Dr Paul Allen

By Clint Archer Detecting fake wine is a specialized business. When collectors purchase wines with historic value, they never open them. As long as the bottle remains sealed, you can claim the wine is good. Opening it reveals if it’s turned sour. So, wine forgery is all about the bottles, the labels, and the corks. Forgers who get their hands on old bottles will carefully distress a cork, color a label, and then offer the product at an inflated price. The most infamous example was the Jefferson Wines. In the late 1980s billionaire, William Koch bought four bottles of wine from the collector, Hardy Rodenstock, for a total of $500,000. Rodenstock claimed to have unearthed the wines from a bricked-up cellar in Paris and said they dated back to 1787 and belonged to the 3rd US president, Thomas Jefferson. The bottles were engraved with the initials, ThJ, like others in Jefferson’s collection. Jefferson was well-known as an oenophile, having imported much French wine from his days as Ambassa...

"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:2) John 15:2 sets forth a major emphasis on the relationship of the believer to Christ. Jesus' exhortation throughout this portion of His discourse is that, as Christians, as His disciples, we are to be fruitful. That is, we are to be productive. This theme is declared so often in the pages of the New Testament, you would think it would be almost a cliché among Christians, but that is not the case. I frequently encounter the idea in the Christian world, and particularly in academic circles, that if you are a Christian, you do not really have to do very much. The idea is that since we are justified by grace through faith alone, works are utterly inconsequential, so we can kick back, take our ease in Zion, rest on the grace of God, and be utterly worthless for His kingdom. It seems that our proper emphasis on the monergistic sa...