Adventist Review Podcasts

So you’ve lived a good life, a moral life, a life of treating others as you wish you would be treated. You pay your taxes when they’re due. You let the elderly go first. You rescue fledglings fallen from the nest. Your colleagues count on you for steady work. Your dog adores you.

Does all of this not matter when it comes to final reckonings? Is God not suitably impressed with upright choices we’ve made—with gifts we’ve given to the poor, with candles lit, with self-denying sacrifice? Surely, righteous deeds must tip the scales in our favor.

Such thinking is both fully natural and painfully mistaken—not because God fails to notice, but because He has provided a better and more perfect way to bring us to His heart. The Bible is emphatic: “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:23-25). The Father has appointed a Saviour whose perfect life and sacrificial death isn’t sullied by our habits of accounting or self-congratulation. “He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with His truth” (Psa 96:13).

We’ll never earn God’s gift of grace. But in His name—and for His fame—we’ll move the world with kindness.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

What happens when the rules you were given for purity don't match the life you end up living? Beth Hill grew up inside purity culture's strict guidelines for dress, dating, and desire, and in this Lifestyle column she traces how those rules shaped her sense of self, her marriage, and even her faith in God. Some of it was good. Some of it, she came to realize, went further than Scripture ever did. Beth Thomas joins her to unpack what purity culture got wrong, what it's cost a generation now raising kids of their own, and what a healthier, more biblical picture of purity actually looks like. Listen to the full article and decide for yourself.

What does a 380-year-old fight over censorship have to do with the Seventh-day Adventist Church? In 1644, the poet John Milton published a furious defense of free speech — and Shawn Boonstra suggests it may have quietly helped set the stage for a movement that wouldn't emerge for another two centuries. From book burnings to Bible societies, this Perspectives column traces a trail of "coincidences" that looks suspiciously like design. Was it chance, or the finger of God nudging history forward without violating human free will? Listen to the full article and decide for yourself.

Drive in snow and overcorrect one way, and you'll end up in the ditch on the other side. Theologian John Peckham argues the same danger lurks around one of Christianity's most contested ideas: sola scriptura. Push too hard toward reading the Bible in total isolation, and you land in one ditch. Push too hard toward letting community or tradition control what Scripture means, and you land in the other. So where's the road between them — and how did Jesus himself model staying on it? Listen to the full article to find out.

Between this moment and the final triumph of God’s love, there will be many moments when the outcome may appear in doubt.

Hard-edged, hard-hearted people flourish in a world chilled by greed. Deceit—in all its printed, spoken, filmed and digitized dimensions—settles like a toxic fog over what was once a landscape formed by trust. Unforgiveness grasps our culture by the throat, insisting that no war can ever truly end; no feud can ever fully finish.

And still the Word of God insists that grace personified in Jesus will sweep the world’s stage “by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil 3:21).

In the face of graceless, human-caused catastrophes, the Bible is emphatic: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:10-11).

Grace will win because God’s love is so much greater than our hate. Every soul will have the chance to choose that grace for themselves—and thrive in it.

Choose now—and stay in grace. -Bill Knott

And you thought grace was just for individuals.

When God’s mercy and affection are much-welcomed and deep-trusted, lasting impacts start to flow to all within the circle.

Grudges soften at the edges; ancient bitterness begins to fade. Forgiveness flourishes in crevices, even between those who never thought they could be anything but enemies. Gentle, subtle acts of kindness replicate themselves like wavelets traveling outwards, touching lives far distant. Other souls are softened, watered, warmed, enriched. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

The grace “that saved a wretch like me” is so much more than God’s plan to bring me safe and sound to heaven, lovely as that is. Yes, it starts in one responsive heart, but never ends just there. As the old hymn constantly reminds us, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea.” “The grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people” (Titus 2:11).

Grace ripples through our families, our friendships, our communities—unlimited; inclusive, and unstoppable. “Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Rev 22:17).

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

3 billion people on Earth have never heard the name of Jesus — and most of them live in cities the Adventist Church has been quietly leaving for decades.

Gary Krause, Director of Adventist Mission at the General Conference, sat down with Shawn Boonstra to explain what's actually being done, where it's working, and the 4-word principle that changed how both of them think about mission.

A minister who's raised his kids and an editor still in the trenches sit down over one question: what do you do when the most addictive thing your child will ever hold fits in their pocket? No easy answers — just honesty about the fear, the failures, and the grace that carries parents through.

Shawn Boonstra and Justin Kim talk screens, dopamine, the anxious generation, the "bubble" trap, and why every parent they know has "gone nuclear" and regretted it — plus the stranger's words that changed Shawn's life at 16.

Three churches. Three continents. One thing they all figured out that most Adventist congregations still haven't.

Shawn Boonstra opens the mission reports that reach the General Conference building — the ones most members never get to see. A district in the Scottish 
Highlands that filled a Gospel Fest with people who'd never set foot in an Adventist church. A youth ministry in wartime Ukraine that sorts every person 
they meet into five levels — starting with "haters." And a congregation in Seoul's professional district that stopped waiting for growth to happen organically.

The pattern connecting all three isn't budget, location, or talent. Listen to the end.

She once heard voices telling her she was about to hurt someone. Now she hosts one of Hope Channel's most-watched shows. This episode asks the question most Christian parents are afraid to say out loud: is it ever loving to let someone hit bottom?