Creation Illustrated Enters 25th Year (edit, back)

12/20/2017

Creation Illustrated Ministries enters its 25th year of making it easy to “Share Christ in the Marketplace” through the beauties and truths found in God’s creation. Starting with the recently-published 95th issue of Creation Illustrated magazine, some exciting changes make this outreach tool even easier to reach souls in this hurting world.

One major adjustment is removing all outside advertising to help make the whole publication a reprieve from the daily overwhelm. Editor and publisher Tom Ish explains that the magazine will now have an even broader appeal that keeps coming throughout the year, so that more professionals, business owners, hospitals, and ministries can provide this top-quality outreach tool to clients, patients, and community contacts. Some Adventist hospitals, clinics, and lifestyle centers are using it as an outreach to their patients, doctors, and staff. The publishers pray that the reduced advertising revenue will be more than covered by subscriptions to an expanded market, where more souls will receive the first angel’s message—to worship the Creator of heaven and earth—in these last days.

The impact of nature has a lasting effect. A recent report in LiveScience explains how inmates who watched nature documentaries had much less aggression in prisons. Creation Illustrated and Christmas Behind Bars ministries already knew this. They have been partnering for the last five years to send Creation Illustrated magazines to some of the 2.3 million incarcerated men and women across the country. Prisoners are surrounded by concrete and steel all day, and the inspiring award-winning nature photography, combined with Bible-based character-building messages, speaks to their hearts of a loving Creator God who can make each of us a new creation in Christ Jesus. The reception has been overwhelming, with many letters of thanks and requests for more issues coming in every week.

Some other new changes and features Creation Illustrated has added include more contests to help students and others unplug from electronics and get out in God’s restorative creation. Now each edition includes a new poetry contest for three different age categories, a new coloring contest, which is part of a character-building lesson study by Pastor Terry McComb, and the popular photography contest, which is now expanded to three age groups. Tom Ish explains that these new features will help engage the youth more and rescue them from social media. “Reaching our youth and helping them value the messages found in Creation and God’s Word is so vital in these trying times,” he said.

To facilitate this commitment, Creation Illustrated Ministries has sought to reach Adventist students for the past 15 years with the creation message by mailing yearly subscriptions to all 5,000 Adventist teachers and school libraries in the NAD, as well as to all the Adventist self-supporting school teachers and libraries. By partnering with several foundations, donors, and the support of many of NAD conference education departments, all of the dedicated Adventist teachers are able to use Creation Illustrated in their classrooms for science, Bible, and language arts studies.

Creation Illustrated stands apart from most other publications available today, in that it is able to help all ASI businesses and ministries reach inside and outside of their organizations with a message from inspired counsel that using nature and creation is the “most effective way to teach nonbelievers, more than any other method” (Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, pp. 186, 187). “All need the teaching to be derived from this source. In itself the beauty of nature leads the soul away from sin and worldly attractions, and toward purity, peace, and God” (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 24).

Creation Illustrated Ministries welcomes your prayers and encouragement as it continues to share the message of hope and rest for the weary who need “communion with their own hearts, with nature, and with God” (The Ministry of Healing, p. 58).