Adventist Review Podcasts

Michael Yonker: From Disappointment to the Advent, November 2019

Michael Yonker is a historical research specialist in the office of Archives, Statistics and Research at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

Search The Obvious: Reunions, November 2019

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”(Psalm 139:7, NRSV) “Searching the Obvious” focuses on how the Holy Spirit is ever active in our surroundings and in our lives, urging us to serve others. Personal stories challenge the reader to be mindful of our Christian Walk, recognize our own fallibility and slow down to ‘search the obvious’, the active presence of the Holy Spirit ever always around us. www.adventistreiew.org

Lael Caesar: Prophecy Again?, November 2019

Lael Caesar is an associate editor of the Adventist Review magazine. www.adventistreview.org

Gerald Klingbeil: Lip-syncing for God, November 2019

Gerald Klingbeil serves as associate editor of Adventist Review. www.adventistreview.org

Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Cross Purposes (October 25, 2019)

Be wary of the vengeance that your bitterness demands. The blade you wield will cut both ways to injure you and those you wound:  you both will bleed.  Retaliation never was so cool and final as it seems in all the movies. There’s always more to pay—more pain, more cuts, more haggard hearts.  No grudge was ever settled save by love.  Christ’s wounded majesty and broken law didn’t move him to abandon us or push us toward our fate.  No, He stepped closer after being injured, and embraced us in our violence.  The spear was taken from our hands; the curses quieted in our mouths.  “With His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Christ crossed our bitterness with love too great to seek retaliation, and far too kind to give us what our sin deserved.  In this is life, and all our hope.  Grace ends the deadly cycle of our hurt. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

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Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Staying In The Race (October 18, 2019)

Grace doesn’t gloat when others lose, nor grow dejected when another takes the flag. It isn’t glum when others swell with self-importance, nor filled with glee when rivals lose their footing. Salvation never was a zero-sum game, for there can be millions—no, make that billions—who finish the course and win the prize. The waiting crown comes in as many sizes as those who run the race. But finding grace will always be a winner-take-all contest. All whom Christ saves win all of Him—eternal love; enduring hope, and joy that triumphs over sorrow. We look down into open graves and twisting pain, and say to all the worst that evil brings—“Because He lives, I too shall live.” We taunt death’s weakness—"Oh, where’s your sting?”—and fix our eyes upon that day when we will rise to light and joy and everlasting life. “The prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of His return” (2 Tim 4:8). We run to win!  So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

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Bill Knott's GraceNotes: A Circle of Forgiveness (October 11, 2019)

As Christ grows greater in our minds, we lose our need to be authorities over what others think and do. The deepening awareness that we have been wrong more than we have been right—that we are only now approaching the starting point of faith—creates a gentle tolerance for those now camped where we once stopped, or mired in the stuff from which Christ freed us. We learn to smile at vehemence and vitriol, remembering how frequently we used them for bad causes or when we were still unsure. Grace makes us gracious to the ungraceful, for we see ourselves in them. We remember that their faults are just as pardonable as ours, and no more dangerous. The fellowship of the forgiven is as vast as the grace that makes it possible. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

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Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Is It Too Good To Be True? (October 4, 2019)

If you are truly saved through faith, then you are daily praying grace down into the cracks and crevices of life, into the dim and unlit corners where fear and fate and faithlessness more often hold the keys. Understanding—really understanding—grace rarely happens through a flash of intellectual enlightenment: Paul’s own Damascus Road was just the first of many miles spent learning grace. Each week we find how weak and meager is our faith, how little we actually trust the great bold verities announced by Jesus and His gospel, how much we fear that what He promises to give is too good to be true. “Increase our faith” is the most honest prayer we ever murmur—and the one He most delights to answer. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

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Marvene Thorpe-Baptiste: Light A Candle (October 2019)

Marvene Thorpe-Baptiste is an editorial assessment coordinator for Adventist Review Ministries.

Bill Knott's GraceNotes: When Everything Changes (September 27, 2019)

Our pledges of good behavior are only as good as the people who make them—which is to say, not good at all.  The litter of our broken promises to change, reform, and improve ourselves stretches back like resolutions at the end of January. And we aim too low. We have in mind trying to suppress our angry words. Christ has in mind an entirely new vocabulary grounded in the knowledge that we—and all others—are deeply loved by Him. We imagine chocolates as the foible we intend to fix. Jesus knows that fear is at the root of all our failing—fear of the Father, of each other, of the future. And so His first word to us at every moment of doubt and discouragement is an assurance of His care:  “You can stop being afraid now.” Grace always meets us where we are, but never leaves us where we were. The greatest and most joyful change is lived by those who most receive the gift of grace. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

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