Dr Paul Allen

As the Apostle John comes to the end of his gospel, having just described the events of Jesus’ resurrection, he pauses to state his purpose in writing his account of Jesus’ life. He declares, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30–31). John states what Jesus and His Apostles consistently declare: the hope found in coming to Jesus is nothing less than life in His name—a life that is new, abundant, and eternal in Him (John 10:10; Eph. 4:4–5; Rom. 5:20–21). How do we receive this abundant new life? John puts it succinctly: by believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. But what exactly does John mean by believing that Jesus is the Messiah? What is involved in such a belief? This question is not merely academic or exegetical. As a pastor, I have watched many wrestle wi

IS THIS POSSIBLE? Communist Party officials in China have rewritten one of the Bible’s most powerful accounts of Jesus Christ’s grace and divinity by blasphemously claiming the Saviour stoned to death the woman caught in adultery.  Barnabas Fund reports that the well-known New Testament account in John’s Gospel (8:3-11) is completely altered to depict Jesus Christ as a devious murderer, and self-proclaimed “sinner”, in a “professional ethics and law” textbook used in Chinese vocational secondary schools. The textbook’s amended version of the account states,  “The crowd wanted to stone the woman to death as per their law. But Jesus said, ‘Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.’ Hearing this, they slipped away one by one. When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, ‘I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.’” The Biblical account describes how the scribes and Pharisees attempt to set a

John’s description of the Beast depicts a figure inspired by Satan, the Dragon who also comes from the Abyss. The Beast mimics Jesus, the Lamb, whose death and resurrection signaled his defeat, seeking to maintain his influence over the earth dwellers.  The Beast demands worship and loyalty from the inhabitants of the earth, using the kingdoms and rulers of the earth to exercise control. The seven kings and the ten kings that John associates with the seven heads and ten horns of the Beast could have been understood in the first century as depicting specific Roman emperors and their allies, or as depicting the political system and cultural and religious practices of the Roman Empire more generally. John’s interpretive comments suggests that he understands the Beast as the political, cultural, religious, and economic systems that Satan uses in order to thwart God’s purposes—to no avail, as God will destroy the forces of evil when the end comes.  The connections that John estab