A warm welcome to Adventist Review readers and to the 2012 ASI International Convention. For a short while, allow yourself to exchange the intensifying pressures of the outside world for a refreshing and inspiring taste of what it means to be an active Seventh-day Adventist layperson. The theme for this year’s convention is “It Is Time . . . to Be About Our Father’s Business.”
Being on time, for some, is a problem. But unlike His fallen creation, God never has to hurry, nor is He ever late. He declares unequivocally that there is “a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Eccl. 3:1).* God revealed to Abraham that Israel would sojourn in Egypt for 400 years, and on “the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt” (Ex. 12:41). Centuries later a man named Mordecai encouraged his niece with the thought that she was “come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). And of Jesus Paul wrote, “When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4).
I wonder, Were we not, as Seventh-day Adventists, also raised at a specific time and for a special purpose? Are we really, as a prominent Adventist theologian once proclaimed, a “movement of destiny”? Yes, we are. Ought we not then to be about our Father’s business?
What is our Father’s business at this time, anyway?
The ASI officers strongly feel that “it is time” for us, as Seventh-day Adventist laypeople, to do some serious heart searching and some serious searching of the Scriptures to ascertain what Jesus wants of His people today.
Come add your prayers to ours, whether in Cincinnati or in your home. Expect to receive a special blessing from heaven.
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* Bible texts in this editorial are from the King James Version.
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Frank Fournier is president of Adventist-Laymen's Services and Industries (ASI). This article was published August 9, 2012.
