by Loren Seibold, Executive Editor, Adventist Today

You might have heard of Paula White-Cain. Pastor Paula is a televangelist, and now a White House Special Government Employee and Senior Advisor in the newly created White House Faith Office.

Paula has an offer she thinks you can’t refuse. If you send her ministry $1,000 during Passover this year, she promises you (based on some pretty shaky theology) seven supernatural blessings: 

“As we read in Exodus 23, when you honor God during this Passover, God will assign an angel to you, be an enemy to your enemies, give you prosperity, take sickness away from you, give you a long life, bring increase and inheritance and give a special year of blessing.”

Heaped on to these blessings of health and prosperity are a 10-inch-high Waterford cross, some devotionals, and an “olive wood communion set,” which includes unleavened bread and grape juice from the Holy Land, two “beautiful” olive wood communion cups, and a booklet.  

What are you waiting for? All this for just $1,000? Oh, and as an added bonus, you’ll also be subsidizing a major conflict of interest for a government employee!

A better offer

But hold on a second. Before sending Paula your money, we have a better offer for your $1,000. We’re offering you the seriously hard work of an enthusiastic group of Adventist journalists, who are putting up lively resistance against overgrown institutional religion, and directing our hearts and minds back to Jesus!

Why settle for just seven blessings?  Adventist Today can offer you many more.

You’ll get our commentaries on scripture, theology, and the church. Our daily church news. Weekly editorials by our editor, Loren Seibold, and his team. Our popular Adventist Today Sabbath Seminar. A whole library of videos, including the amazing new feature, AdventInnovate, plus video classes by serious scholars on a wide range of subjects. The quarterly Adventist Today magazine. (The new issue is about the upcoming General Conference Session in St. Louis.) Regular columnists such as Reinder Bruinsma, Jack Hoehn, and Melody Tan. The extraordinary Barely Adventist. And of course our popular Aunt Sevvy column.

Our promise

White-Cain, in her pitch for $1,000, conveniently left out one passage from Exodus 23, that she probably should have included: 

“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness…. You shall not pervert the justice due to the poor by lawsuits… You shall take no bribes… You shall not oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens yourselves in Egypt.” 

Adventist Today promises never to take bribes, nor expel foreigners, nor subvert justice, nor tell lies. We tell the truth—biblical truth—about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. 

If you want the blessings that come from helping us tell the truth, put your $1,000 somewhere besides Paula White-Cain’s pockets. Put it into advancing the ministry of Adventist Today!

Thank you for backing the AT Spring Fundraiser today!

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