Dr Paul Allen

I love the seemingly insignificant phrases in the Bible—phrases like the ones we find at the end of Genesis 1:16—“He also made the stars” (NIV)—or at the end of John’s gospel, where we are told the exact number of fish that Peter caught after Jesus had been raised from the dead—153 “large fish” (John 21:11). We frequently pass over these kinds of comments without giving them further thought.  But we must remember that there is no such thing as an insignificant phrase in the Bible. The Lord was not trying to fill up a minimum word or page count like many students try to do today with their writing assignments. Everything the Bible says is essential, and God intends to teach us something. Rather than passing over these phrases, we should consider what God might be trying to teach us through them. The account of the feeding of the five thousand, recorded in all four Gospels, contains several seemingly insignificant phrases—but one in particular has recently grabbed my attention. In Jo...

If you were asked to describe our world in one word, would you choose “peaceful”? I’m guessing there are a lot of other words that come to mind before that one. Your list may include words like “chaotic,” “broken,” “unstable,” “frightening,” or “disintegrating.”   Right now, the world is anything but peaceful.   But we all desire and need peace. Many people look for peace in superficial things, including drugs, alcohol, entertainment, and money, and yet they still feel empty.   Truthfully, we’ve been looking for peace in all the wrong places because the world cannot offer true, lasting peace. We need peace that isn’t of this world.   Other-worldly peace is just what Jesus offers us. On Palm Sunday, a week before He was to go to the cross, suffer, and die, Jesus took His disciples aside and gave them a fantastic promise, saying, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”  This is a remarkable promise.   Peace Served Three Ways Th...

Do you know God? Do you have the assurance that you have eternal life? Knowing that we know God is paramount because salvation ultimately can be boiled down to this one thing: knowing God. In John 17, Jesus, before going to the cross, was praying to the Father for His disciples – both those present at that time and those who would believe in future generations through the preaching of the apostolic word of the gospel. In verse 3, Jesus defines eternal life for us, praying,  “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” “Eternal life” is a phrase used forty-one times in the New Testament. And in John 17, we see what it means: to know God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal life is not merely to live forever and never die. It includes that, of course, by definition. But eternal life is not simply an eternal existence of isolation or independence. It is eternal life in a relationship with God. It is a life th...

Of all the misconceptions we have about Heaven, which is the most destructive? That’s a difficult and important question to tackle. Once, while preaching about the New Earth, I cited passages about feasting together in our resurrection bodies. Afterwards, a veteran Bible student asked if I believed we would eat and drink in the afterlife. I told him yes since Jesus said so. Visibly shaken, he replied, “Engaging in physical activities in heaven sounds terribly unspiritual.” Standing there with a body God promised to raise, he was repulsed by the thought of living forever as a physical being in a material world. And he’s not alone. Many Bible-believing Christians would die before denying the doctrine of the resurrection—yet they don’t fully believe it. I’ve dialogued with lifelong evangelicals who don’t understand what resurrection means. They really believe they will spend eternity as disembodied spirits. God’s revelation concerning the resurrection and the New Earth—our forever home—el...

Did Abraham laugh God off in unbelief?   In Genesis, we read of Abraham going along with Sarah’s plan with Hagar to make Ishmael his heir (Genesis 16:1–16). Later, when God tells him he and Sarah will bear a child at a hundred and ninety years old, respectively, he seems to laugh it off in unbelief (Genesis 17:17).  Therefore, how is it that Romans 4 celebrates Abraham’s unwavering faith? Does it tell us anything about how God views our own wavering faith in the end?” This is a good example of how careful we should be not to read into a text something from our own experience that makes an interpretation seem likely, but rather let the context decide whether it’s likely or not.  So, the question is this: Did Abraham’s laughter in Genesis 17:17 signify the kind of weakened faith or unbelieving doubt (wavering, as she calls it because that’s the way it’s translated in Romans 4:20) that Paul said Abraham did not have? Is Genesis 17:17 in conflict with what Paul says? Faith A...

“Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope.” ( Psalm 119:49 ) The saints of God have always faced something of a two-pronged challenge to their hope. First, those “that will live godly” and love His laws will “suffer persecution” ( 2 Timothy 3:12 ) and, secondly, will be troubled by the “prosperity of the wicked” ( Psalm 73:3 ). The pressure of the first and the perplexity of the second often test our expectations. But the Word of God provides “comfort in my affliction” ( Psalm 119:50 ). Jeremiah, often called the “weeping prophet,” found that the “word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart” simply because he embraced with unshakeable confidence the fact that he was “called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts” ( Jeremiah 15:16 ). When David asked, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” ( Psalm 42:5 , 11), his answer—in spite of the troubles of the hour—was his certain knowledge that he “shall yet praise him.” We may recoil in holy anger when t...

Peter tells us that “the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9). At some point, each of us joins the “some” group. We reach places where it’s painfully clear that our sense of time-urgency must be different than God’s. And it is. We prefer to measure time in minutes, rather than months. But the Ancient of Days measures time by millennia (2 Peter 3:8). God knows that he sometimes appears slow to us, which is one merciful reason he gave us the Bible. This book, which God took millennia to assemble, shows us that God is not slow, but patient in working out his redemptive purposes in the best ways (2 Peter 3:9). And it shows that he is compassionate toward us when we wait for him for what seems like a long time. Not as Some Count Slowness Abraham and Sarah were not only the parents of all of God’s faith-children (Romans 4:16); their lives are perhaps the most famous picture of God’s redemptive purposes in what seems like his painfully slow pace....

Jesus is considered by scholars such as Weber to be an example of a charismatic religious leader. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Matthew 23:16–22 “Whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it” (vv. 21–22). Jesus declares seven woes upon the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:13 –36, which is a significant number. Scripture often uses the number seven to denote completeness. For example, God rested on the seventh day when He had finished creating the heavens and the earth (Gen. 2:1–3). Considering the association of wholeness with the number seven, Christ ’s use of seven woes to denounce scribal and Pharisaic transgressions likely indicates the thoroughgoing wickedness of many people in these groups. This is the third woe Jesus uttered against the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23:16–22), the content of which He previously deliv...