Dr Paul Allen

Laws That Sound Strange to Us Many readers view several laws in the Pentateuch as obscure, strange, and sometimes impossible to understand. Specialised vocabulary and ritualistic concepts make them difficult to translate for the ears of modern readers. However, we must take great care to read each law within its given context instead of ignoring or reading our own mindset into the text. Get clarity on some of these laws from Biblical scholars who have dedicated their lives to discerning their meaning. All content is adapted from the ESV Expository Commentary . “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” —Ex. 23:19b Exodus 23:19b relates to the Lord’s proper worship. Boiling appears to have been a common way to prepare sacrificial meat (Lev. 6:28–29; 1 Sam. 2:13; Zech. 14:21), which would have been done during three festivals mentioned earlier in chapter 23: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering. Why such meat should not be boiled...

“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8, NKJV). Humility, like patience, is one of those virtues for which we would like to be known while not having to often express it. In Colossians 3:12, God commands Christians to put on humility and meekness, but this is easier said than done. To begin we must ask, What is humility? Webster defines humility as “being free from pride or arrogance; not proud or arrogant, not haughty or assertive.” One Greek lexicon explains it as “the quality of not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance.”  If Thomas Aquinas is right that pride is the root of all sin, every instance of putting on humility requires a corresponding death blow to the root. Therefore, the reciprocal act of putting on humility and putting off pride is a foundational part of the spiritual warfare that the believer has entered into. Here we must unders...

One of my favorite books is Dr. Michael Greger’s How Not to Die. He lists the top ten causes of death (heart disease, diabetes, various cancers, etc.), and shows how diet and lifestyle changes can increase your chances of preventing, and in some cases reversing, these lethal maladies. Dr. Greger, employing winsome humor and loads of incontrovertible evidence, is very convincing. But he candidly admits that there is no cure for death. His goal is to help you be healthy, energetic, and enjoy vitality… right up until the moment you die of old age. But what if there was a cure for old age? Some reputable scientists are taking the challenge to find the fountain of youth very seriously. Biologists at UCLA have successfully extended the lifespan of fruit flies by tweaking their genes. These files live only 40 days, but with the UCLA longevity intervention, they get an extra 20 days. That’s a 50% increase; imagine you could live to be 130 years old! At Nottingham University, scientists did som...