Dr Paul Allen

Does God plan everything ahead of time? If so, does that mean humans lack free will, that we are like robots? Such topics lead to questions about salvation: Does God save only those he’s chosen in advance? And, if so, how is that fair? These are the kind of questions that pop up whenever we broach the doctrine of predestination. These questions are not just extra-biblical speculation. Christians mainly talk about the doctrine of predestination because they’ve encountered it in the Bible. The doctrine of predestination derives from several biblical passages, including Romans 8:28–30 Romans 9:9–23 and Ephesians 1:11Open in Logos Bible Software (if available): “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”1 To answer our questions correctly, we must first understand some key terms. The different categories used to explain predestination and its related topics, as well as how other...

 I used to read the traffic lights more than my Bible. Before coming to Christ, I had developed a mystical method for divining the will of God from automotive semaphore. It went like this: All green lights – God is pleased with what I’m doing. All red lights – God is angry with what I’m doing. As with horoscopes and fortune cookies, these superstitious traffic readings never actually affected my decision-making, but they loomed in the back of my mind. “Is God secretly trying to tell me something? Am I on the right track? How am I supposed to know God’s plan for my life?” And while my eyes were on those changing lights, my Bible stayed shut. Though you may not look to roadway signals for divine guidance – to be clear, please don’t – I wonder if you too have been tempted to find hidden messages from God in the world around you. Here’s how this circumstantial divination might sound: “God has been blessing it, so it must be the Lord’s will.” “What a coincidence! The only explanation mu...

We tend to project our natural expectations about who God is onto him instead of fighting to let the Bible surprise us into what God himself says. Perhaps nowhere in the Bible is that point made more clearly than in  Isaiah 55 . “There is nothing that troubles our consciences more,” said John Calvin in this passage, “than when we think that God is like ourselves.” When life takes a difficult turn, Christians often remind others, with a shrug, “His ways are not our ways”—communicating the mysteries of divine providence by which he orchestrates events in ways that surprise us.  The mysterious depth of divine providence is, of course, a precious biblical truth. But the passage in which we find “his ways are not our ways” comes from   Isaiah 55 . And in context, it means something quite different. It is a statement not of the surprise of God’s mysterious providence but of the surprise of God’s compassionate heart. The full passage goes like this: Seek the Lord while he may be...

The book of Ecclesiastes is enigmatic. It’s puzzling. It’s puzzling because it tells us that much of life is vanity, chasing after the wind. It says this from the second verse of the book: “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV).  But God’s providence tells us that everything in life is meaningful. So, what gives? The avalanche of scriptural evidence to prove that nothing is random, nothing is without purpose, nothing is pointless, and nothing is meaningless is truly overwhelming. My question is regarding Ecclesiastes.  If providence proves that nothing is random or meaningless, why does Ecclesiastes repeatedly say just about everything in the drama of human life is meaningless? How do you reconcile this?” I suspect that the author of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher (Qohelet in Hebrew) intended it to be complex and perplexing, precisely because, as we look at the world that he was looking at, it is a per...

Nothing is more practical than the doctrine of providence, for it engenders both faith and godly fear. When Christ teaches us how to deal with anxiety, He reminds us that God the Father feeds every little bird and clothes every flower with its lovely colours (Matt. 6:25–30). How much more, then, should we trust Him to care for His own beloved children? Whether one is willing to admit it or not, everyone constantly lives in the presence of the living God. The more the believer is conscious of God’s providence, the more it can be said of him, as B.B. Warfield wrote, “Everywhere he sees God in His mighty stepping, everywhere he feels the working of His mighty arm, the throbbing of His mighty heart.” God is in control. While we cannot fully plumb the depths of God’s ways, we can still affirm that “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever” (Rom. 11:36, KJV throughout). There are many things for which we do not know the reason, but for everything, we know...