AW NAD English - December 2016

The International Paper for Seventh-day Adventists

D ec e m b e r 2 01 6

Grace

Is Where You Find It

19 Gratitude and Transition 22 How Shall We Pray?

42 Safe in His Hands

North American Division | n a d

D ec e m b e r 2016

The International Paper for Seventh-day Adventists

D ec e mb e r 2016

Grace

Is Where You Find It

19 Gratitude and Transition 22 How Shall We Pray?

42 Safe in His Hands

C O V E R

24

S T O R Y

Grace in Unexpected Places

By Lael Caesar

I t’s not called “amazing grace” for nothing.

8 Remembering God’s Plan W O R L D

V I S T A

By Ted N. C. Wilson

No matter where we are, we can thank God for leading us.

20 Angel in a KGB Uniform, Part II A D V E N T I S T

H E R I T A G E

By Pavel Liberanskiy

Christians rarely fared so well in Soviet Russia.

22 How Shall We Pray?

D E V O T I O N A L

By Frank Campbell

We know what we want. But do we know what is best?

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From Victims to Victors

By Albert Kazako

God uses people to guide His children.

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N A D

By Nina Atcheson and Arne Nielsen

A D V E N T I S T

L I F E

F E AT U R E

Encounter: Helping Students Know God A new curriculum in North America uses the Bible to help youth develop a relationship with God.

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F U N D A M E N T A L

God’s Good Story

By Lael Caesar

B E L I E F S

We didn’t sign up for it, but we’re involved in it.

D E PA RT M E N T S 3 W O R

L D

R E P O R T

3 News Briefs 6 News Feature 11 NAD News 14 NAD Update 17 NAD Perspective 18 NAD Letters

42 B I B L E Q U E S T I O N S 19 W O R L D H E A L T H A N S W E R E D Gratitude and Transition Safe in His Hands 38 S P I R I T O F P R O P H E C Y 43 B I B L E S T U D Y Unto You a Savior What the Bible Teaches About Health 44

I D E A

E X C H A N G E

www.adventistworld.org Available in 10 languages online The Adventist World® (ISSN 1557-5519), one of the Adventist Review® family of publications, is printed monthly by the Pacific Press® Publishing Association. Copyright © 2016. Send address changes to your local conference membership clerk. Contact information should be available through your local church. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. Vol. 12, No. 12, December 2016.

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Adventist World - nad | December 2016

Beyond Words

WORLD REPORT

By Kent Kingston

Slain Missionaries and Ellen White

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A D V E N T I S T

R E C O R D

Solomon Islands prime minister marks a milestone

K I N G S T O N

othing in the world we know prepares us to fully, clearly understand the grace of God. When we discover a kindness so full and a love so persistent, we reach to the very edges of language to find suitable words. In the truest sense, the Word who became flesh is always beyond the reach of our words.

It would have been grace enough if God the Father had announced from heaven’s throne that He was commuting our sentences and opening all prison doors. That would have been the very definition of unimaginable and unmerited favor.

But that His Son should condescend to crawl into our hovels, be one of us, experience our dirt and pain, and taste the worst of weakness and of cruelty, is more than we dared ask or think. Grace took on flesh and bone, and all the drudgery and mystery of being human, in hope of bonding us forever to the Father.

Jesus was the grace of God incarnate, for grace invariably moves toward those who hurt and grieve and sin. Christ passed through our last portal—death— to open up the door to heaven’s deathless throne room.

Now He has sat down again at the right hand of the Father, awaiting grace’s final chapter, when He says we will share His glory and His throne.

As you read the pages of this gracefilled edition of Adventist World, stop to pause in wonder and in worship for the grace that has reached into your story and come to where you live.

By the grace of God, you have been called to be His child, His friend. By the grace of God, you have found a community of brothers and sisters where each one has a unique story of God’s undeserved kindness. By the grace of God, you can have a destiny with Jesus in His forever kingdom that is so much happier and fuller than anything you have ever known that words always fail to capture it (1 Cor. 2:9).

So stay in grace.

K E N T

N

Anniversary attendees visit the gravesite of slain Adventist missionary Mary Semi.

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he prime minister of the Solomon Islands paid an emotional tribute to slain Seventh-day Adventist missionaries and cited church cofounder Ellen G. White in a speech celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of a remote Adventist hospital.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogovare joined hundreds of people for the three-day celebration at Atoifi Adventist Hospital on the eastern side of the island of Malaita, a location that can be reached only by boat or aircraft. The country’s capital, Honiara, is a 40-minute airplane flight away.

Sogovare said government policy has been strongly influenced by the hospital and a school of nursing operated by Papua New Guineabased Pacific Adventist University on its campus.

“I can testify to the contribution this church has made to building the capacity of Solomon Islands,” he said. “Models developed by Atoifi and the school of nursing have proved appropriate to roll out in rural areas. . . . This is one of the best hospitals in the Solomon Islands, one of the most respected and well-equipped.”

Surprising some, Sogovare incorporated strong spiritual themes in his speech, even quoting Ellen White at length. “ ‘In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of Continued on next page

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WORLD REPORT advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God!’ ” Sogovare said, reading a passage from White’s Life Sketches. “ ‘As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.’ ”* Sogovare spoke about Adventist pioneers who sacrificed much to bring the gospel and better health to the local Kwaio people, both before and after the official establishment of the 91-bed hospital in 1966.

Sogovare became emotional as he remembered those who had given so much, “even the supreme sacrifice,” referring to missionaries such as Lens Larwood, who died in a tractor accident in 1979, and Mary Semi (died 1929), Brian Dunn (1965), and Lance Gersbach (2003), all slain by those they had come to help.

Later a group of guests took a short boat trip to the other side of Uru Harbor and climbed to the top of a steep hill to pay respects at the grave of Mary Semi, an Adventist missionary from the Western Solomons who was brutally killed in connection with a dispute over how a local girl’s bride price should be paid. Local oral histories consistently recall that Mary’s husband, Semi Pukekera, also from Ranongga in the Western Solomons, ran down the steep hill to avoid being the next victim. He jumped and was miraculously carried through the air, landing safely in the sea, where he was picked up by a boat from the opposite shore.

Chester Kuma, health ministries director of the South Pacific Division, whose territory includes the Solomon Islands, and an Atoifi doctor from 1988 to 1999, recalled during his

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speech a specific instance when God’s leading was evident at Atoifi. In 1994 hospital and Adventist Church leaders met to discuss closing the institution amid financial difficulties.

Closure seemed inevitable after a daylong meeting in which various last-ditch strategies were considered and rejected and heartfelt prayer sessions were held. But before the final vote was taken, one of the participants was called away to a telephone call.

He returned in tears. It took him awhile to compose himself enough to

announce that the New Zealand government was extending a sizable grant, just the amount needed for Atoifi to remain open.

The recounting of this story brought applause from the crowd and visible pleasure to the face of New Zealand’s ambassador to the Solomon Islands, Marion Crawshaw, who was seated on a specially constructed VIP dais along with Australian ambassador Andrew Byrne. n * Ellen G. White, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1915), p. 196.

By Andrew McChesney

Helping Refugees

“as Important as Preaching” ADRA’s director for Serbia shares frontline lessons.

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eventh-day Adventist pastor Igor Mitrovic´ once believed that the church’s prophetic calling was to proclaim the second coming of Jesus.

But after working on the frontlines of Europe’s refugee crisis for the past year, Mitrovic´ sees a second and equally important prophetic calling: to help the helpless.

The two callings are not unrelated, Mitrovic´ said in an interview at a refugee crisis center that he helps run in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. By reaching out to those who cannot help themselves, Adventists are sharing the gospel with as much power as with an evangelistic series.

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

“Whenever you find a stranger, someone helpless, you are called to raise your voice and protect,” Mitrovic´ said, citing Old Testament prophet Amos and his strong denouncements of the exploitation of the helpless in passages such as Amos 2:6-8 and 8:4-7.

Mitrovic´, who has worked at ADRA’s country director in Serbia for the past five years, also expressed new appreciation for biblical characters who were refugees and said the church’s frontline refugee work was pointing both refugees and nonAdventist partners to the gospel. He shared how an interpreter recently began attending an Adventist church.

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Igor Mitrovic´ speaks with a journalist outside the refugee center in Belgrade, Serbia.

ADRA is not alone in assisting refugees in Serbia. Many of the Balkan country’s 6,000 Adventists sprang into action as refugees poured in last year, collecting food, clothing, and water, then distributing the supplies. Church members also wanted to open up their homes, but authorities forbade it, saying they needed to keep track of the refugees by housing them at state-designated facilities, said Djordjija Trajkovski, president of the Adventist Church’s South-East European Union, whose territory includes Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

“Church members have had a very positive attitude about the refugees coming to Serbia,” Trajkovski said. “We were surprised at the speed some churches organized themselves to help.

Many young people volunteered at the spots where refugees needed initial help, especially at the beginning when other NGOs were not prepared to help.”

ADRA took the lead in opening a refugee crisis center with four other organizations near Belgrade’s main train station in July 2015, just when Europe’s refugee crisis spun out of control.

“ADRA has invested significantly in establishing both an international and country-level response to disas-

ters,” said Jonathan Duffy, president of ADRA International. “The situation in Serbia serves as a good example of the plan working where we were able to mobilize and respond rapidly.”

About 5,000 refugees live in Serbia at any given time, a decrease from highs seen a year ago when thousands of people flowed across the country’s border daily, Mitrovic´ said.

Many of those refugees stop by ADRA’s Asylum Information Center, which provides food and other supplies, psychological support, activities for children, and information to parents and teens on the upper floor. The ground floor, which is run by another organization, provides legal support and free Internet. The refugee center is open around the clock, and ADRA has seven paid employees working with 50 to 70 unaccompanied minors or families daily.

Mitrovic´ said the ongoing refugee crisis serves as a wake-up call for Adventists not only to dress up in “nice suits” and proclaim the gospel to strangers in “nice venues” but also to engage with strangers who are helpless.

He could well find a basis for his stance in the earthly ministry of Jesus, who is recorded as spending much more time healing the sick and caring

for the marginalized than preaching sermons. Working with the refugees has allowed Mitrovic´ to see biblical characters like Jesus in a new light.

“All the Bible’s main characters have been refugees: Adam and Eve, Abraham, Jesus,” said Mitrovic´, who projects a no-nonsense image with a muscular physique, a shaven head, and a determined voice. “When you have firsthand experience, you can appreciate the Bible stories a little differently.”

Like biblical characters, today’s refugees have stories of homes lost and of being uprooted in various ways, he said. All they have is their belongings as they seek a place to call their own.

“They have this wonderful opportunity to learn how God can help,” he said. “Most of them come from a proper religious background. I think if they encounter an authentic Christian community along the way, they will be very much open to God’s call.”

He said he has seen a similar openness to God’s call among non-Adventists partnering with ADRA as interpreters and social workers. He said that although ADRA had a small office in Serbia, the refugee crisis put it in a position to attract highly qualified professionals to help. As a result, the first people to see the gospel in action have been those non-Adventist partners.

Mitrovic´ said his faith has not been a topic of discussion in the office, but coworkers have told him that they are listening to church sermons by him and other ADRA staff members online.

“We will partner successfully with God in reaching people when we partner with these people in reaching others,” he said. “The first people to be reached will be those whom we partner with every day. This is my experience.” n

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/ T E D H U L B E R T V I C T O R

WORLD REPORT

By Andrew McChesney

Poland’s Accidental

Soccer Evangelist Dariusz Ginda is known for keeping the Sabbath.

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eople have called Dariusz Ginda foolish, and worse, for turning down a nearly $500,000-a-year soccer contract in Poland.

Ginda, a lifelong Seventh-day Adventist, said he does not enter into controversy over his decision to keep the Sabbath rather than play in the premier league. Instead, he says: “I know you don’t understand, but this is what I believe. Money was never the issue. It was always God who was more important. Please try to understand that.”

Ginda’s decision to place God first may have cost him the chance to become an international soccer star.

But he is a hero to many people in soccer-loving Poland, a predominantly Roman Catholic country with 38.5 million people and only 5,800 Adventists. He receives letters nearly every day from people who express gratitude for his example of faithfulness.

You could call Ginda an accidental soccer evangelist.

“You shouldn’t look at the things that this world tells you to look at,” Ginda, 46, said in an interview in Poland’s capital, Warsaw. “You will only have those things for a few seconds and then they will go away. You must focus on God and having a good relationship with Him. That lasts forever.”

Ginda, known to friends and sports fans as Darek, is not only a soccer player but also a Christian musi-

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cian and the Sabbath School superintendent at the Adventist church near his hometown of Chojnów in southwest Poland. He works full-time as a company driver and coaches and plays for a fifth-league soccer team, Skora Jadwisin, three days a week.

But he is known across Poland for refusing to play on Sabbath since becoming a professional soccer player in 1989 at the age of 19.

“He is a very dedicated Adventist,” said Jaroslaw Dziegielewski, president of the Adventist Church in Poland.

“He could have had a really great career in soccer.”

Big Money

Ginda, raised by an Adventist mother, remembers being an obedient child. He also spent hours on the soccer field.

“I could have looked for another career, but I quickly realized that soccer was my passion,” said Ginda, a soft-spoken man with a kind face.

Ginda’s first contract, with Chojnowianka, a fourth-league team, stipulated that he would not be required to play during Sabbath hours from sunset Friday through sunset Saturday.

Remarkably, the team made the exception for the young striker just a month before Poland’s Communist government collapsed in parliamentary elections in June 1989.

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

Inset: Dariusz Ginda pictured in his team colors in 2012.

“I was baptized when I was 16, and I knew that I would never break the Sabbath commandment,” Ginda said.

In 1993 soccer scouts from top-tier team Zagłebie Lubin approached Ginda, then 23. Of nine players invited to tryouts, only he and one other received an offer. The base contract was worth $20,000 a month, plus at least another $16,000 in bonuses for goals and won games. The sum, significant by any standard, was especially impressive at a time when newly democratic Poland was struggling amid economic upheaval.

Ginda said he nearly signed. “I picked up the pen, but then I looked at the contract, and I didn’t sign it,” he said.

Startled, the team managers asked what was wrong.

Ginda replied: “I am a Seventh-day Adventist, and I don’t work on Sabbath. When there are matches on Sabbath, I won’t be able to play. I am trying to obey God’s Ten Commandments.”

The team managers expressed regret and said goodbye.

Surprise Media Coverage

Ginda returned to the Chojnowianka team. His salary was small in the fourth league, so he also worked in a factory, making hydraulic pumps. Then in 1998 a prominent Polish sports journalist asked to interview him. The resulting article about how he had turned down the lucrative soccer con-

By Andrew McChesney

Prayer and Faith

F A C E B O O K

tract five years earlier was published in one of the country’s biggest newspapers. The report caused a large splash.

Fifteen other newspapers and several TV channels picked up the story.

“I had no idea what God had planned for me,” Ginda said. “This was an opportunity to talk about the Seventh-day Adventist Church, our beliefs, and the fact that my relationship with God is the most important thing for me.”

It was at that point that Ginda realized that he had become a soccer evangelist. “I think God’s plan for me was not that I would be successful as a soccer player, but to give those interviews so other people would know about God,” he said. News reports and television programs about Ginda remain online, and he receives letters from strangers almost daily.

“Someone is contacting me by mail or e-mail all the time to ask about God and why I didn’t do this or that,” Ginda said. “It’s a great opportunity for me to tell my story.”

People who earlier had called Ginda foolish changed their minds.

“When all those articles were published, they began to think there was something to this,” he said. “Even those who are not in the church write to me, ‘You did a good thing because you focused on the things that you believe in.’ ” n

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ain risked ruining the biggest day of the year for Latvia’s Pathfinders.

Fifteen minutes remained until the annual Pathfinder Camporee was to open with a pomp-filled ceremony last July. But a downpour was drenching the campground as Pathfinders huddled in tents with non-Adventist friends.

“So we started to pray, ‘You created rain, and You can stop it,’ ” said Guna Rimane, the Adventist Church’s Pathfinder director for Latvia.

Then Rimane’s walkie-talkie squawked. It was a Pathfinder leader from the other side of the campground.

“We’re going to start,” he said. “Guna, please pray for us.”

All the children listened as Rimane prayed over the loudspeaker. Then the drummers marched out. Just as they stepped into the center of the camp, the rain abruptly stopped.

“It was two minutes before the opening ceremony,” Rimane said. “And it never rained again.”

The astonished children—and their parents—could talk of nothing else. “For the kids, it was something else,” Rimane said. “We had parents who were present and were saying, ‘What is going on? God is so real.’ ” No one knows how many hearts were touched that rainy day. But church leaders said the story illustrates

how God is using Pathfinders as a powerful witnessing tool in Latvia, a small Baltic country of 2 million people and only 4,000 Adventists.

“The Pathfinders are very good missionaries,” said Vilnis Latgalis, president of the Adventist Church in Latvia. “They have a lot of passion.”

Pathfinders distribute ADRA-provided gifts to low-income children.

They bake gingerbread cookies. They invite non-Adventist friends to become Pathfinders and to join them at the camporee.

“The camporee really unifies our club. It makes us like one,” said Maija Paulina, 22, a Pathfinder leader in Riga. “Some children come and some don’t during the school year. But they all come to the camporee.” n R I M A N E

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G U N A

G I N D A

300 Pathfinders are changing Latvian hearts.

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D A R I U S Z

Stop Camporee Rain

C O U R T E S Y

Above: Polish soccer player and coach “Darek” Ginda speaks with Adventist World in Warsaw, Poland.

Pathfinders wait in the rain for the opening ceremony of the camporee in Salacgri-va, Latvia, last July.

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W O R L D

V I S T A

Remembering

By Ted N. C. Wilson

God’s Plan

In the church and in

This selection is abridged from Wilson’s sermon “Remembering God’s Plan,” given during Annual Council on October 8, 2016. It came at the conclusion of a conference focusing on the importance of Seventh-day Adventist education.—Editors.

M

emory is a wonderful thing. Even the best of us, however, forget now and then. God knew that we would forget, so He admonished us in His Word to “remember.” The most notable instance is the fourth commandment to remember to keep the Sabbath holy. A close second is “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth” (Eccl. 12:1). God wants us to remember that He is in charge, and that in our youth He is able to take charge of our lives.

The Israelites kept forgetting God’s leading and blessing. After crossing

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the Red Sea and heading into the Sinai Desert, they became embroiled in a case of amnesia. They complained about the lack of food and uttered the strange words “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full!” (Ex. 16:3).

They forgot how God led them through the Red Sea; how He turned bitter water to sweet at Marah. Our memories are very short.

Never Forget

Describing this experience, Ellen White wrote: “Had they possessed faith in Him, in view of all that He had wrought for them, they would cheerfully have borne inconvenience, privation, and even real suffering; but they were unwilling to trust the Lord any further than they could witness the continual evidences of His power.

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

They forgot their bitter service in Egypt. They forgot the goodness and power of God displayed in their behalf in their deliverance from bondage. They forgot how their children had been spared when the destroying angel slew all the first-born of Egypt. They forgot the grand exhibition of divine power at the Red Sea. They forgot that while they had crossed safely in the path that had been opened for them, the armies of the enemies, attempting to Follow them, had been overwhelmed by the waters of the sea.”1 They forgot, they forgot, they forgot. Let’s never forget God’s merciful hand moving in His Advent movement, and in giving us His precious educational model. Let’s never forget to lean completely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our work for Adventist education. We are told, “The history of the wilderness life of Israel was

our lives

chronicled for the benefit of the Israel of God to the close of time.”2 Forgetting God and His leading seems to be a constant problem for us at times, if we look to ourselves and the world instead of leaning completely on Jesus. We lean on our own understanding too much. We begin to think we are advanced enough in our own wisdom that we don’t need to remember God’s model.

Prosperity

Uzziah was only 16 when he became king of Judah. He reigned for 52 years. Second Chronicles 26 records a strange case of amnesia: “He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. . . . As long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper” (verses 4, 5). What a lesson for us leaders in Seventh-day Adventist education and in the church in general today. If we seek the Lord in all we do, He will

[Uzziah] forgot to give God the glory, and took upon himself the power to create his own rules. prosper His church with the great mission task of proclaiming the three angels’ messages.

Uzziah had victory over the Philistines, Arabians, Meunites, and Ammonites, and that his fame spread far.

Subsequent verses detail his strength—towers built, wells dug, farmers employed, an army of 375,000 that fought with “mighty power” with efficient battle gear and war machines that shot arrows and large stones (verses 13, 14). “So his fame spread far and wide, for he was marvelously helped till he became strong” (verse 15).

“As long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.”

Our Seventh-day Adventist educational system has grown from a small beginning in Battle Creek to a worldwide system of 5,705 elementary schools, 2,336 secondary schools, 54 worker training schools, 114 colleges and universities, six medical schools, and legions of well-trained, bright, dedicated teachers and professors.

We’ve become the largest Protestant educational system in the world.

Our consecrated educators have become proficient in many different disciplines. The world has taken notice. Our schools have produced

thousands of professionals in many areas of study. We’ve become strong.

God has blessed us as long as we’ve sought Him and His educational model.

Heart Lifted Up

But what happened to Uzziah? The Bible contains a warning for each of us to stay humble and rely on God for all things. “But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction, for he transgressed against the Lord his God by entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense” (verse 16).

Azariah, the priest, went into the Temple, reminding Uzziah that it wasn’t his duty to burn incense, but only that of the priests. “Get out of the sanctuary,” Azariah said, “for you have trespassed! You shall have no honor from the Lord God” (verse 18). King Uzziah had forgotten who gave him the power to become strong. He’d taken the glory to himself, and even had the ungodly boldness to take on a role he wasn’t authorized to perform.

He forgot God’s rules and regulations.

He forgot to give God the glory, and took upon himself the power to create his own rules. He forgot God’s model.

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W O R L D

V I S T A

Upon hearing the reproof of the priest, “Uzziah became furious; and he had a censer in his hand to burn incense. And while he was angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead” (verse 19). The king who had done right in the sight of the Lord and prospered because of his connection with God became so sure of himself and so filled with self that he left God’s pathway and God’s model to exalt himself and in so doing received God’s penalty. He wasn’t supposed to be inside the Temple; he wasn’t a priest. And now with leprosy prominently visible on his forehead, the priests threw him out of the Temple.

“Indeed he also hurried to get out, because the Lord had struck him” (verse 20).

If only Uzziah would have remembered where he had come from and how he had gotten there, and had given God the glory with humble respect. He could have continued to be described at the end of chapter 26 as he had been at the beginning of the chapter: “He did what was right in the sight of the Lord.”

Christ Is the Center

In the book Counsels to Parents, Teachers and Students we are counseled, “Christ is the center of all true doctrine. All true religion is found in His Word and in nature. He’s the one in whom our hopes of eternal life are centered; and the teacher who learns from Him finds a safe anchorage.”3 Adventist education stands at the center of imparting urgency to students and faculty as we understand the weighty subjects to be shared through education, and then to the world. We praise the Lord for faithful teachers who have blessed us and brought us here today, and for those who currently teach thousands of young people in our global Adventist school system.

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Never lose that humble dependence on God for His direction and His model. Never think you are better than God and His holy instructions.

In our educational work according to God’s model, we are not to seek for self-willed independence, for academic freedom that pulls us away from the elevated and sacred responsibility to train students as part of God’s great final proclamation of biblical truth and prophetic understanding.

We are to resist any efforts to employ higher criticism and the historicalcritical method in our teaching and relation to the Bible that only alienates us from God and exalts self instead of Jesus.

The Bible Our Foundation

The world is in the process of neutralizing the Bible and biblical truth.

Next year we will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, when Bible-believing, God-fearing people said that the only rule of faith was the Bible alone, and that we believe in salvation by grace alone, our trust and faith in the righteousness of Christ He offers us.

Seventh-day Adventist pastors, teachers, administrators, and church members, let’s stand firmly for the heavenly principles that guided the Protestant Reformation for almost 500 years. These biblical principles will guide us into the last days of earth’s history and give us strength for the proclamation of Christ and His prophetic truths.

Don’t forget what God has done for His church and His people. As much of the religious world mixes truth and error and turns back to tradition, emotionalism, and ecumenism, stand firm for the powerful Word of God. Don’t allow the neutralization or deconstruction of truth to find any entrance into our schools, churches, or our personal lives.

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

Never Old-fashioned

God spoke through Ellen White to provide instruction to His Advent movement. The Spirit of Prophecy is one of God’s greatest gifts to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Unfortunately, there are those who would think they don’t need the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, that somehow we’ve now arrived at a higher level of understanding than what those heavenly instructors can give us. Let me tell you with all humility and conviction: the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy are as valid today as they were when they were written. God’s truth is never old-fashioned; it’s relevant today and will be relevant until Jesus comes.

One of these days very soon we will look up and see a small, dark cloud about half the size of a man’s hand. It will get larger and brighter as all of heaven is poured out for this climactic event. Right in the middle of that cloud will be the One we have waited for, our Savior and Lord, the Master Teacher, Jesus Christ. We’ll join Him in the air to be with Him forever—all through His grace and righteousness—as we head to the eternal classroom of heaven, learning throughout eternity from the Master Teacher Himself.

For a complete transcript of this message, go to adventistreview.org/ church-news/story4450-remembergods-education-model-dont-forget. n 1 Ellen

G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1890), pp. 292, 293.

2 Ibid., p. 293.

3 Ellen G. White, Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1913), p. 453.

Ted N. C. Wilson is

president of the Seventhday Adventist Church.

You may follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

R O H A N

W E L L I N G T O N

NAD NEWS

Leaders from the General Conference, North American Division, Atlantic Union Conference, Northeastern Conference, and Greater New York Conference convened to emphasize religious liberty during an August 26-27 rally in New York City.

Religious Liberty Rally

Builds Bridges

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ublic Affairs and Religious Liberty (PARL) leaders from the Seventh-day Adventist Church came together for a rally in New York on August 26-27, 2016. Experts in the religious liberty field dispersed across a dozen New York City churches to speak on the theme “Building a Bridge for Freedom and Religious Liberty.” In each borough, local congregations heard a message proclaiming the gift of religious freedom and explaining the vital role the church plays in public affairs.

Event speakers included world church leaders Ganoune Diop, PARL director for the General Conference

(GC), and Orlan Johnson, PARL director for the North American Division. The New York rally culminated with a Sabbath afternoon areawide event held at the Goshen Temple of Seventh-day Adventists in Brooklyn.

“The Northeastern and Greater New York conferences partnered together to organize this phenomenal citywide religious liberty rally,” says Melissa Reid, North American Religious Liberty Association (NARLA) director and associate PARL director for NAD, who attended and presented at the event. “It was quite an undertaking, and enthusiastically supported

by local church members.”

Honored guests from the community included the Honorable Una S. T. Clarke, who was presented with a special freedom medal. Robert Hall, pastor of the Bronx Household of Faith, was also recognized for his 20-year battle with the City of New York, fighting for religious organizations to have access to meet in public schools. G. Earl Knight, president of the Atlantic Union Conference; Daniel Honore, president of the Northeastern Conference; and Henry Beras, president of the Greater New York Conference, were also in attendance.

The rally featured a lineup of experts helping members to understand better what religious liberty means for the church today. Nicholas Miller, a professor of church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University and director of the International Religious Liberty Institute, opened with a presentation explaining the relationship between religious freedom and civil rights.

In his presentation, Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine, clarified and reemphasized the church’s belief in the strong separation of church and state and the free exercise of religion.

Reid facilitated a panel discussion covering very practical ways church members and leaders are engaging in the work of protecting religious liberty through partnership and coalition building.

The 2016 New York rally served as a precursor to an ongoing collaborative effort to revamp the strategic religious liberty agenda of the Seventhday Adventist Church in New York.

—Janice Da Silva, Greater New York Conference Continued on next page

December 2016 | Adventist World - nad

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NAD NEWS Department of Religion Renamed at Pacific Union College ■■ As of July 1, 2016, Pacific Union College’s Department of Religion has been renamed the Department of Theology. The change was made to represent the department’s mission and scholarship focus more accurately.

Ross Winkle, chair of the department, said, “We’re excited about the change in our name since it more accurately conveys the type of majors we have and the confessional stance of our department.”

Winkle explained that an academic department named “religion” typically offers a neutral approach to the teaching of religion and of global faiths and religious traditions, not prioritizing any particular religion above others. By contrast, a department named “theology” more conspicuously focuses on Christianity, and seeks to educate future ministers and students majoring in various disciplines to be intelligent, informed, and faithful disciples of Jesus.

“We’re also excited to have an excellent departmental faculty, including a new faculty member who will bring our full-time teachers up to seven in number, more than we’ve had in more than a decade,” said Winkle.

—Larissa Church, Pacific Union College

Church Dispenses Gifts at Local Farmers’ Market ■■ The California street was lined with vendor booths during one Thursday summer evening at the Redlands’ Market Night. But one vending machine was different. “Free” was marked on every button.

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Visitors to Redlands Market Night wait for a free drink or gift this past summer, while Todd Rosspencer, youth and young adult pastor of the Redlands Adventist church, looks on.

From 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. on five Market Nights culminating on September 8, 2016, the Redlands Seventhday Adventist Church’s hollow vending machine dispensed free beverages, snacks, dolls, coloring books and crayons, and glow stick tubes. One night alone saw almost 750 items given away.

By the final night, the machine had distributed more than 4,100 items.

This no-strings-attached giveaway left passersby surprised and curious.

One man asked if it was a study on human behavior; his girlfriend searched to find a hidden camera. Some joked about not giving their Social Security numbers or getting their fingerprints dusted from the buttons.

Todd Rosspencer, youth and young adult pastor at the Redlands church, managed the booth. As people ventured up, he’d assure them it was indeed a free vending machine, saying, “Our church is just having fun.” And giving visitors food for thought.

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

C O U R T E S Y

O F

Cool! A woman enjoys a free beverage from the Redlands Seventh-day Adventist Church’s vending machine at a local farmer’s market.

Rosspencer said the idea for the free vending machine began when he started bringing burritos for lunch to a boy from his church youth group who attended Redlands High School. The teen began inviting some friends, and the group soon grew to 30 students.

They eventually thought of building a hollow vending machine and having a person inside with hundreds of burritos to give away during lunch.

A campus food distribution policy, however, prevented the idea from becoming reality.

So Rosspencer’s team turned its focus to Market Night. He asked his

R E D L A N D S

S E V E N T H - D AY

A D V E N T I S T

C H U R C H

One Church’s Ministry: Prayer-on-the-Go ■■ The police officer narrowly escaped the wheels of a car driven by a robbery suspect trying to run him

Committee members, referred to as The One Accord team, say that ultimately the goal is for individuals to be saved by introducing them to Christ for commitment through baptism.

There are also prayer boxes inside the church for members to leave requests.

“We ask participants about their concerns, requests, and challenges.

Their concerns are first addressed,” said Marshall.

“At times we will have a line of cars waiting for prayer in the parking lot. A school bus and garbage truck once parked in the lot. The drivers walked to the prayer area where walk-ins stop for prayer,” added Peterson.

—John Gardner, excerpted from an article that originally appeared in the Southern Union Tidings, October 2016.

P E T E R S O N

over. A broken leg, scars, and bruises from his narrow escape still ache from the experience.

Several days after the accident his wife asked for a divorce. So the officer drove into the parking lot at Mountainside Seventh-day Adventist Church in Decatur, Georgia, where he pulled his car close to waiting members and asked, “Can someone pray with me?”

Gregory Saunders, pastor of Mountainside, and other team members prayed with him.

Nestled in an Atlanta suburb, Mountainside sponsors a ministry that reaches out to the community, offering prayer and encouragement.

The Prayer Drive-Thru Ministry (PDTM) is the brainchild of church member Norwida Marshall, a retired elementary and early-childhood education director at the Southern Union Conference, and was launched in February 2016.

Marshall credits the Holy Spirit with the idea, which weighed on her mind heavily for several days before she approached the church board for approval to implement the plans.

Thelma Peterson, an elder, was appointed to oversee PD-TM. She invited volunteers Richie and Carol Cenac, Frank and Shirley Kelly, and Rose Vaughan to discuss and work out the logistics of the program.

A prayer box, cards for names and addresses, and signs were designed and placed around church property, directing community members to the prayer box in the parking lot available 24 hours a day. Members pray on-site a couple days per month for those who stop by the church. At the end of September more than 200 cars had been logged entering the parking lot for prayer.

T H E L M A

youth ministry assistant, Jon Soto, to build the machine.

During the Market Night events, three teen girls interacted with people and helped draw attention and traffic to the machine. Another teen, Kameron Plata, operated the machine.

“Imagine a hollow machine with a 30-gallon trash can brimming with drinks and ice water, stacks and stacks of drinks in cases, and a teenager wedged between it all, watching for a button to push, then checking our signal light to see if he can drop any random drink in the bin or modify it for a child, a diabetic, etc.—for three and a half hours each night!”

Rosspencer said he has wrestled with how to convey Christianity’s message of free salvation. “I want to demonstrate the word ‘free’ as God defines it,” Rosspencer said.

“People are oversolicited and wary there’s a catch, because there often is one. But with God free is free. He truly paid the bill. It’s simply our choice to accept the gift,” he said.

The church staff considered participating in Market Night again in late November, leading up to their annual Christmas plays; and/or in March, before their performances commemorating Christ’s resurrection.

But whatever the Redlands church decides to do with their oneof-a-kind machine, it will be with the gospel in mind.

—Kimberly Luste Maran, department of communication, North American Divsion

Gregory Saunders (left), pastor of Mountainside Church in Decatur, Georgia, prays with a young man who pulled into the parking lot asking for prayer.

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P I E T E R

D A M S T E E G T

N A D U P D AT E

In a Stop Hunger Now project at the NAD Women Pastors and Chaplains Retreat, participants packed meals for 10,000 people.

Women Pastors and Chaplains

Renew, Reflect, and

Reconnect

Seasons of ministry remembered and celebrated

By Kimberly Luste Maran, communication department, North American Division

F

ort Lauderdale, Florida, was the backdrop for the North American Division (NAD) Women Pastors and Chaplains Retreat held on September 11-14, 2016. The event, themed “Renew,” offered the 160 attendees time to relax, reflect, and recommit through workshops, keynote presentations, and a special outreach activity. Those gathered were also able to pray, worship, and fellowship together.

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“This event is the first of its kind,” said Brenda Billingy, an NAD Ministerial Association associate director and retreat coordinator. “We wanted to give the women time for spiritual renewal, but we wanted to do something that would also give them an opportunity to reach out to the community. Hence, we had the Stop Hunger Now Project, where we bagged 10,000 meals for the hungry.”

Esther Paul-Emile, pastor of the

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Montreal North and Laval, Quebec, Canada, churches, was grateful for the short break from her responsibilities.

But she also said that serving the Lord and the community makes her happy.

She appreciated the Stop Hunger Now Project, during which attendees, donning hairnets, weighed and bagged rice, beans, and other dry foods for a couple of hours one evening. She plans to “apply what I’m learning here to my work, and I will share it with the members and leaders, and also apply it to the community.”

Billingy explained that the retreat also offered educational workshops.

“One unique feature of this event is offering seminars that give attendees the opportunity to get CLE [continuing learning education] credits. So we are multitasking: we’re resting but we’re also, at the same time, doing things that will give [us] that educational update.”

Four general sessions afforded the female clergy time for prayer, extended song services, and devotional talks by Chris Oberg, senior pastor of La Sierra University church in California; Rebecca Davis, pastor of the Washington-Thomson district in Georgia; Adrienne Townsend Benton, first U.S. Navy Seventh-day Adventist female chaplain; and Elizabeth Talbot, speaker/director for the Jesus 101 media ministry. Bible stories provided the framework for each talk. And each session gave equal time to prayer and music.

“The music is phenomenal and is beautiful,” remarked Rochelle Webster, family pastor at the Redlands, California, church, who presented a workshop on constructive conflict. “I grew up with a cappella music and listening to people sing together. There’s something deeply holy about it.”

Webster also said she appreciates having the “opportunity to be among

people who are dealing with similar challenges. It is valuable to have strong women, unapologetically strong, as leaders to learn from.”

Jocelyn Shaw, a Florida Hospital chaplain, was blessed to learn from seasoned women in ministry “as they share their experiences.” Important, too, was “sitting down and having fellowship. It does something for the soul, and that’s one thing, between the sessions and even during the sessions, I’ve been able to enjoy.”

In agreement, Patricia Nesbit, associate pastor of the Bradenton and Palmetto churches in Florida, said, “Fellowship is key. It’s nice to be able to relate to people who understand your own circumstances.”

Another important result of the

retreat for Nesbit, who pastors with her husband, Joseph, was reconnecting. “A lot of people here I’ve known on my journey from before and through seminary, and when I was in training in ministry before that. [My] peers from the seminary, and now my peers in the Florida Conference, are getting to know each other better, just edifying each other. I’m here for renewal of purpose, a reminder of God’s leading, and trusting Him for the future.”

Julie Vega, pastor of the Madison Campus church in Tennessee, has attended several women pastors and chaplains retreats through the years.

She’s thrilled to see an increase in female clergy, and is glad to see them serving in ministry.

“It feels like a fulfillment of my

ALL YOUR MINISTRY NEEDS FROM

dreams to see more acceptance, and more possibilities open for these young women,” Vega said. “I know there are still obstacles. But [my advice is] to keep on trusting the God who called you, because good things will unfold from that.”

Talbot, the final speaker of the retreat, closed with these words of encouragement after sharing Miriam’s story from the Bible: “I know the end of the story, and you know what? Jesus wins! So you can’t forget that perspective: we already know He calls us leaders of gratitude, leaders of the new ‘song of redemption’ that very soon we will be singing. Let’s start being leaders of gratitude now.” n —Visit www.vimeo.com/183384512 to watch the NAD video report.

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December 2016 | Adventist World - nad

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Serving communities in Christ’s name ACS Offering - December 10, 2016 communityservices.org NORTH AMERICAN DIVISION

NAD PERSPECTIVE

By Benjamin Speegle

Christmas Is Why

A message especially for those in unfamiliar places, eating unfamiliar food, hearing unfamiliar languages, and seeing unfamiliar customs.

You’re Not Home for

Christmas

H

ere’s a thought: Christmas is the reason you, as a missionary, aren’t spending Christmas at home this year.

If that sounds confusing, I’ll try to explain.

At my local church we had a Christmas presentation that included singing, theatrics, and historically suspect costumes.1 In a whirlwind of about 40 minutes, actors portraying disciples, shepherds, Wise Men, angels, and Jesus sang familiar Christmas carols and acted out key moments in the Christmas story. It was the story I’ve seen time and again—except for one thing.

The inclusion of the adult Jesus, not just baby Jesus, made the entire story more real to me.

It’s easy to view the birth of Jesus as a stand-alone story; to say, “Wow, what an interesting tale.” But there’s a danger in separating the what from the why. Many Christmas programs focus on the verses in Isaiah, where Jesus’ birth was prophesied (Isaiah 7:14 in particular). Some programs also quote from the second chapter of Luke, as Linus did, in response to Charlie Brown’s desperate plea in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”2 My church’s presentation focused

on Jesus’ words in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (NIV).

Maybe I’m the only one who had managed to separate the purpose of baby Jesus from the purpose of adult Jesus, but I do so no longer. And that brings me to my original point: Christmas is the reason you, as a missionary, aren’t spending Christmas at home this year.

Think about it: the purpose of the birth of Christ was to bring an Individual into this world who would save the world; who would offer grace, redemption, purpose, and life to those who believe. This same Individual, whose birth we celebrate at Christmastime, encouraged us in Matthew 28:19, 20: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (NIV).

I’m grateful for those of you serving in a mission field far from home.

And I write this for you: The life that began at the event for which we cel-

ebrate Christmas is (I hope) the reason you are in an unfamiliar place right now, eating unfamiliar food, hearing unfamiliar languages, and seeing unfamiliar customs. God’s plan did not begin with the birth of Christ; it did not end with His death; and people like you are crucial to its continuation.

Many verses are appropriate to read during this season, but for missionaries who may be missing family and traditions and a sense of familiarity, the verse I feel impressed to share is this one: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Dear missionaries, give thanks for that first Christmas. Know that you are not alone. You are loved, appreciated, and prayed for. May God continue His good work in you. n 1 I

vote that people go without eyeglasses for the duration of the show, just for authenticity.

2 Charlie Brown asks if anybody really knows what Christmas is all about, and Linus responds with Luke 2:8-14 (KJV), in the 1965 animated television special “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which originally aired on CBS.

Benjamin Speegle is

a long-term volunteer processing assistant for the North American Division’s Office of Volunteer Ministries.

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NAD Letters Of course, my greatest memory is giving my life to Jesus around the Friday night campfire. My life has never been the same.

—Benjamin Bailey, Ceres, California Plant-based Diet Wisdom

Thank you for the article “Campfires, Memories, and Meeting God” (October 2016). It brought back some wonderful memories from when I was at Camp Cedar Falls in southern California in the early 1960s.

I came from a fairly small church, and I quickly became acquainted with kids from all over the conference (although in those days I didn’t know what a “conference” was). I met some of those same kids later when I went to conference-wide academy events, and even met them again in college.

Of course, my greatest memory is giving my life to Jesus around the Friday night campfire. My life has never been the same.

Benjamin Bailey Ceres, California

Drs. Landless and Handysides (October 2016) said Ellen White “cautioned against the medications of the time” and warned against “toxic heavy metal drugs. . . used in her time.” Those italicized words are their opinion only.

In fact, Mrs. White wrote a timeless principle to avoid medications (pharmaceuticals). That would include vaccinations, which today contain heavy metals she warned about. Mrs. White made a personal decision to accept the smallpox vaccine, but that was before vaccines included indisputably harmful ingredients.

Satan has not spared the medical field from his corrupting influence.

Protect your health by eating a simple plant-based diet and using natural remedies.

Jean Handwerk Colville, Washington

Thank You

Eternal Life Insurance

Thank you for the great magazine—Adventist World (September 2016)! I have to add my name to the list of “old” Adventists who respectfully request that you keep Spirit of Prophecy quotes “word perfect.”

Please see The Desire of Ages, page 362, to see the implication of the spelling “Saviour” without the “u”—it’s there!

Thank you and God bless you.

Terry Olson Grants Pass, Oregon

Thank you for sharing the faith-building testimony by Ariel Noltze (August 2016). It thrilled me to read his timely article. We have an eternal “life insurance policy” through Christ who “guarantees life in the face of death.”

Christ’s testimony? He has promised insurance against the second death: “ ‘ “When Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” ’ Here is the only life insurance which heaven

Campfire Memories

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Adventist World - nad | December 2016

P H O T O :

G E O R G I A

sanctions” (Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church [Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1948], vol.1, p. 550).

My testimony? Years of studying the above counsel and related documents dating from 1891 to 1911. I confessed to Christ my spiritual blindness and “bought” His remedies (Rev. 3:18). Then the understanding I sought began to dawn. An ongoing, deepening relationship and search for truth as it is in Jesus, whatever the subject, gives freedom and riches that eclipse the riches of the world.

Esther McCluskey Loma Linda, California Changed Lives

The article “Changed Lives Change the World” (July 2016) gives the wrong reference in Acts in point 3.

The reference should be to Acts 26:14, which has the quote, “And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ ” I use the New American Standard Bible.* If I didn’t understand something correctly, please let me know. I’m constantly looking for Adventist Bible studies.

Derek Hughes Norton, Kansas * New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

C U M B E R L A N D

C O M M U N I C AT I O N

D E PA R T M E N T

W O R L D

H E A L T H

Gratitude and Transition

Dr. Allan Handysides

By Peter N. Landless Dr. Zeno Charles-Marcel

T

he World Health column has run in Adventist World since its first issue was printed in September 2005; and Ask the Doctors has run in its sister publication, Adventist Review, for 14 years.

William Johnsson, then editor of Adventist Review, approached Dr. Allan Handysides and me in late 2001 to write a regular column answering readers’ questions and addressing current health trends. He was excited about the idea but also candid about the fact that such an undertaking demanded a commitment to regular and recurring contributions. To date, nearly 180 Ask the Doctors and almost 140 World Health columns have been published in the Adventist Review and Adventist World magazines. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to provide this service to the Adventist Church.

There have been many responses; some were acrimonious, but most were overwhelmingly positive, and it has been a joy to answer questions and share tips on healthful living all these years.

Where is this all heading? The fulltime Adventist Health Ministries team has reconstituted since Dr. Handysides’ retirement and the General Conference session in San Antonio, Texas, United States. It’s a pleasure to welcome Dr. Zeno Charles-Marcel as the new member of the World Health/ Ask the Doctors duo. Dr. Charles-

Marcel is an internist and specialist in lifestyle medicine. He has a rich experience in academic medicine, having been the dean of the Montemorelos School of Medicine, as well as fulfilling years of work at lifestyle centers across the United States. He is a deeply committed follower of Jesus, exercises a balanced and measured approach to life, and has a warm and well-honed sense of humor. Welcome on board, Zeno!

Adventist Health Ministries has been richly blessed across the world by the visionary, dedicated, innovative, and energetic leadership of Dr. Allan Handysides’ lifetime career as a physician, ordained minister, and champion of balanced, practical, Bible-based, Spirit of Prophecy-consonant, and evidence-based health ministry. He was key in guiding the church to an understanding that the Adventist health message is a gracefilled blessing to be embraced and practiced by the church and shared with the communities it serves. Additionally, he enunciated the concept that every church congregation ought to be a center of hope and health, and every member a health promoter—concepts that have strengthened the comprehensive health ministry (CHM) and Total Member Involvement (TMI) initiatives of the past six years.

Allan and Janet Handysides are

happily retired and living six months of the year on the beautiful shores of Pigeon Lake in Canada, and the winter months in Florida. They continue to be actively engaged in health evangelism, in the life of the church in its varied facets, and in special assignments for Adventist Health Ministries across the globe. Most recently Dr. Handysides was the opening keynote speaker for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union global conference held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

I personally owe Dr. Allan Handysides a tremendous debt of gratitude for his place in my life as a leader, role model, mentor, administrator, confidant, and treasured friend of more than 36 years. Thank you for practicing what you preach, Allan— for walking the talk and tirelessly sharing the love and grace of Jesus at the patient’s bedside, with the church as a whole throughout a lifetime career of service, and in the chambers and halls of world health bodies and government offices! You are loved and appreciated, and your years of effort continue to bear fruit. n

Peter N. Landless, a board-certified nuclear cardiologist, is director of Adventist Health Ministries at the General Conference.

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A D V E N T I S T

H E R I T A G E

By Pavel Liberanskiy

IN A In Part I Pavel registers for compulsory military service in Moldova. A KGB officer shows an interest in him.

I

spent my first Sabbath in the army in the Lenin room. It was a strange irony. Before this I had spent my Sabbaths in church among youth, brothers and sisters. Now I was among portraits of Communist leaders and military officials and other propagandistic paraphernalia.

Each time a sergeant came and asked me to, I explained that I don’t work on Saturday.

On Monday the KGB major invited me to his office. He asked if I had a motorcycle driver’s license. It was at home. He explained that I would not be transferred. All issues of Sabbath and food would be resolved.

But I had no desire to work with a KGB representative after all they had done to believers. I raised every objection I could. Nothing worked. I was stuck with the KGB. I sent a telegram home requesting my driver’s license. It was hard to believe. It had to be a sophisticated KGB strategy for getting me into their prison. I prayed and worried constantly. But letters of support from loved ones and church members were a huge blessing.

A Military Life

Seasoned soldiers in my barracks abused new “fresh meat” conscripts.

So besides pressure to compromise my faith, I still had their harassment. But God helped me stand firm and still have good relationships with everyone. In the evenings I played some-

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God does many impossible things.

PART 2 one’s guitar and sang songs about life, mothers, friendship, and Christian love. It helped me gain respect.

One day, early in my military service, the major took me to the cafeteria. Everyone stood up as the KGB officer entered, with me walking right beside him. He approached the cook: “What is in the soldiers’ menu? Is there pork in the food?” Then he instructed him to serve me meals without pork or fat. That shocked the cook and everyone who heard it.

Alla Serdyukova, the major’s wife, worked as chief cook at a resort named Neptune. Enjoying good food was extra reward for being her driver; enjoying family retreats to the Black Sea was another gift of the major’s kindness.

To protect me from pressures to work on Sabbath, he gave me his office: “You can come here on Saturday right after you wake up,” he said. “You can read, sleep, or pray here; nobody will disturb you.” Later he gave me several dozen blank leave passes bearing his signature and stamp. I could fill my name as needed and go everywhere outside our military unit.

I remember attending church in Sukhumi for the first time. I sat in the first row and listened carefully to

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

every word. I was so hungry for worship and spiritual things! Being in church again was a blessed gift. Nevertheless, on Sabbath I usually stayed at his office. If he arrived after me, he would knock, I would open, and he would usually say when he entered, “Please, study, read, rest.”

If we traveled on Fridays, he always gave me ample time to prepare for the Sabbath before sunset. He never required my services on Sabbath.

The Bible

One day the officer pointed to an empty bookshelf where he said I could put “everything you need for your study or reading.” So I asked my parents to send me a Bible, the precious Bible they had presented to me on my twelfth birthday: I recalled the Sabbath evening my father sent me to our church elder’s house with a shopping bag. Elder Vasiliy lived in his own house in our village. Communists often kept their eyes on him to discover how he provided Bibles and other literature for church members. I gave him my father’s message, and he invited me to wait in the house. From somewhere outside he brought a small, damp, ill-smelling package for my bag.

P H O T O :

S TA F F

S G T.

D .

M Y L E S

C U L L E N

A U T H O R O F T H E C O U R T E S Y

The author as a conscript in the Soviet army He prayed with me and asked me to go straight home and neither speak with anyone nor show anyone the package.

At home my father unwrapped the small, beautiful new Bible, damp and a little damaged because, as we later learned, Elder Vasiliy buried Bibles in his backyard. They may have got a little damp, but they were safe, nobody ever confiscated them.

But I could not bring my Bible to the major’s office. It was contraband: its flyleaf indicated that it was published by the “Bible Society.” The U.S.S.R. had no Bible society.

Pastor Aleksey Sitnik visited me one day with a magazine authorities in Moscow had permitted Adventists to publish. I opened his Bible and read the date and place of publication: “Moscow 1968.” What a coup! We exchanged Bibles. Now I could take a Bible into the KGB major’s office along with my officially printed Adventist

Minister’s Desk Calendar magazine. I went, not only on Sabbath, but at other free times too. I had a place to spend time with God and His Word!

The major noticed my books. I put them in his hands. He saw that they were legitimate books, printed in Moscow. Perhaps his encouragement to “bring everything that your brethren give you to read” was because he wanted to see samizdat books (underground books typed on a typewriter and on cigarette paper). I suggested he begin reading the Bible, and he almost finished it by the end of my military service. One Sabbath as I read he had been speaking loudly on the phone. Suddenly he stopped talking and put the phone down. In the silence I looked up and saw him looking at me. With great reverence he asked, “Am I disturbing your Bible reading?” I said I was OK. But his respect was embarrassing.

C O U R T E S Y

O F T H E

A U T H O R

The author celebrates God’s goodness with his wife (to his left), his two daughters, and his son-in-law.

Going Home

Only the best soldiers in military and political indoctrination from my unit got vacations home. But one day I was awarded a two-week vacation home along with an allowance! My chief helped. He had come to admire and respect my parents, though he didn’t know them personally. I was thrilled to be home with my family in my native church.

After military service ended, I returned home to youth ministry, missionary work, and later, three years of study in a Moldovan underground theological seminary. Volunteer service, marriage, and many portfolios in pastoral ministry and church administration have followed. But I have never been able to forget my KGB angel.

In 2011, 30 years after my military service, I located and telephoned the family. Alla didn’t recognize my voice, but she remembered my name.

“Yes, I remember,” she said, “how my Oleg always said ‘Don’t feed Pavel pork!’ ” Though they live far away from us, I try to visit them at least once a year, share Christian materials with them, and pray for and support them. I keep praying that God will reveal His character to them and lead them into a more intimate relationship with Him. I thank God for them, and for all He has done for me. His ways are both mysterious and good. n

Pavel Liberanskiy is director of the Pub-

lishing Ministries, Stewardship Ministries, and Trust Services departments for the Euro-Asia Division.

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D E V O T I O N A L

By Frank A. Campbell

How Shall We

Pray?

Our faith, or His will?

S

he was 20 and close to graduating with a science degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

She loved people and animals, and wanted to be a doctor or a veterinarian. But instead of school, my daughter Adafih Campbell spent her months in bed. She had brain cancer.

Tale of Two Texts

Friends and family in many countries were praying.

Many came to her bedside at the hospital or in her apartment. One church sister seemed determined that God should answer her prayer by setting my daughter up on her feet that very day. She was profoundly disappointed. Years later, dying of her own cancer attack, she still seemed not to have sufficiently regained her faith to do much praying for her own recovery.

Jesus seems to offer us contrasting instructions about prayer. In Matthew 6:10 He teaches us submission to heaven’s program: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In Mark 11:24 He validates a faith that can issue receipts for answers even before we receive them: “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them.” So which is it? Is submission opposed to faith? How

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much of our submission to God’s sovereignty—our pious hedging of bets in case I don’t get work or she doesn’t get healed; our cautious pleading, wanting healing if it is God’s will, if God in His wisdom so decides, if . . . ? How much of that almost tentative supplication is really faith?

I knew of a young preacher who heard one “if” too many for his liking in his elders’ request. So he interrupted them and finished the prayer himself. He interceded with the holy audacity only an adolescent could muster. He sent up what he considered the “prayer of faith” that the apostle James intended in James 5:15. The patient lived many more years.

So was he right? Or was it the cautious elders who moved God’s arm? Whose prayer had God really heard?

God: Missing in Action

When the doctor announced that Pastor Charles D. Brooks would not survive pancreatic cancer, the distinguished Seventh-day Adventist evangelist, like another distinguished evangelist before him, declared, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race” (2 Tim. 4:7).

Brooks resisted every attempt to induce him to ask God, as did the biblical king Hezekiah, for a few more years, or even a few more days.

P H O T O :

F R A N K

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But countless people from many countries and several continents prayed. The 85-year-old evangelist, whose ministry had led to more than 20,000 baptisms on six continents, died anyway.

A Distinction Without a Difference?

Exploring Scripture on our question exposes the truth that the dichotomy between faith and submission is a false dichotomy, a distinction without a difference. The justification for our faith in God is our belief that He is God, the King of kings, the sovereign one. In that context, faith and submission are not alternative approaches, but parts of the same rational process: if He were not worthy of our submission, He would not be worthy of our faith.

In Gethsemane Jesus recognized the consistency between faith and submission. Having asked the Father to “take this cup away from Me,” He also signaled His submissiveness: “nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 24:42).

And Hebrews 11:6 makes clear that we also need to reflect both faith and submission in our prayers. For “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Who has ever understood or stated this better than Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Their response to King Nebuchadnezzar palpably demonstrates the intersection between faith and submission. They know that their God can deliver them from fire (Dan. 3:16, 17). But they also know that He need not do it, which makes no difference to them, as they say to Nebuchadnezzar: We still will not “serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (verse 18).

New Prayer

After becoming familiar with the story of the “three Hebrew boys,” I started praying for my daughter’s recovery “in the spirit of Daniel 3.” I told God that I believed He could, and knew that He would, heal my daughter. There was no room in my mind for doubt that my child would someday, somehow, get out of that bed and resume her classes at McGill. And I started telling Him, with equal conviction, that, even if He didn’t, I still would not bow down to false gods or worship the statue. By His grace I had developed faith and faithfulness, certainty and submission, in equal measure, in a way that I have not often done, either before or since.

Is God worthy of my submission?

Sabbath, and Beyond, With Adafih

One Sabbath I chose to spend virtually the entire day alone with Adafih to give other family members a break.

The progress of the disease had affected her speech. And, being away in Ottawa, I had not had the benefit of conversing with her in recent days. Nor was I sure what to say, her known religious interest not being very deep. I myself, just returning to faith after some three decades in the spiritual wilderness, was a baby Christian once again.

But after I had read for her an Old Testament passage, my daughter said, as clearly as I had heard her speak in quite a while, “I want to see Jesus when He comes again.”

Her declaration of faith both pleased and amazed me.

I later learned that during my absence in Ottawa, she had given her heart to Christ. Her Sabbath morning declaration of faith would be the last I would hear her speak this side of eternity.

Later, after I returned to Ottawa, her aunt called to say, “Adafih has expired.” Immediately I fell to my knees. I asked God to help me to live up to the second part of my prayer. I had faith that He would heal her. And although He did not do so in the way I had hoped and intended, I was determined, by His grace, to respect His lordship.

I know now that the proper answer to the question of faith or sovereignty is not “or,” but “and.” None need fear to exercise their faith, or be too proud to recognize the sovereign prerogatives of a good God. n

Frank Campbell is president of ARISE! His writings have appeared in the Washington Post and various other publications, both Adventist and secular.

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C OV E R S T O RY

Grace

By Lael Caesar

Is Where You

grace

For by you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. —Eph. 2:81

Find It

W

hat is grace? At first thought it seems to be something very abstract.

For many of us the grace that brings salvation is mainly a theory to believe. But grace is also something to experience.

Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship trainer helped me see how much light potatoes could shine on grace. I knew, long before her, that God loves the world; that I could neither be nor survive without His grace; and that Jesus is the center of everything. But I hadn’t attended any class on how to share that news with brothers and sisters of mine who were confined behind prison walls. Then I learned about God’s love through “the potatoes lesson” from Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship associates.

Our instructor laid several potatoes out on a table and told each of us to pick up one. After a while she had us all return our potatoes to the table. Later, and to my dismay, she sent us all back to the table to pick out our potatoes.

My classmates knew their own tubers. Maybe it was their keener eyes.

Or their greater confidence. Maybe it was their superior potato love. Love was our instructor’s grand point—the love, full of care, that is necessary to minister to those who are society’s nonentities; the love of God that is more discriminating than we could ever be; the love that consistently lets you recognize each of your sibling brothers for who he is; the love of a mother’s heart that teaches a mother’s ear to distinguish her baby’s cry out of some babbling bedlam of shrieks and

INTELLECTUAL RESERVE, INC. LDS MEDIA

howls; the love of a Father who carefully numbers all His children, who knows that one is missing, knows where he is prone to wander, and will not rest until he has been rescued from the wilderness (Luke 15:3-7).

How Grace Appears

My “potatoes training session” was the object lesson I needed on how God loves us each and all, in a way that is unique to each of our situations. Saying that “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men” (Titus 2:11) means at least two quite contrasting things. It means that grace saves us all without regard to the differences we emphasize among ourselves—without regard to our ideas of grandeur or humility, greatness or smallness. The God of grace-bearing salvation loves the world (John 3:16), all of it at once.

But it also means that God loves every single one of us, according to those very distinctions we make among ourselves. He loves each of us and gives grace to each of us according to the unique distinctiveness of each human being, whether conceited, or deflated, or simply and clearly grasping the truth that it is because he or she is a sinner that He offers grace. For had she been the one and only sinner “Christ would have died for that one.”2 For her uniquely, and for all humanity, God’s grace is our miracle.

And it is not a miracle waiting to happen. It is a miracle already occurred, before we could cry out to Him, or for it. God has already

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C OV E R S T O RY

“shined on” all humanity is the message of the Greek word epifainō. He has shone in brilliant blasts: as on the quiet, unsuspecting night when men pasturing their animals were “suddenly” and “terribly frightened” (Luke 2:9) by the presence of a single messenger from glory: a single messenger because His unfailing compassions desire, not to consume us (Lam. 3:22), but simply to assure us of the abundance of His grace.

Grace is never stingily dealt; it is always abundant (Rom. 5:20). And so it was that once the shepherds had adjusted to the light of grace appearing on their darkness, “a multitude of the heavenly host” (Luke 2:13) flooded the skies with song and greater light that showed and taught still more on how amazingly grace abounds.

He has shone in the constant and unvarying modesty of momentary providence that serves the whole creation waiting on Him for bread (Ps. 145:15). He has shone on evil and good, and sent His rain for the just and unjust (Matt. 5:45). So that the fool may exploit His gifts of life and mind, of bread and rain and sunshine, to declare the source of his life as nonexistent (Ps. 14:1).

Again, it is but the abundance of grace appearing. For who can tell how those fools with their commitment to appearances (1 Sam. 16:7), their great faith in poise and postured dignity would have withstood the blast of that single messenger’s appearance before humble shepherds out in the pasture that Bethlehem night. The gospel of that messenger to Bethlehem on a night that will never need to be repeated, and the voice of providence through all the nights and days of fallen human breath and being and existence, are, purely and simply, grace appearing, grace for all, and grace for each one, applied as distinctly and as outrageously as the uniqueness of Irish potatoes.

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Caring Better

I now realize that knowing my potato better is a function of caring about my potato. Caring more deeply about my potato is what would make me pay attention: I would number its eyes; I would know its valleys and contours, its shape and size, the way it felt in my hand, the way it looked on the table, the way it differed from any other tubers I have ever known.

Instead of being potato X in a bag of 20, my potato would have her own identity for me. Which is both how and why my Father cares about me and you.

How does He care? He cares exhaustively.

He knows all about the sparrow that once tumbled out of the sky, right beside my feet, dead. But He needs me to know that I matter much more than the birds (Matt. 6:26); He cares according to the peculiar details of my individual existence (verses 25-32).

And why does He care so particularly? Because His care is the expression of His nature of love (1 John 4:8).

And though He loves the world (John 3:16), though humans of all hues are the objects of His affection (Acts 17:28), though His grace is for the restoration of the whole creation—fauna and flora (Rom. 8:19-23)—He nevertheless loves each of us who populate that world independently of our connections to any other of its other inhabitants (Isa. 49:15).

I learned from my “potatoes session” the inadequacy of my love. At the very least, if I had loved my potato more, I would have had much less difficulty distinguishing it from all the other potatoes. My Father has no difficulty distinguishing His children. His particularity is not a proof of His judgmental nature. It is the guarantee that His grace will deal perfectly with my case. His love for me brings Him in and brings Him down to every nuanced complication of my utter-

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most low. He can rescue me just right, because He knows my frame: he knows the hairs my head once knew; He knows the specific problems that persist in plaguing me at 3:00 a.m.; and He knows the strategies for properly ministering to my unique shalom as distinct from yours.

Grace and Noah

How do we distinguish God’s salvation-bearing influence and energy from all our weakness or power, drive or idleness, whim or calculation that seem to rule and steer the moment-to-moment reality of our lives? In the midst of “the play and counterplay of human interests and power and passions”3 that never sleep and to which we awaken whenever we do, what is to bear the label “God,” or “salvation,” or “grace”? The answer is both vague and unmistakable.

Grace, God’s saving grace, may seem unclear, because “the Lord Jesus is making experiments on human hearts through the exhibition of His mercy and abundant grace.”4 Those experiments may look confusing as sanctifying grace grows me up and takes me forward even as Satan and his ministers condemn my God and challenge His grace by pointing out all the flaws in me that they still can see (Rev. 12:10; Zech. 3:1-5). They may not always know, but the God whose grace brings salvation always knows how His grace works. He does not despair at the bewildering mix of sin and righteousness. He knows that in the end I shall be “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).

Meanwhile, salvation-bearing grace remains as evident and as vague as the celebrated goodness of doubting Gideon, child-sacrificing Jephthah, and lecherous Samson (Heb. 11:34); as obvious and opaque as Abraham who lies consistently (Gen. 12:10-20; 20:1, 2) and is still the

Almost everyone recognized their own potato. God never gets His children mixed up.

father of the faithful (Heb. 11:8-12; Rom. 4:11); as clear and as obscure as the inconsistent virtue of Noah, whom Scripture offers as the first person named as receiving its wonder.

Grace must at least seem vague to objective analysis because Noah is its earliest stated illustration (Gen. 6:8, 9, NKJV). Not a single convert from his century and more of preaching joined him in the ark of salvation he built by God’s instructions; none but his immediate family, along with some animals. Then, in the years after he survived the Flood, we remember him most for drunkenness and the shame it brought (Gen. 9:20-25). Yet we are to believe that there is goodness in this person that makes him stand out in his generation, and that justifies celebrating him as “blameless in his time” (Gen. 6:9). What grounds might this be? I surely wish to know. For if the earnest yet unproductive and intemperate Noah may be blessed on such grounds, then let me stand with him. And if you, my reader, know enough of your own inadequacies, you too may stand with Noah and me.

The book of Hebrews knows the ground of Noah’s standing: it is “the righteousness which is according to faith” (Heb. 11:7). It is goodness dependent, not on effort, but on belief. It is believing the word of the terror-inspiring messenger from glory, that our intimidation, however understandable, is unnecessary, inappropriate, and contrary to the ultimate reality of the universe. We should be welcoming him, because he brings “good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10, 11).

Wonderful news indeed, news for all, the news of saving grace appearing.

years, the naked sacrifice of Calvary’s cross, the incontrovertible miracle of the Resurrection, and the bold promise of John 14:1-3 is God’s crucial handout to all humanity.

But grace will work only because we concede our need, an emptiness that God knows and understands; and an emptiness only He can fill. If we will be both poor and humble, paupers willing to receive an infinite handout, it will do us each and all eternal good. n 1

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

2 Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1900), p. 187.

3 Ellen G. White, Education (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1903), p. 173.

4 Ellen G. White, Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1923), p. 18.

Grace and All

Saving grace has appeared for all, as vague and yet as real as the breath of life in our nostrils and the electricity in our nervous system.

God’s saving grace that appears in the innocence of a virgin, the fragility of pregnancy, the awkwardness of a stable, the mortal manhood of 33½

Lael Caesar, an associate editor of Adventist World, never ceases to be amazed at the unceasing miracle of amazing grace.

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L I F E

FROM

VICTIMS TO

C O U R T E S Y

By Albert Kazako

O F T H E

A U T H O R

A D V E N T I S T

VICTORS

TRUE FRIENDS: Albert Kazako (middle) stands with Dee and Kevin Horn, whom God used to bring Albert and his family to the United States.

An incredible journey of faith

I

spent the first 34 years of my life in Malawi, Africa, where I married my wife, Eunice, and saw the birth of my two sons, Albert, Jr., and Davis. We survived by running a small medical clinic until a traumatic event turned our world upside down.

Yet through this life-threatening experience, when it seemed that there was no silver lining to the dark cloud that hung over us, God showed me that He was just getting started on His plans for me and my family.

Terrorized by Intruders

In March 2001 my family and I were in a wonderful mood as we returned home from “Big Sabbath,” a periodic event in which several area Adventist churches gather together in a park or stadium to worship. Soon after drifting off to sleep we were startled awake by an increasingly loud clamor, which quickly turned to gunshots as a group of thieves broke through the front door.

I leaped out of bed and met them in the kitchen. There were eight of them, and they were armed not only with a gun but also with axes and knives. I tried to stay calm as I asked them what they wanted. We didn’t have much, but I would give them

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whatever I could as long as they would not injure us.

They asked for money, and I truthfully told them that I didn’t have any.

One man then held the gun to my forehead and menacingly asked, “Do you think this is a toy?” He then started beating me and demanded that I give them money. Since I was unable to meet his demands, he tied my hands, and the group headed to our bedroom, where they began beating my wife, who was two weeks from delivering our second child. That was the worst moment of my life. I was helpless to do anything except plead with them to stop beating her. I told them that they could take anything in the house that they wanted. They finally gave up and grabbed everything they could, including the supplies we needed to run our medical clinic.

We lost almost everything we had, but we were grateful that God had spared our lives. Two weeks later we were again overwhelmed by God’s grace when our son Davis was born a healthy baby.

A New Direction

The robbery showed me that my family and I were not safe and that our future in Malawi wasn’t bright. I

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dreamed of taking my family to America, but I didn’t have enough money for even a plane ticket, not to mention the obstacles that would have to be cleared to emigrate to the United States. My miraculous journey to America began when I was able to get a plane ticket on loan.

I still remember the early-morning taxi ride to the airport. The car was shaking violently, and we struggled to reach 20 miles per hour. This resulted in my missing the flight. I was disappointed, but later it became clear that it was all in God’s plan. I rescheduled for a later flight.

One leg of my flight was from Amsterdam to Detroit. As I settled into my seat I noticed the heading on a page of the book the man next to me was reading. It said something about the Sabbath. Since I was a Seventh-day Adventist, it caught my attention. I introduced myself and learned that he also was an Adventist.

His name was Kevin Horn, and he was returning to Michigan from a business trip to England. Before we parted ways in Detroit, he gave me his business card and told me to contact him if I ever needed anything. I then continued to my destination of Atlanta, Georgia.

C O U R T E S Y

O F

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H O R N

ing.” Then they left me the keys to their minivan, gave me directions to the Midland Adventist Church, and explained that some church members would be expecting me.

Moving Forward

KAZAKO FAMILY: (From left): Albert Kazako; his son Albert Jr.; his wife, Eunice; and son Davis pose together during Albert Jr.’s high school graduation in June 2015.

God’s Continuing Intervention

I arrived in Atlanta with the intention of staying with a relative until I could get enrolled in a nursing program. I had been a medical assistant in Malawi, and had heard rumors of how easy it was to enroll in school in America; unfortunately, reality was quite the opposite. After three weeks I hadn’t made any progress with getting into school, and I was unable to continue staying with my relative. With nowhere else to go, I contacted the only other person I knew in America: my friend from the plane.

As I brought Kevin up to speed on the situation, I asked if I could visit for a week or so before I returned home to Malawi. An hour later he told me to take a bus to Saginaw, Michigan. After an almost 24-hour trip, Kevin and his wife, Dee, met me late that night at the

bus station. We arrived at their house around midnight, and their four children—Jeff, Kristi, Katie, and Josh— had stayed awake to meet me. After a good night’s sleep I awoke to find that the youngest child, Josh, had brought me flowers that he had collected outside. I felt so welcomed in their home!

Later that day Dee told me that they were leaving in two days for vacation and that they were going to let me stay in their house while they were away. “You mean all by myself?” I asked with great surprise.

Her reply was “Yes. May I ask you to take care of our pets while we’re gone?” I could not believe the trust that they had in me after such a short time. I offered to let them take my passport with them while they were gone, but Dee said, “No, Albert; if we do not trust people, life loses its mean-

When the Horns returned from their vacation, we discussed my purpose for coming to America. I told them that I would like to go to school to study nursing, and that I hoped my family would eventually be able to join me here. Kevin and Dee then helped me achieve my first goal. They started processing my student visa as my sponsors, and I was soon enrolled in the local community college. Dee’s father, Larry Butcher, employed me on his farm, so I had some money to live on and could begin saving to bring my family over.

Midland church members, however, raised the money to pay for plane tickets for my family. Soon my wife, Eunice, and my two sons arrived from Malawi!

My family and I lived in a house on Larry’s farm. Larry charged us only minimal rent, and Midland church members and others continued helping us with food and other needed supplies. We are so grateful to all of them!

Nursing school was difficult, but I prayed and asked God to help me succeed. In 2005 I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Today I work as a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. My wife works as a nurse as well.

Through my incredible journey God has taught me many lessons. The most important is that when we think there is no hope and no possibility of escaping a tough situation, God says, “We are only getting started!” n

Albert Kazako and his family have been

living in Maryland since 2007. They continue to praise God for His many blessings.

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N A D F E AT U R E

: Encounter Helping Students Know God

By Nina Atcheson and Arne Nielsen

L A R R Y

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B L A C K M E R

L A R R Y

B L A C K M E R

A new curriculum brings spiritual growth to both students and teachers.

H

ave you noticed the trend to reject—or perhaps it’s more of a subconscious dismissal of—the Bible as an authority about life’s questions?

An unspoken assumption pervades: perhaps the Bible isn’t so relevant after all. Culture is different now. People change. The issues we face are unlike those in the times of the biblical writers, so using good sense and reason, we’ll find our way through life, despite the Bible’s claim to be our personal lamp (Ps. 119:105), and God’s gracious offer to enlighten the darkness before us (2 Sam. 22:29).

To offer an alternative worldview, one that is founded solidly on the Bible as truth, requires intention; a purposeful approach—especially for the youth in our schools who we hope will become, in the words of Ellen White, “thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men’s thoughts.”1 In the summer of 2015 the North American Division Office of Education (NADOE) began rolling out a new Bible curriculum. Using the Bible as the textbook, the Adventist Encounter curriculum seeks to help students in our schools to develop a tangible, vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ; to have a deep and personal knowledge of the truths of the Bible and Seventh-day Adventist beliefs; to apply them to everyday situations; and be passionate about the salvation of others.

Guiding Principles

Advice from Ellen White helped guide the development of this curriculum: “Parents and teachers should constantly seek for improved methods. The teaching of the Bible should have our freshest thought, our best methods, and our most earnest effort.”2 Through rigorous, pedagogical practice and the use of twenty-first century learning techniques such as collaboration, problem-solving, digital literacy, higher order thinking, and creative expression, students are encouraged to use the Bible as their guidebook to grow spiritually and emotionally in today’s world. Students are led to think deeply, to make practical applications of their learning, and to, as White recommends, “see the force of truth for themselves.”3 Kent Rusk, pilot teacher of Encounter and associate superintendent of schools for the British Columbia Conference in Canada said, “I am convinced that Encounter is God’s answer to how we’ll reach students in our Bible classrooms. We have realized that merely teaching our children about God is not enough. We want to reach them where they live, with the saving message of a living, loving, involved Father God. The Encounter Bible curriculum is enabling our teachers to do just that.”

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Join ShareHim as we partner in evangelism with fellow Adventist brothers and sisters in the beautiful East African nation of Kenya. There, YOU will have the privilege of being the guest speaker for a sixteen-day evangelistic campaign held by a local church.

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N A D F E AT U R E

Teachers will find it a pleasure to use this material, and students will discover that learning the Bible is fun.

Pilot Program

The Adventist Encounter curriculum was initially developed for students in kindergarten through tenth grade by the Australian Union Conference and New Zealand Pacific Union Conference, in response to their schools’ needs for a curriculum that honored the Great Commission to “go therefore and make disciples” (Matt. 28:19). The NADOE was in the process of updating some of its curricula, and consideration was given to the possibility of adapting Encounter to the NAD context.

After a thorough pilot of the Encounter curriculum over a two-year period, involving 30 pilot teachers across each union in the NAD, a decision was made to use the trial feedback to review and update the curriculum under the guidance of the NADOE Encounter Steering Committee.

Dennis Plubell, vice president for education for the North Pacific Union Conference, was involved in the pilot process. “I still remember clearly sitting in five different classrooms, in five different locations across the NAD, where units of the Encounter curriculum were taught on a pilot basis. It was evident that this was far different than the Bible class I took in academy,” said Plubell. “The engagement of students in deep discussions in all classrooms did not resemble a textbook-based curriculum.

With the Bible as the textbook, a plethora of good resources and helpful teacher guides, based on proven learning strategies, it was evident that students were being led to encounter God.” Following this trial, the decision was made to develop grades 11 and 12, so that a complete, seamless curriculum

L A R R Y

B L A C K M E R

could be shared with all Adventist schools in the division.

Currently curricula for grades 9 and 10 have been rolled out, and grades 11 and 12 will be subsequently released in the coming years, along with the elementary curriculum, which will be ready for implementation in the 2018-2019 school year.

The Curriculum

The high school Encounter curriculum consists of five to 10 teaching units per grade. Each unit consists of a detailed teacher plan, which includes a variety of age-appropriate creative activities, short videos, object lessons, indepth Bible studies, group activities, discussion questions, assessment options, and worship moments that seek to build students’ knowledge, faith, and relationship with God. Each teaching unit also comes with a resource kit that includes various items, such as posters, DVDs, books, and other unit-specific resources. The variety of material and learning activities seeks to engage all learners from all backgrounds and knowledge bases.

Betty Bayer, director of the Office of Education for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada and chair of the Encounter Elementary Committee, shares some feedback from teachers in her union about the elementary material that has been piloted: “Teachers have found the units and accompanying resources to be ‘planning friendly’ and, even more important, that their students have been powerfully engaged. Their learning experience is so much richer than it has been in the past, and the connections they are making are that much stronger as well,” said one teacher.

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N A D F E AT U R E

“My students love the hands-on, group, and responsive activities,” said another teacher. “They really seemed to develop a close and authentic relationship with their Creator. There were so many times I could just strongly sense the Holy Spirit working on their hearts.”

Jud Lake, professor of preaching and Adventist studies at Southern Adventist University, has reviewed the curriculum and said, “Teachers will especially appreciate the whole-person lesson plans that impact students intellectually, emotionally, and behaviorally. Accordingly, students will learn not only how to read and understand the Bible, but how to apply its lessons to everyday life.”

Lake added, “From a creative application of Bloom’s taxonomy to the nine intelligences, this curriculum applies the latest learning theory and strategies to the academy Bible classroom. Teachers will find it a pleasure to use this material and students will discover that learning the Bible is fun. Through Encounter the secondary Bible classroom will achieve its ultimate objective: transformed teenagers who are authentic Seventh-day Adventist Christians.

Adventist education will never be the same!”

With the help of the Holy Spirit and guidance from their teachers, Encounter encourages students to search for truth in the Bible for themselves, and to be able to explain and defend their faith to others. Jim Ingersoll, associate director of secondary education in the Southern Union Conference, affirms the impact of the curriculum. He said,

“The Encounter Curriculum has proved to have an indelible and life-changing impact on students in the Southern Union. What we have witnessed is a spiritual renewal for students who are learning that the Bible has something to say to them personally.”

Ingersoll said, “As the curriculum continues to roll out for all four grades in academy, I believe we will see an evergrowing understanding by our students of what God has done, is doing, and will do for them.”

Enthusiastic Response

The NADOE and each of the nine union conferences in North America have invested in running many two-day training in-service events for all Bible teachers before they teach this new curriculum, in order to have a thorough understanding of new pedagogy and methodology that will make a real difference in the classroom. At these training events teachers not only hear again the purpose of Adventist education and the methods and approach of the Encounter curriculum—they are also personally challenged to spend more time with Jesus in His Word. This application becomes ever so clear: We cannot share with others what we do not have. As we abide in Jesus, we are able to model His love to others.

Deborah Daniel, Bible teacher at Columbia Adventist Academy in Oregon, said, “This curriculum has such an emphasis on developing a personal, real relationship with

Other

Endorsements The front cover of one of the teaching units for Grade 10, Jesus: Messages from His Heart—the Sermon on the Mount

The secondary curriculum has been examined by the Biblical Research Institute which has expressed support for its sound, biblical approach.

George Knight, professor emeritus of church history at Andrews University, has endorsed the Encounter curriculum and states, “This pioneering Bible curriculum is what the church has needed for decades. It is relational, wholistic, and thorough, yet at the same time theologically respectable and biblically insightful. The genius of this approach is that you have featured personal relationships and the challenge to grow spiritually while at the same time introducing students to significant Bible study and discovering learning along with the basic Christian and Adventist doctrinal understandings.”

Knight added, “My prayer is that your groundbreaking curriculum, when fully developed, may find a place throughout the world church. Your curricular work is far beyond anything else I have seen.”

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SHORT • SHARABLE • VIDEO-ON-DEMAND IS HERE

VISIT ARTV.ADVENTISTREVIEW.ORG

N A D F E AT U R E

L A R R Y

Through Encounter the secondary Bible classroom will achieve its ultimate objective: transformed teenagers who are authentic Seventh-day Adventist Christians.

Adventist education will never be the same!

B L A C K M E R

Jesus that it is impossible to teach it without ensuring that I am experiencing such a relationship with Him myself.

Teaching Encounter challenges me to make sure I take the time to grow my own relationship with Jesus so I can lead my students in authentic worship of Him.” Teachers and administrators have enthusiastically shared how their students are responding to the Encounter curriculum; that it is changing the way their students are responding to the truths of the Bible, the call to walk in a close relationship with Jesus Christ, and the call to share the Adventist message of hope and wholeness to those around them.

Joyce Fortner shares her experience as principal at Little Rock Adventist Academy in Arkansas: “This program is awesome! Our students have been spiritually moved and blessed. We have ended the year with the Sabbath unit. Our Communion was so meaningful for the students, and their preparation of the Sabbath sections was so detailed, and done so well, that the local pastors have ask them to present them for the 11:00 [worship] hour.”

Linda Vigil, Bible teacher at Maplewood Adventist Academy, said, “My students say they like the Encounter curriculum because they explore biblical topics and beliefs through interactive and hands-on activities. Plus, the assessments allow them to express themselves creatively according to their learning styles. Watching the students react to class information and activities is really exciting as we discuss, laugh, and even cry together.”

As other teachers have reported, Vigil said, “this curriculum challenges me in new ways to personally know Jesus more intimately and to share that with my students.”

Precious Classroom Time

It is a humbling responsibility to be called to lead our young people to Christ as their personal Savior. The precious hours in the Bible classroom cannot be wasted!

Edward Zinke, former president of the Adventist Theological Society and previously an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute of the General Conference, has given guidance on the content of the secondary curriculum. He said, “The Encounter curriculum is Christ-centered and biblically founded. It is designed to lead students to a closer personal relationship with Christ.”

Zinke went on to thank those of us involved in helping to make secondary Encounter come to fruition, adding, “I am grateful that my grandchildren will have the opportunity to study this curriculum.”

For more information on the Adventist Encounter curriculum and to view a sample teaching unit, go to http:// encounter.adventisteducation.org/. n 1 Ellen

G. White, Education (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1903), p. 17.

2 Ibid., p. 186.

3 Ellen

G. White, Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1913), p. 434.

Nina Atcheson is an associate director of education (secondary curriculum) for the North American Division and Encounter secondary author/trainer. Arne Nielsen is associate director for secondary/accreditation for the North American Division.

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S P I R I T

O F

P R O P H E C Y

Unto You

Savıor

a

By Ellen G. White

T

he King of glory stooped low to take humanity. Rude and forbidding were His earthly surroundings. His glory was veiled, that the majesty of His outward form might not become an object of attraction. He shunned all outward display. Riches, worldly honor, and human greatness can never save a soul from death; Jesus purposed that no attraction of an earthly nature should call men to His side. Only the beauty of heavenly truth must draw those who would follow Him. The character of the Messiah had long been foretold in prophecy, and He desired men to accept Him upon the testimony of the Word of God. The Amazing Plan

The angels had wondered at the glorious plan of redemption. They watched to see how the people of God would receive His Son, clothed in the garb of humanity. Angels came to the

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land of the chosen people. Other nations were dealing in fables and worshiping false gods. To the land where the glory of God had been revealed, and the light of prophecy had shone, the angels came. They came unseen to Jerusalem, to the appointed expositors of the Sacred Oracles, and the ministers of God’s house.

Already to Zacharias the priest, as he ministered before the altar, the nearness of Christ’s coming had been announced. Already the forerunner was born, his mission attested by miracle and prophecy. The tidings of his birth and the wonderful significance of his mission had been spread abroad. Yet Jerusalem was not preparing to welcome her Redeemer.

With amazement the heavenly messengers beheld the indifference of that people whom God had called to communicate to the world the light of sacred truth. The Jewish nation had been preserved as a witness that Christ

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

P H O T O :

was to be born of the seed of Abraham and of David’s line; yet they knew not that His coming was now at hand.

In the temple the morning and the evening sacrifice daily pointed to the Lamb of God; yet even here was no preparation to receive Him. The priests and teachers of the nation knew not that the greatest event of the ages was about to take place. They rehearsed their meaningless prayers, and performed the rites of worship to be seen by men, but in their strife for riches and worldly honor they were not prepared for the revelation of the Messiah.

The same indifference pervaded the land of Israel. Hearts selfish and worldengrossed were untouched by the joy that thrilled all heaven. Only a few were longing to behold the Unseen. To these heaven’s embassy was sent.

Angels attend Joseph and Mary as they journey from their home in Nazareth to the city of David... But in the city of their royal line, Joseph and I N T E L L E C T U A L

R E S E R V E ,

I N C .

L D S

M E D I A

He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life.

Mary are unrecognized and unhonored. Weary and homeless, they traverse the entire length of the narrow street, from the gate of the city to the eastern extremity of the town, vainly seeking a resting place for the night.

There is no room for them at the crowded inn. In a rude building where the beasts are sheltered, they at last find refuge, and here the Redeemer of the world is born.

Men know it not, but the tidings fill heaven with rejoicing. With a deeper and more tender interest the holy beings from the world of light are drawn to the earth. The whole world is brighter for His presence. 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. . . .

Humble Witnesses

In the fields where the boy David had led his flock, shepherds were still keeping watch by night. Through the silent hours they talked together of the promised Savior, and prayed for the coming of the King to David’s throne.

“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

At these words, visions of glory fill the minds of the listening shepherds.

The Deliverer has come to Israel!

Power, exaltation, triumph, are associated with His coming. But the angel must prepare them to recognize their

Savior in poverty and humiliation.

“This shall be a sign unto you,” he says; “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”

The heavenly messenger had quieted their fears. He had told them how to find Jesus. With tender regard for their human weakness, he had given them time to become accustomed to the divine radiance. Then the joy and glory could no longer be hidden. The whole plain was lighted up with the bright shining of the hosts of God. Earth was hushed, and heaven stooped to listen to the song— “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, good will toward men.” . . .

Singing Heaven’s Song

Heaven and earth are no wider apart today than when shepherds listened to the angels’ song. Humanity is still as much the object of heaven’s solicitude as when common men of common occupations met angels at noonday, and talked with the heavenly messengers in the vineyards and the fields. To us in the common walks of life, heaven may be very near. Angels from the courts above will attend the steps of those who come and go at God’s command.

The story of Bethlehem is an exhaustless theme. In it is hidden “the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.” Romans 11:33. We marvel at the Savior’s sacrifice in exchanging the throne of heaven for the manger, and the companionship of adoring angels for the beasts of the stall. Human pride and self-sufficiency stand rebuked in His presence. Yet this was but the beginning of His wonderful condescension.

It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to

take man’s nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity.

What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors.

He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life.

Satan in heaven had hated Christ for His position in the courts of God. He hated Him the more when he himself was dethroned. He hated Him who pledged Himself to redeem a race of sinners. Yet into the world where Satan claimed dominion God permitted His Son to come, a helpless babe, subject to the weakness of humanity.

He permitted Him to meet life’s peril in common with every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss.

The heart of the human father yearns over his son. He looks into the face of his little child, and trembles at the thought of life’s peril. He longs to shield his dear one from Satan’s power, to hold him back from temptation and conflict. To meet a bitterer conflict and a more fearful risk, God gave His onlybegotten Son, that the path of life might be made sure for our little ones.

“Herein is love.” Wonder, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth! n

Seventh-day Adventists believe that Ellen G. White (1827-1915) exercised the biblical gift of prophecy during more than 70 years of public ministry. This excerpt is taken from the book The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), pages 43-49.

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F U N D A M E N T A L

B E L I E F S

C

aring for Words in a Culture of Lies: this is the damning title and rousing call to arms that Marilyn Chandler McEntyre has sent out to any of us “who care about language and story.”1 McEntyre laments that “we live in a culture where various forms of deception are not only commonly practiced but commonly accepted.”2 The greater tragedy would focus on how anciently deception arose. For long before McEntyre, long before time’s measures were centuries and millennia, deceptions were already misusing God’s language and blighting His story. Rational beings, products of His creative love, were already being beguiled into the belief that their Creator is not really the nice guy of the universe.

God’s

NUMBER 8

Good Story Preferring the better story

By Lael Caesar

The First Deceiver

To be fair, the original deceiver was not easy to nail down. Knowing him as Lucifer, “light bearer,” helps us appreciate how worthy a personage he was: “Beloved and reverenced by the heavenly host, angels delighted to execute his commands, and he was clothed with wisdom and glory above them all.”3 Beyond his name and gifts there were his earnest conversations that sought “to remove dissatisfaction and to reconcile disaffected angels to the order of heaven,”4 having as “his sole purpose to promote loyalty and to preserve harmony and peace.”5 What a caring story he told! And in context of the recent big meeting the Father had called to extol Jesus as the unique one with divine prerogatives,6 you may well have understood Lucifer’s story: something discriminatory was going on, favoring one over another.

And though Lucifer himself was not personally affected or troubled by it—“he himself stood uncommitted”7—you could see that allowing matters to run in such a vein made for

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a bad story. No angel interested in a good story could conscientiously ignore these developments. They required attention. It seemed both easy and proper to agree with Lucifer.

Joining his cause was standing up for right and rights. Moreover, it was not so much his story as their own.8 For they could see, as he clarified things, that “the condition of the angels, . . . needed improvement.”9 The Trader

Ezekiel’s description of Lucifer’s story-making draws on a business metaphor: Lucifer was a trader, and a busy one at that, as Ezekiel’s oracle addresses him: “By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence” (Eze. 28:16).10 It is a surprising insight into the path to violence. Lucifer became “internally filled with violence” by the abundance of his trade: gossip makes for sweet stories and mounting outrage with their overweight of innuendo, unnecessary complications, flattery, deceit, falsification of God’s Word.

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Lucifer managed a great list of narrative strategies unavailable to God11 in what has turned out to be universal history’s first and lasting bad story—a fight story that has engendered all other fights, yet one that never would have begun if the patient forbearance of a loving Father God had had its way. Those unmeasured seasons through which He tried to counsel with Lucifer gave no hint of the clashing confrontations that would eventually stain God’s creation. And Lucifer’s gossip on behalf of the angels gave no hint at the assaults that would lead to his expulsion from heaven, take Abel’s life, give content to murderous Lamech’s song (Gen. 4:23, 24), and inspire Auschwitz, gulags, and IEDs. However uplifting his storytelling may have seemed, death and lies were present from the beginning in the mischievous distortions Lucifer came to cherish as his original truths (John 8:44). Consistent with His character of love, God knew, and “bore long with Lucifer,” endeavoring to help him

appreciate the ultimately ruinous impact of suggestions he found so admirable.12 But bent on his own account, Lucifer would not be helped, even when his narrative engendered quarrels with those who disagreed. He would accept no counsel, even when those quarrels established rival camps among God’s messenger corps. He remained resistant even when confrontation between those camps erupted into a climactic story war between the spirits that occupied the control room of the universe. Light-bearer Lucifer, who had turned himself into Satan, the adversary of God, had to be cast out with all his supporters (Rev. 12:7, 8), because “it would not have been safe to suffer any who united with Satan in his rebellion to continue to occupy heaven.”13 War on Earth

Tragically, Lucifer’s narration found sympathetic ears on Earth: the planet’s first stewards opened their hearts to his twisted tale about God’s rule, and became part of his bad story with its final chapter of doom, as, in Adam, all die (1 Cor. 15:22). But God be praised, for Satan’s awful story will soon be told no more, nor will it be the final chapter on life in God’s universe.

And because his original deception trafficked in slander on God’s nature and character, the climactic conclusion to the great controversy will be the whole creation’s effusive response to Lucifer’s portrait of God as a manipulative, discriminating cheat.

God’s patient love alone can bring about that denouement.

Some, bent on slander, still find ground for scorn: they say that God is a weak deity who promises but never delivers on His threats (2 Peter 3:9).

Others find proof of the meanness of His omnipotence in the blight of every congenital birth defect, devastating plane crash, or uncivil war. Conflated

with all these, life’s anguished “Why?” before Earth’s sickening disasters proves either the coldness of His tyranny or the profound depths of His incompetence. Meanwhile, others who claim to represent God’s side advance the enemy’s cause when they celebrate God’s appearance on Planet Earth as a game-changing apology for imposing laws His creatures could not keep.

Conclusion

Despite Lucifer’s distortions, his satanic reign has already seen its doom. He knows the end of the story because he was there, at Calvary, when the selfless sacrifice of God’s Son silenced every argument he could conjure up against God’s love. He knows full well that soon, when he and sin have been cleansed from the entire universe, creation’s original, harmonious, one-pulse ballad will be sung again, as all things, “in their

The

unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.”14 n 1

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), p. xii.

2 Ibid., p. 56.

3 Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1890), p. 37.

4 Ibid., p. 38.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 36.

7 Ibid., p. 41.

8 Ibid.: “The very work which he himself was doing, he charged upon the loyal angels.”

9 Ellen G. White, The Story of Redemption, (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1947), p. 19.

10 Scripture quotations in this article are from New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

11 E. G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 42: “God could employ only such means as were consistent with truth and righteousness. Satan could use what God could not.”

12 Ibid., p. 39.

13 E. G. White, The Story of Redemption, p. 17.

14 Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1911), p. 678.

Lael Caesar is an associate editor of Adventist World.

Great

Controversy All humanity is now involved in a great controversy between Christ and Satan regarding the character of God, His law, and His sovereignty over the universe.

This conflict originated in heaven when a created being, endowed with freedom of choice, in self-exaltation became Satan, God’s adversary, and led into rebellion a portion of the angels. He introduced the spirit of rebellion into this world when he led Adam and Eve into sin. This human sin resulted in the distortion of the image of God in humanity, the disordering of the created world, and its eventual devastation at the time of the global flood, as presented in the historical account of Genesis 1-11. Observed by the whole creation, this world became the arena of the universal conflict, out of which the God of love will ultimately be vindicated.

To assist His people in this controversy, Christ sends the Holy Spirit and the loyal angels to guide, protect, and sustain them in the way of salvation. (Gen. 3; 6-8; Job 1:6-12; Isa. 14:12-14; Ezek. 28:12 18; Rom. 1:19-32; 3:4; 5:12-21; 8:19-22; 1 Cor. 4:9; Heb. 1:14; 1 Peter 5:8; 2 Peter 3:6; Rev. 12:4 9.)

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B I B L E

Q U E S T I O N S

A N S W E R E D

Safe What is the biblical evidence for an end-time time of trouble for the church?

in His

Hands

In the Bible the phase “time of trouble” refers to Jacob’s experience the night before he met his brother, Esau. This Old Testament experience is used to prefigure the experience of God’s people shortly before the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. I will examine the experience of Jacob and the pertinent biblical passages.

1. Experience of Jacob: Before meeting Esau, Jacob experienced a strong sense of guilt both for what he did to his brother and because of his fear of death (Gen. 32:11).

He was “in great fear and distress [tsarar, “be anxious, in trouble, in distress”]” (verse 7, NIV). His sense of guilt moved him to seek forgiveness from his brother through gifts that would appease Esau (verses 4, 5, 20). That night Jacob went alone to pray in deep anguish, struggling before the Lord with his sense of guilt and fear. Later, as he recalled the experience, he said, “Let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress [tsarah, “distress, anxiety, trouble”]” (Gen. 35:3, NIV). Jacob’s time of trouble and his deliverance became a symbol of hope for those who found themselves in similar situations (Ps. 20:1).

2. End-time Applications in Jeremiah and Daniel: Jeremiah announces to God’s people a future experience similar to that of Jacob. The context of the passage is about the proclamation of the return of the people from the exile (Jer. 30:1-3), interrupted by a message from the Lord that is not about the return from the exile but about a future time of trouble for God’s people from which He will also liberate them (verses 4-9). After that parenthesis, the prophet returns to the hope of a return from exile (verses 10, 11). The time of trouble announced is a day of panic and terror, paleness of face, and the absence of shalom (verses 5, 6). The image of men experiencing labor pains is used to indicate their fear and inability to overcome the enemy by themselves. It is a great day in the sense that there had not been one like it before (verse 7). It is specifically called “a time of trouble [tsarah] for Jacob,” i.e., God’s

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people (verse 7). But God will intervene and liberate them from it. They will never again be under the power of enemies. The kingdom of God will be established, and they will serve only their messianic King and Lord (verses 8, 9).

Daniel 12:1-3 also refers to a time of trouble for God’s people. As in Jeremiah, it will be an unprecedented “time of distress [tsarah]” (verse 1, NIV). Daniel suggests that the distress is for all humans. While the people of God pass through this anguish, God intervenes and delivers them (verse 1). This terrifying experience is associated with the attempt of the king of the north to exterminate them, from which God will deliver them (Dan. 11:40-45). This time of anguish takes place when Michael arises to liberate them, shortly before the resurrection of the dead (Dan. 12:2). It is an end-time event.

3. Time of Trouble in Revelation: Revelation knows about a last-day time of trouble for God’s people, called

by John “the hour of trial [thlipsis, “trouble, distress”]” (Rev. 3:10, NIV). It is a global tribulation, but it will not destroy the faith of God’s people. They are described as those “who have come out of the great tribulation [thlipsis]” (Rev. 7:14, NIV) and have remained faithful through the blood of the Lamb (verse 14). They go through this experience after the release of the four winds of destruction and shortly before the return of Christ (Rev. 6:17-7:3).

Revelation 13:11-17 clarifies that during this time, as in Daniel, God’s enemy will try to exterminate God’s people, but the Lord will deliver them. They, like Jacob, will experience fear of death and a deep sense of their unworthiness.

But the reference to the blood of the Lamb indicates that they will absolutely trust in the saving power of God and that none of them will perish. God allows them to go through this difficult experience because they are safe in His hands (Rev. 22:11). n

Angel Manuel Rodríguez is retired after

serving the church as a pastor, professor, and theologian.

B I B L E

S T U D Y

What the Bible Teaches About

Health

By Mark A. Finley

M

any people believe that how they treat their bodies is a completely personal decision. They think: Since it’s my body, no one has the right to tell me what to eat, what to drink, or anything else about my personal choices. Even some Christians have the strange idea that Christianity deals only with the spiritual dimension of life and has absolutely nothing to do with the physical dimension. In this month’s lesson we will explore what the Bible has to say about the health of our bodies.

1 What passionate appeal did the apostle Paul make regarding how Christians should treat their bodies? Read Romans 12:1.

The passage begins with the words “I beseech you.”

“Beseech” means urge, strongly encourage, or appeal to. It denotes both urgency and priority. The word “bodies” in the Greek New Testament means the “whole, collective, sum of your parts.” The J. B. Phillips translation of the New Testament translates the last phrase “reasonable service” as an “act of worship.”* Literally and accurately translated, the verse might read like this: “Brothers and Sisters, I urge you as strongly as I can, by the mercies of God, that you present [no one else can do it for you] yourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to God as an act of worship. Caring for our bodies is in a sense an act of worship to God.”

2 How does the concept that caring for our bodies is a spiritual act of worship relate to God’s last-day message for His church in Revelation 14:7?

God’s last-day message for the world is a call to worship the Creator. If we genuinely worship Him as the Creator, will we cooperate with Him to build up what He has made, or work against Him to tear it down? Of all the things He made, the human body is one of the most marvelous.

3 In what way did the apostle Paul pray about health in light of the Second Coming of Christ? Read 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

4 What significant question did Paul ask in 1 Corinthians 6:19? And how did the apostle answer His own question in 1 Corinthians 6:20?

The apostle argues that we are not our own. What we put in our bodies and how we treat them matters because we were bought with the precious blood of Jesus. We are accountable to Him for how we treat the bodies He so graciously gave us.

5

Why does it at times seem so difficult to change our physical habits? Compare the following texts: Romans 7:18; Galatians 5:17; and Ephesians 6:14.

We are in the midst of spiritual warfare between the forces of God and the forces of evil. In our own strength we are powerless.

6

How can we be victorious in this battle that rages in our own minds and bodies? Summarize these texts of positive assurance of victory over evil: Philippians 4:13; 2 Corinthians 5:17; and Romans 8:3-6.

In our own strength we are powerless to overcome. But through Jesus, victory is ours. He never lost a battle with Satan and the forces of evil. The good news is that through Jesus we too can overcome. n * From J. B. Phillips: The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition. © J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co.

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IDEA EXCHANGE

My

L

P salm 23

ord, as we hike the mountainous, private “back country” of our lives, continually remind us that You are “watching out” for us the way shepherds look after their sheep; that because You love us, we lack nothing of eternal importance.

Wildflowers along a rocky mountain trail proclaim that You are the author of beauty. Grassy meadows and the stillness of crystal lakes speak to us of the peacefulness and tranquillity of Your spirit. Snowcapped peaks declare Your righteousness and saving justice. Ravines, dark as death, are not terrifying, because we can look up and see the brilliant blue of Your limitless sky.

We are comforted because we carry Your staff of confidence and Your compass of faith. Our tents are Your protecting power. In them we eat lunch during the sudden lightning, hail, and fierce wind of a summer storm. We go joyfully to sleep under the stars knowing that we are close to heaven’s gate.

Your compassion and faithful love surround us. It is the longing of our hearts to end the journey of our lives at the door of Your house; to knock, to meet You face to face, and live in Your neighborhood forever.

— A ndrew Hanson, Chico, California, United States

Native Americans Pronghorns, a species related to Africa’s antelope, are indigenous to the world’s first national park, Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, United States.

Pronghorns can run 48 kilometers (30 miles) an hour for sustained distances, and can sprint as fast as 96 kilometers (60 miles) per hour.

PrayerW

Source: Smithsonian

PRAISE

Please pray for my family to get a house, for my sister to get a job, and for my younger siblings’ success in school, as well as for my mother to have her needs met.

Patrick, Rwanda

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I am asking God to show us Adventists how to reach the refugees who arrived in Germany during the past year, that we may introduce them to Jesus.

Jakob, Germany

Adventist World - nad | December 2016

My wife has lost our baby while six months pregnant. We have a lot of debt, and not enough money to cover our expenses.

Mutundi, Uganda Please pray that God helps me register for my second year of theology studies.

Daniel, Cameroon

The staff of Adventist World magazine takes a break at a long-range planning session earlier this year (from left): Mark Kellner, Stephen Chavez, Sharon Tennyson, Wilona Karimabadi, Marvene Thorpe-Baptiste, Gaspar Colón, Kim Brown, Kristina Penny, Jared Thurmon, Andrew McChesney, Lael Caesar, Merle Poirier, Gerald Klingbeil, Sandra Blackmer (on Gerald’s smartphone), Bill Knott, André Brink.

I am a pastor training at the University of Eastern Africa. I need prayers for health and hospital fees, for school fees for my daughters, and other basic needs. I never had peace until I found the Prince of Peace and accepted Him as my personal Savior.

Mohamed, Somalia

p God’s

grace and peace

for the holiday season and throughout the year

Please remember me in prayer. My exam results were not what I hoped they would be, and I have to retake it in a year. Maybe God has a different plan for me. Thank you for your prayers.

Jenson, India

The Place of Prayer: Send prayer requests and praise (thanks for answered prayer) to prayer@adventistworld.org. Keep entries short and concise, 50-words or less. Items will be edited for space and clarity. Not all submissions will be printed. Please include your name and your country’s name. You may also fax requests to: 1-301-680-6638; or mail them to Adventist World, 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600 U.S.A.

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IDEA EXCHANGE “Behold, I come quickly…”

Our mission is to uplift Jesus Christ, uniting Seventh-day Adventists everywhere in beliefs, mission, life, and hope.

Publisher The Adventist World, an international periodical of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The General Conference, Northern Asia-Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists®, is the publisher.

Adventist Review Ministries Board Ted N. C. Wilson, chair; Guillermo Biaggi, vice chair, Bill Knott, secretary; Lisa Beardsley-Hardy, Williams Costa, Daniel R. Jackson, Peter Landless, Robert Lemon, Geoffrey Mbwana, G. T. Ng, Daisy Orion, Juan Prestol-Puesán, Ella Simmons, Artur Stele, Ray Wahlen, Karnik Doukmetzian, legal advisor Executive Editor/Director of Adventist Review Ministries Bill Knott Associate Director of Adventist Review Ministries

167 Years Ago

A D V E N T I S T

O

D I G I TA L

L I B R A R Y

n December 20, 1849, William Miller died in Low Hampton, New York. A farmer and lay Baptist preacher, Miller announced the imminent coming of Christ and founded the movement popularly known as the Millerite movement.

Largely self-educated, he lived with his wife in Poultney, Vermont, where he was elected to a number of civic offices. In the War of 1812 with England, Miller served as a lieutenant and captain. At the close of the war he moved to Low Hampton, New York, where he hoped to live quietly as a farmer.

In 1816 he was converted, writing later, “I saw that the Bible did bring to view just such a Savior as I needed; and I was perplexed to find how an uninspired book should develop principles so perfectly adapted to the wants of a fallen world. I was constrained to admit that the Scriptures must be a revelation from God; they became my delight, and in Jesus I found a friend.”

In 1818, while studying the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, he interpreted Daniel 8:14—“Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed” (KJV)—and concluded that “in about twenty-five years [about 1843]. . . all the affairs of our present state would be wound up.”

Miller used the general phrase “about the year 1843” to describe his belief as to the time of the Advent. After the passing of October 22, 1844—a date that Miller did not set, but accepted at the last moment— Miller wrote to Joshua Himes: “Although I have been twice disappointed, I am not yet cast down or discouraged. . . . My hope in the coming of Christ is as strong as ever. . . . I have fixed my mind upon another time, and here I mean to stand until God gives me more light. And that is Today, Today, and TODAY, until He comes, and I see HIM for whom my soul yearns.”

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Adventist World - nad | December 2016

International Publishing Manager Chun, Pyung Duk Adventist World Coordinating Committee Jairyong Lee, chair; Yukata Inada; German Lust; Chun, Pyung Duk; Han, Suk Hee; Lyu, Dong Jin Editors based in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA André Brink, Lael Caesar, Gerald A. Klingbeil (associate editors), Sandra Blackmer, Stephen Chavez, Wilona Karimabadi Editors based in Seoul, Korea Chun, Pyung Duk; Park, Jae Man; Kim, Hyo-Jun Operations Manager Merle Poirier Editors-at-large Mark A. Finley, John M. Fowler Senior Advisor E. Edward Zinke Financial Manager Kimberly Brown Editorial Assistant Marvene Thorpe-Baptiste Management Board Jairyong Lee, chair; Bill Knott, secretary; Chun, Pyung Duk; Karnik Doukmetzian; Han, Suk Hee; Yutaka Inada; German Lust; Ray Wahlen; Ex-officio: Juan Prestol-Puesán; G. T. Ng; Ted N. C. Wilson Art Direction and Design Jeff Dever, Brett Meliti Consultants Ted N. C. Wilson, Juan Prestol-Puesán, G. T. Ng, Guillermo E. Biaggi, Mario Brito, Abner De Los Santos, Dan Jackson, Raafat A. Kamal, Michael F. Kaminskiy, Erton C. Köhler, Ezras Lakra, Jairyong Lee, Israel Leito, Thomas L. Lemon, Solomon Maphosa, Geoffrey G. Mbwana, Blasious M. Ruguri, Saw Samuel, Ella Simmons, Artur A. Stele, Glenn Townend, Elie Weick-Dido To Writers: We welcome unsolicited manuscripts. Address all editorial correspondence to 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600, U.S.A. Editorial office fax number: (301) 680-6638 E-mail: worldeditor@gc.adventist.org Web site: www.adventistworld.org Unless otherwise indicated, all Bible references are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Texts credited to NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011

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