Ministry And Theology
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Item 1 and 2 Peter(2016-09-01) McIver, RobertThis book starts with a careful examination of the text of 1 and 2 Peter, and then teases out the implications that the words of Peter have for the everyday life of a Christian. It has many of the characteristics of a commentary. For example, it considers the historical, social and literary background of the passages under consideration, and it comments at the meaning of many of the key words and others features of the Greek text of the epistles. From time to time it does what Peter himself does in his letters, it considers the practical application of the theology expressed in the letters to the every-day life of Christians.
While there are significant commentaries and articles written on 1 and 2 Peter which I have been able to consult while writing this book, much less is written on the two epistles than on the letters of Paul, any of the Four Gospels, and the Apocalypse of John, even when you take into consideration 1 and 2 Peter are short in length. In some respects, the relative neglect of 1 and 2 Peter can be understood. The Gospels record the deeds and sayings of the founder of Christianity. The letters of Paul carry within them profound ideas that have shaped much of Christian theology, and which played a significant role in the extraordinary upheaval in Christianity associated with the emergence of Protestantism. 1 and 2 Peter, on the other hand, are quite small letters tucked away towards the back of the New Testament, and written to address situations that can seem a little alien to the modern reader.
Yet there is much to commend 1 and 2 Peter to our attention. Sure, they are written to people very different in culture and circumstances than those living today. Even so, Peter addresses their concerns with carefully reasoned answers, rich in theology and practical advice. The resultant letters have many interesting features. We discover something of the stressful circumstances that the early Christian believers in Asia Minor were facing, and how Peter addresses their real concerns. We find out that there are false teachers troubling these very churches, and discover the consequences of their teaching in the lives of those who they influence. The theology that Peter shares has been formed to meet very practical needs. Because of that, they have a relevance to contemporary believers that is quite remarkable.
This book explore the concerns that Peter has with regard to the Christian communities he addresses, and his response to their circumstances. The first chapter looks at Peter himself, to discover the stature of the one from whom these letters originated. The next 11 chapters deal with the leading ideas covered in the two letters, more or less in the order in which they are found in the letters. The final chapter looks at some of the larger themes that have emerged as we have studied the details of the letters.
Item 1 Kings, 2 Kings(2020-01-01) Tasker, DavidItem 2 Samuel 24(General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 2013-02-01) van Wyk, KootThe purpose of this study was to produce a devotional commentary on 2 Samuel to be put online by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for the public.
Item 2 Samuel 7(General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 2013-01-01) van Wyk, KootThe purpose of this study was to produce a devotional commentary on 2 Samuel to be put online by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for the public.
Item 2017 Global Church Member Survey – South Pacific Division(2017-01-01) Williams, Anthony; McIver, Rob; Morton, Lindsay; Petrie, Kevin; de Waal, Kayle; Tasker, David; Beamish, PeterItem 538 A.D. and the Transition from Pagan Roman Empire to Holy Roman Empire: Justinian’s Metamorphosis from Chief of Staffs to Theologian(2017-01-01) Van Wyk, Koot J.; Treiyer, Alberto R.; Shea, William H.; O'Reggio, Trevor; Nam, Dae Geuk; Miller, Nicolas; Lee, Myun Ju; Kwon, Jhung Haeng; Kim, Sook Young; de Kock, Edwin; Damsteegt, Gerard; Ahn, Keum YoungThe year 538 A.D. became the turning point in the history of the Roman Empire since so many aspects on political, administrative and economical levels were already switched off that when Justinian declared himself to be a theologian from this year and no longer a soldier, he crossed the barrier of his mandate between what is purely civil obligation and what is religious obligation, similarly to Constantine before, and entered in competition with the papal function and this role is evidence of Justinian’s ongoing caesaro-papism. The quest for unification of the empire by unification of the church, the fever for church-building projects with his wife Theodora, the persecution of enemies of the church and heretics, his disdain with the Sabbath although his second name was Sabbatini, his support for suppressing any eschatological fever in line with the church fathers and Oecumenius and yet trying to build the ‘Kingdom of God’ on earth, all this indicate the problem 538 was for the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. Archaeological and historical original sources of Justinian and contemporaries of popes, biographer of Justinian and a commentator on Revelation (Oecumenius) are very revealing of these times and the shift or transition of what belonged to the Roman Empire handed over since 538 A.D. to the church and the papal function. The Code of Justinian was a persecuting instrument. Justinian upheld the supremacy of the papacy. He permitted through the Council of Orleans actions to be done on Sunday that Constantine prohibited like travel and preparation of food and cleaning the house. In Novellae CXLIV Justinian instituted a Seventh-day Sabbath persecution. He changed the times and laws ad hoc as his Novellae XLVI and coins of 538 A.D. (XII year) indicate. Private gatherings were persecuted. He had church-manual laws. Justinian studied Systematic Theology on the nature of Christ and wrote homiletical rules for preachers. He gave textcritical advice to Jews and condemned their doctrinal deviations. This theological hobby of the ruler of the once mighty Roman Empire was to be taken over by a more theological competent power that would eventually lead to papal-caesarism until the unsettling of this new aggrandizing paradigm in 1798 by Napoleon. The prophetic embedding of the 1260 days as “years” prophecies in both Daniel 7 and Revelation 12 definitely started in 538 A.D. contrary to W. Spicer’s (1918) suggestion of 533 or 538 as two alternative dates or any other dates suggested by other scholars in the history of interpretation in historicism. It is also not just a case of history of interpretation hermeneutics but data solidly supported by archaeology, iconography and original historical sources that coincides with the parameters provided by exegesis of the rest of the Books of Daniel and Revelation added with the exegesis of the detail of the passages under consideration. A necessary ingredient for the historical researcher remains to be the faith that God can predict the future and He did and that the data as well as the prophecies of the Biblical Text are evidence of that.
Item A BÍblia e a Terra Plana(2020-05-01) de Waal, KayleThis article studies the supposed texts that teach that the earth is flat. After an examination of the biblical texts it the paper concludes that the Bible does not teach that the earth is flat or that it has a literal vault or dome or that there are pillars under the earth. The claims for a “flat earth” are made more on presupposition than responsible exegesis. Biblical truth must be grounded in the clear consistent teaching of Scripture that takes seriously the historical, literary, cultural and social context. A God-centred contextual reading of Scripture actually points to God’s indescribable power and sovereign control of the earth.
Item A Biblical and Historical Reflection on the Theology of Ordination and Whether Women May be Ordained as Ministers in the Seventh-day Adventist Church(2015-01-01) Tasker, DavidThe Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church has tried on at least five previous occasions to resolve the issue of whether or not to ordain women ministers. Opposing sides use the same passages of Scripture, demonstrating convincingly that there are more layers to this issue than many care to admit. The chapter explores some of these layers, including historical roots for current practice, a review of the biblical practice of installing leaders, and how various models of Church determine ministry functions. Finally, an evaluation of the reasons given to prevent modern women from following in their steps.
Item A Biblical Theology of Ordination(2015-06-01) de Waal, KayleThis book chapter examines the New Testament evidence for or against ordination.
Item A Church for the Twenty-First Century? A Case for Flexible Organizational Structures(2005-01-01) Oliver, BarryIn order to remain viable in the twenty-first century, the administrative structures of the global Seventh-day Adventist Church need to have an inherent flexibility which enables change. A study of those principles and factors which precipitated the organizational reform of 1901-1903 in the light of contemporary contextual realities reveals that such flexibility and the possibility of change was never precluded by the architects of that process. A healthy church is a church which can subject itself to scrutiny and be flexible enough to change when necessary.
Item A Conversational and Compositional Grid for Freshman University Students(2015-03-01) van Wyk, KootThe purpose of this paper is to put together a tool for Freshman University Students with an ESL level, which will assist them to avoid errors in syntax precision and sentence generation. Both these aspects are problematic for students with a SOV language as mother-tongue who then have to produce with a SVO challenge. When their own language is a post-positional language as opposed to English as a prepositional language, that situation may complicate matters for these students even more. The grid is designed in such a way to allow the student to start from the left and work his way to the right selecting one item from the list constructing a meaningful communication as he/she goes along. The overall intention is towards greater precision and correctness, raising the level of accuracy in syntax and other grammatical aspects. The grammar selected for this purpose is the traditional grammar chosen for its simplicity, stability, and continuity functional in millennia of grammar didactics. The role of transformational-generative grammars are not overlooked but none of the recent grammar approaches in sentence grammar, discourse grammar, HPSG (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar), universal grammar or syntax grammar could serve the purpose of designing this tool except sequencers or DM (discourse markers) discussed by Heine (2013). The limitation to this study is that the Conversational Grid tool has not been tested yet and that task calls for another future article describing the results of experimentation utilizing this tool.
Item A Conversational and Compositional Grid for Freshman University Students II: Application and Analysis(2015-09-01) van Wyk, Koot; Chung, Andy H. T.Previously a tool was designed for the purpose of improving the standard of the sentence production of Freshman University Students with an ESL low level, which assisted them to avoid errors in syntax precision and sentence generation. The lamenting aspect of the previous article is that the tool was not tested for effectiveness. In this article, the results are presented of applying the tool in a class situation. The focus was on problems that beginners experience in a ESL situation regarding syntax in grammar and whether this tool could help them. A project was designed for the students to watch a small video of a robot-“donkey” designed by Boston Dynamics in their online video. The actions of the robot had to be described by them following the instructions of the teacher as to how to use the grid for each sentence. For 2014 spring semester 10 products of students were selected without instructions how to use the syntax tool as compared to 10 products of students for spring semester 2015 in which the tool was mandatory. In both years the students had to know descriptively, procedurally and processionally. The characteristics of the students were listed, namely gender, major, final grade, ranking in team presentation, and listening TOEIC score. The reason the characteristics were brought to the table surrounding the specimens to be investigated is that every specimen can be “weighed” better and it would also permit more interpretation velocity. The errors were listed and the results demonstrated that there are less syntax errors in 2015 than for 2014 but both researchers felt that ”Further investigation is needed with a larger sample size”. Students were given a questionnaire to indicate their feelings and this was also analyzed. We felt, with reasonable reservation that the Grid has a significant impact on aiding students and that one should continue to improve the current Grid as well as developing Grids for pre-intermediate and advanced students.
Item A Demographic Analysis of the Tithing Behaviour of 2562 Seventh-day Adventists in Northern New South Wales, Australia(2002-01-01) Currow, Stephen; McIver, Robert K.An analysis of tithe receipted in Seventh-day Adventist Churches in Northern New South Wales compared to census data reveals that there is a decided difference between the tithing behaviour of the under-fifty-year olds and those over fifty. It is suggested that this explains why there has been an approximately 40% drop in NNSW tithe compared to incomes over the last 25 years.
Item A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660(1975-01-01) Ball, Bryan W.This study is primarily concerned with the theological concepts which formed the basis of the fervent eschatological expectations of seventeenth-century England.
Item A Hermeneutic Case Study Approach to Exploring Continuing Ethos in Religious Institutions(2006-12-01) Handley, Jim; Watts, John D.Item A Message to Teens about Domestic Violence(2013-01-01) Bogacs, Paul; Fischer, Trafford ArthurIn this resource, Trafford Fischer interviews Paul Bogacs, a marriage and family therapist in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Paul is also a school counselor and has a keen interest in keeping young people heading in the right direction when it comes to relationships.
Item A New Creation? The Challenge of the Resurgence of Ancient Rites(2007-06-01) Oliver, BarryThis article discusses conflict and compromise and a growing and worrying tendency of accommodating opposing beliefs in the supernatural into the Christian faith.
Item A Presentation of 4QLXXNum in Comparison with the LXX and MT(2013-10-01) van Wyk, KootTexts from Qumran received attention in publications and research since their discovery. The text under investigation here is no exception. There are some serious questions to consider in relation with this text: What can this Qumran text tell us about the relationship with the consonantal text of the Masoretic Tradition? What can it tell us about its relationship with any of the Ancient Translations? What can it tell us about its relationship with the so-called LXX or Septuagint? And what can it tell us about the condition of the Septuagint in the pre-Christian era? What scholars may not have realized, is that 4QLXXNum is able to tell us something about the conditions of the Hebrew Vorlage in the pre-Christian period related to the existence or not of one canonical perceived and applied text. Textual variety over millennia is no secret nor surprise. Close correlation of texts over millennia is a noteworthy surprise. It appears that 4QLXXNum is the survival of a pre-Antiochus Epiphanes text-form of the Septuagint (pre-164 BCE) which was more literal and in line with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition than the Greek text-form that survived in post-Epiphanes times through Christian hands. Since 4QLXXNum is aligning so well with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition (a period of nearly 1148 years) the stability of these two texts calls for a canon form to have existed almost identical to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition from which the literal translation was made. It implies that this form existed already at Qumran. Any deviation from this standard is later and due to degenerative scholarship. Wevers is correct, he did not reconstruct the original Septuagint of Genesis for the Göttingen edition. He reconstructed the post-Epiphanes degenerative product and what was preserved through Christian hands, and not the original, of which 4QLXXNum is an example.
Item A Provocative Study of Tithing Trends in Australia(2001-08-01) Currow, Stephen; McIver, Robert K.This paper discusses tithing trends and their implications
Item A Reflection in 2004: A Diminishing Financial Support and a Dearth of Expatriates Challenge the Growth of the Adventist Church in the Pacific Islands(2005-06-01) Oliver, BarryThis article discusses an exposure of a worrying trend in the church - the dwindling support for the South Sea Islands.