Religion

Nothing can prepare us in advance for the suffering we will experience in this life. But even knowing this, we often remember with guilt the moments of blissful ignorance we had before suffering hit us.

Jeddah is different, at least according to its city motto. This Saudi Arabian port city on the Red Sea is home to more than 4 million people and is a gateway to Mecca: the holiest city in Islam. Millions of pilgrims come through Jeddah to visit Mecca, some 65 kilometres to the east, and Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, 360km to the north.

Seventh-day Adventists have the deep conviction that Jesus Christ will soon return, and the desire to keep His commandments as they were originally written in the Decalogue.

One of today's dilemmas disputes, dialectically, the complex reality of the Bible and the secular way of looking at the "terror of history": Is God a source of morality superior to humanism, or not?

In January 2014, in what catholic.org called a historic gesture, Pope Francis sent a message of unity, recorded on a mobile phone, to charismatic and Pentecostal leaders attending a conference organised by Kenneth Copeland Ministries.

There are so many versions of the “real meaning” of Christmas—kindness, generosity, neighbourliness; family, food and gifts; and, in our part of the world, end-of-year parties, carols by candlelight, summer holidays and trips to the beach or other outdoor adventures. 

The idea of the end of the world refers to the end of the social order and humanity; the end of the planet as we know it. But according to the Bible, these will not all come at once.

Trust is the main currency of the age in which we live, and people seem to be changing the directions they invest in faster than in the past. How is our life of faith influenced by how we relate generally to trust?

There is a poignant poem by the young Nicolae Labiș, a profound thinker and visionary who tragically passed away at the age of 21, that warns of the danger of wasting one’s life.

No scene depicting the birth of Jesus is complete without angels.

In our desperate search for miraculous answers or confirmations, we often forget that the most profound miracles are hidden in the seemingly mundane details of our lives.

In a world dominated by artificiality and instant gratification, we are becoming masters at controlling our circumstances and environment.

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

The Carolingian Renaissance must be understood as a "reform and reconfiguration of all peoples under the reign of Charles, with a view to creating a Christian territory in its institutional structures, moral conduct, and personal convictions."

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’.”