Dr Paul Allen

“And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.” ( Luke 19:13 ) NLT versions says: " Before he left, he called together ten of his servants and divided among them ten pounds of silver,  saying, ‘Invest this for me while I am gone.’ This “parable of the pounds” indicated to His disciples that they should not wait idly for the second coming of Christ, thinking “that the kingdom of God should immediately appear” ( Luke 19:11 ), but that they should stay busy, using whatever abilities and opportunities they had in the Lord’s service until His return.   The word “occupy” is an unusual word, the Greek "pragmatenomai", from which we derive our modern word “pragmatic,” meaning “practical,” and it only occurs this one time in the New Testament. There is another related word, however, also occurring only one time, in 2 Timothy 2:4 : “ Soldiers don’t get tied up in the affairs of civilian life, for then they cannot ple

In the church age, we Christians have no definite unfulfilled list of events which must transpire before his return. What the Bible promises will happen at the end is already happening, in significant measure, around the world today — and has been happening, in some sense, since the earliest days of the church. As long as Jesus tarries, we do indeed have the concrete directives of the church age to continue pursuing, like the evangelization of the nations ( Matthew 28:19 ) and the hastening of his coming through holy living ( 2 Peter 3:11–12 ). And yet we have no firm, certain list of unfulfilled conditions about which Jesus could not surprise us. His coming is the next big thing and could happen at any moment. That’s what the New Testament means when it says his return is near. The End Is at Hand Four particular texts in the New Testament, from four different human authors, say that the end is “at hand,” or literally, “has drawn near.” Paul writes in Romans 13:12 , “The night is

Dispute of Jesus and the Pharisees over tribute money (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) We have to be careful not to be guilty of what Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for—what I call the Red Sky Syndrome. If you recall, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees because they had an ability to predict the weather. They could look at the sky, and if it was red at night, they would say, "Sailor’s delight." And if it was red in the morning, they would say, "Sailors take warning." But they missed the signs of the times, and they missed the first advent of Christ . They missed the coming of the Messiah right in their midst in spite of the fact that a host of biblical prophecies heralded the appearance of Jesus on the scene—and Jesus rebuked them for it. When somebody asks, "Are we in the last days?" I suspect what they mean by that is, "Are we near the last chapter of history prior to the coming of Jesus Christ ?" I can’t say yes or no. So I will say, "Yes, and I d

The angels told the disciples that Jesus will return “in the same way” in which he ascended to heaven (Acts 1:11). Does that mean that he will return on the Mount of Olives, “a Sabbath day’s walk from the city” east of Jerusalem (Acts 1:12 NIV), where this event took place? The prophecy in Zechariah 14 seems to confirm this: “On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem.… Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him” (vv. 4–5 NIV).  However, the angels’ reference to the “manner” of Jesus’ ascension refers to the heavens and to the cloud, not to the location of Jesus’ return. The context of the angels’ explanation clarifies that the task that the disciples have been given is more important than the details of Jesus’ return. Indeed, even more important than waiting for Jesus’ return in Jerusalem.  The question “why do you stand here looking into the sky?” (Acts 1:11 NIV) reminds them that they have been commissioned by Jesus to

The Spirit of False Prophets/Antichrist (Deceit) (1 John 4vv. 1b, 3) In the early years of Christianity, before the New Testament was completed (AD 100) and before the first creeds of the church were formulated (AD 325), there were no official, universal theological benchmarks for evaluating Christian preaching and teaching.  To complicate matters, the early Christians were pneumatics; that is, they believed themselves to be filled with the Spirit of God, which provided divine backing for their messages. This is why Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:19–21 that Christians should, on the one hand, not despise prophecies of the Spirit, while, on the other hand, they should discern whether the spokesperson truly was inspired by the Holy Spirit. John is calling for much the same in 4:1–6: his community needed to discern whether a speaker was inspired by the Holy Spirit.  For John, however, there was indeed at least one theological benchmark: if the person confessed that Christ was the

People who obey God’s will have often been discriminated against, persecuted, and killed. This history of prejudice, ridicule, and opposition began with Cain killing Abel, upon whom the Lord God had looked with favor (Gen. 4:4–5).  From that time onwards, many of God’s people have experienced reproach and affliction in various ways (see Heb. 11:35–38). This history of opposition continues until today: the execution of Jesus, Steven, James, Peter, Paul, and countless other Christians throughout the ages being only the more explicit examples of prejudice and discrimination. This is also why Jesus returns: when God restores his perfect creatio n, he will vindicate all those who have obeyed his will throughout the ages . It is not “the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars” who will live in God’s new world (Rev. 21:8). It is “those who conquer” (v. 7), that is, the people who followed the revealed will of Go

One of the theological reasons for Jesus’ return is connected in a fundamental way with God’s creation and the fall. At the end of the sixth day of creation, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31; the phrase “very good” in Hebrew is tob me’od).  The next time that the Hebrew term for “very” (me’od) is used in the book of Genesis is in the statement “Cain was very angry” (Gen. 4:5), a disposition that quickly led to the first murder in history. The fact that Cain was “very angry” was a vivid demonstration of the fact that God’s creation was no longer “very good.” The event that changed God’s “very good” creation was the decision of Adam and Eve to act in deliberate disregard of the will of God, following the Serpent rather than obeying the One who had created a perfect world (Gen. 3:1–6). The consequences of the fall were swift, decisive, and numerous (Gen. 3:7–19). First, the relationship of Adam and Eve with God was fractured: they h