Dr Paul Allen

In 1948 a ship named Nora headed from a Yugoslavian port to the Middle East. To the naked eye, the cargo was onions—almost 600 tons of them. Imagine the stench. I get seasick at the best of times; sitting on that many onions would guarantee it. Onions weren’t the real cargo though. It was a stash of Czech rifles making their way into the hands of Israel’s army, but no customs officer was going to dig through mountains of onions to find them. In Judges, Samson’s antics stick in our nostrils like the stench of a shipload of onions. His behaviour is revolting. It’s a crash course in how not to live. But take a deep breath, plug your nose, rummage around a little, and before long you’ll discover the real cargo—the truth that our God can and will bring his plans and purposes to fruition despite his people’s antics. This is the goodness and grace of our God. Even when our actions reek of sin, his steadfast love and faithfulness win the victory. Personal Vendetta (Judg. 15:1–8) In Judges 14, ...

  By TRENT HUNTER Why the name Christ Over All? The answer to that question begins with a prayer we find in the Bible, a prayer for a certain powerless and unimpressive church. When Christians walked down the street in those days, they did so on Roman roads. Rome’s roads made way for the gospel, but those roads also reminded Christians of the vast domain of the state who built them. Christians lived in the shadow of pagan culture-making institutions. Down the street from the church at Ephesus, the Temple of Diana offered sexual immorality as a religious rite. When they went to work each morning, Christians entered an economy hostile to their most precious beliefs. When taken seriously, their new Christian faith undermined the bottom line of the ancient world built as it was on idolatry and superstitions. These churches did not have impressive buildings. They did not have the respect of their communities. The temptation to syncretism or accommodation was real. As a people gathered ...

Roy Sullivan is either the world’s luckiest man or the world’s most unlucky man, depending on your perspective. Mr. Sullivan worked as a park ranger in Shenandoah National Park, and still holds the Guinness World Record for being the person struck by lightning the most times. About 270 people are struck each year in the US, and 10 percent of those are fatal strikes. The chances of being struck by lightning once are 15300:1 and being struck twice in your lifetime is exponentially more unlikely. From 1942 to 1977 Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning not twice, nor three times, but seven times! That sounds like he would be the unluckiest person on earth. But amazingly, he suffered no major injuries, besides a burn on his legs, a lost toenail, scorched eyebrows, and hair that caught on fire on five of the seven occasions. Sounds pretty lucky to me. Understandably, Roy developed a severe phobia of storms. After the fourth encounter, he began to avoid being in crowds, in order to keep others sa...

If seeing and embracing the sovereignty of God causes us to pray less, we have not yet understood his sovereignty or prayer. Providence does not make prayer optional or incidental, but vital and indispensable. Not because God couldn’t do it another way — God does all that he pleases however he pleases — but because the sovereign God has chosen, precisely and wisely, to hang many of his plans on the prayers of his people. Did anyone love and herald the absolute sovereignty of God like the apostle Paul? And yet he says in 2 Corinthians 1:11,  “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” He also calls believers to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and to pray “at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18). The pages of Scripture, and of history, are filled with the power and necessity of prayer, because the all-powerful God has chosen to hear and ans...

If someone asks me, “Do you think God planned for those planes to fly into the World Trade Center towers in New York on 9/11 in 2001?” I answer in two ways. I say, “If God cannot blow a plane with his breath a hundred feet off course to the right, then he’s not God.” And I say, “If we surrender the all-governing providence of God in order to save him from any causality in those tragic events, then by saving him, I lose him as a sovereign, wise God who can give meaning and strength and hope to those who have lost the most in this tragedy.” In other words, it is the very sovereignty by which he governed those jets that enables him to govern all things for the good of tens of thousands of survivors who look to him for strength and purpose and hope in their massive losses. So, my sixth precious, real-life effect of seeing and savouring the all-governing providence of God is that this providence assures us that the so-called “problem” of God’s sovereignty in suffering is more than relieved ...

Have you finally come to grasp the sovereignty of God in salvation? The reality is that for many people who feel that way, it is actually their first conversion to Christ.  For it is only when we come to understand who God truly is that we come to understand ourselves—that we were dead in sin and that God by His sovereign will make us alive in Christ by the Holy Spirit. When we realize that our salvation is all because of God’s amazing grace, our eyes are opened. We see not only that God saved us but also how He saved us as the Spirit helps us reflect on everything that God has been orchestrating throughout our lives to bring about our salvation. As Christians, we know there is really no such thing as luck, chance, or fate . We understand that providence is not the Christian synonym for coincidence. We know that everything happens for a reason, and unlike unbelievers who often say the same thing, we actually know the God who is in control of all things. We know the ultimate reason ...

The purpose of this post is not to argue that Biden was, or was not, fraudulently elected in the 2020 presidential election, but to keep a biblical perspective. Sources report that 47% of American voters believe that large-scale fraud handed the election to Biden/Harris. Nevertheless, 49% say that fraud was unlikely. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll reported that 67% of Republicans and 11% of Democrats surveyed believe that voter fraud gave Biden election. However, the same survey showed that 19% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats disagree. In either case, dozens of millions of voters believe that there was a fraud, and dozens of millions believe that there was not. Numbers do not prove whether or not it happened. The point here is that a huge swath of the US population believes that voter fraud helped usher in the next president. It’s likely that someone you sing next to in church believes that there is ample evidence of fraud, and is grieved about it. Disdaining them as crazy conspiracists i...

This year will mark 20 years since two passenger planes plunged into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. It was the most widely witnessed, large-scale terrorist attack the world has ever seen.  Metaphysical questions were being raised on radio talk shows and on TV. Of all the questions, the most haunting one was the topic of a Larry King Live interview. Larry King assembled a panel consisting of prominent Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders, as well as New Age pundit, Deepak Chopra. His question: “Where was God on 9/11?” It was a question of sovereignty. Is God in control of everything or not? Here are some of the answers offered by the panel of religious experts… DEEPAK CHOPRA: God is infinite creativity, infinite love, infinite compassion… God is not the problem, Larry. It’s our ignorance about our inseparability with each other and our tribal instinct. We’ve sacrificed God. We’ve made a brand name out of God, and we’ve gone to war. … the name of God is not “...

God is sovereign in creation, providence, redemption, and judgment. That is a central assertion of Christian belief and especially in Reformed theology. God is King and Lord of all. To put this another way: nothing happens without God’s willing it to happen, willing it to happen before it happens, and willing it to happen in the way that it happens. Put this way, it seems to say something that is expressly Reformed in doctrine. But at its heart, it is saying nothing different from the assertion of the Nicene Creed: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty.” To say that God is sovereign is to express His almightiness in every area. God is sovereign in creation. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Apart from God, there was nothing. And then there was something: matter, space, time, energy. And these came into being ex nihilo—out of nothing. The will to create was entirely God’s. The execution was entirely His. There was no metaphysical “necessity” to...

God is constantly working in a million ways at all times. He is constantly at work in the world and in the hearts and lives of believers in so many ways that we will never know. Obviously, it is impossible to know fully the mind of God, but it is clear that God is Sovereign over every single event in history, including the recent outbreak of the Coronavirus.   Many liberal Christians have come out strong in their opposition against God having anything to do with the sending of the Coronavirus, rejecting a God who is involved with the affairs of the world.  But the fact of the matter is that God is the ultimate cause for everything that happens on earth, so, it is important for believers to think through what exactly God is doing through this pandemic.  John, in 1 John 5:14, writes about an important truth we can hope in as believers. That is if we pray according to God’s will that He hears us. In other words, God doesn’t listen to prayers that are...

If God is sovereign over the decisions I make, how am I still responsible for sin? Some questions to ask as you read and study Philippians 2:12–13 : If God is sovereign over all that happens in the world, including my decisions, how are we responsible for sin? Paul tells us that God works in us to influence our will for his good pleasure ( Philippians 2:13 ). Why doesn’t this make us robots or puppets? Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. 2:12 you have always obeyed Obedience is evidence of faith in God. Paul appeals to the entire community to continue to obey, which means adopting the attitude of Christ in their relationships with one another. work out Emphasizes that obedience is intentional and purposeful. Paul’s point is that salvation, once receive...