Dr Paul Allen

THE SABBATH POLICE Sometimes, when we read through the Gospels, we’ll see passages where Jesus does something remarkable, then everyone gets mad. On occasion, the Gospel writers explain why people got angry, but often we don’t get much overt explanation—which causes some twenty-first-century Bible readers to scratch their heads. In the excerpt below from the brand-new Signs of the Messiah, Andreas J. Köstenberger unpacks the John 5 passage in which Jesus heals a paralyzed man, then faces persecution. . . . the narrative (in John 5:5–9a) focuses on one such invalid, a man who had been in this condition for thirty-eight years. This must-have seemed like an eternity for the man to be languishing without a realistic chance of being healed. One of the reasons John may have chosen to include this sign is that there was virtually no way this miracle could have been staged. The man had been lying there for thirty-eight years, and countless people had seen him. This is not an individual who had

Just over one hundred years ago, B.B. Warfield delivered the Thomas Symth Lectures at Columbia Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C. The transcription of those lectures forms the content of Warfield’s book Counterfeit Miracles , which opens with these words: “When our Lord came down to earth He drew heaven with Him. The signs which accompanied His ministry were but the trailing clouds of glory which He brought from heaven, which is His home.” Taking up the subject of miraculous healings, in particular, Warfield summarized his assessment of contemporary claims to the continuation of healings when he stated:  “All Christians believe in healing in answer to prayer. Those who assert that this healing is wrought in a specifically miraculous manner, need better evidence for their peculiar view than such as fits in equally well with the general Christian faith.”  For Warfield, the great burden of the day was for Christians to reckon with the biblical teaching about the unique, rede

“And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power.” ( Luke  4:32 )   God’s words, whether spoken by Jesus or written in Scripture, are indeed full of power, and it is noteworthy how many and varied are the physical analogies used to characterize and emphasize its power.   For example, consider  Jeremiah  23:29 . “Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” The fire analogy is also stressed in  Jeremiah 20:9 , when the prophet became weary of the negative reaction against his preaching: “Then I said, I will not . . . speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”   God’s Word is also called a sharp sword wielded by the Holy Spirit. As part of the Christian’s spiritual armor, we are exhorted to take “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” ( Ephesians  6:17 ). “For the word of God is