Cliff's Edge
Who but a Seventh-day Adventist?
Seventh-day Adventists, and Seventh-day Adventists alone, taught me the truths that I love; truths that have radically changed my life.
Clifford Goldstein
July 10, 2026
Mercy Above Enemy Lines
Because Franz had not pulled the trigger on him, his children and grandchildren were able to experience life.
Clifford Goldstein
May 8, 2026
A Dissent from Deep Time
From about age ten to twenty, I lived in Miami Beach. Within that ten-year span, I watched the Atlantic—one wave, one ripple, one current at a time—chew away the shore. Having no more sand to erode, large waves would smash into hotel walls, spraying saltwater into the freshwater pools above them. One stormy day I … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
June 14, 2024
My First Public Evangelism
The year was 1979. Yours truly had just been born again, though so clueless that, had you told me I was a sinner, I would have uttered, “What are you taking about?” The next day I walked into a health food store run by Christians whom I had just met. I didn’t know that they … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
May 10, 2024
A Lament
It’s my fortieth year at the General Conference, and though I was not brought there to be an apologist, that’s what I’ve been doing since, even longer if you count my four years in the church before the Big House. Though having no idea how effective I’ve been in convincing others of our message, I … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
May 1, 2024
A Little Existentialist Dread for the Soul
Describing the change that overwhelmed Adam and Eve immediately after the Fall, Ellen White wrote that their peace and harmony was replaced by “a sense of sin, a dread of the future, a nakedness of soul.”1 A sense of sin? A dread of the future? A nakedness of soul? These sentiments, from Adam and Eve … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
April 22, 2024
Tolstoy’s Confessions
One of the greatest writers in the last two centuries was Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). The Russian was world famous while alive and his legacy continues. Though raised in “Orthodox Christian faith,” he abandoned religion young, seizing instead upon Enlightenment promises that through science, technology, and reason, humanity would progress toward utopia, a common theme … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
April 13, 2024
Origin of a Slur
It was the early 1960s, a summer because I remember the green grass and the leafy weeping willow tree in the back corner of our yard in upstate New York. My dad wore his ubiquitous white t-shirt and, surely (though I don’t remember), a cigarette had been dangling from his mouth. What I do remember … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
March 22, 2024
Ivan’s Children
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (1821—1881) greatest novel, Ivan Karamazov, who symbolized skepticism about the goodness of God, challenged his brother Aloysa, a monk who symbolized more traditional faith. Ivan begins with a litany of tragic stories, all involving children (according to Joseph Frank’s epic biography, Dostoyevsky: A Writer in His Time,[i] many of … Continued
adventist-review
March 8, 2024
Abraham’s Great Name
For (surely) deep and sophisticated reasons, the über-intellectuals in Bibledom make a great hermeneutical division in Scripture where none exists. Genesis 1:1-11:26 is something called “mytho-history” or the like. The six-day creation, the Fall, the global flood, the Tower of Babel. Bah! Myths written by primitive Bronze Agers who never read The Descent of Man. … Continued
Clifford Goldstein
February 29, 2024
Sign up for the Newsletter
Get the latest Adventist news straight into your inbox.
Follow Us:
Advertisement
