Fatima fled Syria with her three young children. Fatima’s husband and her father were beheaded back home. She was on a desperate search for peace and shelter for her children. It was never her choice or desire to be stuck in a refugee transit camp at Hegyeshalom, on the Hungary- Austria border. It was simply her least-worst option.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s official membership has topped 19 million for the first time in history, and the number of local churches has doubled worldwide to more than 80,000 in just two decades, according to newly released figures. The Adventist Church had 19,126,447 members as of Dec. 31, 2015, a net increase of 647,144 people, or 3.5 percent, from the previous year, the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research said.
Seventh-day Adventist researchers from Loma Linda University have proposed a new field of research that would underscore the environmental benefits of a vegetarian diet. The California-based university’s School of Public Health proposes the introduction of the new field, Environmental Nutrition, in a paper that will be published in the May issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Seventh-day Adventist believers expressed shock — and love — after a suicide bombing in a large park in Lahore, Pakistan, killed more than 70 people on a day that much of the Christian world was celebrating Easter Sunday. “We extend our heartfelt sympathy and love to the precious people of Pakistan and the major city of Lahore for the tragedy that has taken place in the horrible bombing of one of its parks,” Ted N.C. Wilson, president of the Adventist world church, said Monday on his Facebook page.
In October 2016, thousands of viewers will be tuning in to a special It Is Written television program celebrating the past 60 years of this international evangelistic media ministry. Since 1956, It Is Written has used the most updated technology to share the love of Christ. Today, It Is Written is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and its programming can be viewed by 97 percent of the world’s population.
Adventists believers in Europe and elsewhere were reeling after bomb attacks at the international airport and a subway station in Belgium’s capital, Brussels, killed more than 30 people on March 22. Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, and authorities have warned that additional attacks may follow.
The leader of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Belgium narrowly missed one of three explosions that rocked Brussels on Tuesday after deciding at the last minute to travel by car to work instead of making his customary trip on the subway. But Jeroen Tuinstra, president of the church’s Belgium-Luxembourg Conference, made no mention about his close call in an e-mailed statement, saying instead that he was praying for those affected by the tragedy and for the safety of city residents.
Global Youth Day began in 2013 with the hope that setting aside a single Sabbath every year for Seventh-day Adventist young people to engage in community outreach would encourage them to become more active in sharing the gospel. That goal was fulfilled beyond expectations as hundreds of thousands of young people surprised veteran organizers on March 19 by finding new ways to “Be the Sermon” — the motto of Global Youth Day — and, perhaps more significantly, by taking ownership of their faith.
A Seventh-day Adventist scholar has cautioned attendees of a major international conference in Italy that religious freedom cannot exist in countries where the government has a special relationship with a single religious group. For many people today, this issue holds more than just academic interest. More than two dozen countries of the world — including Costa Rica, Argentina, Greece and Bulgaria — acknowledge either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy as either the official state religion or a state-supported religion.
Andrea Luxton, president-elect of Andrews University, found herself at wit’s end several years ago while working as an educator in Europe. “I had to deal with a very challenging situation that left me totally drained,” Luxton said. “The period ahead looked very bleak, and I just wasn’t sure I had the strength left to deal with it. I needed some help.”
More than 300 community members and elected officials gathered to break ground for a new $331 million Washington Adventist Hospital in White Oak, Maryland. The hospital, scheduled to open in early 2019, will replace an aging facility built in 1907 just 6 miles (10 kilometers) away in Takoma Park.
As global alarm grows about the Zika virus, hundreds of thousands of Seventh-day Adventists in one of the most affected countries, Brazil, decided to respond with their hands and feet. The Adventist Church in Brazil kicked off the Zika Project, a national campaign to raise awareness, prevent new infections, and mobilize people to act against a virus that the World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency.