Dr Paul Allen

For more than 10 years, I was entrenched in mysticism and self-discovery. Jordan Taylor I practised witchcraft and performed spells. I became an oracle card reader and enrolled in classes to sharpen my psychic abilities. I was a certified Reiki master and yoga teacher. I used crystals as a means of healing, protecting, and manifesting. I believed in astrology, manifesting under a new moon and cleansing and recharging my energy under the full moon. I worshipped nature and worked with goddesses. I found my spirit guides and let them lead my life. I’d talk to “Spirit/Source/Universe” and believed I was speaking to my “higher self.” I believed I created my own reality and was my own god, in control of my life. I thought I finally knew my purpose—to heal the collective, raise the planet's vibration, and help others heal and do the same. But behind it all, I grappled with darkness, deception, and a yearning for more . Still, I became trapped in a cycle of healing and “up-levelling,” cons...

Lyne Wallace In simple words, John gives us an important observation about the morning of the resurrection. “…It was still dark…” As always with John the words operate on two levels. Yes, it was before dawn so it was dark. John, however, was not referring to the limited number of lumens peering over the horizon. The time of day is only a servant to his greater point. The world was dark not because the sun had yet to peer over the horizon. John is not trying to describe the ordinary. The world was dark because the power of evil had if just for a moment, won the day or so it seemed. The Light of the World was extinguished, and, for all Mary Magdalene knew, that fact remained unchanged. She most likely suspected it to forever remain unchanged. Mary was beside herself in grief. Her eyes, swollen by hours of wailing, were unable to see clearly. Her wailing had drowned out both extraordinary and familiar voices. John 20 -  Mary and Jesus She watched in disbelieving horror as the soldiers...

By Thomas West I live in London as someone inspired by two missionaries to Western culture. One is Lesslie Newbigin, a cross-cultural missionary sent to India who later returned to England. The other is Tim Keller, a church planter who established a thriving evangelical congregation in the middle of Manhattan. Today, Keller’s life and ministry are being celebrated following his recent death. Keller showed us how to connect with, confront, and call to Christ a culture with the gospel, doing this, of all places, in New York. His love for the city and his theological vision inspired my family to move to London to plant a church. I first encountered the works of Newbigin and his missionary perspective while a seminary student. I also learned of the Stone Lectures delivered by Newbigin at Princeton in 1989, where he famously called the church to “a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and modern Western culture.” In 2017, Keller gave the Kuyper Lecture at Princeton titled “Answ...

I want to share two things. First, I am hungry for more and don’t live in the past or dwell in the past, despite the great things I have seen the Lord do over the decades. So, rather than looking back, I am always looking ahead. Rather than getting nostalgic and, with longing, thinking about the good old days, I am anticipating the next thing God will do. As I understand His words: because I am hungry for more, I have a reason to live and to thrive. Something holy drives me and carries me. I do not want to stagnate. Instead, I want to thrive and continue to grow. This brings to mind the words of Paul, who wrote (concerning his ultimate spiritual vision), “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward...

Tomorrow in Washington DC, a few miles away from the church I pastor, will be a rally called the “Trans Day of Vengeance.” The event will be led by the “Trans Radical Activist Network” and has been promoted by political leaders around the country. Supporters of the “Trans Day of Vengeance” say that the Trans Community is under attack, and their protection can only come through retribution. This week has exposed a seething, violent hatred towards those who won’t fly the rainbow flag over their homes, churches, and on their social media accounts. That the Day of Vengeance takes place the week of the Nashville shooting is no coincidence—or if it is, one of the leaders of the trans movement called it “a happy coincidence.” The media has also shown hatred for the church—with major outlets even strongly implying (if not outright declaring) that the church is responsible for the shooting at its own school. The White House expressed support for the calls for vengeance on those that oppose the ...

1 Kings 18:24 – “…And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” One of the primary metaphors the Bible uses to describe spiritual warfare is light versus darkness. God wants His people to live in the light, and Satan wants us to live in the darkness. Much like a dimmer switch, Satan and demonic forces know that if they simply flipped everything from light to darkness, it would be too obvious and stark.  So, evil forces at work in the world slowly turn things darker and darker hoping that, over the course of years and generations, the darkness is winning without being alarming. This is precisely the backdrop for the ministry of Elijah – things had grown dimmer and darker for generations, and Elijah came to turn the light on.  Throughout the Bible, God creates and Satan counterfeits. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created...” 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 [NLT] speaks of, “the work of Satan”, as...

The Rejection of Good News If God is really so good, surely mission must be the easiest work in the world. Simply hold out Jesus in his gospel, and people should come flocking. Of course, that’s not how it is. Quite the opposite. Bizarrely, the wonderful good news of free grace is a tough sell. People dislike not just the idea of God in general but the message of the gospel specifically.  Late in his life, George Orwell recalled that as a schoolboy, he hated Jesus and even felt sympathy toward Judas and Pontius Pilate, who had betrayed and executed him.1 Orwell’s attitude may well have been the perversity of a schoolboy, but it expresses something of our natural hostility toward God and the gospel. Human beings are fallen, and this is why we do not intuitively worship, trust, and love God. The radiance of God’s glory shines not into neutrality but into darkness. Indeed, Paul writes that our hearts are “darkened” (Rom. 1:21) because we reject the Lord.  The truth is that human ...

The pastor seemed uncertain. He might normally talk with the discouraged congregant about spiritual endurance or encourage him with a psalm, but today he was relatively silent. He was compassionate but offered no hopeful connections to Christ’s redeeming work or the Savior’s present help. Why? This pastor was concerned that any spiritual encouragement he gave might be misguided or unhelpful because the congregant had recently been diagnosed with depression. Most people believe depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, but this assumption has been challenged by a recent medical study titled “The Serotonin Theory of Depression.” The project, led by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff of the University College of London, was an umbrella review, a survey of the major psychiatric research on the link between depression and serotonin, the neurotransmitter psychiatrists have long cited as the most likely chemical cause of depression. After reexamining and collecting much of the relevant and reliable res...

When my daughter Eliana was 6 years old, I wrote her a lullaby that included these words: You, Eliana, remind me each day That God does answer the prayers that we pray. And though the night falls and we cannot see, He will bring light when the time’s right for you and me. These four lines are packed with profound meaning for me. I rarely can sing them without tears. They refer to an extended season of what Christians call spiritual darkness, a dark night of the soul, or a faith crisis, which I experienced the year before Eliana was born. Since I told this story in some detail a number of years ago, I won’t recount it all here. I do, however, want to recount the moment God brought light into my night because it was a transformational moment when I experienced the biblical truth David describes in Psalm 139: If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,      and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you;      the night is bright as t...

  GOD SPEAKS IN THE DARKNESS The moonlight spilled over the room’s edges through the large windows on the south side. I could see his body lying still, yet attentive, as I slipped through the bedroom door. The light outlined his small form on the pillow, and a foot peeked out from under the sheet. He was waiting again, more patiently than most eleven-year-olds, because waiting is his life. Waiting to hear the creaking of the stiff door hinges, waiting for the sound of feet coming near, waiting to hear the bedrail creak indicating presence. My slippers shuffled noiselessly along the wooden floor; at his bed, I leaned forward and felt his warm breath on my cheek. So near, yet his eyes still wide and waiting—no recognition greeted me, just the same wondering and expectant expression. I have done this a thousand times, but still, he does not know my face. His eyes could not pick his mother out in a crowd. I broke the silence with a hoarse whisper: “Son, it’s Mom. I’m here.” His head je...

Christians embrace a number of unbiblical ideas about the powers of darkness. The reasons are twofold and are related. First, most of what we claim to know about the powers of darkness do not derive from close study of the original Hebrew and Greek texts.  Second, much of what we think we know is filtered through and guided by church tradition—not the original, ancient contexts of the Old and New Testaments. Taken collectively, these two realities mean that our beliefs about Satan and the dark powers are not rooted in these powers’ own original contexts. Bible teachers (including some scholars) are prone to write about the powers of darkness on the basis of the English translation. That undermines the nuance found in the original languages . Substituting traditions that merged after the biblical period for ancient context and conflating ancient-language terms into the vocabulary of English translations produces an incomplete and occasionally misleading portrait of the...

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” ( Isaiah 9:2 ) This beautiful verse is treated in the New Testament as a Messianic prophecy, fulfilled when Christ came into the world—growing up in Nazareth and then dwelling in Capernaum, both cities being located in “Galilee of the Gentiles” ( Matthew 4:15 ). This was in the region once occupied by the 10 northern tribes and then devastated by the invading Assyrians when they carried the Northern Kingdom away into captivity. This region had for centuries thereafter remained in spiritual darkness, even after the return of Judah from captivity in Babylon. But then Christ came, and “from that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” ( Matthew 4:17 ). Thus, His public ministry actually began in this land of darkness. “And the light shineth in darkness. . . . the true Light, which lighteth ever...

“And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” ( Revelation 22:5 )   The Bible reveals that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” ( 1 John 1:5 ), and also that, in the ages to come, there will be no more darkness. God promises twice that there shall be “no night there” ( Revelation  21:25 ; 22:5) in the very last references to night in the Bible.   Why, then, is there darkness, and where did it come from? God gives the answer: “I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness” ( Isaiah 45:6-7 ). Light was always in and with God, but the darkness had to be created! And, it has a purpose, serving as a contrast to the light.   Men and women were created to love and have fellowship with their Creator , not as robots but in freedom. Darkness thus served as the choice that could be made against God and ...