Dr Paul Allen

T he Holy Spirit opens our hearts to the Glory of God.  What is God's glory, and how important is it?  The glory of God is the holiness of God put on display.  That is, it is the infinite worth of God made manifest.  Notice how Isaiah shifts from "holy" to "glory": "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" (lsa. 6:3). When the holiness of God fills the earth for people to see, it is called glory.  The basic meaning of holy is "separated from the common."  Thus, the holiness of God is His infinite "separation" from all that is common.  God's uniqueness as the only God - His "Godness" - makes Him infinitely valuable, or holy.  In speaking of God's glory, the Bible assumes that this infinite value has entered creation. It has, as it were, shone.  God's glory is the radiance of His holiness, the out-streaming of His infinite value .  And when it streams out, it is seen as ...

Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. (Ex. 33:11) Moses is unique in the history of redemption. God spoke directly and intimately with him. He was a prophet and an intercessor, speaking God’s words to the nation and speaking to God on behalf of the nation. Moses was the covenant mediator. He also played a special role in pointing to the coming One, who would be a prophet like himself (Deut. 18:15–19). In Exodus 33, Moses continues to intercede for the wayward Israelites. His intercession had spared them previously, and now Moses intercedes once more. Although stubborn, this people belongs to the Lord. They need more than deliverance from judgment. Moses knows that God himself must accompany the people. God’s covenant presence must be what distinguishes them from all other people on the face of the earth. Moses appeals to the favo...

1 Thessalonians 2:10-12 – You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. For those who know the Lord Jesus and believe in His coming Kingdom, living on this fallen cursed planet can be very dark, discouraging, and disorienting. This longing for Home causes Christians to ask numerous questions. In the New Testament, there are parts of the Bible where the author answers questions that were sent to him by local church leaders on behalf of people in the church.  One example is 1 Corinthians. Throughout the letter, Paul frequently quotes directly from the letter he received from the Corinthians (e.g. 6:12, 6:13, 8:5, 10:23). He also notifies the reader of when he is transitioning from one topic to another with the simple phrase “now” t...

If you were a Jew, you understood that it doesn’t get any better than Moses. It’s all downhill after Moses. No one will outstrip Moses and what he has given to God’s people. What came before is always better because what came before is Moses. So what is Jesus saying through this sign? He’s not just performing some cheap parlour trick to impress his disciples. Nor is he simply showing them that he has power to do what he wants. No, this whole miracle is a parable of a deeper truth about who Jesus is and about how Jesus is going to defy Jewish expectation. They thought that the pinnacle was Moses. But Jesus is saying, “No, my Father has saved the very best for last, and it’s me. It’s me.” Do you remember what John the Apostle wrote in the Prologue? John 1:16-18, “16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace in place of grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. 18 No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who...

“By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb. 11:3). Creation sings a beautiful story. Every detail was designed by a masterful artist whose artistic abilities are high and above the most skilled human painter. Not a stroke of colour is wasted. Every layer of wispy blue and white in the sky is intentionally designed; every verdant hue of green in the dew-dipped grass is there on purpose; every shade of colour in the wind-swept flowers of the field was put there like a well-stationed singer in a choir. Creation sings a beautiful story; the author and perfecter of that story is God Himself in Christ. But what does creation sing about? John Calvin was fond of using the theatre analogy to talk about creation and its relationship to God. He called creation the “theatre of the glory of God.” In this theatre, God is the great artist-conductor, and every scene of the play is designed to reflect...

Some sorrows run so deep and last so long that those who bear them may despair of ever finding solace, at least in this life. No matter how large a frame they put around their pain, the darkness seems to bleed all the way to the edges. Perhaps you are among those saints whose lot seems to lie in the land of sorrow. You have not taken the bitter counsel of Job’s wife — “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9) — and by God’s grace, you will not. Yours is not a fair-weather faith. You know that God has treated you with everlasting kindness in Christ. You cannot curse him. But still, with Job, you stare at the fallen house of your life, where so many dear desires lie dead. And even with faith larger than a mustard seed, the brokenness seems unfixable in this world. The wound is incurable. The grief is inconsolable. The darkness defies the largest frames we could build. This is why, when God speaks to such saints in Romans 8, he does not bid them to merely look harder here below, squinting for a silve...

  Several instances throughout Exodus (e.g., Ex 16:10; 34:5) have made clear that the visible manifestation of Yahweh’s presence often occurs as a cloud. Since the Israelites conceived of Yahweh as invisible, they needed a visible entity—​a reminder or symbol that could be seen by the human eye—​to reassure them that Yahweh was indeed present with them. That visible entity is often referred to in the OT as the “glory” (kabod) of Yahweh. Isa 40:5, e.g., states that it is the “glory of the LORD” that “all people will see.” Once the construction and arrangement of the tabernacle in Exodus are complete, the glory of Yahweh, in the form of a cloud, fills the place that Moses cannot even enter it (Ex 40:35).  It seems, therefore, to have been more than something that could merely be seen; it could be sensed in other ways. At one point in Exodus, the “glory” is called a “consuming fire” (24:17). The glory of Yahweh was reassuring and fear-inspiring all at the same time. This is remin...

In 1977, California pastor Jack Hayford and his wife visited England during the Silver Jubilee — the twenty-fifth anniversary — of Queen Elizabeth’s 1952 accession to the throne. They were struck by the grandeur of the celebration and the manifest joy of the people in their monarch. While there, they visited Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill and famous for the magnitude and stateliness some non-UK people today know only through watching Downton Abbey. Driving away from the palace, overcome with awe, Hayford found himself reaching for words — language that would transpose the weight of the earthly experience into the key of heaven. As he stretched, the word that seemed most fitting to describe the stunning magnificence of the palace and how it pointed to the superiority of the reigning Christ was majesty. According to a California newspaper’s retelling of the story, As the Hayfords pulled themselves from that regal palace and drove away, Dr Hayford asked his wife to t...

Despite the many English translations that refer to radiance or brightness emanating from the face of Moses, it is unclear what the Hebrew text means to say. Ex 34:29 says, “The skin of his face qaran.”  The main reason why many English translations refer to brilliance is that several ancient translations do so: the Septuagint, the pre-Christian Greek translation of the OT (done two centuries before Christ), the Peshitta (the Syriac translation probably completed by the fourth or fifth century AD), and the Targums (the Aramaic translations of OT books that originated during the first few centuries BC and continued to develop throughout the first millennium AD). The most basic meaning of the Hebrew word qaran is “to have horns.” Iconography, notably the representation of Moses by Michelangelo, portrays Moses with horns protruding from his head.  This interpretation is not as far-fetched as one might think. Besides the surface meaning of the Hebrew, horns are a prevalent symbol ...

I believe the Bible teaches that saving faith is a trusting and treasuring of Jesus Christ that rises from a Spirit-given sight of the truth and greatness and beauty and worth of Jesus as we see him at work in the gospel. “Saving faith sees Jesus as supremely desirable, supremely great, supremely beautiful.” And what David rightly sees in this understanding of faith is that faith is not mere agreement with facts about Jesus, and it’s not a mere trust in Jesus to do for us things that even unbelievers want to be done. Saving faith does not receive Jesus merely as useful.  Saving faith receives Jesus as himself, the greatest gift of the gospel. This means that saving faith sees Jesus as supremely desirable, supremely great, supremely beautiful, and valuable, all of which the Bible sums up by saying that Jesus has divine glory. So those words valuable, beautiful, great, desirable — they’re all subsumed I think in what the Bible means by glory. Saving faith is a treasuring trust in Jes...

They will see His face (Rev. 22:4). As the Scripture sets before believers our enduring hope, the saints hear of the day when we shall see “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Specifically, when Christ appears, “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).  John Owen once asked,  “To who is it not a matter of rejoicing, that with the same eyes with which they see the tokens and signs of him in the sacrament of the supper, they shall behold himself immediately in his own person?”  He then adds “in the immediate beholding of the person of Christ, we shall see a glory in it a thousand times above what we can here conceive.” Believers have been longing for such a sight (Job 19:26), yearning to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27:4). And while we have some faint acquaintance with Christ’s glory now by faith, a total transformation in us, changed from perishable to imperishable (1 Cor. 15:51–52), is necessary to see His unveiled glory. It is when we are like Him that we shall see Hi...

I first started listening to hip hop music in the late 80s. If there’s one thing that characterized the hip hop I listened to from then through the 90s, it was filled with musically gifted, but lyrically vile, musicians. For that reason, I’m grateful for brothers like Omri Miles, and his   latest album, “GGCW” (Glory Gospel Church World) . Born and raised in New Orleans, Omri came to faith in Christ in 2008. Since then, he completed the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling program at The Master’s University in 2016, became a certified biblical counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, then finished the Master of Divinity degree at The Expositors Seminary in 2020. Omri currently serves as an elder at Grace Bible Church in Tempe, Arizona. He is married and has four children. In the midst of all that, he’s been making music since 2008. Omri’s purpose of the album is to present four pillars which support a biblical theology of missions (Glory, Gos...