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How can one explain that laws attributed to revelation are found in the legislation of other ancient peoples? How can the similarities between biblical thought and ancient culture be explained? How is the biblical God compared to the gods of other peoples?

In biblical times, those holding trials between people were called judges (Exodus 18: 21-26), just as they are today. Some more prominent judges, in the centuries between Joshua’s death and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel, were noble leaders who led various Jewish tribes in battle against invaders. In this capacity, they were liberators of their people. Any just judge is a...

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens" (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

The epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch thinks that social distancing will have to continue, in one way or another, hopefully in milder forms and in correlation with other activities. Lipsitch is the author of a study suggesting that social distancing may be necessary, possibly intermittently, until 2022.

These days, we are free to believe anything and to be anything, at least in theory. However, if we gave history a closer look, we would realise that it is not beneficial for us to believe or be just anything. We agree with the biblical exhortation, often distorted by popular lore: "...test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

I clearly remember the days following the Revolution of 1989 in Romania. Whoever you met would speak about freedom: “Now we can say what we think out loud. We no longer have to whisper. We are free!”

It is estimated that over 100 million Bibles are printed annually, which means over 11 000 per hour, or about 3 every second. These numbers show the huge impact the Bible has on people’s lives.

"Suppose I go to the Israelites…and they ask me, ‘What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, 'I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:13-14).

Sometimes I feel like an impatient child wanting to cry at God, “Are we there yet?” When prayers go up year after year and answers don’t seem to come down, I get frustrated. Does God even care that I’m waiting? Why doesn’t He move faster?

Fairy tales begin with the words "Once upon a time", which automatically send us into a timeless world of fantasy, imagination, and daydreaming.

Dr Zeno L. Charles-Marcel is an associate director in the Department of Health for the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The holidays are a time of generosity, when those forgotten by the world meet those who want to forget that sadness exists and, out of the coexistence of the two needs, something good is born.

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

“We shrivel when we are not able to interact. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are” (Desmond Tutu).

The Protestant Reformation was a tumultuous river, the flow of which began to become visible in 1517. A significant contribution to this eruption was made by its tributaries, the (pre-) Reformation movements: the Waldenses, Albigensians, Lollards, Hussites, etc.—true springs of the main Protestant current, which took over their force in its flow through history.