For the One Quotes

“Jesus is not one among the 28 Adventist Fundamental Beliefs. Rather, He is the fundamental Adventist Belief through whom all other “beliefs” unfold and find their meaning.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“But it is not theology that saves us. Jesus holds that place. Our theology continues to be the way we express our best thoughts about Jesus but Jesus is not bound by our words. He always transcends them. He lives beyond them, in a realm of meaning we can hardly comprehend. So we use these units of thought that we call words to explain, describe, and try to capture the mystery of Jesus. However, our words fail us—and they always will.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“However, there is room in its shadow for everyone who ever has, does or ever will live.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“But there is not room on the cross for two.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“We must not let our doctrines and teachings be reduced to tools used to create a wedge between others and us. Our doctrines must be a link that continues to give us a clearer picture of Jesus and invites others to come and see what we have discovered.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Lord, we thank you for bringing us through the dark moments of 1844. You led us beyond the struggle and the disappointment that shook us to our very core. May this sublime reality keep us from dividing into separate camps and alienating ourselves from the world. May we extend to everyone we encounter the grace You have bestowed on us. Keep us from every evil inclination, but may we be led to serve you as Lord with all of our heart, mind, and soul.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“By the time Jesus enters the story, instead of the failsafe system reminding God’s people of His mighty outstretched arm and turning their hearts to back Him, it had become a sign of spiritual pedigree. The children of Israel developed a false sense of security in their system of rules, regulations, rituals, and rites. They placed their faith in having the system, rather than the God who created the system. The leaders were using the forms of the system to show their piety rather than renew the reality of a life surrendered to God. That which was supposed to be a renewable resource continuously recalibrating their hearts back to God, simply became an outward declaration of who’s better than who.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Among His own people, Jesus is tekton. For the centurion, Jesus is kyrie.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“We need to be united in what or who we are “for,” not in what we are against. Our enemy is defeated and will soon cease to exist, but we will remain united in Christ, our core, for eternity.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Jesus Himself, the Lover and Uniter of humanity, often stood up and spoke out for what was right or needed to be reinterpreted, even though it caused problems in the “church” He was loyal to. So much so, they killed Him for it.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“I love being a Seventh-day Adventist. I chose it . . . on purpose. And I love what my church teaches about God.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Our church had an awkward beginning. We grew out of a movement that was dead wrong about the dates and times of Jesus’ return. But out of that great disappointment and gross error grew a people devoted to voraciously studying the Bible and banking on being with Jesus as soon as He would allow.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Is it possible to be so blinded by your own doctrine that you would actually take human life in God’s name and think you are doing Him a service?”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“I know Jesus—I have encountered Him—but I want more and more of Him. I am not ready to say, “I have enough Jesus.” I want more of Jesus. And I want more of Him for my church. I want more of Him for you and for me. I want more of Jesus. If discovering more of Jesus means plunging into uncomfortable and unknown deep waters, then let’s be uncomfortable, let’s risk it, because it is there in the deep waters where amazement is found. There in the deep waters we discover more of Jesus.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“And when we gather with our fellow believers, confessing our sins, hearing each other’s stories, sharing each other’s heartbreaks—then, most of all, Jesus is here.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“When we are wrong, Jesus is still with us. When we thought we knew what it meant to follow Him and it all blows up in our face, He is beside us. When we’ve staked our claim on something, then fall on our face in front of everyone, Jesus is still there.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“If William Miller is a great example of someone who started out with a deep conversion, then sought to be theologically correct out of that experience, Ellen White represents those who started out wanting to be right, then learned to love Jesus.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Adventism was born because of a wrong calculation about the Second Coming . . . fuelled by an intense, emotional, highly personal, fervent, and ultimately right desire to be with Jesus.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“The Advent movement was born in failure rather than success, error rather than truth, darkness rather than light, and sorrow rather than joy.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Our love affair with God isn’t an arranged marriage to a demanding partner, a fate worse than death. It’s more like a spirited adventure, like otters in the ocean swimming in the assurance of deep, safe love.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“He came, not so much as to declare a message, but rather that there might be a message to proclaim. He Himself was and is the message, not His teachings, but He Himself constituted Christianity.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Before Ellen White had her first vision, we were about one thing. We had an all-consuming, irrepressible, irresistible, overpowering, radical desire to be with Jesus.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Before they behaved right, before they believed right, they recognized a Voice and they knew—I will follow this Man. I will belong to Him. They left everything behind. All they had was Jesus. They didn’t know where they were going, what they were being called to. They weren’t sure who He was, but they were attracted to this Person. They recognized something in Him.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“The earliest record of Adventist history is in Genesis 1. The supremacy and authority of Jesus is evident even in the Creation story.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“My job is not to be right; it is to be in Christ. My job is to explore the wonders of His mercy and His grace together, in community.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“As real spiritual life declines, it has ever been the tendency to cease to advance in the knowledge of the truth.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Faith is fearful and defensive when it begins to die inwardly, struggling to maintain itself and reaching out for security and guarantees. In so doing, it removes itself from the hand of the One who has promised to maintain it. And its own manipulations bring it to ruin. The pugilistic faith usually occurs in the form of an orthodoxy that feels threatened and is therefore more rigid than ever.3”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“To have the church define Christ is dangerous. The bride did not ask the groom for the relationship, it was the groom who asked. The church is the bride of Christ only because He asked us to be, not because we have any place or title from which to attract Him.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“Our missiology has always been clearly defined for us and our ecclesiology has been inherited, healthy or not.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project

“In this journey, I began to understand the blessing that I have in holding my faith tradition high when it comes to Jesus because a high Christology is the elemental impulse of the pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.”
― Nathan Brown, For the One: Voices from The One Project