ATSS
Are Our Grandchildren Damned?
15 September 2021 | Read this poem, and the following essay, in preparation for our class. Are We and Our Grandchildren Damned? A Biblical Basis for Setting Our Hearts at Rest Just a year or two into my first ministerial assignment, I conducted a funeral service for the eighteen-year-old son of one of my new […]
ATSS: Remembering 9/11/2001
8 September 2021 | Read this essay in preparation for the class. Excerpts of the four points: 1. The enemy Some Christian leaders rushed to Islam’s defense. Yet I also received an email written by a clergyman, that was just short of Hitlerian in its bigotry and willful misinterpretation of the theology and social system of […]
Bryan Ness: Noah’s Flood vs. Science – 4 September 2021
4 September 2021 | Read the essay by Bryan Ness here. Excerpt: These are important questions because Adventists that are scientifically well educated often recognize that the scientific evidence does not support the existence of a worldwide flood, and if the church insists all must believe in a worldwide flood, or their salvation is at […]
Reinder Bruinsma: Adventists and Catholics—What Are the Issues?
25 August 2021 | The following reading was given us by the author. It is reprinted from Spectrum, 1999, summer, pp. 45-52: “Adventists and Catholics: Prophetic Preview or Prejudice?” You can read the entire essay by clicking here. Excerpt: Adventists did not invent anti-Catholicism. Even before the Reformation drastically changed England’s ecclesiastical landscape, there were […]
Stephen Chavez: Who Controls the Holy Spirit? 8/21/2021
18 August 2021 | Read the article by Stephen Chavez here: For most of the last decade, Seventh-day Adventist church leaders at the highest levels have hammered the necessity of revival and reformation. The height of this obsession was perhaps demonstrated most starkly in March 2021, when 10 pages in Adventist World magazine featured messages […]
Fundamentalism and the Rise of “Muscular Adventism”
11 August 2021 | Muscular Adventism, by Michael W. Campbell While attending some recent scholarly meetings, I was standing in line to visit the book exhibit. In front of me was a renowned Old Testament scholar whom I readily recognized. After I complimented him, telling him that I enjoyed his books and noting a relative […]
The Art of Remembering: How We Tell the Sabbath Story – 7 August ’21
4 August 2021 | Read Dr. Frey’s paper about the Sabbath’s lessons of justice and equality here. The Art of Remembering: It Matters How We Tell the Sabbath Story I remember the girl, 8 years old, trembling beneath a towering, gray-haired madman teacher. To the left of her outstretched arms twenty-four students held their breath. […]
When Leaders Are the Problem – 7/31/2021
27 July 2021 | The entire article can be read here. Excerpt: When a well-intentioned endeavor or promising new initiative fails, the question naturally arises, “What went wrong?” The answer too often implicates leaders as being responsible for the graveyard of promising initiatives or once-thriving efforts. It is expected of leaders that they contribute constructively […]
Loren Seibold: A Proposal for a 29th Fundamental Belief
24 July 2021 | The entire article can be read here. Excerpt: Rather than regarding some as lesser Adventists, or dissenters, or silent hypocrites, we propose a 29th fundamental belief. This 29th statement would say that people can embrace or reject any one or more of the previous 28 and still remain loved and active […]
ATSS: Ronald Lawson on the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Polygamous Converts
14 July 2021 | The entire document can be read here. The following excerpt is mostly about the Adventist response to polygamy: Christianity grew up in what was basically a monogamous world. The first recorded official Christian statement on polygamy dates from 1201, when the Bishop of Tiberius asked Pope Innocent III if polygamous converts […]