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Paul spoke both Hebrew and Greek. He spoke Hebrew to a large crowd gathered in the temple. When the people heard him speaking Hebrew, they paid closer attention to what he was saying. Hebrew was not dead to this large crowd of Asian Jews gathered in Jerusalem. While you say the LXX was in the language of the common person, the captain in Acts 22 was surprised that Paul, who he mistook for a rebel leader, could speak Greek.

That was well said GHansen!

(N) Psalm 9:18 For the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.

My cat, Tigger, is using Autocorrect!

(N) Acts 2:25-26 For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope:

(N) Proverbs 20:29 The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.

(N) Titus 2:11-12 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

Hi Gustave, Upon what do you base this statement?

Tobit is not a Biblical book. Mrs. White's writings are not Biblical books. They at best can be used for an application to make a point, but as Mrs. White says, her writings are not to be used for exegesis (in phrases such as "My writings are not to be used to answer questions such as 'what is the meaning of the daily'" refusing to answer questions addressed to her for matters of exegesis, or answering those questions with it being their job to study the Bible to learn the answers, it is not her job to answer those types of questions. I have not read Tobit to see how Tobit applies Raphael. It may or may not be a valid message, just in Mrs. White's quotes she is applying the term "archangel" as a way to emphasize correctly that Lucifer was the highest of all the [created] angels. That is the context of her quotes. We need to remember that we need to interpret what she says from her context, and even though she sometimes is surprising when compared to studying the exegesis; that she still does not want us using her for exegesis, but for application only. Thus, when you go to the Bible alone, there is only ONE exegetical, Biblical, archangel, and that is Michael.

(N) Matthew 18:4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

The SDA Church would not exist had not God raised up a prophet, specifically Ellen White, to establish the foundation of its doctrinal positions. "One thing is certain: Those Seventh-day Adventists who take their stand under Satan’s banner will first give up their faith in the warnings and reproofs contained in the Testimonies of God’s Spirit." Selected Messages 3:84 (1903). {LDE 177.4} "The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God’s remnant people in the true testimony." Selected Messages 1:48 (1890). {LDE 177.5} "My commission embraces the work of a prophet, but it does not end there. It embraces much more than the minds of those who have been sowing the seeds of unbelief can comprehend." (Letter 244, 1906) There is something about Ellen Whites gift of prophecy that goes much deeper than her work as a prophet...

Some prophets were considered "The Lord's Messenger" This was considered a representative as an observer to the heavenly counsel to report on what he/she had witnessed for heaven's decisions for this time. There were prophets such as Harriet Tubman who's visions were on how to get her group to safety. I have not read this for sure but I've heard that Sojourner Truth had visions, so could have well been a prophet (and she also became a Seventh-day Adventist.) I'm not sure about his status in his public ministry, but William Foy stepped back to allow our forming group to grow. For a long time we had the mistaken belief that he was not faithful, gave up faith and soon died. But in the 1970s there was research on his life. He showed the spirit of Jonathan to David. He left Boston and moved out to the backwoods of Maine. There he spent the rest of his life seeking out those living in the back woods of Maine to form churches for them to worship and minister to their needs. I would not be surprised if God gave him additional visions to find some of these people. (I can't wait to see his crown when we get to heaven He will have the stars from his regular pastoral and prophetic work, and he will have the stars that he shared with the Seventh-day Adventist church for his spirit of giving us room to grow and do our work, but there will be some of his stars that are going to stick out among the others; I don't know it it will be in color or brightness or shape, but we are going to be awed by however they appear, these are the stars of the people living in the backwoods of Maine who he spent the rest of his life ministering to.) But again, Harriet Tubman in being told where to get through safely, Sojourner Truth in her messages for civil rights and women's rights, and if William Foy continued his prophetic ministry in God showing him were in the woods there were souls for him to minister to, was different from the wide range of Mrs. White's visions in first encouraging us not to give up our Millerite experience and saying that they were not being lead by God, the organization of the church, publishing work, health message, educational work, how to work cities, to study the Bible deeper, the world wide work of the church was a bit bigger and longer lasting than a vision on how to escape slave catchers or where there was someone living lost in the woods of Maine, or Joan of Arc trying to work with the church and state for freedom and being advised on warfare in the process is different from the more deeper Bible study. Also, another thing that MIGHT play a part is the visions Mrs. White had on the Civil war. The Whites were friends of Fredrick Douglass, who was friends and advised on the war to Abraham Lincoln. A second thing is a lot of people who were doing a special job in awaking people to issues: Martin Luther, William Miller, Fredrick Douglass, later Dr. Martin Luther King, have been called prophets for their wake up calls to the population. These are people of deep insight waking us up, but apparently was not taken off into vision. These people were still inspired by the Lord, but they were indirectly inspired. Mrs. White was including that there were actual visions from God that many of these faithful servants of the Lord did not have. I've mentioned a few of the people who church history, and Adventist Theologians have suggested may have been true prophets of God. Some of these may have been the Lord's Messenger for their day (Maybe Joachim of Italy), but others had more specific topics that they dealt with. Mrs. White was chosen to be allowed to witness the heavenly counsel and share her observations with us. All of these were equally inspired, all of them were "local prophets" but they also had different roles in whether or not their job was inclusive enough to be the Lord's messenger or not. A third thing that she had in mind is that people were just grouping her with others claiming to be prophets, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, etc. and she wanted to point out that while they were bringing "New Truths" that she was different. Her appeal was to bring us back to the Bible, that the Bible is the only place to get truths, and that her role as "The Messenger of the Lord" was not to bring new truths, but to bring back from heaven an appeal to the Bible.

Prophets are all equal in inspiration, but they have different jobs. The Bible writers give us the universal truths over time and history. The prophets who's writings were not included in the Bible have a job of applying Bible principles, pointing out lost messages from the Bible, and give church guidance for that period. This is what we find in people such as Joachim of Italy who restored the concept that we needed to stop reading the Bible as allegory, but to read the Bible and to use historism in applying the Bible over history, and that the earth was indeed traveling to a literal second coming of Jesus, and that the Pope could either use his office for church reform, otherwise the office will be used by Satan. And finally he gave advice that if followed could have lead to the second coming around his time. Harriet Tubman had visions on where to go to evade those after her. Hilgard of Bingen tried to call people away from superstitions and rituals in dealing with health issues and to turn to learning health principles. Julian of Norwich tried to return to the Bible in having salvation be through the love of God rather than the fear of hell. Joan of Arc gave messages of freedom, and living at the time she lived in history, she appealed to the church and state to implement freedom. Her martyrdom shook Europe preparing hearts for the 95 Thesis and questioning the roles of church and state and liberty; as we study more this may have lead us to the ideas of Roger Williams, and the American Revolution, especially the views of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and as carried on in history. John MIlton pointed our minds to the fact of the Great Controversy, which he presented in poetry. William Miller fused together the views of freedom of Williams, Jefferson, Madison as deepened in the age of Jackson with the views of historism that evolved out of Joachim of Italy's ministry. Ellen White picked up Miller's fusing of the messages of Joachim and Joan of Arc, and added making the issues of the Great Controversy into a philosophy, revived Hildegard's health message and Julian's focus on the love of God and not the fear of hell. She updated these to what we had learned over history, and gave us guidance in applying these Biblical truths. She gave us messages in how to form and develop the Seventh-day Adventist church. She taught us how to work cities. She included the publishing and educational work. These were molded by the principles and framework of the Great Controversy. What confuses us is that we try to fit Mrs. White, along with the Bible, and other prophets from history, to fit the mold of ideas that may have been subconsciously developing and officially was developed in the mid to late 1800s of Fundamentalism. The problems that Mrs. White runs into is through us trying to filter her through the concepts of Fundamentalism. We tend to end up in one of two camps, those who try to explain how she really does fit the mold of fundamentalism; or those who throw her out because she does not fit their Fundamentalist views. While not as popular now, in the early 20th century there were people like William Spicer who believed that there were two types of inspiration. That the Bible fit the Fundamentalist mold, but that people like Mrs. White get a second type of inspiration that does not fit the Fundamentalist mold. I believe that there is one type of inspiration, and it would look more like Spicer's second of his two views which I'd apply both to the Bible prophets and the local prophets.

(N) Romans 4:7 Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

(N) 2 Chronicles 30:9 … for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.

People shouldn't be ashamed of being Protestant Christians. It doesn't mean rejecting all elements of Roman Catholicism or warring against the people of that faith.

Wayne Shorter, sage of the saxophone, dies at 89 Wayne Shorter, the 12-time Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer and the creator of one of the singular sounds in contemporary jazz over more than half a century, died on Thursday, March 2 in Los Angeles. Shorter was 89 years old. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/768874324/wayne-shorter-sage-of-the-saxophone-dies-at-89