Dr Paul Allen

 What does the once-glorious city of ancient Babylon look like today? Have the prophecies of Isaiah 13:19-22 and Jeremiah 50:39 come true? Watch Expedition Bible’s video to see for yourself!

  Here is what Chat GDP said: 1. Why is there suffering and evil in the world? "Why do bad things happen to good people?" "Where are you suffering?" "Why did this happen to me/my loved ones?" This is perhaps the most universal and emotionally charged question Christians bring to God, especially in times of grief or tragedy. 2. What is your will for my life? "What should I do next?" "What is my calling or purpose?" "Am I on the right path?" Christians often seek divine guidance for big life decisions—career, relationships, ministry, etc.—hoping for clarity and direction. 3. Do you really love me / have you forgiven me? "Am I truly accepted?" "Can you forgive what I’ve done?" "Why do I still feel distant from you?" This taps into core concerns about grace, guilt, shame, and assurance—especially in traditions that emphasize personal salvation. 4. Why do you f...

Today in history, the West achieved one of its most resounding victories over the forces of jihad — a triumph so monumental that it inaugurated the tradition of ringing church bells at noon. This practice still endures, even if its meaning has faded from memory. Three years after his brutal conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultan Muhammad II — the infamous “Conqueror” — marched westward with more than 100,000 Turks. His target was the strategic fortress town of Belgrade, gateway to Hungary and sentinel of Europe. If it fell, the heartlands of the West would lie exposed to the tide of Islamic conquest. The memory of Constantinople’s horrific sack was still raw, its churches defiled, its faithful slaughtered or enslaved. As the Muslim horde advanced, a wave of panic swept across the Danube. Even King Ladislaus V of Hungary, gripped by fear, fled to Vienna on the sorry pretext that he was going “hunting.” But one man refused to flee, standing tall while kings quailed: John ...

On July 16, 1212, atop the windswept plains of Las Navas de Tolosa, Christendom and Islam clashed in one of the most consequential battles of the Middle Ages. This event shattered an empire, galvanized a continent, and still echoes in the political currents of modern Spain and among Islamist terrorists who vow vengeance for it. It had been 500 years since the armies of Muhammad first crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and began their conquest of Iberia in 711. In their wake, most of the peninsula fell under the crescent. Yet a single ember of resistance smouldered in the northern mountains of Asturia—small, defiant, unyielding. From this remnan,t the Reconquista was born: the slow-burning, centuries-long Christian effort to reclaim the land for the cross. A Gathering Storm By the dawn of the thirteenth century, that ember had grown into a flame. Northern Christian kingdoms had pushed their borders south, reclaiming nearly half of Spain. Alarmed, the Muslim world responded with a thund...

A worthy lifestyle is possible only by depending on God’s resources. “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” (Eph. 4:1) Walking is often used in Scripture as a symbol of the Christian life. It is simply a reference to your daily conduct or lifestyle—a day-by-day, step-by-step commitment to follow Christ.  As Christians, we “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). John wrote, “This is love, that we walk according to His commandments” (2 John 6). Paul said to walk in good works (Eph. 2:10) and to please God in our walk before Him (1 Thess. 4:1).  In Ephesians 4:1 Paul is saying, “Let your lifestyle be worthy of the calling to which you are called.”  You may ask, “Is it possible to walk this way?” Yes, but only on this basis: you must devote yourself to be strengthened with the power of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 3:16), Christ’s Word must dwell in your heart, His love must penetrate your life (v...

  July 4 marked the anniversary of the Battle of Hattin, one of the most catastrophic defeats of Christians by the forces of Islam in history.  This battle led directly to the fall of Crusader-held Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187. A far lesser-known but equally horrific event took place after that: the ritual beheading of the warrior-monks of Christendom. Unlike the average captured Crusader, these knights were denied the opportunity for ransom. In fact, Saladin went so far as to “ransom” 300 Templars and Hospitallers from their Muslim captors for 50 dinars apiece, simply to ensure he could personally witness their slaughter if they rejected his “magnanimous” offer: Any knight willing to utter the words of the Islamic profession of faith would be spared and welcomed into the ummah as a brother. He then sent them to a makeshift desert prison to contemplate their fate. An Offer They Could Refuse That night, amid the howls and jeers of their captors, the brethren of the Temple and H...

While the world’s attention remains locked on nuclear threats, anti-Israel rhetoric, and escalating Middle East tensions, a quiet revolution is transforming Iran, not through politics or protests but through a surge of faith that defies everything the Islamic Republic stands for. Beneath the iron grip of clerical rule and state repression, more than 2,000 Iranians are converting to Christianity every single day, embracing a faith that is banned, criminalized, and punishable by prison or worse. This spiritual explosion, invisible to international headlines but deeply real on the ground, is rewriting the very identity of a nation once seen as an unshakable stronghold of radical Islam. What’s happening is not a fleeting trend but a sustained transformation with roots going back nearly a decade. As early as 2016, Iran was recognized as the country with the fastest-growing Evangelical movement in the world. Today, mission groups and researchers estimate that well over two million Iranians h...

As you work your way through the hundreds of mentions of the word heaven in the Bible, you soon realise there is a plurality of heavens. In fact, the Bible speaks explicitly of three distinct heavens. When the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about his visions and revelations, he told them of a time when he was “caught up to the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2). That clearly implies there is also a first and second heaven. The Atmospheric Heaven The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven — the sky with its clouds, birds, and life-giving oxygen. Isaiah 55:10-11a says, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be …” (NKJV). In this passage, the word heaven refers to the atmosphere that yields its rain and snow to the earth. We live on a privileged planet, surrounded by a thin layer of gases — mainly nitrogen and oxy...

Did Mark write the story of the pigs called Legion to have a go at the Romans?  Mark has the event mistakenly at Gerasa, which is over nine kilometres from the Sea of Galilee. Can pigs run that far? But was this intentional? In our world, we want everything to line up for the gospel to say the exact thing, but that was not a necessity of the gospel writer.  Matthew’s Gospel has the pigs at “the region of the Gerasenes” (τὴν χώραν τῶν Γερασηνῶν) to “the region of the Gadarenes” (τὴν χώραν τῶν Γαδαρηνῶν). Nicholas Elder says, in Mark at the Borderland of Orality and Textuality, that Mark’s author wrote this anecdote as a disguised criticism of the Roman legions during the Roman-Jewish War of 66–70 CE. He explains why the demons purportedly said their name was ‘Legion’ and why the tale had to take place near Gerasa: Vespasian’s military actions in Gerasa in the years preceding 70 CE will have made the city culturally significant for Mark’s audience. In J.W. 4.487–489, Josephus re...

Can Jesus really mean what he says in John 15:7? His promise is breathtaking: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Ask whatever we wish? How is this possible when so many of our prayers seem to go unanswered? Is this promise only for super-saints? No. The only saints Jesus chooses are those who are weak and foolish (1 Cor. 1:26). They are disciples whose faith begins small (Matt. 14:31). They are people just like us. So this promise is for us. It is a check Jesus wants us to cash at the Bank of Heaven, where there are more than sufficient funds (2 Cor. 9:8). But there are two conditions we must meet for this check to be valid.   The first is that we must abide in Jesus (John 15:1–6). Jesus commands us to abide in him just as branches abide in a vine. Apart from him, we can do nothing but wither (vv. 5–6). An abiding branch has the sap of the Holy Spirit running through it. The more connected the branch, the more it re...

Why do some historians like Tallus and Phlegon mention unusual events like eclipses during Jesus' crucifixion, and what do these accounts add to the narrative? We do not have any actual writings from Thallus, although some of his work was quoted by later writers. One such writer was Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian who lived in the early third century. He said that Thallus reported darkness at about the time of the crucifixion but dismissed it as a solar eclipse.  As Africanus points out, solar eclipses never occur at the time of the full moon. Origen reported, in Against Celsus 2.xiv, that Phlegon wrote about "the greatest eclipse of the sun" at the sixth hour.  William Lane Craig, a theologian and Christian apologist, has written a lengthy article (Thallus on the Darkness at Noon) in which he accepts that Thallus wrote the account attributed to him and demonstrates that there was, in fact, a darkness at the time Jesus was crucified. As we only have references to wha...

It has been a good term for religious freedom at the U.S. Supreme Court, and predictably, LGBT activists are outraged. Their anger, however, reveals how far their crusade to hijack public education has gone and how necessary judicial pushback has become.  Exhibit A is Mahmoud v. Taylor, considered a key test case for parental rights – a concept that many LGBT activists reject entirely. The case centred around Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, which had introduced LGBT books into the pre-kindergarten through Grade 5 curriculum, and, in March 2023, eliminated a policy allowing parents to opt their children out of LGBT lessons.  Led by Tamer Mahmoud, a group of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish families sued the school board generally and Superintendent Thomas Taylor specifically, saying that their First Amendment right to the exercise of religion was being violated because their families were being forcibly exposed to content that directly conflicted with their religious...

Every year, substantial sums of money are allocated to the two major Christian churches in Germany. Last year, they received more than €600 million ($645 million) in state funding, in addition to the billions in church tax that the clergy receive. Understanding why huge state allowances go to the  Catholic  and  Protestant  Church takes us back more than two centuries to the 20 years of Napoleon's occupation of Germany at the beginning of the 19th century. After defeating what was then the first German Reich, the French ruler ordered a far-reaching separation of church and state, including the closure and expropriation of monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions. A law dating back to 1803, known as the "Reichsdeputationshauptschluss" — often referred to in English as the Imperial Recess of 1803 — compelled the churches to cede money and land to often neighbouring secular principalities. As a form of compensation, they agreed to pay the salarie...

I was a sophomore in college when I took my first class devoted to the scholarly study of the Bible. It was a course on the New Testament that covered the background of the Christian Scriptures and dealt with matters such as the authorship of the New Testament books. It was the first class for my major in religious studies, and I was excited to take it. My professor was a kind and very encouraging man, so I was glad to have him as my instructor. However, the subject matter of the class was occasionally jarring. It was my introduction to the world of biblical scholarship, and it was the first time I saw how many professional Bible scholars did not treat the biblical text as the Word of God. That was not in itself especially surprising to me; before taking the class, I had known many people who did not treat the Bible as God’s Word. No, what was surprising to me was seeing how scholars would outright reject statements made in the Bible that should not be objectionable, even to those who ...