Just over one-third of the way through the fall a holiday makes its annual appearance. For some it is a night of masquerade, mystery and the thrill of trick-or-treat, or harmless pranks. For others it is a night of spiritual significance, both good and bad; and for still others it holds nothing at all. That holiday is Halloween, October 31st.
Read MoreHere is a question for you. What does God in His holiness require as the cause or basis of His forgiveness of sinners? Is it a life of perfect obedience or faith in Jesus Christ? Yes, this is a trick question but an important one.
Read MoreGrowing up in my home church I heard about these people called “Mormons,” and I was told hardly anything about them or what they believe and I even felt that I was being told that Mormons were born-again Christians, but they simply had some weird doctrines. As I got older, I met some Mormons and befriended several. Even they, however, struggled to tell me exactly what they believed as Latter Day Saints. If I were to summarize all of the answers I received, It would go something like, “It’s complicated.” Eventually, I decided to stop asking people about Mormonism and investigate it at the source.
Read MoreOne of the most common attacks on the Trinity focuses on the deity of Christ. The skeptic might say, “If Jesus was God, then why didn’t He just say, ‘By the way, I’m God’?” For emphasis, they might even grab your Bible, flip through the pages, and challenge you by saying, “Show me one verse where Jesus said that He was God. You can’t do it, because He never said it!”
Read MoreIn order to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, one must first know what the Trinity is, and what it is not. I add “and what it is not,” because often skeptics will try to attack this doctrine by setting up a “strawman” (A distorted version of an opponent’s position that is attacked rather than the real thing).
Read MoreOver the past few months we have all had a lot to think about. Few people alive today had experienced a global pandemic prior to this year. This is a new experience across the board…
Read MoreWithout belaboring the basics, I thought it would be interesting to consider what special contribution Adventism can make to the season of Lent. At first glance, the two might appear to be strange bedfellows. While Lent looks to our past and present condition, Adventism by its very nature looks forward to the future. To the uninformed, the essential message of Adventism is that the Christian’s hope should be fixed upon the day of Christ’s return, that day in which the reign of Christ will be fully revealed along with new heavens and a new earth. It is the message that God promises to set everything aright in the end, bringing all of Creation to the glorious end instituted by her Creator. It is the promise of a coming age far removed from our present condition, but which carries with it the assurance that we who have been joined to Jesus Christ shall live again to see all things made new.
The value this conviction brings to the season of Lent is that the hope of resurrection is necessarily preceded by the need for death.
Read MoreWhen you think of the Advent Christian Church, what is your conception of it?
Read MoreIf we grasp the Bible's teaching on the nature of sin then we would understand how dire our situation truly is. We, apart from God's grace, are incredibly lost, men and women.
Read MoreTo set the scene, I am taking a course in ethics at a prominent Catholic college (I’ll keep some details anonymous to protect the professor). Of my classmates, at least half of the class are Roman Catholic priest or members of a Catholic religious order (e.g. Society of Jesus/Jesuits).
Read MoreTwo times in my adult life, I have experienced dramatic change in how I understood and practiced Christian faith. The first occurred in my early twenties with a transition away from a more emotionally based faith…
Read MoreLast summer, the murder of eleven Jewish people while at worship in a Pittsburgh synagogue stunned so many of us, not just because it represented an assault on religious freedom in the United States, but because it served as an ugly reminder that Antisemitism still lurks in the shadows of American life. In the last ten years, we have seen horrible Antisemitism manifested in Europe and the Middle East, but beginning with Charlottesville and the alt-right “tiki-torch” march through the campus of the University of Virginia in the summer of 2017 we were shocked to see it expressed in such hateful ways in our own country.
Read MoreAs I was getting ready for commencement, I watched another ceremony that captured much of the world’s attention—the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. Nobody does ceremonies like the British Royals. And this one mixed hundreds of years of tradition with icons of popular culture. As the ceremony progressed, cameras panned across a crowd that featured a who’s who of world famous celebrities.
But what grabbed my attention was the sermon.
Read MoreCorey McLaughlin has put forth a monumental effort in his four-part series...After reading these articles, I found myself agreeing with most of them, so much so that it has ironically led me to disagree with the basic contention of the series, that we are in fact fragmented along the lines Corey describes.
Read MoreWho am I to be even suggesting that this beloved hymn by John Newton is lacking or deficient in any way? I must be nuts! Don't get me wrong everything that these lyrics proclaim is true and indeed wonderful...
Read MoreIn A Devil of A Dilemma: Part 1, we examined Revelation 20:10 honestly and cogently, but many were not impressed or satisfied with what we termed a sort of “modified conditional immortality view.” In truth, that is not a particularly good name since there is nothing actually modified about it per se, it merely states the main assertion of conditional immortality in plain language and follows it to its logical conclusion.
Read MoreAt the 2017 ERA annual meeting, President Steve Brown of BICS presented the idea that the major barrier to unity within the Advent Christians is “theological fragmentation.” The major proposed solution, assuming one accepts the premise, was a call for a hermeneutical reformation (a la Kaiser as exemplar) to reinvigorate and reestablish basic, core, essential principles of interpretation in hopes of gaining unity of mind together.
Read MoreCorey McLaughlin and Tom Loghry have levied some heavy charges over the last couple of weeks. They have indicated that it is our responsibility as Advent Christians to hasten the Second Coming of Christ. I want these good and well meaning servants of Christ to know this…I’m not ready for that. I certainly want Christ to return, but can’t he wait until I’ve gone on vacation first?
Read MoreThe title of this article is punctuated with a question mark because of the embryonic stage at which it is being put forward. In his latest two-part series, “Advent Christians in the 21st Century”, Corey McLaughlin has set before us what is in my estimation one of the most pivotal reflections on Adventism in late Advent Christian history. Conditionalism has dominated Advent Christian identity in the latter part of our history, but McLaughlin has reminded us of our other hand, in fact what was once our dominant hand, which is our Adventism.
Read More“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards,” says Søren Kierkegaard. This is all the more crucial for the new generation of Second Adventist leaders as they ponder the four stages of social movements and apply them analogously to our denomination, noting that we are currently in the final stage of decline and therefore soon failure. The grave is dug, the tombstone is written, but the body has yet to fall. Is there yet still vibrant life in this mortal frame? In order to understand who we are, we must first look back:
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