A friend of mine, when asked what makes him an Adventist, declares emphatically that the foundation of his belief is the parallel identities of Rome in Daniel 2, 7, and 8, along with the beasts of Revelation 13. He finds in these the confirmation for the existence of our church, and the truth of our […]
13 September 2024 | Recently one of my friends, noting the new optimism generated by a fresh presidential candidate in the United States, wondered, “Could that happen to the Adventist Church?” “With Harris-Walz, it seems like the nation is starting to breathe again, seeing hope, sensing joy. Does the church need the same? Who could […]
by Melody Tan | 11 September 2024 | Humankind wanting to know “why?” is the reason we know about things such as gravitational forces (“Why does an apple fall to the ground and not up?”) and the structure of the atom (“Why do materials have different properties?”). Our natural curiosity has led us to make […]
11 September 2024 | In Romans chapter 9 Paul talks about various Old Testament individuals and how God chose to use them for his purposes. This chapter makes it sound like God has predestined certain individuals to play specific roles in history, with no choice on their part. This led theologians such as John Calvin […]
David Geelan | 10 September 2024 | Most of us know the story of Lot, the one righteous man in Sodom who was saved from the destruction of that City of the Plain. We recall Abraham’s negotiation with God—“If there are even ten righteous men in Sodom…”—and that it turned out there weren’t. We find […]
9 September 2024 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, An older church worker that I admired once told me that the church promotes people to their level of incompetence. I was new to church work at the time, and thought maybe he was just jaded. But over the last few decades I’ve seen it to be true. […]
I’ve recently begun working in a skilled nursing facility as Director of Social Services and it has introduced me to some really beautiful people in the form of the patients. These lovely people who have lifetimes of experience and wisdom are experiencing a difficult time in their lives. Most of them have some form of […]
by Loren Seibold | 6 September 2024 | When I was a teen, one Adventist teaching that seemed extraordinarily clear to me was that Seventh-day Adventists were—and I supposed always would be—noncombatants in military service. This was the Vietnam era. I knew Adventist men who got drafted and served, not as soldiers but as medics, […]
by Robert Crux | 5 September 2024 | Do students still have the constitutional right to a public education free from religious indoctrination and discrimination? Or do public school officials have free rein to promote their religious beliefs and practices to students? Could American public schools become religious public schools? We may now be living […]
by Reinder Bruinsma | 4 September 2024 | I have nearly finished reading the most recent book of Professor Stefan Paas. He teaches systematic theology and mission studies at the Free University in Amsterdam. Most of his writing is in the Dutch language. (This book is Dutch, though I would not be surprised if there […]
