Religion

Seventh-day Adventists consider the issue of religious freedom to be essential to their mission. “Separation of church and state offers the best safeguard for religious liberty and is in harmony with Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22:21: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s’.”

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.

What is the future? The question may seem trivial. But when you think about it, you understand better what St Augustine confessed: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know".

For the chained man, there were now only two options: unreserved submission to the council or condemnation; recantation or death. Outside, the stake was already prepared.

"God has guided my steps in life, saved me from some wrong decisions, and when I have made mistakes, He has helped me to admit my mistakes and learn from them." (Dumitru Borţun)

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.

John the Baptist's call—"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near"—succeeded in bringing Jews "from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan" to the desert where the prophet preached, to confess their sins and be baptised. Two thousand years later, the exhortation to "repent" is buried under a mountain of pejorative associations.

When I was at high school, I played basketball a lot—most days at school, then team training sessions and often two or three games each week. At university, I played on the best team I have been part of. We trained and competed regularly over two years, and twice won our league championship.

One day, Jesus’s disciples—who followed Him about, observing His every word and action—asked Him to teach them how to pray.

The separation between church and state is greeted with enthusiasm by those who appreciate freedom of conscience. However, this separation can also have less fortunate ramifications.

Born into a family of surfers, one could say the love of the salty ocean air courses through the veins of his body. Named after legendary surfer Derek Ho, even his name embodies the hopes and expectations of what he was to become.

To nothing else is the name of God so often linked in our human discourse as to suffering and deliverance. This locus is a huge and complicated intersection of our existence.

When I read how a non-religious mother felt she needed to calm herself down at the thought that her child might begin to believe in God, I was surprised and almost offended.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Europe was hit hard by several disasters, the proportions of which are difficult to imagine today.

Pliny the Elder wrote, in Naturalis Historia, a well-known adage: "Among [mortals] the only certainty there is is that nothing is certain."[1] Few know that Pliny made this statement in a chapter on the gods.