Reviewing the Adventist Review

January 8, 2009
Vol. 166, No. 1

GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue is an excellent one. Share it with a friend. Bill Knott’s editorial, Snowbound, deserves a Bouquet even though he spends longer than necessary to conclude his argument. Reader Frank Hutchins was a Navy medical corpsman on the beach at Tarawa! Paulsen’s speech to the Evangelism Council is impressive. Nostalgia, by Reinder Bruinsma and Beauty for Ashes by John Press are exemplary stories that allow the reader to conclude, with the authors, that the lessons learned are useful and worth remembering. And Cliff Goldstein’s essay is insightful and well written!

QUOTES WORTH NOTING
Knott
“We seem to be entering another of those periodic seasons in the life of the Adventist Church when strong-minded individuals are asserting their privilege to declare what emerges from their study of prophecy and current events without much concern for the consequences. Perhaps it is the admitted drama of these times that tempts some to say the irresponsible things they are proclaiming in pulpits and newsletters. . . It takes no special skill to agitate the ‘scattered flock’ of God with fear-filled speculation. Otherwise-sensible sheep quite naturally run when shepherds cry ‘Wolf!’ to facilitate their own influence, agendas, or economic interests.”

Paulsen
“I wouldn’t want to be only with those who have it all figured out. [Such people can become] arrogant, clinical, and judgmental. . .It is within our reach to shape and create the spiritual atmosphere of our community. . .a good home in our local congregations, a warm family.”

Bruinsma
“So when people say they want to go back to the church of the past, they, in actual fact, tend to work with a heavily edited version of the past, from which uncomfortable aspects of the past have been deleted.”

Goldstein
“As long as we believe in human freedom, God’s moral law must be present. Moral freedom is inseparable from moral law; for without it how would free creatures know how to use the costly and risky God-given gift of freedom, to stay within the bounds of what God Himself deems right and wrong?”