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“There is a biblical base for Adventist youth ministry. The Adventist philosophy of youth ministry encompasses the salvation of our youth and acceptance by the Church of its responsibility to them. It is one thing to realize that we have youth in the church. It is another thing to accept the responsibility for those youth and give them a message of hope that will bring peace to their souls. The church has a responsibility to appeal to its youth in the light of the urgency of God’s coming. Our young people need to be challenged today with a message that is relevant to them, a message that fills their needs. They need to see this message modeled by the church and its members. They need to be led by precept and example to adopt a lifestyle that will allow them to enjoy the presence of God on this earth, so that this enjoyment and relationship may be continued in the courts of heaven. That's the message and the mission of this church to its youth” (Malcolm J. Allen, Divine Guidance or Worldly Pressure?, p.10)

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“…there is one overriding and superior culture in the world. It is a culture that transforms societies by transforming people one by one. It is a culture that, perhaps paradoxically, unites people from all cultures into one that shares a common goal and a common set of values. It is not a new culture, per se, but one that has been around for over two thousand years: the Christian culture…God has a specific people in mind; the people of God-those who put their trust in Jesus Christ. The spiritual principles that Christians must live by make up a unique God-centered culture, a culture that cuts across all race and ethnic lines. Revelation 5:9 speaks directly to this when it declares that Christ has purchased with His blood men and women “from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” God has taken a cross section of fallen culture and redeemed it into a new and living culture that plays be His rules; men and women who are new creatures in Christ (cf. 2 cor. 5:17).
So there is a Christian culture made up of black people, white people, Asians and Middle Eastern groups, that all share a common bond.” (Joseph Bianchi, Common Faith, Common Culture, p.7,21)

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“Ultimately, it was the bacchanal’s smothering culture of sexual excess that proved to be the undoing of Greek dominance in the world. Historians from Thucydides and Heroditus to Himmelfarb and Schlossberg have documented that the social collapse of Hellenism was rooted in the moral collapse of Hellenism. The reason is as simple as it is universal.

Just as liberty and equality are opposite extremes often contrary to freedom, so sensuality and satisfaction are opposite extremes often contrary to happiness. There is, in fact, no real connection between the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of pleasure. Happiness and pleasure are indeed, in a sense, antithetical things since happiness is founded on the value of something eternal while pleasure is founded on the value of something ephemeral. (Grant & Horne, Unnatural Affection, p.2)

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“American materialism has led the nation into a moral vacuum which portends frightening results for society. Moral values are rooted in the Christian religion because the stem from the character of God. Moral values cannot be separated from the revealed truths of the Bible and an honest adherence to them. The quest must therefore be for authentic biblical truth regarding God’s plan for the individual, and for the present and future destiny of planet earth. Thus the blueprint to be sought is not Roman, nor American, nor can any crusade be Roman-American! What must be proclaimed is a biblical message with evangelical zeal, dynamic conviction, and prophetic insight rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The religious heritage of America tells us that this can best be accomplished by a free church in a free state, where no single religious entity has a preferential status.” (V. Norskov Olsen, Papal Supremacy and American Democracy, 161)

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“We know that extremist demagogues emerge from time to time in all societies, even in healthy democracies. The United States has had its share of them, including Henry Ford, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace. And essential test for democracies is not whether such figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place- by keeping them off the mainstream party tickets, refusing to endorse or align with them, and when necessary, making common cause with rivals in support of democratic candidates. Isolating popular extremists requires political courage. But when fear, opportunism, or miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.” (Levitsky & Zimblatt, How Democracies Die, p.7)

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“Atheism is still very much alive today. In contemporary America, it has become most militant, seeking to expunge all vestiges of Christianity from public life by going to extremes about the separation of church and state. This time, too, the devil is cunningly using it as a maneuver to fire up Fundamentalist zealots who want to contaminate politics with theology. The fiend behind their fair-seeming designs knows well that the inevitable consequence would be: legislation that mandates faith in a quite Medieval way, by stipulating what people have to believe in and how they must worship. Eventually this can have only one effect, to destroy religious freedom in America, with disastrous consequences for both dissenters and the country itself.” (Edwin de Kock, 7 Head & 10 Horns, 45)

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"The assumption among church marketers seems to be that if a resource is available, it must be from God. And if God has given us this resource, we are thereby warranted to use it to accomplish God's purposes, so long as we remember to give God the credit for blessing our efforts when we “succeed.” The church marketers are not the first in church history to make such assumption. In the fourth century, Augustine believed that God’s providence was responsible for Constantine’s embracing Christianity, thereby placing the reigns [reins] of power in the hands of Christians for the first time. Augustine thought this meant the church was now justified in using its newfound power to coerce wayward Christians back into the fold. In retrospect, many think Augustine was mistaken. Similar assumptions were no doubt held by many Crusaders who thought they were merely using the resources that God had given them, such as the sword and the power of the medieval monarchy, to convert the masses to Christ. In retrospect, many also think The Crusaders were mistaken. Finally, many Christians in the United states believe their country fully justified in exploding nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not least because they believe God provided these resources. Again, many believe these Christians were wrong. Too often, it seems, the church has been tempted to believe that this new Kingdom God is bringing could be established by using the methods of the old Kingdom that is passing away.” (Kenneson & Street, Selling out the Church, 153)

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“The first commandment may seem outdated if we think of idols as statues of wood and stone. But Scriptures treats the topic of idolatry far more subtly. An idol is anything we want more than God, anything we rely on more than God, anything we look to for greater fulfillment than God. Idolatry is thus the hidden sin driving all sins…We tend to equate idols with things that are forbidden or intrinsically evil. But things that are intrinsically good can also become idols-if we allow them to take over any of God’s functions in our lives.” (Nancey Pearcey, Finding Truth, 36-37)

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“We, today, do not understand as we should the truths for which our forefathers paid so dearly. More than our naivete, we display our slothfulness by acting as though these doctrines require no further study to yield their full blessing. It is dumbfounding that the special people raised up to herald these truths should consider them worthy of nothing more than the partial and fragmentary comprehension we have of them. Who can doubt but that the understanding of the heavenly sanctuary and the judgment will take on more pointed and practical meaning as we near the close of probation? But where will this newly heightened meaning come from? From those walking far
from God? From those who are unable and unwilling to press together in seeking Heaven’s blessing?” (Dave Fiedler, Hindsight, p.22)