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* The word of God is always true. Sometime, it is partial and incomplete. In addition, we may not correctly understand it. * God used Ellen White in the development of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. * God used Ellene White to urge people to turn to what we commonly call the Bible as the source of ultimate authority as to what God wanted us to know. * Ellen White, in her humanity was imperfect. Her spirituality grew, and changed, over the years of her life. She probably never fully understood what God was communicating to her. * It is clear to me that that modern Adventists of today, often misunderstand what she said, and often mis-use her writings. * Her writings were often sensitive to the time, culture and the circumstances of the person to whom she was writing. With that in mind, one cannot always apply what she said to one person in that same manner to someone today. None of this detracts from her leadership and the value of her ministry to us in our development.

What if: * We have nothing to fear related to the judgment, as our salvation is assured, and we may trust in that? * The judgment is actually related to God, and His justice in granting we sinners salvation? * In this judgment, so to speak, Saten says Ralph is a sinner, you have the record, and you cannot fairly grant salvation to Ralph, and condemn me. * God says yes, here is the record. through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the ministry of Christ, all sin has been removed from Ralph. He is free from rebellion and rebellion will never rise again in Ralph. * Therefore, I am fair in granting eternal life to Ralph and to admit him into that life in close association with me/

The first step is to try (if possible) to see how the prophecy would have had a local application, at least not too far into the future. Second (and sadly often we have to start with this step) is to see how the prophecy has been applied over history by the church. Third, look at the principles. Fourth, besure we are using the principles of historism and not some new idea such as dispensationalism. From this we can grow and continue as we learn more. Before I look at the horn in Daniel 8, let me get to an excellent book in the Bible that answers the question of this thread. The book of Amos. Now, yes, I know that some of our General Conference leaders are pushing for a hermanutic that avoids editing and even teaches that while there is evidence that editing occured, that we should treat the text as if the final version IS the ORIGINAL version. Ok, we can debate this, but one place where this principle hurts Adventism is in the book of Amos. According to linguists, there are two very, very different writing styles in the book; althought translators try to smooth it over. If you divide up the two styles, one style does not list Judah in the going in cycles around the area, and the seventh-nation to be criticized is Israel. The entire writing style is focused on what Israel was about to face with Assyria if they did not repent (and the rejection by a priest made the "if" a lot less probable.) The second writing style breaks the traditional stucture by making it against 8 nations than the routine structure of focusing on the number 7. It places Israel in #8 and places Judah in the 7th position. The whole writing style applies the principles of the first style from talking about Israel with Assyria to Judah with Babylon and events that were occuring about a hundred years after Amos went to Israel. The one writing style is the immediate context, the second writing style is someone using the method of historism to apply the living word of God over history through historical analogy. Now, let's look at the horn of Daniel 8. The above posts gives a good question noticing that it seems to leapfrog so how can it be the same little horn as in Daniel 7. So far, so good. However, this interpretation misses step 1, the local application; but jumps to an application over history (that whether we know it or not) comes out of the original setting. The ancient world thought in forms of cycles. For example, to ancient Egypt a day was equivalant to the cycle of the sun, or the annual flooding of the Nile. If we lived in ancient Egypt and I borrowed money from you and said that I'd pay you back the next day, you would expect the money within 24 hours, or within the year from the flooding of the Nile and you would be fine. The Hebrew cycles are given in Leviticus 23, 25 and here and there in Deuteronomy. Leviticus talks about the Hebrew weekly cycles of 6 days and the Sabbath, 6 months and Passover/Yom Kippur, 6 years and the Sabbatical year and 6 Sabbatical years and the Jubilee. Now Deuteronomy does not have the Jubilee and all that is done in the Jubilee in Leviticus is done in the Sabbatical year in Deuteronomy. Thus the Hebrew day cycle = a literal day, a month, a year, and in Leviticus but NOT Deuteronomy, a Sabbatical year. In Christian history, St. Augustine replaced historism with some other ways of understanding prophecy. Also, in the early centuries of Christianity historism began to decrease, especially by people prefering allogory. Eventually Histroical analogy/historism had been lost. Also, much of the original context had also been lost. Then came Joachin of Fiore, who restored the church to use historism. Sadly, he was pressured to push for a crucade that he really had no light on but wanted to help the church leaders. It was a disaster, and when he got home he started to focus more on where he believed he did have light and now to spread the gospel in his day and how the Lord could have come soon after his time. However, one thing that he picked up in the crucade was the eastern cyclic thought, but he only learned about the day=year connection (not the entire day=day=month=year and in Leviticus=Sabbatical year.) But the day=year was the one that the church at and after his time needed and from which we get 1844. 1844 was the LAST date (since Daniel is based on Deuteronomy) to fulfill the prophecy. What our pioneers did not know was that 2300 literal days from Daniel getting the vision would bring us to the year (we are not told what day within the third year of Belshazzar the vision was given) where Medio-Persia was at Babylon's gate, Belshazzar's feast, and the start of the Medio-Persia Empire at the fall of Babylon. Getting with the more original setting, we have Medio-Persia, Greece with the one horn, breaks into 4 horns going to the four winds of heaven. Then we have Daniel 8th little horn comeing, yes, from the North, but NOT ONLY from the North but specifically North-West of Israel, traveling to the south east. This is just what ROME did. While Daniel 7 has different parts of Rome, of which the little horn is only a part of; in Daniel 8 the little horn is the entirety of Rome, from pagan to papal through out history to the second coming, including Satan's counterfeit of Jesus coming. I hope this helps.