FIREBALLS AND SOLAR ECLIPSES: RELIABLE PORTENTS OR FALSE ALARMS?

We don’t know what April 8, 2024 will bring.  None can be sure whether the path of the pending solar eclipse over towns named Nineveh and Jonah is anything but a coincidence.  And none can be sure when Ellen White’s prophecies of fireballs destroying buildings, in Nashville or elsewhere, will come to pass. 

But at the bottom line, God isn’t waiting on natural or man-made disasters so that Jesus can come.  Rather, He is waiting on the spiritual preparedness of His people, who through His grace will reproduce the character of Christ in their hearts and lives (I Thess. 5:23; II Peter 3:10-14; I John 3:2-3; Rev. 3:21; 12:17; 14:5,12). 

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THE BITTERNESS TRAP

Too many of the striving faithful in modern Adventism lost their way, not so long ago, through bitterness.  It is a path none dare traverse again.  It is a trap that will extinguish godly zeal, suffocate love for the erring, and obliterate the patient spirit which God’s Last Generation Christians must cultivate and possess (Rev. 14:12).

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CANCEL CULTURE OR COWARD CULTURE?

God’s heroes through the ages have risked everything, including their lives and those of their loved ones, for the sake of bearing public witness to Bible truth and the resulting contrast with error.  For people in the church today to hide in the shadows when rebuking wrongful teachings because they fear negative reputational or career consequences, is difficult if not impossible to justify. 

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"LOOKING DOWN ON ME FROM HEAVEN"

A few years ago I attended a baptism in one of our churches. As with many of our baptisms, the candidates are encouraged to give a testimony after they have come up out of the font (dried and re-dressed of course). At one point this particular lady said, " . . . and my late grandmother is now looking down on me from heaven.”

                                                        

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WHY CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM MATTERS

A number of prominent voices are articulating an eschatological narrative that is foreign to what Scripture actually states regarding how the end will play out. This has resulted in confusion, disunity and debates on social media and other media outlets. Unfortunately, many are mistaking political ideology and theories for Adventism and Scripture. This has resulted in misdirected focus, time and energy on peripheral matters that are depleting our limited energies and diverting us from our shared message and mission as Seventh-day Adventists. These matters are consequential. 

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PASSED BY

“Above the hills of Bethlehem are gathered an innumerable throng of angels. They wait the signal to declare the glad news to the world. Had the leaders in Israel been true to their trust, they might have shared the joy of heralding the birth of Jesus. But now they are passed by.”

Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 47.

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