The book of Revelation has always enjoyed great interest in Adventist circles and has often been the subject of detailed study. Many scholarly studies and articles on the theology of the last book of the Bible have been written, but thorough Adventist exegetical commentaries following the biblical text verse by verse are rather rare. The new…[Read more]

Tonstad was invited to write a 398-page commentary on Revelation in the Paideia Series on the New Testament is a further step in this development of SDA contributions. From the Foreword to this series we read that “the primary focus remains on the text and not its historical context or its interpretations in the secondary literature” (p. x). Tha…[Read more]

1919 is one of the significant dates in Seventh-day Adventist history. In this year, an important conference took place of the denomination’s leaders and theology and history teachers. However, the (incomplete) transcripts of the conference disappeared in the archives of the church’s headquarters and were not unearthed until the 1970s. Soon the…[Read more]

Die Frage, wie Adventisten sich gegenüber den Forderungen des Militär-dienstes verhalten sollen, wurde während der gesamten Geschichte der Sie-benten-Tags-Adventisten kontrovers diskutiert. Zwei wesentliche Ursachen können dafür benannt werden: 1. Einerseits existiert in den Vereinigten Staa-ten eine Berufsarmee, die nur im besonderen Krie…[Read more]

Nathan Brown’s book was written as a companion volume to a recent set of Sabbath School study guides (third quarter 2019). It is thus divided into thir-teen chapters each of about eight pages. As such, it is directed towards a popular readership within the church. The sequencing of the chapters is not particularly logical and not, one suspects, w…[Read more]

Editorial preface to Spes Christiana 31.1

Millions of Bible verses are shared on Twitter every year. This article examines the Bible on Twitter, by looking at Bible verse images produced by three organisations: Faithlife/Logos Bible Software, Dutch Bible Society, and Graceway. I examine the way these three organisations mediate the Bible on social media. The outputs of these companies…[Read more]

This study attempts to find and describe a leadership style for a church organization that matches the needs and expectations of the generation called “Millennials.” Lessons are drawn from the work-place where employing entities have had to adapt to the strengths, weaknesses, demands and expectations of a generation that carries particular cul…[Read more]

The article firstly deals with church authority in general and with the way this is understood and functions in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. All church authority is delegated authority, and the church’s authority is always subject to God and the revelation in his Word. The Adventist governmental structure has not always sufficiently r…[Read more]

To what extent can the Bible, the Christian message, and especially the ministers, as their public representatives, have an impact upon our post-modern society? As public role models of God’s pathos, some leading biblical prophets demonstrated a strong conviction nourished by the basic texts of Israel’s heritage. Consequently, they stood firm for…[Read more]

Adventist ethics is an evolving field that, thus far, has lacked comprehensive theoretical grounding. Publications in this academic area fall into six major categories that reflect the importance of the Bible, denominational tradition, and cultural contexts; however, meta-ethics of an Adventist kind is yet to be developed. Therefore, this article…[Read more]

Heavenly sanctuary, earthly sanctuary – has not all been said from an Adventist point of view? It is astonishing that to date there is no comprehensive, scholarly collection analysing the pertinent references that includes not only biblical findings but also ancient Near Eastern (ANE) and early Jewish litera-ture. This has now changed due to t…[Read more]

There are books with content that one can understand in a couple of minutes or read in a few hours. Others need days, and some can take you weeks. This book actually will entertain you – and challenge you – for months. The author admits that it turned out “a little longer than originally intended” (p. 22); with its more than 700 pages of text, i…[Read more]

This article aims to review the main biblical texts that refer to the pas-toral function in the Old and New Testaments. In reviewing these texts as a whole, it is possible to identify a series of orientations that can contribute to the elaboration of a Theology of Pastoral Ministry from an Adventist perspective. There are some essential concepts…[Read more]