Norel Iacob
Norel Iacob, currently teaching systematic theology at Adventus University and serving as director of Adventus University Press, is also the executive editor of ST.network. Before joining Adventus, he served as editor-in-chief of Signs of the Times Romania from 2009. In 2020, he introduced ST.network, an English platform of the Inter-European Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which serves as an international interface for worldwide authors analyzing topics of interest to a general audience from a Christian perspective. Iacob has edited or authored several books, including “The End of Uncertainty: Returning from Exile” and “Fathers: The Meaning of Being a Father in Today’s Society.”
Puritanism in the Protestant Reformation
Less than 50 years after the supporters of Martin Luther’s ideas in Germany were mockingly called “Lutherans,” England was in its turn discovering a derogative nickname—“Puritans”—which it applied to a category of Christians who disturbed the ordinary life of the English church and society.[1]
A blood-red sunrise: martyrs and the instinct of persecution
Even though we have been in a much better place for 700 years now, we know that the passing of time has not eliminated the instinct of persecution from human nature.
“Divine Providence: God’s Love and Human Freedom” | Book review
Bruce Reichenbach's book, Divine Providence: God’s Love and Human Freedom is impressive first of all due to the author’s total disinterest in impressing his readers. Instead, he has a legacy to pass on.
Financial literacy is in the spirit of the Bible
Are you financially literate? If your financial management strategy is one of the following four, then the answer is probably no.
How to grow a dream of a lifetime
Pull out the high school years from the archives and carefully browse the file with daily memories. Don’t you think that the details of the clothes, the house, the room, the school, the classroom are all there with hyperthymestic precision?
It’s just us and the Truth. Who judges whom?
The (metaphysical) Truth does not allow us to judge Him. According to the Bible, He expects to be believed and accepted so that He can be understood and evaluated. In contrast, the Truth is the One who judges us.
A fulfilled life in the presence of God: the picture
A fulfilled life is built on the foundation of faith and the desire to imitate the character of God, in a world conceptualised around the truth.
Free time and the science of living
Free time is the slice of life that an appropriate will and motivation learn to transform into experiences that make our life better, more beautiful, more balanced, and more pleasant to remember.
Trust in God and the great small step
Trust in God gives clarity to our thinking, so God asks us not to be obsessed with justice, but to be concerned with and delighted by grace.
It wasn’t me! It was Eve, the snake or the genes!
The stakes are high when it comes to homosexuality, promiscuity, alcoholism, violence, and the like. Previously seen as a result of environmental influence and moral choice, they have now become a genetical given.
Misunderstanding a “memorable misunderstanding”
The spontaneous generation of life on Earth is as likely as a whirlwind putting a Boeing 747 together using scattered spare parts in a junkyard.
The stories that restore our future
Among the words of Jesus, I was first fascinated by His surprising and enigmatic counter-questions, which generated real clashes among his tempters. In the face of the questions that were supposed to leave Him speechless, He always had a more comprehensive vision, from the perspective of which the traps were reduced to ridiculous, absurd obstacles.
How (not) to clip the wings of reformation
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Europe was hit hard by several disasters, the proportions of which are difficult to imagine today.
Real information is dialogue
I request from my colleagues at the ST.N editorial office at least three sources for news and at least two books for the analysis topics: one for and one against. Ideally, the reading of the first two books will give rise to the desire to look for at least two more, so that the differences are clearer. After that, there will be a...
Bewilderment
Jesus’s unpredictability is one of His most memorable traits—one that was, however, not born out of an extraordinary speculative intelligence, but out of such a different perspective on reality that even the most trained and educated thinkers could not foresee it. Therefore, Jesus’s unpredictability says more about us than about Him.