There is a pink elephant in the room that no one seems to want to discuss. I don't want really want to discuss it myself; but it is, after all, a pink elephant.

The Los Angeles Lakers have just won their second consecutive N.B.A. championship; the sixteenth championship in the history of the franchise. It was a tough, hard fought, seven game series between two evenly matched rival franchises (the other being the Boston Celtics). Lakers fans the world over, once again, are ecstatic. Winning is wonderful.

OK, no more Mr.Nice Guy.

Tennis great John McEnroe is famous for his brilliance as a player and infamous for his expletive-laced argumentative tirades in which he often questioned officials' calls made during his matches with the exclamation "you cannot be serious!" He has since leveraged this notoriety and signature expression into a current commercial endorsement of a rental car company.

"That which we have is true, but we don't have the whole truth. If we had the whole truth, we'd be God." --Dr .Rupert Bushner

An epiphany of sorts has descended on me in reading (and perhaps in writing) some of the more recent (and perhaps provocative) Adventist Today blogs, and their subsequent commentary.

In my opinion, given our corporate eschatological view concerning the role that America will play in events immediately preceding the Second Coming, or more specifically, given the consensus Seventh-day Adventist "take" on Revelation 13 as delineated in The

It is often considered rude or at least somewhat ill-mannered to discuss politics or religion in polite society. I wonder if it is considered equally ill mannered to discuss politics within the context of [a] religion; or for that matter, if indeed this particular blog space should or should not be considered as part of polite society?

It's a nice feeling to be sure that you are right, whether in fact you actually are or not. That sense of certainty is at once powerful and empowering. On the other hand, not being positive that you are right, or telling those with whom you are generally in agreement that, alas, you are not sure that "we" are right, tends to be somewhat threatening...even dangerous in a sense.

For nearly 65 years now, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the United States have had what we refer to as Regional Conferences, comprised chiefly of Americans of African descent, i.e., black people.