Dr Paul Allen

One of the world’s oldest Christian communities is facing extermination from jihadists, as Islamic militants linked to Al-Qaeda have seized the Syrian city of Aleppo –home to an estimated 3.5 million people, including more than 50,000 Christians. While Aleppo has seen a mass exodus of some 200,000 Christians in the past 12 years, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took control of large parts of the city on Sunday, prompting warnings from persecution watchers of a fresh “religious cleansing” of Christians. “It looks like we are now heading for another major crisis for Syrian Christians,”  Dr Martin Parsons , director of  The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution , told  The Stream . “Christian aid agencies need to prepare for a massive relief operation.” “Effective and Deadly” Muslim Militants Parsons explained that HTS is a direct affiliate of Al Qaeda set up under the name of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front in 2011 with the help of Abu Bakr al-Ba...

Tom Gilson.  It’s always been there. It’s in one of the most famous passages in the Bible. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I had one of those moments this morning, reflecting on Alistair Begg’s message last Sunday in which he explained his advice to a grandmother that she attend her granddaughter’s same-sex wedding. He’s been blasted for it, sometimes far beyond what he deserves, for example, in a blistering condemnation The Christian Post responded to in an opinion piece. (More on that below.) Begg is one of just three pastors I’ve put on my podcast listening list, other than friends of mine who are pastors. I put him there because I consider him one of the three best. I love his commitment to the love and truth of God and his wise teaching of the Scriptures. I’ve never known anything to complain about except the beef I have with every speaker from Scotland or Ireland: His accent gives him an unfair advantage over the rest of us who speak and teach. (Yes, it’s a joke.) So I was sligh...

Samuel Emadu “That’s the thickest book I’ve ever seen!” My friend and I were discussing the differences between Christianity and Mormonism. He’d just pulled the Mormon “Quad” out of his locker, and I was amazed at its heft. Roughly two and a half inches thick, this collection of Mormon scriptures includes the KJV Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. As we continued our conversation, one thing was clear: the Bible may have been bound alongside the other Mormon scriptures, but it didn’t carry the same authority. What Do Mormons Believe About the Bible? Article 8 of the Mormon Articles of Faith reads, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.” Mormonism doesn’t view the Bible and the Book of Mormon equally. The Bible’s status as God’s Word is relativized by the phrase “as far as it is translated correctly.” The Book of Mormon is the word of God;...

In working with unbelievers and believers alike, we’re called to live and labour in a manner worthy of the gospel (Phil. 1:27). We should be quick to humbly confess and repent when we fall short of it. But how should we respond to coworkers who’ve taken offence not over our own actions but over those of other Christians? 1. Listen with humility. In the face of frequent, embittered accusations that all Christians are prejudiced or malignant, it may be tempting to respond with defensiveness, resentment, or even retaliation. But humility is defusing and disarming. Even the strongest and proudest among us may be persuaded by patience and a soft tongue (Prov. 25:15). Our best first step is to genuinely listen. This is more active (and self-forgetful) than silently crafting a rebuttal while the other person speaks. It involves praying for a tender heart that’s moved with compassion over the wrongs others have experienced as we mourn with those who mourn (Rom. 12:15). Our coworkers (or others...

It’s not a matter of  if  but  when . When will students in your church—or even the child in your home—announce same-sex attractions or transgender identities? For some of you, the “when” may have been last week, coinciding with National Coming Out Day. But no matter what day kids come out, Christians need to be ready. We need to know how to demonstrate love without affirmation, kindness without capitulation. Ultimately, we need to know what the Bible says and how to respond. In her article, “ How to Respond If Your Child Comes Out Today ,” Maria Keffler offers advice for Christian parents in this very situation. And she gets practical, providing suggestions for what to say in the moment, even if it’s just, “I need some time to process.”

These past two years of the pandemic have undoubtedly been the most difficult of my 15+ years in pastoral ministry here in India. I became the lead pastor of our small urban church in 2009, and since then by God’s grace, we have become a cluster of four churches with about 600 members—many of whom come from different faith backgrounds. In May 2021, our church family was shattered by the deaths of four highly active and beloved church members in just over three weeks. In addition to this, almost all of our people lost at least one relative due to COVID, several of our members lost jobs or experienced pay cuts, many have struggled with post-COVID anxiety and panic attacks, and our children did their schooling online for 23 months straight. Every person in our church has been affected negatively by this pandemic in some way or another, and many have been devastated. As a church, it’s also been challenging to navigate the unchartered territory the pandemic led us into: not being able to me...

In 2021, 360 million Christians lived in places where they experienced high levels of persecution and discrimination. Of that number, 6,175 believers were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned, 3,829 were abducted, and 5,898 were killed for their faith. For the past 30 years, the Open Doors World Watch List has tracked such persecution, offered a global indicator of countries where human and religious rights are being violated, and highlighted those countries most vulnerable to societal unrest and destabilization. “The World Watch List is always sobering to read, just because the problem is so big,” says David Curry, president, and CEO of Open Doors. “But it’s not new; Satan has targeted God’s people since the beginning. It’s just gotten worse, and more sophisticated.” Persecution is extremely high in Afghanistan, which for the first time has supplanted North Korea as the most dangerous country to be a Christian.  The 2022 World Watch List reveals that persecut...

“The child of God has two great marks about him . . .” So writes J.C. Ryle in his classic book Holiness. How would you finish the sentence? Faith and repentance? Love and hope? Praise and thanksgiving? Humility and joy? I’m not sure what I would have said before reading Ryle, but I know I would not have finished the sentence as he does: The child of God has two great marks about him. . . . He may be known by his inward warfare, as well as by his inward peace. (72) Warfare and peace. Combat and rest. The clash of armies and the calm of treaties. The Christian may have more marks about him than these two, but never less. He is a child in the Father’s home, and he is a soldier in the Savior’s war. That sentence would play no small role in saving me from despair. Parachuting into War When I entered the Christian life, I had no idea I was walking into war. I felt, at first, like a man parachuting over the glories of salvation — finally awake to Christ, finally safe from sin, finally headed ...

For a spot sacred to countless billions throughout history, Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been the site of a lot of bloodshed. When the site was first awarded sanctity cannot be known. Prehistoric peoples may have venerated pagan gods on the hilltop and the tradition continued, in changing forms. Or perhaps, it was made holy when the Jerusalem Temple was built by King Solomon, as the Bible says. We cannot even investigate when the site was first settled: Excavation is impossible both because of the holy sites now on the Mount, and the unrelenting political tensions. With material evidence scarce at best, two main camps have developed in biblical archaeology. One takes the bible literally and believes King Solomon constructed the First Temple there in the 10th century BCE. But based on what archaeological evidence there is, the second camp suspects that Jerusalem in Solomon's time was a small hilltop village, and that the site that would come to be known as Temple Mount wasn't e...

Chengdu, Sichuan Province, persecution of the church continues,  Multiple police officers appeared at the home of Elder Li Yingqiang of Chengdu Early Rain Covenant Church and stopped him from attending Sunday worship. Police arrived at 8:20 am that morning and did not leave until noon. According to China Aid and Elder Li’s Facebook page, two undercover officers with several guards and uniformed police officers broke into his home, (included one uniformed officer, Director Dai of Qingyang District Caotang Road police station), Elder Li challenged the officers and asked if they had secured official paperwork to detain him. Police stressed that they did not come to enforce the law at this time but to “chat” (communicate). Even though Elder Li said that he did not want to chat, officers insisted that he talk with them. Elder Li explained to the officers why he risked returning to Chengdu and why he remains committed to the church with several hundred congregants experiencing persecutio...

Do Old Testament commands apply today?  1) Theologians have divided the Old Testament laws into moral, ceremonial, and civil law, 2) We are bound by some commands because they are moral principles, 3) We do not follow civil and ceremonial laws, rather we have to recognize that “God had a moral principle that he was applying to a specific society” and then in order to apply those laws to ourselves we have to “stop and ask what is the moral principle that God was applying into that world, and then figure out how do I apply that moral principle into my world today” and 4) Figuring out the moral principle for today is a “harrowing and messy process” because “there is nothing in the Bible that marks the law as moral or ceremonial or civil, we just have to figure it out” and by studying the Bible we can understand what “would God have us do with this particular command.” There is a process for figuring out what God wants us to do in obedience to him -  that is neither ...