Dr Paul Allen

I’ve sometimes asked my students what comes to mind when they hear the phrase “The God of the Old Testament.” Words like wrath, anger, violence, judgement, and even hate are often shared.  To be sure, some also associate God with mercy and salvation, but the imbalance toward the “negative” attributes is telling. This image of an angry and violent God features prominently in the intro to Christianity Today’s podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, where Mark Driscoll expresses his desire to “go Old Testament” on a few members of his church—an overt reference to violence.  Many would baulk at the idea of equating the Old Testament with violence. But what of the many texts that show God acting violently or commending violence within Israel? Isn’t the idea of God drowning 99.999% of his creatures in the Flood, or commanding the destruction of the Canaanites, inimical to the teachings of Jesus? The rush to resolve this perceived disconnect between the violence of God in the Old Tes...

Do unbelievers get a second chance at salvation after death? Can you explain 1 Peter 3:19–20 and 1 Peter 4:6, this idea that the gospel was preached to the dead? Some go so far as to imply second-chance salvation. Is there one?” I don’t have complete confidence that I know what Peter is referring to when he says that Christ in the spirit preached to those who are now in prison. Here’s what that verse says so everybody can be up to speed with us. Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which [that is, in that spirit] he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal ...

If God is making a comeback, where has He been all this time? Well, literally speaking, He didn’t go anywhere. He’s just been banished from the landscape of respectable “scientific” discourse. But if one takes the long view of history, this dramatic banishment happened very recently indeed. It wasn’t so long ago that even notorious freethinkers like Voltaire took God’s existence as a matter of course. But with the rise of methodological naturalism and the wide acceptance of naturalistic frameworks like Darwinism, a new consensus gradually formed that God had been put out of a job. Theism became a fringe view, something “serious” academics didn’t entertain in public if they wanted to be “respectable.”   If the word “God” pops up in a physics book, like Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time, it’s understood to be metaphorical, a place-holder word for the ultimate all-explaining mathematical principle. What happened? The status game changed.   “We’ve become very guild-oriented...

Of all twelve statements in the Apostle’s Creed, the most maligned is what is referred to as the descent doctrine. This doctrine teaches that after being crucified, Jesus’ body went into the grave but his soul went into the realm of the dead, from which he ascended on that first Easter morning. In bold is the phrase the Apostle’s Creed uses: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. This teaching has generally been understood to mean that after his physical death, Jesus’s soul really went to Sheol, where his victory over Satan, sin, and the grave were all announced. His victory was declared to the spirits in prison from the ...

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.” 8Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.” 9And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand,10he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these wor...

- Watch the moment pastor Alph Lukau - @AlphLukau revives a 3-day -old dead man in South Africa. pic.twitter.com/N5O6ZPcRgO — SubDeliveryZone (@SubDeliveryZone) February 25, 2019 He’s being called a modern-day Lazarus. This past Sunday,  Alph Lukau of Alleluia Ministries in South Africa  is reported to  have raised a man named Elliot from the dead . - Watch the moment pastor Alph Lukau -  @AlphLukau  revives a 3-day -old dead man in South Africa.  pic.twitter.com/N5O6ZPcRgO Elliot was carried in his coffin from a hearse to Lukau for the miracle. The supposed dead man lies in the coffin with his mouth open. With onlookers gazing, mood music playing, and fans cheering, Lukau commands the man to rise and he sits up in the coffin. The crowd goes wild. Understandably, social media has been ablaze with the event. News outlets such as  the BBC have covered it . But here’s the question: did it happen? Is Elliot, as some claim, a “modern-day Laz...

Paul and Barnabas stayed in Lystra long enough (as v. 20 indicates) for a number to believe and become disciples (and, as always, to be baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2:4). Then some (unbelieving) Jews from Pisidian Antioch (about one hundred miles away) who had thrown Paul out of their city and some from Iconium (about thirty miles away) who had wanted to stone him heard of Paul’s success at Lystra. They came and persuaded the pagan crowds to help them, or at least to permit them, to carry out their plot. (Some of the pagans may have felt they were disgraced when Paul and Barnabas did not let them sacrifice to them. They did not forget this, so they listened to Paul’s enemies.) This time they did stone Paul and “dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead” (cf. 2 Cor. 11:23, 25). Clearly he was not dead; however, he was probably unconscious and no doubt severely bruised and bloody—as well as having broken bones.55 Paul never blamed God for suc...

Matt. 27:45-50 reads : 45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” 48 And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. 49 But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” Here’s some quick observations: –  In Matt. 27:45, there was an eclipse, or some other condition resulting in darkness (it may  not  have been an eclipse), that was three hours long.  This is certainly significant, especially in relation to the Messiah, but I’m not going to work through this specific detail right now.  In a nutshell, ...