Reviewing Adventist World, NAD Edition

September, 2012
Vol. 8, No. 9
http://www.adventistworld.org/

Adventist World is free online. For that reason, I only review or comment on articles that I believe to be of special interest. Online readers can now read the entire print edition. Just click on the cover in the bottom left of the home page, and every page of the entire magazine is yours! Editors, way to go!

GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue is dedicated to Adventist families. I’ll summarize. Be good Adventist adults, good Adventist parents, send your children to Adventist schools, pray that they marry good heterosexual Adventists (But be nice to people who have had the misfortune to marry nonAdventists), attend church regularly, have daily Bible study, pray earnestly, and do everything you can to keep your family from being influenced by the world outside the Adventist bubble. I have just two other irreverent comments.

ONE WHOLE HUMANITY: Third International Bible Conference Focuses On Biblical Anthropology as reported by Mark Kellner, was held in Israel. It might just as well have been held in Silver Spring. For Adventist theologians and so called “anthropologists”, the ancient world is anathema. For them, Ancient Middle East settings are 4000-year-old Biblical props.

Ted was there, of course, to make sure that Delegates to the 10-day conference strongly affirmed the president’s 
challenge.

Wilson called on educators to lead a positive revolution on your campuses—a revolution back to the Bible with an historicist position and with an historical-biblical approach. His message also stressed the importance of the Adventist understanding of the sanctuary service, which, he said, holds the ultimate answer to the two distortions of Christian belief, legalism and ‘cheap grace.’

And then there is Fundamental Belief Number 23.

Marriage was divinely established in Eden and affirmed by Jesus to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman in loving companionship. For the Christian a marriage commitment is to God as well as to the spouse, and should be entered into only between partners who share a common faith. Mutual love, honor, respect, and responsibility are the fabric of this relationship, which is to reflect the love, sanctity, closeness, and permanence of the relationship between Christ and His church. Regarding divorce, Jesus taught that the person who divorces a spouse, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery. Although some family relationships may fall short of the ideal, marriage partners who fully commit themselves to each other in Christ may achieve loving unity through the guidance of the Spirit and the nurture of the church…

Number 23 needs a rewrite, and I’d be glad to offer some corrective help!

1. Marriage is not discussed in either of the creation stories found in Genesis.
2. No two persons share “a common faith.”
3. There are a number of good reasons why divorce is a good idea.
4. Marriage partners, straight or LGBT, can’t always “achieve loving unity” no matter what help and assistance is provided, temporal or spiritual.
5. Second marriages, by definition, are not adulterous.