Adventists have always been concerned about formulating and preserving correct doctrine.  Pioneer evangelism strongly emphasized that Adventists had a clearer understanding of Biblical truth than other Christian options and consequently enquirers should consider joining this remnant movement – which had been given a central role in effecting the Second Coming.

The Adventist church, like many conservative Christian denominations, takes an official position condemning homosexuality. The 1999 General Conference Annual Council approved a position statement, found on the church’s website at http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat46.html  that states:

Over the past few weeks the Spectrum website has featured multiple articles focusing on denominational year-end meetings, both at the GC and NAD level. Because the issue of gender equality and participation was a major point of discussion at both meetings readership of these articles has been high and the comments extensive – and sometimes passionate.

Consider this thought experiment:

You are placed in a time machine and transported back to Bethlehem shortly after Jesus’s birth. You enter the stable and see Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and perhaps a few shepherds. Approaching the baby you kneel and gently ask Him (in your native, modern, non-Aramaic language): “Dear Jesus, What are the solutions to the equation: 3x⁴ + 20x² + 50 = 2x⁴ + 5x² -4?”

What response do you think you might get?

In 1995 Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL) started a two-day event called The Global Leadership Summit (TGLS). It exists to “transform Christian leaders around the world with an annual injection of vision, skill development, and inspiration for the sake of the local church”. Attendance that year was 2200 at one location. This year’s totals were expected to be over 135,000 attendees, 400 locations, 76 countries and 37 languages, worldwide.

An often-believed subtext in the Adventist Faith/Science conundrum is that here are two worlds in collision. From the disparaging and presumably oxymoronic epithet ‘Seventh-day Darwinians’ to the short-chronology requirement for membership in the Adventist Theological Society, contemporary Adventism struggles with the question of compatibility – can revelation be reconciled with science? And, where we presently cannot, how should we proceed?

These days the word ‘interpret’ is a red flag to some people, who fear it is a license to distort the ‘plain reading’ of scripture down some slippery slope toward heresy.

But I’m trying to use it in a much less threatening way. We each have to interpret and apply this collection of writings we call the Bible personally, so our lives might be changed for the better. So we are (first of all) happier, and our words and actions will reach out to, and bless, others.

In Mark 8:29 Jesus asked his disciples “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” Simple and clear, right? Well, if so, it certainly proved exceedingly difficult for the church to subsequently work through all of the questions and issues that surrounded and intertwined Peter’s initial declaration.

How do you have both Monotheism and a Triune God? And, is Jesus fully God and fully man? Seemingly intractable paradoxes.

Recently on this website there has been heated discussion regarding the Michigan Conference’s decision to deny tuition subsidy for its workers who might wish to send their children to La Sierra University. The rationale for denying subsidy is the presumption that LSU’s approach to teaching evolution constitutes apostasy.

The lesson last week was entitled The Human Condition and the lecture material and DVD discussion focused on the so-called Problem of Evil. This week the DVD conversation lead by Dr. Nicoli returns to much of the same material but there is more of an emphasis on our mortality and what may lie beyond.