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For those who might be interested in increasing their financial knowledge: 1) schwab.com/trading-up-close is a website that has multiple professional tutorials and guidance. 2) SchwabMoneyWise is available at the app store. It is a free game that teaches financial fundamentals to teens age 14 and older.

Slaveowners in the U.S. were aware that enslaved people were fleeing to Mexico, so they tried to persuade Mexico into signing a fugitive slave treaty. Mexico declined, insisting that once enslaved people set foot on Mexican soil, they were free. James

1 and 2. In the TANAK (what we tend to call "Old Testament") the high priest would enter the most holy place on two different occasions; when dedicating the sanctuary to inaugurate the service and then on Yom Kippur. Dr. Richard Davidson pointed out that in the Septuagint (the best known and most complete copy we have of the TANAK in Greek) uses two different words for the two different reasons for entering. When Hebrews talks about Jesus entering the most holy place, the author of Hebrews decided to use the same word that the Septuagint for inaugurating the start of a new service in the sanctuary, NOT the word that the Septuagint used for entering on Yom Kippur. 3. This is a bit complicated. First; when we look at how other Bible writers quote other Bible writers, they tend not to use what is called "exegesis" which is all the context of the original text. They either use analogy to apply the principles of the text to an analogous situation (Such as how Matthew uses Isaiah 7) or else they use the language to make an application. Thus it is safe to assume three correct ways of using a Bible text: Exegesis; it's immediate context and all that implies. Analogy: Applying the principles to a very similar situation. And what I've heard called "Homiletical" drawing lessons from the words, but not focused on the exegesis or even what can be called an analogy. (Such as when Ellen White said that "we preach the law the law the law until we are as dry as the hills of Gilboa"). We rarely find prophets using exegesis on other prophets; they usually draw analogies or homilies. Mrs. White was frustrated in how people kept wanting to use her writings for exegesis and kept getting questions for exegesis. She saw her job as making application of Biblical principles. She tended to either deliberately ignore requests for exegesis, or tell people that it was their job to study out what it meant, including saying things like "My writings are not to be used to interpret the meaning of the daily." She seemed to enjoy looking at the tools of exegesis. She visited the archaeological finds in museums in Europe and longed to stay studying the finds, but she needed to leave to do her job. To me, some of her statements seem to be baffled that we as church members were not interested in doing our job of studying the exegesis of a text and wanted her work to be the exegesis. A second principle is found in the SDABC vol 4. an article titled "The Role of Israel in Old Testament Prophecy". A while back I found a book covering similar information titled "Old Testament Eschatology". When we do an exegesis of a text we tend not to find very long prophecies. We find God offering his people two ways of spreading the gospel: Either living in the land, blessed by God and have the trade caravans bring messages about them to the world and the world come to learn about the gospel. The other is if not faithful that God would send them curses to encourage change and if nothing else worked, they would go into exile. In exile they were to share with their neighbors their unfaithfulness and God's faithfulness; thus spread the gospel and the exile could end with a second great exodus lead by the messiah. Most of the theological theories about Daniel 8:14 were developed at a time when Belshazzar had been forgotten. We did not know when his third year was until archaeological discoveries in the 20th century. In class at AUC a professor did a little experiment. Taking what we now know was the 3rd year of Belshazzar, and adding 1150 days to it we come to business as usual in Babylon. But if you add 2300 days to it, we come to a year when Medio-Persia was breathing down Babylon's neck, Belshazzar's feast and the early days of the Medio-Persia empire. With the understandings of Old Testament Eschatology; the emphases is that time is running short for sharing the gospel if they wanted the exile to end in a second great exodus lead by the messiah. Daniel 9 is an analogy of the other texts for Old Testament eschatology and Daniel 8. Daniel is saying that the exile was not going to end in the second great exodus lead by the messiah, but that there will be a return to the land and another 70 weeks of years of how God could to bless them in the land and thus lead to the ministry of the messiah. Now, in Daniel 8:14 Daniel does not use the word "days" or "Years" but evenings-mornings, indicating cyclic time. We modern western Greek thinkers think in terms of a time line. The ancients and the east thought in terms of cycles. (An excellent book to read about this is "Before Philosophy" 1946 University of Chicago Press, by Henri Frankfort et. el. I don't know why our church does not get the publishing rights and reprint it. that book would answer many of our arguments). We find the Hebrew Cycles in Leviticus 23 and here and there in Deuteronomy. Leviticus 23 gives the Hebrew week: 6 days and the Sabbath. 6 months and either Passover or Yom Kippur, 6 years and the Sabbatical year or 6 Sabbatical years and the Jubilee. Thus the Hebrew daily cycle would be a day, a month, a year, or in Leviticus we have the possibility to count a 7 year cycle, but Deuteronomy does not have this. So 2300 evenings-mornings would be in ancient cyclic time with Hebrew emphases 2300 days, 2300 months or 2300 years. And it is reapplied in Daniel 9 from the end of Babylon to the 70 weeks of years. 1844 was not the ONLY time that COULD have fulfilled Daniel 8:14, but it is one of the possibilities that Daniel could agree to. I'm sorry that I've gone into the more modern studies and thus evidence that is more complicated than the way we usually share it, back before we learned the additional evidence. For me this additional evidence shows that as we learn more, we find us on the right track and continue to study. No matter which context, Daniel's 2300 evenings-mornings are focused on us developing a deeper relationship with God and us sharing the gospel with the world. So what happened in 1844 for this? While I did not learn the details enough to explain (ok, after my treatise above you can offer a sigh of relief) but Dr. Waterman from Andrews University did a study and found that, according to the early date for the exodus, Yom Kippur 1844 was a Sabbatical year going into a Jubilee. These were historically times of new beginnings. We find shortly before this two huge events, the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone and Edward Robinson had completed his first trip to the Holy Land and published his findings and they were starting to be read. So what was the big deal about these? The deciphering of the Rosetta Stone opened the door for the understanding of ancient languages, and Robison was the first serious scientific study of Biblical Geography which opened the door to Biblical Archaeology. Prior to the 1840s, exegesis was limited to only a fairly small understanding of what the words meant, many words translators had to guess at, and limited knowledge of the geography, culture and history. These two events was the dawning of a whole new age of Biblical studies. A time where we started studying the Bible like never before. Referring back to Frankfort's book: The ancient cycles were also cyclic places, and the idea of the sacred mountain. It was believed that things happening in heaven were reflected on earth and visa versa. Another aspect that we had forgotten about in the ancient world, that Mrs. White has explained to us (and archaeological discoveries confirmed this) is the importance of the Great Controversy in the ancient world, including the Bible. In heaven we have what, I think it was James White, coined as the "Investigative Judgment" to explain what some Adventists had come to describe what happened. The Investigative Judgment is where the angels and beings on the unfallen worlds evaluate the lives of those who claimed to have accepted God into their life. They see if the person did really accept him or just gave an empty claim, and if they did accept him, what difference did Christ make in their lives. As they study us in light of these two questions, they get a better understanding of their own salvation and a deeper love for Jesus. On earth, we get to investigate the pages of scripture like never before. We get to investigate Abraham like never before, and Paul, and other people and events of Biblical history. As we learn more about these, we get a deeper knowledge of the God of the Bible, and the more we know about the God of the Bible, the more we can love the God of the Bible. The two work together. I hope this helps!