Brothers and Sisters of the Adventist Faith–
May 2012 be the year the Adventist church in North America becomes a movement again!
Let us preach our message in 2012:
“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people— saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”
And another angel followed, saying, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”
Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”
Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” –Revelation 14:6-12
It is not a message to be ashamed of but a message to be proud of! “Fear God and give glory to Him for the hour of His judgment has come!” And He will come soon and we are prophetically called to share with the world the good news of our soon to come Savior.
Let us plant churches, preach the message to the one or to the many, and let us pray for the revival we talk so easily about but are so scared to embrace!
May 2012 be a year like no other and may Jesus be glorified through His church and His message to this world.
So I was going to get on here and rant about how our Adventist publishing houses were dropping the ball by not having ebooks available! But before I spouted I decided to do a quick search and I found this by Pacific Press Publishing & this by Review & Herald Publishing. So my rant is not going to be quite as intense. But I still want to rant a little. I praise the Lord that I see the church entering into the realm of ebooks, but their progression into this realm is far too slow and under marketed!
As much as I love books in my hand and as much as I didn’t want to embrace the tablet culture I find that almost all of my reading is now done on my Kindle! The only things I haven’t been able to read primarily on my Kindle, my Adventist literature. For those items I have to drive 45 minutes north to the nearest Adventist Book Center, which means I’m not reading most of the new Adventist material out there.
Every single published material of the Seventh-day Adventist church from books to magazines should be available through the kindle store, the Nook store, or whatever is the preferred reader of choice. (Pacific Press seems to be ahead of the rest on this, most of Review & Herald stuff is primarily in google book format which is cumbersome). I believe that if our publishing institutions did this then we would increase readership in many areas and spread the message much more quickly.
Let me give you two recent scenarios to illustrate my point:
Two of the preachers I appreciate most, Dwight Nelson & David Asscherick were discussing on twitter a quote by NT Wright from his book Justification. Because this book is not Adventist I knew that I could immediately go to Amazon Kindle Store and purchase that book. On the same day Pastor Dwight plugged his most recent devotional book, “The Chosen.”
Yes, there is a link to Amazon to buy the book. But if you went to Amazon as I am writing this, you would notice that there is only one copy, and it is being sold for $15, not including shipping and handling. So if I buy it there I have to wait on it and pay almost $20 for it. Or I can drive 45 mins north and buy it at the Adventist Book Center…or maybe which is what probably quite a few folk do, they just don’t buy it.
But say that same book was available through the Kindle store like Justification is. Then if a person read that tweet of Dwight’s (and a lot of folk read those tweets: Dwight has been on twitter for a little over three weeks and he already has well over 300 followers), and being a person that uses twitter so probably also uses other techno stuff, they jump on their iphone kindle or Nook app and they immediately go to the kindle store and Download the book which is sent wirelessly to their kindle, iphone, and ipad all at once and it was for only $9.99 versus $20. Answering me this, which seems more convenient?
Yes we won’t for a very long time completely get rid of books on paper, and indeed there are many people that don’t use any of the technology I am speaking of, but there are enough people that do use tablet readers that for us to not flood that market with our materials is just a lack of foresight and evangelistic creativity on our parts! 11% of all the United States alone have a tablet computer that is equal to 44 million people. And then think about these facts just in light of Amazon and their Kindle:
As of early 2011, Amazon had over 137 million active customers worldwide.
110 of 111 New York Times Bestsellers are in the Kindle Store.
Amazon’s Kindle Store pays out 70% to its Direct-to-Kindle authors.
Since April 2011, for every 100 print books sold on Amazon, it’s sold 105 Kindle books.
So far this year, Amazon has sold more than three times as many Kindle books as last year.
These statistics continue to rise. It begs the question – why aren’t Adventists marketing Kindle books like crazy! What’s holding us back from our piece of the Kindle pie?
One more area where I see us getting into the e-market really benefitting our readership, and that is with the Adventist Review, and our other magazine publications. I get the Adventist World just like all other baptized SDA’s, but I would probably subscribe to the Adventist Review if I could do so through Kindle. I mean I can read, Newsweek, Fortune, & Runner’s World on my Kindle why not the Adventist Review. I was once having a conversation with Bill Knott the editor and executive publisher of AR, and he was saying to me that one of his desires is to see readership of the Church’s flagship paper up amongst the younger generations! I would say to my friend, Elder Knott, get it on the Kindle and other such devices and market it and watch the level of subcribership potentially go up!
So that is my rant! I’m glad to see something is happening, but outside of Pacific Press, much more needs to be taking place! We should not be the tail of things, but the head!
These words of Jesus struck me today, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!” –Matthew 23:37a
I began to wonder would we as a church be accused of stoning our prophet, Ellen White, as well? Not with literal stones, but with our words.
The old kid saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” BULL! We’ve all been hurt by words. Words are powerful and influential. And in the way many have spoken of Ellen White and her writings I believe it is just the same as casting a stone, because in some peoples lives before they ever opened a book of hers or read one line of her writing she was already dead to them. Before they could make a decision for themselves she was dead to them, because of the words they had heard THROWN around.
I wonder if Jesus would accuse you and me of killing our prophet? Pick-up the books and read them listen to the words. Pray for conviction one way or the other. Before you pick-up a stone and kill her!
I was challenged to stop stoning her and I decided to read her for myself and her writings have become a living breathing blessing in my life!
If you are like me and struggle with sin, here is a great clip that I pray will bless and encourage you. (Sorry for the shakiness of the picture)
I have been blogging on this site for almost a year now, I’ve posted 95 times. Out of those 95 I thought I would share with y’all the Top 10 based on viewings by y’all out there in the web-world:
The thing I find interesting about this list is that more than half of these would definitely not be in my top 10, but I guess folk fancy, what folk fancy.
Here is another top 10. The top 10 countries, yes folk in other countries (62, in fact, read this blog) that browse this blog. Guess which is #1?
Top 10 States:
6 out of the top 10 states I have lived in, I think I might have a readership that has a bias, but I am grateful for them none-the-less!
Top 10 Cities:
What I find intriguing about the cities list in regards to the states list, is that Florida is my third most viewing state, but the first Florida city on my analytics is ranked 41st. So I guess the Florida readership is well spread out.
So if you have made it this far. I am wondering is there a top ten things you would like me to blog about? Or maybe even a top 1 or 2. Comment on this post and I’ll see what I can do.
Oh and thanks for being a reader!
I recently received a new Andrews Study Bible. I actually have owned one for some time, but recently the Pacific Union Conference along with the assistance of some other generous donors provided the Andrews Study Bible w/ the Premium Leather cover to all the pastors in the Pacific Union (the one I purchased for myself is a bonded leather cover). I decided this would be the Bible that I am going to read out of and study out of for the next year at least.
I am excited about this…Why?
Well I have never read through the New King James Version of the Bible. In fact I kinda avoided doing much with the NKJV because I found it difficult to read, well for the past 2 plus months I have been preaching from the NKJV, and suddenly the reading of the New King James doesn’t seem so awkward to me. So now that I am comfortable with this version I am looking forward to reading through it.
I am also excited b/c I am looking forward to reading some of the study notes provided in this Bible. You see I am a Seventh-day Adventist, and the study notes in this Bible are written by Adventist scholars (9 of them that were professors of mine in either undergrad or graduate studies). I am not one that is typically a fan of study notes, in major part b/c I worry that they can cause folk to become lazy Bible students, but I recognize study Bibles are popular and here to stay and so if I am going to read a study Bible myself or if I am going to recommend a study Bible to folk, the one I want folk to read is the Andrews Study Bible!
I think the feature I like the most in this Bible is the themed reference section. It is like a Bible Marking done right in the Bible already. Quick and easy for a person if they are doing a Bible study on a specific topic with someone!
I would recommend to ALL that they purchase the Andrews Study Bible, or just get baptized at our church we’ll give you an engraved one for free!
Oh and even though I am quite comfortable now with the NKJV, I look forward to when Andrews releases an edition in the New International Version!