by Robert Crux  |  6 December 2022  | Past generations used Christianity as a prop to support slavery and segregation. It turns out that what was once old has become new again. With the recent rise of Christian nationalist ideas merging into mainstream American politics (especially over the last two decades), we now see Christianity […]

by Norman H Young  |  1 December 2022  |   The title of this essay is borrowed from a British comedy TV panel show. The show begins with two teams of three members each. A member of team one shares some bizarre personal incident, and the members of team two interrogate her in an effort to […]

by Rich Hannon  |  28 November 2022  | Seventh-day Adventists have historically self-identified as the “people of the book.” That phrase is meant to convey the idea that we take the Bible as our sole rule of faith and thus would diligently study scripture to uncover its truths. Indeed, Adventist Fundamental Belief #1 states, in […]

by William Law  |  23 November 2022  | There is no state of mind so holy, so excellent, and so truly perfect as that of thankfulness to God, and consequently nothing is of more importance in religion than that which exercises and improves this habit of mind. A dull uneasy complaining spirit, which is sometimes […]

by Terry Bottrell   |  22 November 2022  |   Our children learn about literary devices such as hyperbole and similes when they study literature in school. They also investigate different literary genres such as poetry, drama, and narrative, as well as different approaches to drawing meaning from a text.  These lessons are important not just for […]

by Esther Loewen  |  18 November 2022  | While I am transgender and a woman married to a woman, I am also white, educated, conventionally abled, Christian, fertile, and socially well-networked. I own my own home and vehicles, I am in my 40s, and I speak and write fluently in English. All this is to […]

by Hannele Ottschofski  |  17 November 2022  | I am slowly waking up to the realization that the church that I belong to, and where I have grown up, with which I have identified myself for my whole life, has changed. It is no longer the church I joined when I was baptized 60 years […]

by Rajaratnam Jones  |  11 November 2022  |   I was born and brought up in a village in India where almost 100% of the population was Christian. Missionaries from England had come here about 250 years ago and evangelized this area. My grandfather’s parents had been Hindus. Seventh-day Adventist missionaries came to Mukuperi, a very […]

by Thandazani Mhlanga  |  8 November 2022  | At midnight on November 14, 1960, Robert Raymond Cook made the fateful trip to the gallows from his cell in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta—the last man to be hanged in the province of Alberta. Because of how the trial seemed to have been argued on circumstantial evidence, much […]

by Nerida Taylor Bates  |  3 November 2022  |   I’ll never forget something that I saw when coming out of my kindergarten Sabbath School when I was five years old. The hall under our small church was completely empty except for a young woman with teased hair, go-go boots, and short mini skirt, kneeling in […]

by Loren L. Fenton  |  1 November 2022  |   The Apostle John wrote in the prologue of his gospel, “The Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory . . . full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Throughout our history, we Seventh-day Adventists have preached countless sermons and taught […]

by S.M. Chen  |  28 October 2022  | The above words were used by famed physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) to describe the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. There were likely very few things in life Einstein wanted to understand but didn’t or couldn’t. This may have been one even he had difficulty wrapping his head around. […]

by Admiral Ncube  |  27 October 2022 A unique feature about Adventism has always been our eschatological view of the world and our nuanced understanding of the sin problem. Because we relate to the world through eschatological lenses, we have an inherent mistrust of ecumenism, and an indifference towards politics and social justice issues—unless, of […]

by David Geelan  |  25 October 2022  |   Is it possible, or will it become possible with technological advances, to ‘record’ a human mind into a computer? This might seem like a science or science fiction question, more than one appropriate for Adventist Today. Once we delve past some science and technology, though, it quite […]

by Melissa Brotton  |  17 October 2022  | “Hi, Siobhan,” Tim greets his colleague of five years, then stops abruptly. “Everything okay?” Siobhan looks up from her laptop briefly. “Yeah. Well, not really. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.” “Anything I can do?” Tim leans into Siobhan’s cubicle. “Not sure. It’s not that I feel incompetent, […]

by Carl McRoy & Christopher C. Thompson  |  20 October 2022  | It was roughly 2,000 years ago that Jesus said, “God’s kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you will be able to see with your eyes” (Lk. 17:20 NCV). It is as if these words were spoken with the year 2022 […]

by John B. Hoehn, MD All the cells of a developing human live, die, and are replaced by different cells many times. This is as God designed it to be to create healthy humans in his image. Whether spontaneous abortion or medical abortion is a sorrow or a crime is a religious question with different […]

by Arthur Sibanda  |  10 October 2022  |   Over weeks since the death of the longest-serving British monarch, Elizabeth II, I have watched with keen interest the geopolitical arguments as people try to reflect on her legacy. Grief is of course to be expected from those who are directly related to her, as well as […]

by Ron Hessel  |  8 October 2022  |   I got my undergrad degree in theology in the last half of the ’70s. Lots of confusing stuff was happening in that era in the Adventist world, particularly around the investigative judgment doctrine. Reputations were teetering on the edge. Careers were at stake.  I just ducked my […]

by Amy Nordhues  |  6 October 2022  | Why is it that when a person is victimized, especially domestic violence or sex crimes, people are more likely to scrutinize the victim’s actions than those of the perpetrator? Psychologists describe this tendency to blame victims as the “just-world hypothesis,” and it stems from a deeply rooted […]

by Jim Walters  |   4 October 2022  |   Where was God in Hurricane Ian, one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever hit the US mainline? Here’s one view. According to “Captain” Lewis McDonald, God miraculously preserved his ocean-going, shark-hunting cruiser. The boat surged over still-standing electric power lines, ending atop mangled mangrove trees 600 feet […]

by Hannele Ottschofski  |  30 September 2022 Yochi Rappeport’s blog in the Times of Israel on September 13 about role models led me to think about the influence of what we Adventists see and experience. Yochi writes about the influence that exclusively male teachers and rabbis had on her spiritual development as a teenager. If […]

by Carsten Thomsen  |  29 September 2022  |   Some of the most long-lived organizations are churches and religious groups. Some of the great world religions are thousands of years old, and Christianity has been around for 2,000 years.  Adventism is less than two hundred years old, but has many characteristics of a long-lived, successful religion. […]

by Tuwan Ussery White  |  23 September 2022  | We often think of white supremacy as the Ku Klux Klan and other violent groups. However, historical evidence shows that segregationism is a type of white supremacy too. In the year 1890 the Seventh-day Adventist church voted a policy of racial segregation that lasted for the […]

by Rebecca Brothers  |  22 September 2022  | Around the year 360, the Roman emperor Julian (a.k.a. “the Apostate”) wrote a missive known as “Letter 22,” directed to Arsacius, the pagan high priest of Galatia. In his efforts to reinstate Hellenistic polytheism as the official state religion, Julian reopened many temples, repealed privileges Constantine had […]

by Kara Wibberding  |  20 September 2022  |   The home of Ellen G. White is a coveted visit for some. Others have no idea it’s there.  Elmshaven sits on Glass Mountain Road in St. Helena, California. It was once the home of Robert Pratt, then of Ellen White, then sold and later gifted to the […]

by Bryan Ness  |  15 September 2022  | On July 23, I addressed the Adventist Today Sabbath Seminar on the topic of the complexity of the LGBTQ+ question. I explained that though people assume that human sex and gender is binary, and that the normal outcome of reproduction and development is distinctly male or female, […]

by Loren Seibold  |  9 September 2022  | Read The Blueprint, Part 1: The Myth of the Perfect Answer There’s a whole body of writing in the Bible, numbering hundreds of verses, that another group of God’s people regarded as their blueprint. The Torah laws contained the rituals of worship, but also very precise rules about […]

by Loren Seibold  |  8 September 2022  | In a memoir in the New Yorker magazine (August 22, 2022), writer Hua Hsu told of how his family tried to overcome the barriers to success in their new home in America. “Like many immigrants who prized education, my parents had faith in the mastery of technical […]

by Loren Seibold  |  26 August 2022  | Several weeks ago I yanked up my COVID roots and took myself on a trip. It felt like I’d come out of a dark cell, emerged from solitary confinement into daylight. I got invited (actually, I kinda invited myself) to the home field of the Seibolds in […]

by Rich Hannon  |  2 August 2022  | Adventism has, in its basic DNA, a deep fascination with having The Truth. That is, a correct understanding of what God is revealing to mankind. Historically the church has evangelized from this posture, comparing other denominations’ theology to our doctrinal distillations and finding the competition wanting. This […]

by Sarah Kay Jones  |  29 July 2022  | In the last few months, I’ve seen and heard countless comments about abortion rights, from both sides. But almost no one is talking about religious liberty in relation to this issue.  I was raised in the Adventist school system which was then strongly opposed to government […]

by Lawrence Downing  |  28 July 2022  |   Would you be surprised to learn that Adventist evangelists no longer have a lock on the “We’re in the end times” mantra?   A variation on that theme is heard in the community of those who are fascinated by the prospects of venturing beyond Earth’s atmosphere, there to […]

by Nerida Bates  |  26 July 2022  |   20 students accepted the call to be baptized. The president told me that I would do the baptism—but I would have to tell the church board so they would not be surprised when Sabbath came that I was baptizing. When I told the board members I would […]

by Rebecca Brothers  |  22 July 2022  | I love throwing parties. Pumpkin-carving parties in the fall, holiday brunches in December, birthday parties, dinner parties. All the parties. That was one of the hardest parts of lockdown: I had no reason to map out elaborate menus and try fun new recipes. My dad once said […]

Ostriches and Canaries: Coping with Change in Adventism 1966-1979 (Westlake Village, CA: Oak and Acorn Publishers, 2022). Reviewed by Reinder Bruinsma  |  12 July 2022 What follows is more a personal reaction than a formal book review. Because reading Gilbert M. Valentine’s newest book Ostriches and Canaries—Coping with Change in Adventism 1966-1979 was an intellectual feast […]

by Todd Leonard  |  7 July 2021  Just a few days ago, my friend and pastor, Todd Leonard, lost a loved one by suicide. The man’s family asked Todd to preach the funeral. I was moved by Todd’s focused message of hope and understanding, and I asked his permission to share it with you. Names […]

by Admiral Ncube  |  1 July 2022  |   “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful. (Malachi 2:16 NIV) Malachi 2:16 is often employed as a […]