Dr Paul Allen

A Crude Feeding Trough So Mary may have felt disheartened as she trudged, in the last stages of pregnancy, to Bethlehem, about eighty miles away. With no one to help her but Joseph, her betrothed. The Bible does not mention her even having the donkey we like to imagine her riding. Where was Joseph’s family? They must have gone to Bethlehem for the census too, but they don’t appear to have accompanied the young couple. Were Mary and Joseph not welcome with the rest of his family? All we are told was that the couple went together with nowhere to sleep but a stable. And as she was delivering Jesus, did Mary wonder why God had not intervened? Scripture does not record that this birth was anything other than ordinary. Messy, bloody, the way all babies are born. And then wrapped in swaddling cloths according to the custom. All very typical. Very human. And where to lay him? In such a familial society, surely most women would be surrounded by relatives, eager to rock a newborn baby. But Ma

Though his work is almost universally known within the English-speaking world, Charles Jennens is virtually unknown. He was a brilliant librettist — a writer of texts to be put to music by others. Born in the year 1700, Jennens inherited his father’s vast estate and wealth, attended Oxford University, and became a gentleman scholar. He published a controversial interpretation of William Shakespeare and lived a life of extravagance and eccentricity. That could have been the end of his story, but it was not. His emergence as a brilliant librettist was driven by a sense of theological and spiritual urgency. Jennens was greatly concerned to confront the deism that was then spreading so quickly among the educated classes in England in the wake of the Enlightenment. Deism rejected the self-revelation of God in the Bible, the need of humanity for salvation, the deity of Christ, Christianity’s message of salvation, and any divine judgment to come. Deists rejected the very idea of a persona

The glory of Christmas is that it is not the beginning of Christ. Long before that first Christmas, his story had begun — not just in various prophecies, but in a divine person. Christmas may be the opening of the climactic chapter, but it is not the commencement of Christ. Christmas does indeed mark a conception and a birth. We rehearse Mary’s magnificent song of submission, and the shepherds’ visit to pay homage to her newborn son, and read she “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke  2:19 ). For mere humans, no doubt, such is the stuff of our origins. Prior to earthly beginnings, we simply did not exist. But it is not so with the Son of God. His “coming forth is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2). Unlike every other human birth, Christmas is not a beginning, but a becoming. Christmas isn’t his start, but his commission. He was not created; he came. No other human in the history of the world shares in this peculiar glory. As remarkabl

What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, as important as that is, but what's so significant about the birth of that particular baby is that in this birth we have the incarnation of God Himself. An incarnation means a coming in the flesh. We know how John begins His gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So in that very complicated introductory statement, he distinguishes between the Word and God, and then in the next breath identifies the two, "The Word was with God, and the Word was God." And then at the end of the prologue, he says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Now in this "infleshment," if you will, of Christ appearing on this planet, it's not that God suddenly changes through a metamorphosis into a man, so that the divine nature sort of passes out of existence or comes into a new form of fleshiness. No, the incarnation is not so much a s

The movie has a couple mystical moments where characters establish an emotional connection to the Force or through it. In regard to the infamous Force, the movie also promotes modern monism , a New Age theology claiming that there’s a universal, but impersonal, energy or “Force” that is part of everything and surrounds everyone. This is typical STAR WARS mythology. However, in THE FORCE AWAKENS, it’s suggested a couple times that there must be a “balance” not only in the Force but also between the “good side” and the “dark side” of the Force. This is Non-Christian Eastern monism and moral dualism. In this light, it’s interesting to note that these lines in the movie logically contradict the rest of the story, which clearly and strongly says the good must defeat and overcome, if not destroy, the dark side. The movie also suggests, in a redemptive way, that characters who succumb to the dark side can actually redeem themselves by rejecting the dark side and coming into the light

It’s a joy to reserve this part of the year to remember and celebrate the birth of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This, of course, is what Christmas is about in the truest sense. Amid all the tinsel, the gingerbread cookies, and the trees and stockings and gift shopping, true Christians pause to reorient our thoughts and our affections to what Christmas is really about: the incarnation of the Son of God. And that kind of theological shorthand has become so familiar to us that we cease to be amazed at the truth we speak of when we speak of the incarnation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” God. Becoming man. The infinite, eternal, self-existent, self-sufficient, almighty God, without shedding His divine nature, taking upon Himself—in addition

With December 25 fast approaching, the secular media are sure to turn their interest once again to the virgin birth. Every Christmas, weekly news magazines and various editorialists engage in a collective gasp that so many Americans could believe such an unscientific, supernatural doctrine. For some, the belief that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin is nothing less than evidence of intellectual dimness. One writer for the New York Times put the lament plainly: "The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time." Does belief in the virgin birth make Christians "less intellectual?" Are we saddled with an untenable doctrine? Can a true Christian deny the virgin birth, or is the doctrine an essential component of the Gospel revealed to us in Scripture? The doctrine of the virgin birth was among the first to be questioned and then rejected after the rise of historical criticism and the undermining of