Adventist Theologian Sakae Kubo Passes to His Rest
20 April 2025 |
Adventist theologian and Greek scholar Sakae Kubo passed to his rest on Wednesday, April 16, 2025, at the age of 98, in Bakersfield, California. He was a pastor, and later taught biblical languages and New Testament.
Kubo was born to Japanese parents on May 8, 1926. He grew up on his family’s dairy farm near Diamond Head on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii, with nine brothers and sisters.
He graduated from Andrews Academy (then Emmanuel Missionary College Academy) in 1944. He went on to earn five degrees, including a Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christian Literature from the University of Chicago. He authored 18 books between 1965 and 1999. His books include: Theology and Ethics of Sex; So Many Versions: 20th Century English Versions of the Bible; God Meets Man; Acquitted: Message from the Cross; The God of Relationships; Open Rapture; Once Saved Always Saved?; and Calculated Goodness.
He is best known to seminary students the world over for his Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, published by Zondervan.
After leaving Andrews University in 1978 he continued to work as an educator in the Adventist denomination, serving as the Dean of Theology and a professor of theology at Walla Walla College, president at Newbold College in England, and finally as vice president for Academic Affairs, and academic dean at Atlantic Union College in Massachusetts, prior to retiring in 1989. He and his wife, Hatsumi, had four children: Wesley, Paul (deceased), Charlene, and Calvin.
Charles Scriven says,
“Dr. Kubo offered me my first teaching job—though we didn’t get to work together because he shortly thereafter took a call to Newbold. He wrote a crucial book on the Sabbath and the second coming which corrected misunderstandings, and offered moving accounts of what these key doctrines mean in the everyday Christian life. He was a man of astonishing patience and kindness. When, during a purge of certain theologians during the Pierson administration he was relieved of teaching scripture and reassigned to the James White Library, he accepted the move with grace. He continued to write about his Adventist convictions well into his 90s.”
