ANN Video Full Episode transcript - June 14, 2012

This week on Adventist News Network, the final chapter in a decades-long legal saga in Australia
... a top civilian honor for former church President Jan Paulsen

... and Babcock University launches the first Adventist medical school in Africa

These stories and more, coming right up.

This is Adventist News Network, a service of the Seventh-day Adventist world church. Thanks so much for joining us this week.

First in the news, Adventist Church leaders in Australia say this week’s ruling on a decades-long legal saga over the disappearance of a baby could finally bring justice to the family. A coroner ruled that the nine-week-old daughter of Michael Chamberlain and Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton was indeed taken by a dingo from a campsite near Ayers Rock in nineteen-eighty. The girl’s disappearance has for years plagued the family and marred the image of the denomination in Australia. Many community members accused the couple of taking their own child’s life and some went so far as to suggest that the Adventist Church encouraged such acts. Shortly afterward, Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted of murdering her daughter. She spent three years in prison before new evidence reversed her sentence. This week’s ruling ultimately confirms the couple’s innocence.

A Veteran church leader Jan Paulsen received one of his home country’s top civilian honors earlier this year. The former Adventist world church president was appointed commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for humanitarian service. Tor Tjeransen attended the presentation ceremony in Norway last week and has this report.  

Adventists in Norway realized they were part of a, “once in a lifetime” experience as they gathered at beautifully situated Tyrifjord Junior College to witness former world president of the Seventh-day Adventist church, Jan Paulsen received the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit.  The special event took place during the Sabbath evening program of the Annual Day Of Fellowship, for the East Norway Conference.  The bishop also for the Lutheran church of Norway, the Reverend, Ole Christian Kvarme, one of those who proposed to the Norwegian king that Paulsen’s ministry be recognized with the order of merit gave a short description of Paulsen’s ministry.  For ANN viewers, he summed it up in this way,  “Jan Paulsen is an outstanding church leader, he has so much warmth, he has depth in his faith and his thinking, he stands out with personal humility.”  The insignia of the order were given by Knut Vollebaek, former Norwegian Ambassador to the United States.  The official statement from the Royal Palace sites, “Meritorious worked for the good of humanity as the reason for giving the order.”  Vollebaek said this of Paulsen’s ministry, “He has had a great impact for the Adventist church in the world as it’s world leader, deepening it, large-ing it, making it more better known and received in the world.”  Paulsen himself felt very honored and humbled.

Well my feelings, I have been overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the kindness, by the generosity of comments, overwhelmed by the sense of fellowship we have here in the church and overwhelmed by the fact that the representatives who were officially here came and enjoyed the spiritual fellowship we have had together this evening.  You know, it is such a big thing – how can you put words to it?  I praise the Lord and I am thankful to the Church that has giving me this opportunity.

We turn now to Nigeria, where the church’s Babcock University officially launched a school of medicine this month. The Benjamin S. Carson Sr. School of Medicine is the Adventist Church’s first medical school in Africa. Church leaders say the move signals a growing commitment by Africans to address the continent’s sweeping public health needs. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to at least two-thirds of the thirty-three million adults and children worldwide living with HIV/AIDS. But according to the United Nations, just two percent of the global healthcare workforce comes from the region. World-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson spoke at the launch ceremony. Carson said he was pleased to have his name associated with Babcock University. He said the new medical school has the potential to produce excellent healthcare professionals who will impact communities in Nigeria, across Africa and even around the world.

The International Bible Conference is meeting in Israel this week. And for the first time, Adventists around the world can attend the meetings alongside hundreds of top scholars and theologians. Members can hear discussions and presentations through live streaming online. This year, scholars will discuss Biblical anthropology from an Adventist perspective. Topics include Greek philosophy, Judaism, Christian history, culture and contemporary theology. You can check out the discussions at Adventist Biblical Research dot org, forward slash live stream. The International Bible Conference is sponsored by the Adventist Church’s Biblical Research Institute.

Adventist historians are expanding the church’s research capacity. The church’s Office of Archives, Statistics and Research opened a new research center at Adventist world church headquarters. Adventist historian David Trim, who heads up the office, says the expanded facilities will encourage more scholars to study Adventist history. He hopes more research will not only inspire membership, but also guide church leaders in decision-making. The research center includes decades of church periodicals and other publications. Photos and documents are stored in a nearby vault. Adventist Church President Ted Wilson joined other church leaders to attend the launch. Wilson said that a careful study of history illustrates how God has led the church in the past.

Adventist satellite evangelists are trying out a new format. The church radio broadcast and Bible School ministry Voice of Prophecy is hosting a weeklong outreach series in Anchorage in the U.S. state of Alaska. Instead of one speaker for the entire week, a different speaker is presenting each new theme. The series is the culmination of “Reach Alaska,” a Voice of Prophecy project to reach America’s last frontier. You can read more at V O P dot com forward slash Alaska.

And coming up, we have a preview of the latest edition of Adventist Review. This week, the magazine explores how Adventists should respond when an elderly or disabled person quits coming to church.   

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Welcome back. Here’s Kimberly Maran with a preview of this week’s issue of Adventist Review.  

This week I’m happy to share with you details about the June 14 Adventist Review magazine. First the cover story titled “Shut In and Left Out” is about ministry to homebound church members’ what they can do to be part of their church, and how churches and members can help meet the needs of these homebounds’ members through outreach ministry. In putting the piece together, I interviewed several homebound members and church leaders who run successful ministry programs. Be sure to check it and other web only features related to this topic out at www.adventistreview.org. We also have some great material on our Give & Take page, where we share anecdotes and quotes our readers send to us. This week’s Give & Take will be good for a few chuckles! Another terrific read is Leo Van Dolsons article “Prisoner of Grace,” which starts out with a burglary and gun shots in a Japanese city. It’s a gripping piece that gives us a glimpse of God’s grace. For these and more features, visit us at www.adventistreview.org.

Church leaders are urging Adventists around the world to read or reread the Ellen White classic, The Great Controversy. Cindy Tutshe has advice this week on how to deal with confusing passages in this book or others by the church co-founder.     

Every student of the writings of Ellen White will occasionally come across some perplexing passages.  The way we deal with these situations may eventually make the vital difference between a life of faith and a life of doubt.  Let’s take a look at six simple but important steps dealing with difficult text. 

1. Always start with prayer and keep and open mind.  Many are brought into turmoil by preconceived ideas.
2. Remember that there is a vast amount of information indicating that Ellen White was indeed a prophet.  Losing sight of this in favor of a single supposed difficulty is quite short sighted.
3. If you have heard someone quote something that Ellen White supposedly said, make sure she really did say it.  Many frequently quoted statements are actually apocryphal.
4. Make sure to read the statement in its context and take a look at the historical circumstances.  Many perplexities vanish easily once the big picture is clear.
5. If this doesn’t solve your problems, visit our website at http://drc.whiteestate.org  We have collected thousands of answers to questions like yours over the decades, chances are that somebody else already discovered what you did.
6. If all the previous steps didn’t solve your problem, feel free to write us at the White Estate.  We’ll do our best to answer your questions. 

These are six very important steps in dealing with difficult passages. 

This week our Facebook and Twitter followers discussed marriage. Megan Brauner shares some of their thoughts on this week’s Adventist social media highlights.

This week we asked people on Twitter and Facebook how young people could know they are ready for a lifetime commitment in marriage. Here are some of your responses:
On Twitter, StevenDong228 says, young people should wait until they know the meaning of love, and what is the meaning of family, knowing that the marriage is holy, love is responsibility, and sanctified principle is the basis of every action.
FesjaMX calls their opinion old-fashioned they say wait until the girl can cook, do laundry, and clean... and he can bring enough money to be stable.
RicoJB says, when you are spiritually mature enough to see God's plan for you. It took Adam 1 day but today Christians get it at age 27.
For PlugInToGod, the signs of maturity are financial independence, completion of higher education; and dating in that state for min. of two years.
JeBro50 doesn’t think there’s a number. She says, No one age is right for everyone, it's about maturity. Some are more mature at 16 than 30.
StevenBee64 doesn’t have a problem with age either. He says he was married at 18, and his wife was 14.  They have been married 29 years.
On Facebook, Darlene says the key is when a young person is ready to face responsibility and commitments.

Thanks to everyone who joined the conversation this week. Join ANN on Twitter and Facebook for next week’s social media discussion.

A new book by Adventist pastor and theologian John Nixon explores how the book of Genesis reveals the character of Jesus. We hear from the author in the week’s ANN book review.

Redemption in Genesis, this is the book Redemption in Genesis.  Let me tell you why I think it is so important, in these pages we explore together the Revelation of Jesus Christ in the bible’s first book.  We see Jesus walking in the Garden of Eden and aboard Noah’s ark; we understand His character better by comparison with Enoch and in contrast to Cain.  We will even see how it is that the love of Christ has revealed paradoxically in divine judgment of the wicked, one more thing, notice that the subtitle of the book reads, The Crossroads of Faith and Reason, this is a reference to my attempt to show how it is that faith and reason so often presented to being opposed to each other actually work together to lead us to the truth.  This is crucial when it comes to important doctrine life, creationism. I could go on and on, boring you with my voice, blah, blah, blah, I would rather though, captivate you with my words in this exciting new book, Redemption in Genesis, The Crossroads of Faith and Reason.

“Redemption in Genesis, The Crossroads of Faith and Reason,” was published by Pacific Press Publishing Association and is available online through the publisher at pacificpress.com.

Still ahead on Adventist News Network, why a child’s first few years might be the most important. 

But up next, this week’s Tech Corner.

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Welcome back. Headlines about security breaches are a great reminder to protect online information. For more, let’s turn to John Beckett for this week’s Tech Corner. 

Most of us have recently heard about another online security breach, this time with the popular contact building and networking site LinkedIn.com. Apparently LinkedIn did not did not use very good encryption on the passwords stored in its database. This meant that when hackers got a copy of the database, passwords were especially vulnerable.

The inner workings of a site like LinkedIn are hidden, so it's impossible to know for sure whether a site is doing a good job of security behind the scenes. The reality is that bad stuff happens, even to the best sites.

However, each of us can do a lot to minimize the damage of a single security breach by picking a strong password that is different for each web site we use.

If you used the same password on LinkedIn as you do for your e-mail, Facebook, and Amazon you could be extremely vulnerable. Think about it like having a single key for your house, car, and gym locker.  The problem is that remembering all those passwords can be next to impossible, so you may want a digital key-ring on which to store them. For this, I like 1password, because it works on my iPhone and Computer. Another popular piece of software is keepass.

To further limit your risk, choose a nice long pass-phrase that's hard to guess and easy to remember.

For those with LinkedIn accounts, go to the LinkedIn site to change your password right away. But watch out for scam e-mails offering to help you reset your password. Those are much more likely to steal it instead.

Many parents worry about handling their children’s teenage years. But as Saustin Mfune reports, the first few years of a child’s life might be more pivotal. 

Neuroscientists that tell us that when a child is born, comes with a lifetime supply of about a hundred billion neurons.  At birth, the brain of a child weighs about 333 grams, and by age two it triples to 999 grams and by age three weighs 1,400.  Now, if a child is born with a lifetime supply of neurons then what makes their brain grow?  The synopsis, when a child is born, it is born with 2,500 synopsis but by age three they multiply to fifteen thousand per neuron and what makes these synopsis to multiply?  We are told that it is the environment of the child, cognitive stimuli – that is reading books, playing with things which develop their mind.  The brain only grows 100 grams from age three to twenty and you are going to find that the brain grows the most from zero to three, second by conception to birth and then lastly, 100 grams from three to twenty, but many times we focus on teenagers – forgetting that the most important period is from pregnancy to age three, from there the brain doesn’t grow much – it is important to focus on children, that is why Ellen White says, the foundation of the child is led in the first three years of a child’s life, Child Guidance, pages 183 to 185, focus on your children, birth to three years old.

When we come back after the break, this week’s iShare report. 

And coming up later, we hear from missionary pilots in Guyana.

[BREAK] 

Welcome back. Let’s turn to Sergio Gonzales to find out what news you reported this week.  

Welcome to iShare, where you bring the news to us. This week we have a video from Mount Pisgah Adventist Academy in North Carolina, United States. The school recently completed a short documentary style video as a promotion and they've shared it with us. Check out what these students have to say:

It was my eighth grade summer and I had just finished about 7/8 years in public school up to that point so I was just deciding – wondering where I was going to go for high school.  I had some choices, with a public high school right down the road and then Mount Pisgah Academy, every time I would go to camp meetings, you know, they would always come and give out free t-shirts and what not so, I started praying about it and I would be like, you know, maybe God wants me there.  My dad was a pastor at the time and so I came home one day and my dad calls me and he sits me down and he is like, “look Joseph, we are going to get transferred.”  As soon as he said Ashville, North Carolina, I was kind of like in shock, Mount Pisgah Academy is about five minutes from there – God has changed my life through all the different experiences that I have had these past four years and I know He lives, and I know He has been guiding me from that point.

To watch the rest of the video, search for Jesus Lives at Mount Pisgah Academy on YouTube.  Thanks for watching iShare, and don't forget to send us your stories at news.adventist.org/ishare. 

Adventist World Aviation supports remote villages in Guyana. But as Jared Kannanaikkel reports, this ministry goes beyond delivering supplies and providing medical evacuations.

For Adventist World Aviation sharing Christ with the people they serve is as important as tending to their physical needs.  Please listen to what these missionaries feel is the most important part of their job at AWA.

You don’t need to be a pilot to be a part of Adventist World Aviation.

Our job as missionaries isn’t to bring Jesus to these people, it is to help them to see where Jesus is already at work in the places where they are.

The easiest way to show Christ to a community is living like Christ did, He lived with the people, He walked with the people, He spent time with them, He could tell them about the kingdom of God in ways that they could relate to.  The way we can share Christ most effectively is to be integrated into the community, to walk with them, to do the same kinds of activities they do and to become personal friends with them.

For our family, the thing that gives us the greatest feeling of accomplishment from our time here is just the opportunity to show care and compassion to the people that need it the most and don’t often see it from others.

Serving other people is what God is all about to begin with, everything He does has to do with service and encouraging, helping people.

So being a servant is really just following God, and just saying, “God I put my life in your hands, what is it you want me to do?” even on a day-to-day basis, today, what do you want me to do?

To watch this entire video and learn more about what Adventist World Aviation is doing in Guyana, please visit: flyawa.org. 

Now let’s turn to David Trim for a look at Adventist history. This week, leadership advice from a former Adventist world church president. 

Welcome to this week in Adventist history – a week notable for events in the Far East and the Middle East.

On June 11 in 1882, H. P. Ribton, first Seventh-day Adventist missionary to Egypt, and two Italian co-workers were murdered in anti-Western riots in Alexandria. All Seventh-day Adventists in Egypt were foreigners and in the shock of the riots they all emigrated. There was no Adventist presence in Egypt again until 1898.

On June 12 in 1943, Chae Tae Hyun, a pioneer Korean evangelist and Seventh-day Adventist church leader, was tortured to death by Japanese military police. Chae was probably the first Adventist martyr in Korea.

On June 16 in 1966, at that year’s General Conference Session in Detroit, Reuben R. Figuhr, one of the most influential GC presidents, announced his retirement. He declared that after 12 years, he had done enough and the church needed new leadership. He ended by recommending “to our leaders and to our people…the middle of the road”, as it is “where constructive work is done.”

On June 16 in 1970, that year’s GC Session voted to wind up the Middle East Division and create the Afro-Mideast Division. The action was meant well, but in the end the change of administrative focus served to set back Adventist mission in the Middle East very considerably.

That was this week in Adventist history. 

Thanks for watching Adventist News Network. Join us next week for more news from the headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In the meantime, look for us on Facebook. You can connect with other Adventists worldwide and find links to all of our photos, stories and videos. Just visit Facebook slash Adventist News. 

Our good news for this week comes from the book of Ephesians, chapter three. Beginning in verse sixteen, the passage reads, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power … to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.”

That’s our show for this week. Don’t forget, you can always visit news dot Adventist dot org for daily news and videos. Until next time, God bless.

-- transcribed by Carol Little

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