by Shelley Curtis Weaver | 1 February 2023 | Moving to the Pacific Northwest introduced me to a different agricultural reality. Our peninsula is hemmed by timber patches, cranberry bogs, and fisheries. Harvest here involves chainsaws, cranes, and thundering log trucks. Instead of threshing barley, or cutting hay to dry and bale, coastal cranberry farmers […]
by Stephen Ferguson | 27 January 2023 | I was conversing with some ex-Adventist the other day when I came across a claim that Seventh-day Adventist pioneer and prophetess Ellen White was an alcoholic. It seemed farfetched to me. However, after doing my own research, I was able to find Mrs. White’s own words on […]
by Kris Coffin Stevenson If you walk in the doors of the church and then realize it’s communion Sabbath, it will make your heart skip a beat. That’s either because you’re so excited to join in, or it’s because you missed your pedicure appointment or your outfit makes footwashing impossible or just because—feet! If you […]
by Carsten Thomsen | 20 January 2023 | I was born in Denmark in 1949, in a white, Protestant culture. Multiculturalism had not yet arrived. Our family moved to the United States when I was nine years old. We moved from the biggest Adventist enclave in Denmark—centered around the Skodsborg Sanitarium—to its model in Battle […]
19 January 2023 | In our family album there’s a picture of the groundbreaking ceremony for my childhood church. I’m three years old in that photograph, dressed in a navy 1960s swing coat, with a prim hat and curled hair. My grandfather is holding the shovel while I, the youngest member of our congregation, press […]
by Amy Nordhues | 16 January 2023 | I’ve always loved those 1970s VW buses. You know—the vans that have curtains in the windows and are covered by every bumper sticker known to humanity. They are driven by the free spirits of the world—the eccentric types that say, “Hey world, this is who I am, […]
by Patricia Johnston | 13 January 2023 | We’ve heard the story many times, from when we were little children. We’ve seen depictions of it in picture rolls and paintings. There’s even a statue of the Good Samaritan on the campus of Loma Linda University Health! It’s a wonderful story. It teaches such a good […]
by Melissa Brotton | 12 January 2023 | “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9 NKJV) There is something called the science of forgiveness, which my colleague Dr. Lourdes Morales-Gudmundsson and I teach through La Sierra University’s general studies program. The science of forgiveness is wonderful. It tells […]
Richard W. Coffen | 10 January 2023 | The Promised Land! It sits atop what once was called the Great Rift Valley. Here one tectonic plate is subducting (slipping under) the other. And on the top of this seam of plates, the Promised Land nestles, with its two lakes (the Sea of Galilee and the […]
by Jim Walters | 7 January 2023 | Ellen White was born into a devout shouting Methodist family, and coped with poor health and limited education. Nevertheless, Ellen rose to become a canonized authority in world Adventism, and that 22-million-member church now holds her writings—in practice, if not in doctrine—equal to the Bible. Consider two […]
by Thandazani Mhlanga | 5 January 2023 | Towards the end of 2021, a fascinating religious drama played out on the internet and social media. Dr. Yitzhak Y. Melamed, a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, posted to Facebook a letter he received from the Portuguese synagogue (the Esnoga) in Amsterdam. Dr. Melamed had […]
by Carsten Thomsen | 3 January 2023 | Whether Christian or not, many carry a lot of negative baggage about sex, its dangers, risks, and sinfulness, along with guilt and shadows of condemnation of your thoughts and actions. Yes, sex can be misused and abused. But of course, so can food, drink, exercise, and religion. […]