Dr Paul Allen

By Dr. Jim Denison.  The Taliban’s sweeping takeover of Afghanistan is dominating world news. Many will examine President Biden's incorrect statements and rationale. But how does God see this situation? Let's look through the lens of Scripture and Christian theology. Let’s ask some prior questions:  Who are the Taliban?  What does God think about them?  How should we respond biblically to them? Who are the Taliban? The origins of the Sunni Islamist group known as the “Taliban” (from the Pashto for “students”). According to the most common explanation, when two teenage girls were kidnapped and raped in 1994 by followers of a warlord in Afghanistan, a group of 30 students joined their village cleric, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in rescuing the girls and hanging the group’s commander from a tank barrel. Their group grew in strength and popularity, eventually gaining the support of religious parties within neighboring Pakistan. In the chaos of post-Soviet Afghanistan, their en...

    REPORT BY MARK MORRIS In early July, Afghan pastors and church leaders made a difficult decision. They decided to formally register their faith with the Afghan government. What an absurdity to register as Christians in an Islamic republic that prohibits a person from converting to Christianity! Against the advice of many, these Afghan church leaders felt compelled, for the sake of future generations, to legally declare their true faith in Christ. “What about our children and our grandchildren?” they said. “Someone should make this sacrifice so the next generations can openly call themselves followers of Jesus.” They registered with the government, and we all prayed from outside, asking God to protect them from being rounded up and imprisoned the next morning. They were interviewed but not arrested. Dramatic Church Retreat This past weekend, we met in an Afghan/English church retreat. On the first night of the retreat, we learned that a pastor in Afghanistan received a lett...

Image by Skibum415 via Flickr I want you to guess which prominent American public figure said the following: “I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” He added that what makes a law “just” is that it “squares with the moral law or the law of God,” conversely “unjust” laws are those that are “out of harmony with the moral law.” Well, we just unveiled a statue of him on the National Mall . Yes, Martin Luther King penned those famous words in his 1963 “ Letter from a Birmingham Jail .” Those words and the convictions that prompted them changed America. But today, they would cause the great civil rights leader to be labeled a “theocrat.” “ Theocrat ,” and related words like “ Dominionist ” and “Christianist,” are the latest in a series of epithets directed at Christians who insist that their faith is not merely a private matter. Suggesting Christians want to impo Image via Wikipedia se biblical law on civil society is an attempt to make a comparison betw...