Reviewing the Adventist Review

October 23, 2008
Vol. 185, No, 30

GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue is a MUST READ! BOUQUETS have been awarded to the following:

EDITORS AND TECHNICAL STAFF for doing an exemplary job

FIVE THINGS I LEARNED FROM MR. ROGERS by Sandra Blackmer
If you’re kind and caring, you can touch the hearts even of criminals. Fred Rogers’ car was once stolen from near the TV station where he worked. The story was picked up by the media, and, incredibly, the car was returned to the spot from which it was stolen. On the dashboard was a note: “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”

DO WE LOOK FOR ANOTHER by Ed Dickerson
True to our name, Adventists are students of last-day events, often attempting to identify the movements, causes, or even individuals God will use as specific instruments to fulfill His Word. A few among us invest countless hours filling in intricate, highly specific charts that detail the precise nature, order, and relationships of the final events of earth’s history, demonstrating, I think, a desperate desire to accurately predict the future.

But that is not our proper role. Rather than building faith in God, such an approach seeks to replace faith with knowledge. It springs from a desire to walk by sight, rather than by faith. And if John the Baptist and the Millerites could misinterpret events, so can we.

KIDS VIEW editors, young writers and poets, and graphic designers

ONE DAY AT THE LAUNDROMAT: WHAT DO YOU SAY TO A NAKED MAN by Sheryl Mostert Young
Before I could change my mind I grabbed my box of laundry soap and walked over to the man. I tried to look directly into his eyes. For the first time in my life I stuttered: “Hi, I, uh, I noticed you might be a quarter or two short and I have extras. Can I help you start your machine?”

HONOR THY FATHER? SHOULD WE FORGIVE NO MATTER WHAT? by Ann Hanawalt
So here I was, sitting in the jail’s visiting room wondering what to say. I knew the girl he had molested—a 7-year-old with long blond hair and trusting blue eyes. She and her family had befriended Dad while his wife was suffering from cancer. They mourned with him when she died. They included him in family gatherings and outings. They had trusted him, and he had molested their daughter.

FIGHTING A KILLER by Allan R. Handysides and Peter N. Landless
We continue to be saddened by women who decline [breast cancer] therapies that can save their lives (and have been clearly documented to do so) in favor of untested, unproven, and often disastrous forays into such things as fruit and vegetable juicing.