News
Lawsuit Filed Against Southern California Conference, Glendale Adventist Academy for Alleged Sexual Assaults of Student - Lawsuit alleges Glendale Adventist Academy and Southern California Conference knew about sexual abuse that was happening on campus but intentionally ignored and/or concealed it. In the past 9 years, two teachers at Glendale Academy have been convicted for child sexual abuse, with some of the abuse taking place on campus. Lawsuit also alleges that in […]
News Briefs for June 30, 2022 - News Briefs from ADRA, Brazil, Croatia, North American Division. Founder of Breath of Life Ministries Passes Away Walter Eugene Arties III, a Seventh-day Adventist singer and pastor known as the founder of Breath of Life Television Ministries, died from an acute neurological condition on June 26, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. He was born […]
ATSS – “Don’t Be Like Jesus”: Understanding Christian Nationalism - 30 June 2022 | A few weeks ago, my Twitter feed was glutted with a certain video clip of a US congresswoman speaking in a Christian church. She was mocking gun-control advocates who asked how many AR-15s Jesus had. Her answer: “Not enough to keep his government from killing him.” The message, to her pro-gun […]
Advocates Use Cases of Women Jailed for Stillbirths at Adventist Hospitals as Examples of Overturning Roe v. Wade - 2 women jailed, charged with murder after having stillbirths at Adventist Health Hanford hospital in California, U.S. The charges of both women were later overturned. Advocates are warning that increased criminalization of broader pregnancy losses will be the result of overturning Roe v. Wade. 27 June 2022 | In early 2018, Adora Perez was arrested […]
Ladies Who Do More Than Lunch: Female Pastors Feted by NAD - North American Division (NAD) Ministerial Association has a goal to double the number of female pastors in the division. Number of pastors who are women in the NAD has increased from 101 to nearly 200. The Adventist denomination is still struggling with the issue of women’s ordination. 24 June 2022 | “You need to ask no […]
Authority vs. Experience: What Shapes Christian Identity? - 23 June 2022 | When famous Swedish chef Niklas Peter Ekstedt, whose greatest passions are food and health, visited Loma Linda, he was very impressed by the longevity of Adventist centenarians and even with our vegetarian dishes. However, when leaving the town he said that Loma Linda as a town was “pretty boring.” All he […]
Inside Track: Adventist Health Has New Software to Keep Tabs on Employees’ Vaccinations - Adventist Health’s new software allows its leadership to instantly view compliance tracking at every level of its organization. Nurses’ opposition to vaccine mandates has become a lightning rod throughout the pandemic, with some people staging protests in California and across the country. The Adventist denomination is an advocate of “responsible immunization.” 23 June 2022 | Adventist […]
News Briefs for June 23, 2022 - News reports from Australia, Jamaica, North American Division Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Department (PARL). War Zone Ganoune Diop, director of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church, examines the deep religious conflict behind the Ukraine-Russia conflict on Saturday, June 25, 2022, from 6-7 p.m. ET, during the webinar “Divisions in […]
Coming Into Focus: Photo of First Woman Licensed as Adventist Minister Discovered - Sarah Lindsey called the “foremost preacher” in New York and western Pennsylvania who rescued that area’s conference. On August 9, 1869, she received a ministerial license from the New York and Pennsylvania Conference. She is recognized as the first woman to receive a ministerial license in Adventist history. Her photograph was recently discovered in the […]
Under Repair: Adventist Church Trying to Connect with Indigenous People - Staff at Adventist-run mission Mona Mona discouraged Aboriginal culture, punished children for speaking their native language from 1913-1962. Australian Union Conference (AUC) has a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) for Indigenous people that was approved in May 2022. Now, other Adventist Indigenous schools trying to incorporate culture into curriculum. 21 June 2022 | The Adventist Church […]
Love Thy Neighbor: ADRA Urges Observation of World Refugee Day - More than 100 million people have been forcibly displaced. As of March 2022, two million children had been forced to flee Ukraine. UNICEF estimated that more than 2.5 million children have been internally displaced within Ukraine. Less than 1% of all refugees are ever able to resettle and start a new life in safety and […]
Milk, It Doesn’t Do a Body Good? New LLU Study Finds Higher Dairy Intake Increases Prostate Cancer Risk - Men who consumed about 430 grams of dairy per day (1¾ cups of milk) faced a 25% increased risk of prostate cancer compared to men who consumed only 20 grams of dairy per day (1/2 cup of milk per week). A prior study from Adventist Health Study-2 about the effects of dairy on breast cancer risk […]
Commentary
Can Lucifer Be Saved? - by Stephen Ferguson | 30 June 2022 | My wife and I just finished watching the sixth and final season of Lucifer, produced by Fox and later taken up by Netflix. With a solid 88% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes: “=This series follows Lucifer, the original fallen angel, who has become dissatisfied with his […]
A Pastor Reviews the NAD’s CALLED Pastors’ Family Convention - By T.J. Sands | 28 June 2022 | It was a long drive from Oklahoma to Kentucky, but at least there were beautiful sights—God’s creation, and humankind’s. Sarah and I began our journey early Sunday morning, and by evening we’d passed a candy factory, a closed-down wax museum, endless acres of wheat and corn, massive […]
Breaking My Silence - by Jay Wintermeyer | 24 June 2022 | I’ve worked in Adventist radio, mission work, and church administration at the conference and union level for more than 29 years. I’ve enjoyed my work for the Adventist Church and have felt blessed to produce high quality content and programs that encouraged members and pointed people to […]
Ukrainian Church Reorganization & the Kaminskiy Letter - by Victor Czerkasij | 22 June 2022 | In a recent Aunt Sevvy column Aunty quoted a General Conference leader saying that the Ukrainian Union was separated from the Euro-Asian Division (ESD) because of the inconveniences in travel and handling of funds, caused by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. These current problems are undeniable, making […]
Trust Fall, and Other Lessons from Kittens - by Melissa Brotton | 21 June 2022 | Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand” (John 13:7). I watch the tortoiseshell kitten as she climbs to the top of the rope hanging in the middle of her large crate. She claws into the rope and hangs […]
East Germany and St. Louis - by Andreas Bochmann | 17 June 2022 When I grew up in the city of West Berlin, it was still surrounded by the Berlin Wall, to “protect” Communist East Germany from all the dangers of the free world. It is this memory that flooded my mind after the General Conference (GC) session was over and […]
Another Look at the Great Commission - by Thandazani Mhlanga | 16 June 2022 | On July 23, 1983, Air Canada flight 143 left Montreal bound for Edmonton with 61 passengers and 8 crew on board. What seemed to be another routine flight turned out to be nothing of the kind: while cruising at 41,000 feet over Manitoba, the Boeing 767 ran […]
What Does It Mean to “Hold Fast to What Is Good”? - 15 June 2022 | When Ted Wilson delivered his inaugural sermon twelve years ago, after his election as president of the General Conference (GC) a few days earlier, I sat in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta listening to him with growing uneasiness. It was, through and through, a conservative speech in which he left no […]
How Christians Misunderstand Pride Month (and Why It Makes Them Act Like Jerks) - by Alicia Johnston | 14 June 2022 | A lot of Christians chafe at the idea of anyone describing themselves with the word “pride” as if it were a virtue. Pride has been the problem all along. Pride led to the fall of Lucifer, the first movement of sin in the universe. Pride is behind […]
Watching the Sausage Being Made - by Loren Seibold | 13 June 2022 | A friend of mine, a pastor’s wife, wrote this to me a couple of days ago: Two of our members went as delegates to the General Conference session this week. These members texted me from the General Conference floor during the week. They were stunned. They saw […]
Are “Progressive” Adventists Deluded? - by Charles Scriven | 9 June 2022 | This study guide is to help you prepare for our Adventist Today Sabbath Seminar at 1:30 Eastern time on Sabbath. Click here for link and password. Let’s allow first that the word “progressive” is both a problem and a solution. In media culture the word is synonymous […]
Pressing Toward the Mark - by Samuel Jeudin & Christopher C. Thompson | 9 June 2022 | One of the greatest failures of the Christian church is that we spend so much time preaching that we haven’t cultivated the ability to listen. Given the depth and pervasive tragedies and injustices in our world, this failure borders on egregious, and in […]
Features
Aunty, am I wrong because I don’t see the need to witness to my good Christian neighbors? - 27 June 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, All my life I’ve been urged to witness to my friends and neighbors about Adventist beliefs. But I just don’t feel like my good Christian next-door neighbor needs to be convinced of all the things Adventists believe to be loved by God. So, sorry, Aunty, in spite of […]
Aunt Sevvy, did Ellen White “plagiarize” other authors? - 21 June 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, People tell me that Ellen White didn’t plagiarize, because copying from other authors was a commonly accepted practice in Ellen White’s time. Is this true? Signed, Truth Seeker Dear Seeker, When in the 1970s Adventist scholars began to notice that significant amounts of Ellen White’s writings (in some […]
Aunty, can we really just “Let go and let God”? - 6 June 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, “Let go and let God.” I’ve heard this phrase frequently. People tout it as the answer to their prayers. It doesn’t work for me, no matter how I try to apply it to my life’s situations, nor can I find satisfactory examples in scripture. Is there, or is […]
Praying in Texas: A Poem - by Sigve Tonstad | 4 June 2022 | They are praying again in Texas, the governor praying, too, politics of the pious, praying is what they do, and now the news from heaven, fresh from a first-hand source: the prayers will go unanswered: “The prayers show no remorse.” ’Twas time long ago to admit it, […]
Poem: A Psalm for the Earth and Its People - by Patti Purdy Hansen Tompkins | 3 June 2022 | When You made us keepers of Your earth, O God, You expected a lot of us. But we have become careless with Your trust. The oceans and the firmament, the forests and living creatures, All the works of Your hands have been tainted by our […]
Aunty, should we celebrate Memorial Day in church? - 30 May 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, This weekend was Memorial Day in the United States, when we are supposed to remember our servicemen and women who died fighting for our country. Every year on Memorial Day Sabbath in my church, an elderly veteran arranges for the uniformed Pathfinders to march in (with barked military […]- Aunty, is my sugar made with bones? - 23 May 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, Recently I’ve been hearing in vegan online groups that anything with cane sugar isn’t vegetarian because sugar is processed with bone char. Is this something I should be concerned about? Signed, Vegan with a Sweet Tooth Dear Sweet Tooth: Though Aunty isn’t vegan, she understands concerns about what’s […]
- Aunty, what about people with sexual sins in the church? - 16 May 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy: I just recently read Aunt Sevvy’s response to a person who had issues with having a drug addict attending church with them. I have a related question. How should the church handle a person addicted to pornography, masturbation, or illicit sex? The church manual lists these as issues […]
- Aunty, are black people cursed by God? - 9 May 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, Is Jesus white, and are we black people a cursed race? Signed, Puzzled African Dear Puzzled: The short answer is an emphatic no, to both questions. Jesus was a Jew of the Levant, and though artists pictured him for centuries with European features, he undoubtedly had dark skin, […]
Four Misinterpreted Texts About Bible Interpretation - 8 May 2022 Much of what we say we know about Biblical interpretation is derived from what the Bible says about itself. While the Bible is right to self-identify itself as an inspired book, the problem is that several of the oft-used passages are taken out of context, and in some cases wholly misinterpreted. This […]
Memories of My Wonderful, Bold and Unusual Mother - by Jay Linthicum | 6 May 2022 | This was originally presented by Jay during a Mother’s Day Sabbath at the Gathering Place Sabbath School, Loma Linda University Church. It being the time of the year when we honor our mothers, I thought I would tell you some stories about my remarkable mom. Ducks Once […]- Aunty, why is Ukraine Union now run by the General Conference? - 2 May 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, Is detaching the Ukraine Union from the Euro-Asia Division and attaching it directly to the General Conference a good thing? What impact will the change have? Just Curious Dear Curious: According to the press release, “a 21-member Ukrainian Union Conference Oversight Committee, chaired by GC general vice president […]
All
- Can Lucifer Be Saved? - by Stephen Ferguson | 30 June 2022 | My wife and I just finished watching the sixth and final season of Lucifer, produced by Fox and later taken up by Netflix. With a solid 88% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes: “=This series follows Lucifer, the original fallen angel, who has become dissatisfied with his […]
- Lawsuit Filed Against Southern California Conference, Glendale Adventist Academy for Alleged Sexual Assaults of Student - Lawsuit alleges Glendale Adventist Academy and Southern California Conference knew about sexual abuse that was happening on campus but intentionally ignored and/or concealed it. In the past 9 years, two teachers at Glendale Academy have been convicted for child sexual abuse, with some of the abuse taking place on campus. Lawsuit also alleges that in […]
- News Briefs for June 30, 2022 - News Briefs from ADRA, Brazil, Croatia, North American Division. Founder of Breath of Life Ministries Passes Away Walter Eugene Arties III, a Seventh-day Adventist singer and pastor known as the founder of Breath of Life Television Ministries, died from an acute neurological condition on June 26, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. He was born […]
- ATSS – “Don’t Be Like Jesus”: Understanding Christian Nationalism - 30 June 2022 | A few weeks ago, my Twitter feed was glutted with a certain video clip of a US congresswoman speaking in a Christian church. She was mocking gun-control advocates who asked how many AR-15s Jesus had. Her answer: “Not enough to keep his government from killing him.” The message, to her pro-gun […]
- A Pastor Reviews the NAD’s CALLED Pastors’ Family Convention - By T.J. Sands | 28 June 2022 | It was a long drive from Oklahoma to Kentucky, but at least there were beautiful sights—God’s creation, and humankind’s. Sarah and I began our journey early Sunday morning, and by evening we’d passed a candy factory, a closed-down wax museum, endless acres of wheat and corn, massive […]
- Advocates Use Cases of Women Jailed for Stillbirths at Adventist Hospitals as Examples of Overturning Roe v. Wade - 2 women jailed, charged with murder after having stillbirths at Adventist Health Hanford hospital in California, U.S. The charges of both women were later overturned. Advocates are warning that increased criminalization of broader pregnancy losses will be the result of overturning Roe v. Wade. 27 June 2022 | In early 2018, Adora Perez was arrested […]
- Aunty, am I wrong because I don’t see the need to witness to my good Christian neighbors? - 27 June 2022 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, All my life I’ve been urged to witness to my friends and neighbors about Adventist beliefs. But I just don’t feel like my good Christian next-door neighbor needs to be convinced of all the things Adventists believe to be loved by God. So, sorry, Aunty, in spite of […]
- Breaking My Silence - by Jay Wintermeyer | 24 June 2022 | I’ve worked in Adventist radio, mission work, and church administration at the conference and union level for more than 29 years. I’ve enjoyed my work for the Adventist Church and have felt blessed to produce high quality content and programs that encouraged members and pointed people to […]
- Ladies Who Do More Than Lunch: Female Pastors Feted by NAD - North American Division (NAD) Ministerial Association has a goal to double the number of female pastors in the division. Number of pastors who are women in the NAD has increased from 101 to nearly 200. The Adventist denomination is still struggling with the issue of women’s ordination. 24 June 2022 | “You need to ask no […]
- Authority vs. Experience: What Shapes Christian Identity? - 23 June 2022 | When famous Swedish chef Niklas Peter Ekstedt, whose greatest passions are food and health, visited Loma Linda, he was very impressed by the longevity of Adventist centenarians and even with our vegetarian dishes. However, when leaving the town he said that Loma Linda as a town was “pretty boring.” All he […]
- Inside Track: Adventist Health Has New Software to Keep Tabs on Employees’ Vaccinations - Adventist Health’s new software allows its leadership to instantly view compliance tracking at every level of its organization. Nurses’ opposition to vaccine mandates has become a lightning rod throughout the pandemic, with some people staging protests in California and across the country. The Adventist denomination is an advocate of “responsible immunization.” 23 June 2022 | Adventist […]
- News Briefs for June 23, 2022 - News reports from Australia, Jamaica, North American Division Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Department (PARL). War Zone Ganoune Diop, director of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church, examines the deep religious conflict behind the Ukraine-Russia conflict on Saturday, June 25, 2022, from 6-7 p.m. ET, during the webinar “Divisions in […]