Dr Paul Allen

Moon (Photo credit: Paul Garland ) We have just experienced the first of a series of four lunar eclipses. Acccording to  NASA , “The action starts [started] on April 15th when the full Moon passes through the amber shadow of Earth, producing a  midnight  eclipse visible across North America.  So begins a lunar eclipse tetrad—a series of 4 consecutive total eclipses occurring at approximately six month intervals.  The total eclipse of April 15, 2014, will be followed by another on  Oct. 8, 2014 , and another on  April 4, 2015 , and another on  Sept. 28 2015 .” These four consecutive total lunar eclipses will each result in the moon appearing red for the duration of the eclipse. This phenomenon is known as a blood red moon. Well, if you are deeply involved in biblical prophecy, this is the kind of thing you will find difficult to ignore. After all, Joel  2:31  says, “The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of theLORD com

English: Fray Pedro Fernández Pecha, by Valdés Leal, 1656, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The sixteenth century in Europe was a century of church reform. Using the newly-invented printing press, many called the church to clean up its act. Martin Luther set reform blazing in Germany with pamphlets and a German Bible. William Tyndale issued the Bible and many booklets in English and died for it. John Calvin published a powerful theological work that won millions of followers. The very air seemed charged with new learning. Spain , too, had its champion of reformation--a freshman at the University of Alcalá. Juan Valdés was just eighteen years old on this day January 14, 1529when he published his Dialogue on Christian Doctrine . The work was not quite as he had planned. One of his professors cautioned him to make some changes so that he would not rouse the wrath of the Inquisition . Valdés agreed. Even so, the book was strongly Protestant in tone. What

Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales. Illustrates Jesus' description of himself "I am the Good Shepherd" (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). This version of the image shows the detail of his face. The memorial window is also captioned: "To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of William Wright. Died 6th November, 1932. Aged 70 Yrs." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Matthew 24:9–14 “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (v. 14). Jesus’ promise that God’s wrath is coming upon all of Jerusalem (23:29–39), His declaration concerning the imminent fall of the temple (24:1–2), and a question as to the timing of these events (v. 3) precede the signs described in 24:4–35. This requires us to look for these signs within the lifetimes of those who first heard Christ , otherwise this

Image via Wikipedia There were certainly atrocities committed as part of the Crusades : the sack of Jerusalem stands as one glaring example which we should lament as Christians .  However, to be fair the Crusades as a whole must be set against both the backdrop, and immediate context of Islamic expansion through warfare and conquest.  The Byzantine Empire, the great empire of eastern Christendom , was under continued assault and invasion.  North Africa had fallen to the Muslims ; Spain had been invaded.   While the French mainland invasions from Spain had been repelled prior, there were regular attacks by Muslim raiding parties along  Mediterranean coastal France, Italy, Greece, etc.  This is one reasons why medieval (and later!) Greek, Italian and French villages along the coasts sit atop fortified hills – Muslim raiding parties which killed the men, sexually assaulted/captured the women, and took the children as slaves back to North Africa/Palestine. The medieval world was a re