Theology

I doubt there’s a person who hasn’t heard of the Boston Marathon bombing, which took the lives of three people. As runners entered the home straight, with the finish line in sight, first one then another explosion ripped through the happy, watching throng.

In The Legacy of John Calvin, David W. Hall divides leaders into two categories. Some predict the future, and others change it. Calvin, Hall said, is in the second category.

The metaphor of the church as a hospital is so popular in the neo-Protestant milieu that it seems to highlight the hypocrisy of those attending church services even more. That’s what I used to believe until one day when I witnessed the opposite with my very own eyes.

There’s something lying on a massive table. It’s a huge picture. You move closer and see that the design is made up of individual pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle. But the pattern is unusual. It isn’t an immediately recognisable image, such as a Swiss mountain or a bouquet of tulips.

Although we experience more positive than negative elements in life, we are still more intensely and more quickly affected by the unpleasant ones. How can we protect our joy of living despite the problems that beset us?

Professor Bailey V. Gillespie, from La Sierra University's Department of Theology and Christian Character in California, impressed me with both the diversity of his interests and his prestigious achievements, particularly in the field of young people's religious experience.

All COVID-19 statistics lead to the same conclusion: the young ones, our children, are at the lowest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus. That’s comforting. But the pandemic does pose a certain danger to them.

"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)

Fire falling from the sky. A massive tsunami. An abandoned city. Let’s be real—it’s probably Los Angeles or New York (although sometimes Sydney or Hong Kong makes a cameo). These are the images we most often associate with the end of the world. Whatever comes to mind for you, no doubt it has been shaped in large part by literature, art and, of...

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1).

I’m sure you’ve heard the statement: “I’m all about Jesus, but I’m not interested in church.” I’ve heard this many times and have even found myself saying it during certain periods of my life.

Dr. John Ashton of Newcastle, Australia, is a compelling example of a serious research scientist who bases his beliefs regarding the origins of the universe and life on the Bible.

I was born into an Adventist family. This meant feeling that pretty much everything I knew, including my religious tradition, was the sole truth.

The sermons. My mother’s stories. The little sand table and Sabbath School for children. Adults’ conversations about religion. All the information I absorbed in childhood helped me sketch an image of Jesus with one major flaw: it was rendered in far too many shades of grey.

God uses the traits we dislike as well as our weaknesses to create something great, beyond our abilities and imagination. This is the message that pervades the pages of "The Woman with the Book", the biography of the missionary Gladys Aylward.