This week I was informed of a colleague in ministry who has embraced the mantra, “Leave religion to follow Jesus.” How does this notion compare with the picture of Jesus found in the Bible?

When we see the idolatrous veneration of the most corrupt of men blatantly practiced by Christians claiming to be guardians of Biblical morality, we can know for certain that the spiritual collapse of all but a faithful remnant of Christ’s visible body (Zeph. 3:13; Rev. 12:17) is well under way.

The pillar doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist faith remain thoroughly Biblical, and this fact merits repetition as often as possible. 

The faultless character required of those who would meet their Lord in peace at His return encompasses both personal and collective responsibility.

There are those in contemporary Adventism who urge that doctrinal, moral, and ecclesiastical differences be transcended through “oneness in Christ.” But the Bible presents two visions of Christian oneness—one in John 17, the other in Isaiah 4. Which one will we embrace?

Ellen White’s repetitive insistence that First John 3:4 (“Sin is the transgression of the law”) is the only definition of sin found in Holy Scripture, is both consistent with the overall Biblical message and compellingly logical.

Let us pray for and encourage our leaders to take a decisive though compassionate stand for the teachings of God’s Word relative to gender and sexuality, and to hold all accountable at every level for their adherence to the same.  Nothing less is possible for the great end-time movement of whom God will one day soon declare, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12).

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). 

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).

“When one clearly sees a duty, let him not presume to go to God with the prayer that he may be excused from performing it.  He should rather, with a humble, submissive spirit, ask for divine strength and wisdom to meet its claims.”

Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 441.

“And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.

“Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” (II Thess. 3:14-15).

Reflections on the limits of science, technology, and the human character made evident by the revival of the space exploration program.