Adventists at Easter: Unity or compromise? | Scripture & Ellen G. White Speak Out

 

Pope Leo’s Easter message to the world: ‘Let those who have weapons lay them down!’

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — As wars intensify across the globe, Pope Leo XIV used his first Easter address to deliver a stark warning against growing indifference to violence, urging both world leaders and ordinary people to reject fear and choose peace through dialogue.

Pope Leo XIV addresses the faithful after delivering the Urbi et Orbi blessing - Latin for "to the city of Rome and to the world" - from the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica at the end of Easter Mass he presided over in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Claire Giangravé
April 5, 2026


VATICAN CITY (RNS) – During his first Easter address on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV made an impassioned global appeal to end wars and embrace dialogue, following a series of celebrations leading up to Easter in which the pope emphasized the theme of peace.

“Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!” Leo said in his Urbi et Orbi address, Latin for “to the city and to the world,” as 50,000 gathered in the square beneath him, according to Vatican News.

Recent popes have made the traditional Easter address an occasion to call out injustices and conflict in the world. Leo’s Holy Week celebrations, including a prayer vigil on Saturday to “make heard the cry for peace that springs from our hearts,” kept that focus — with added urgency as conflict escalates in the Middle East.

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Full text of Pope Francis’ blessing ‘urbi et orbi’ for Easter 2025

Catholic News Agency / April 20, 2025 


By Pope Francis

CNA Newsroom, Apr 20, 2025 / 06:48 am

On Easter Sunday 2025, Pope Francis did not deliver his speech in person, though he briefly greeted the faithful with a brief “Brothers and Sisters, Happy Easter”.

The pope’s traditio, “urbi et orbi,” was read by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, as the 88-year-old pontiff, still convalescing, was present but physically limited. Pope Francis briefly blessed the crowd after the message was read.

“Urbi et orbi” means “To the city [of Rome] and to the world.” It is a special apostolic blessing given by the pope every year on Easter Sunday, Christmas, and other special occasions.

Here is the full text of the pope’s message:


Christ is risen, alleluia!

Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter!

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Trump Issues Holy Week Declaration on 'the Living Son of God', Plans Whi...

Trump Issues Holy Week Declaration on 'the Living Son of God', Plans White House Easter Service

President Donald Trump prays as he holds his first Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. (Pool via AP)

BENJAMIN GILL
04-14-2025


President Trump issued a faith-filled presidential message on Palm Sunday in honor of Holy Week as Christians around the world commemorate the holiest time of the year. And now there are reports that his administration is also planning a unique Easter staff worship ceremony at the White House with Rev. Franklin Graham as well as Pastors Greg Laurie and Jentezen Franklin.

Trump's Holy Week message wasn't a typical, obligatory, official government statement. Instead, it was filled with the type of language used by Christians, pointing to this week as being sacred to his personal faith, as his own post to Truth Social even declared, "HE IS RISEN!"

He declared, "This Holy Week, Melania and I join in prayer with Christians celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity."  

The White House statement referred to the pivotal events that filled this Holy Week, including Jesus' "triumphal entry into Jerusalem," Holy Thursday when His Last Supper took place, Good Friday as the day Christ was crucified for our sins, and finally "His miraculous Resurrection from the dead" on Sunday.

"During this sacred week, we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross. In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation. Through His suffering, we have redemption. Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life. On Easter morning, the stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, and light prevails over darkness—signaling that death does not have the final word," Trump's statement continues.

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Adventists and Lutherans share combined Easter service

By Daniel Kuberek - May 3, 2019

Conference president Pastor David Butcher (left) with Pastor David Gogoll. 

Seventh-day Adventist campers in South Australia were joined by hundreds of Lutheran worshippers from the Barossa Valley region for a combined Good Friday Easter service on April 18.

The South Australian Conference’s Big Camp meetings are held at Faith Lutheran College in Tanunda, traditionally during the first week of the April school holidays.

“That created something of a problem,” said Pastor Garry Hodgkin, one of the organisers of the program. “The Barossa Lutherans normally utilise this facility for a combined Easter service.”

“Because of that clash, they actually approached us and said, ‘Look, would you be prepared to do a combined worship event on Good Friday?’ We thought about it, we prayed about it, and thought it would be a worthwhile project.”

The program featured musical items from Seventh-day Adventist musical group One Accord, as well as praise time, led by Gilson College chaplain Pastor Mau Tuaoi. Heather Slade from the Lutheran group shared a children’s story, before ministers from both the Lutheran and Seventh-day Adventist Church presented short sermonettes on the significance of Easter.

Lutheran senior Pastor David Gogoll presented on the practical outcomes of the cross. “There are all sorts of theories, we call them the theories of atonement, about what actually happened on the cross. But at the heart of what happened on the cross was that God wants a relationship with you. That God loves you,” he told the capacity crowd.

A presentation by South Australian Conference president Pastor David Butcher followed, speaking on the practical meaning of resurrection. “God’s love is all encompassing,” he preached. “But we live in a world of pain and the resurrection, the return of Jesus provides the only hope.”




Reflecting on combined worship, Pastor Hodgkin said, “This event was not planned as an ecumenical gathering, but rather as a wonderful opportunity to express friendship and provide witness to other Christian people.”

“The thing that I particularly appreciate about this service is that we’ve got other individuals coming along to our Big Camp who are not Seventh-day Adventist. In this particular gathering today, we had about 400 Lutherans. We had about 350 Adventists. So often at our Big Camps, it’s a matter of us talking to ourselves.”

Pastor Butcher echoed these sentiments. “One of the things we want to look at is how to better connect with the local community when we do run camp.”

The event was also live streamed by local production ministry, Living Ministry Media.


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4 Days with Jesus - Sunday / Chris Oberg - April 21, 2019

From Series: "4 Days with Jesus - 2019"

Sunday, ‘a sacrament of Easter’

Archbishop Leonard P. Blaor 

03 April 2018


May the crucified and risen Christ fill your life with light and joy! As St. Paul says: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. … But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Cor 15:17, 20) So, let us rejoice with confidence!

What we read in the Gospel and what we celebrate at the liturgy from one season to another are not simply a historical remembrance of things past. Scripture and the mysteries of redemption are living realities here and now because the risen Christ is alive and active. Having passed outside of space and time (something impossible for us to comprehend), Jesus is always simply “present” in both dimensions. Easter is “today” every bit as much as it was 2,000 years ago.

Even in time, our observance of Easter is more than a once-a-year occurrence. From the earliest centuries, Christians have recognized that every first day of the week every Sunday is a little Easter. St. Augustine says Sunday is “a sacrament of Easter.” And St. Jerome writes: “Sunday is the day of the resurrection, it is the day of Christians, it is our day.”

“It is our day,” and yet it is increasingly evident that we Christians are abandoning what is ours in the relentless drive toward a secular society. The observance of every Sunday by faithful attendance at Mass, refraining from unnecessary business and servile work, making it a day for parish and family all these things are no longer part of the lifestyle of many who consider themselves Catholic.

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Nod for Easter Sunday trading law gives councils power to decide (Video)

THOMAS MANCH 09:50, August 26 2016


DAVID WHITE FAIRFAX MEDIA
David Tua speaks out against Easter Trading

The Government has handed councils the power to decide if shops can open on Easter Sunday ending a decades-long parliamentary impasse and after a dozen previous attempts.

After an insult-laden debate in the house, in which one MP was kicked out, the bill passed by a narrow majority of 62 votes to 59.

The campaign against the legislation, which brought former boxer David Tua into Parliament to weigh in on the matter, failed to knock it out of the ring.


RNZ
Pressure is mounting on the National party to allow its MPs to cast a conscience vote on Easter trading legislation for its final reading, rather than be forced to toe the party line.

National MPs opted to back the bill along party lines, leading to impassioned pleas from the opposition for them to ignore orders and cross the floor to vote according to their conscience.

READ MORE:
* David Tua wants knockout blow for Easter Sunday trading law
* Former All Blacks take on Government over Easter Sunday opening hours law change
* Opinion: John Key playing loose with the facts on Easter Sunday trading law
* Working group a better option than law to fix Easter Trading confusion: Union
* Shops should open whenever they like - Retail NZ

Labour MP Sue Moroney was booted out of the house, for the first time, for calling Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse "gutless".

Deputy Speaker Chester Borrows asked Moroney to withdraw her comments, which she did, only to reiterate her point.

She said National MPs were "hypocritical", attending church in their electorates, only to come to the House and vote the other way.

Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway backed Moroney in a fiery speech, calling upon National MPs to "get some guts".

"The Government ... is passing the buck on an issue, which is fundamental to the role of the New Zealand Parliament.

IAIN MCGREGOR/FAIRFAX NZ


John Key did not allow National MPs to have a free vote on the Easter Sunday trading law which has just passed the House.

"This legislation is shambolic, it is going to create inconsistencies around the country," Lees-Galloway said.

Both Labour and Green MPs argued it was unrealistic for employees, especially women working in retail, to take a personal grievance against an employer who insisted they work.

"They have no idea what it means to try and say no to your boss," Green spokesperson for workplace relations Denise Roche said.

But National MPs said the law would "give power back to the local community".

Jami-Lee Ross said it was "a process issue that should be given to local authorities".

Employee rights were built into the bill, he said.

Ross accused Labour of "awful tactics", using ethnic and religious rhetoric in their protest against the bill.

Simon O'Connor said the party's members had not been whipped into a unified vote on the bill.

He said that was little difference to the opposition, who all voted against the law at its second reading.

'I'll keep fighting'

David Tua was at Parliament for the vote, hitting out at National for denying their MPs a conscience vote.

He was disappointed the bill passed, but said he would now carry on his fight to local government.

"It's a good fight, we've got to keep fighting, you know, it's not the end of it.

"You know when there are things that are dear to your heart you've got to fight for them," he said.

Tua, a devout Christian, said Easter Sunday was one of the most important days for his faith and a chance for all Kiwis to enjoy a rest and spend time with their families.

Another sporting heavyweight, former All Black Michael Jones, had already urged Pacific MPs to vote against the law, saying it would stop people from spending the day with their church and families.

"If the Government's reforms go ahead many New Zealanders will miss out on the opportunity to spend Easter Sunday with their church, their communities and their families.

"Our community doesn't want the Government interfering with Easter Sunday. We want to keep Sunday special."


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Why doubting the Bible is good for Christians

PostEverything

It lets people ponder their faith without losing it.

By Jacob Lupfer March 25 at 6:00 AM 

Jacob Lupfer is a contributing editor at Religion News Service and a Ph.D. candidate in government at Georgetown University.

Penitents parade with crosses during a Holy Week procession in the northern Spanish Basque village of Segura. (Gari Garaialde/AFP/Getty Images)

As a professional observer of American religion, I am fascinated by how people decide which biblical stories must be understood as literal accounts of historical events and which may be interpreted as mythic, metaphorical or exaggerated.

Easter, of course, is the Big Miracle. Though religious belief is difficult to measure empirically, surveys report that between 80 and 95 percent of American Christians believe Jesus literally rose from the dead. Christians almost universally believe he performed miracles and that the Bible records God’s supernatural interventions in the life of his people.

But plenty of Christians interpret at least some biblical material non-literally. Maybe Jesus did not actually walk on water. Maybe the story of Jonah living in a fish’s belly for three days is a myth. Maybe Job was not a historical figure.

Traditionalists typically fear a slippery-slope dynamic: Once you deny the “minor” miracles, you are on the road to rejecting the more theologically consequential ones, namely the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth. And once you reject those, they argue, it’s a hop, skip and jump to atheism. A 1924 fundamentalist cartoon titled “The Descent of the Modernists” says it best. It shows men descending down a staircase from Christianity to atheism. Each step is labeled with a progressively more disastrous heresy: “Man not made in God’s image,” “No virgin birth,” “No resurrection,” and, finally, unbelief.

The slippery slope can unravel a lifetime of faith at a doubter’s first rigorous questioning of doctrines. It can cut many faithful people off from the church as soon as they begin to have any doubts at all. And it can promote an unthinking Biblicism. Once you accept the historicity of the resurrection, you already hold the conditions for believing that Jesus walked on water, that he literally fed 5,000 people with only a few loaves and fishes. And perhaps, when this happens, believers stop thinking critically about the Bible and miss out on a lot of the lessons buried beneath the literal stories.

What strikes me is that, for all my studies and doubts, very few everyday Christians seem to be plagued by the nagging questions that linger so weightily in the dark nights of my soul.

At age 18 or 19, I abandoned my belief in the resurrection as a historical event. This is fairly typical, I suspect, except maybe for the fact that I was majoring in religious studies at a conservative evangelical college.

“If Christ be not risen, your faith is in vain,” my freshman philosophy professor admonished, quoting the King James translation of 1 Corinthians 15:14. Maybe, maybe not, I thought. But I was already certain that the resurrection was a myth. In the course of my academic study of the Bible, I realized that many stories were not literal reports of historical events. If Jonah did not really spend three days in the belly of a fish, I reasoned, then why believe in the virginal conception of Christ or his bodily resurrection?

As I rejected fundamentalism, I retained a key fundamentalist tenet: Either all the Bible is true or none of it is. I chose none.

I expected that a kind of ethical non-theism would illumine the paths to justice, human flourishing and existential contentment that Christianity had for two millennia obfuscated.

I was wrong.

I turned out to be, to borrow novelist Ann Rice’s phrase, a Christ-haunted atheist. The longer I did not believe, the more sense theism made to me. Because I had been so formed (intellectually and culturally, if not emotionally) by Christianity, it just seemed sensible to me that God was the source not only of values like freedom and dignity, but also of justice and morality.

But there was still the matter of the resurrection, a thing I did not believe in. Thus I had gone from a revisionist Christian who loved Jesus but doubted God to a rational theist who believed in God but doubted Jesus. Years after dropping out of church, I began having serious concerns about the philosophical and ethical causes and consequences of my apostasy.

While I vacillate along the slippery slope from doubt to believing, I become less insistent on rendering my personal judgments about the historicity of every biblical or saintly miracle. Instead, I think seriously about what it would mean to follow in Christ’s footsteps.

I struggle to believe the tomb was empty that first Easter morning. But it is easier for me to believe in, or at least hope for, the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. He may well be the central figure in human history. And besides, legions of people who surpass me in knowledge and wisdom accept Jesus’s resurrection as a trustworthy historical fact.

For my part, I usually find popular Christian apologetics to be unpersuasive, even from the minds of literary geniuses such as C.S. Lewis or scholars like the Anglican N.T. Wright. I would prefer a faith that can withstand the most stringent intellectual scrutiny, even as I am skeptical that such a thing exists.

But I will find my way to some church on Easter morning, less as a journalist or scholar and more as a once-and-maybe-future worshiper. I will find my voice exclaiming, “He is risen indeed. Alleluia!” Will I finally believe? Maybe not, but I will silently concede that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not the craziest thing I ever thought about believing in.


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