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I used to work (at a low end salary) for a high-end art and antiques gallery in Los Angeles. Pieces I worked on were displayed in museums and attracted international attention in the art world. The gallery owner had been collecting art for decades, having been introduced to the art world as a child by his grandmother. Among his holdings was a painting of Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch. He believed it to be an original Rembrandt. In order to validate his belief, he took it to Europe for certification by Rembrandt authorities there. They denied that it was an original Rembrandt, instead consigning it to one of his students or other painter. Disappointed, he returned home to America. Sometime after he returned, he received a letter from the chairman of the art history department of a major university, offering to help him certify the painting for a 10% slice of the sale price. which would have put hundreds of thousands of dollars in his pocket. On another occasion, I bought an inexpensive picture which is still displayed in our home. Several years after the purchase, I saw an identical painting written up in an online news source. The painting was being touted as an original antique painting, a great discovery in the art world. Knowing something about the fakery that goes on, I contacted the gallery advertising it. I never heard back. I did see, however, an article retracting previous claims made regarding the picture. I don't believe my note had anything to do with the retraction. Simply a matter of a "scholar" doing a little homework. Fraud is ubiquitous in the art world, whether it be "antique" furniture, paintings, or whatever. Estate sales are another venue for being duped. Gallery owners routinely "plant" pieces they own to ad some cachet to a piece they haven't been able to sell out of their shop. I once told a client that the piece he was buying was a recent copy rather than an antique. He immediately went to the owner (not the same one that had the non-Rembrandt). He returned and we finished putting the item in his car. The shop owner then reviled me for telling the customer the truth. People want to believe what they want to believe. The religious world is similar, in some respects. I know nothing of the sculpture to which the article refers; however, let the buyer beware

fraud 4 sentenced in $12.7M Medicaid fraud; NC treatment center shut down ive NEW BERN, N.C. (WTVD) -- Four people have been sentenced to over 14 years combined in federal prison for a $12.7 million Medicaid fraud scheme that paid over $1 million in kickbacks to patients with substance use disorders, federal prosecutors said Thursday. A federal judge also ordered the permanent closure of Life Touch LLC, the Kinston and Goldsboro-based provider at the center of the scheme, along with a $15 million fine and the forfeiture of more than $6 million in cash, cars and real estate. U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of North Carolina "This is shocking Minnesota-Somali-style fraud right here in North Carolina. For too long, government has allowed grifters to steal taxpayer dollars with impunity. Here, these vultures exploited particularly susceptible drug abusers trying to recover their lives and dignity. Shameful abuse, no remorse. They better learn, and everyone should get the message. Cheaters. Never. Win," said U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle. Prosecutors said Keke Komeko Johnson, Francine Sims Super, Brandon Eugene Sims and Kimberly Mable Sims operated Life Touch and a related lab company, using gift cards to lure Medicaid patients into unnecessary treatment and drug screening services, then billing Medicaid for fraudulent claims. Johnson and Super, who oversaw the kickback payments and falsified records to deceive auditors, were each sentenced to six years in prison. Kimberly Sims received two years, and Brandon Sims was sentenced to 30 months for failing to file federal tax returns and receiving millions in proceeds. U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of North Carolina Agents seized $1.3 million in cash and several luxury vehicles, including a Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Chevrolet Corvette. Federal officials said the scheme exploited vulnerable patients and siphoned millions from programs intended to support those in need. Live

Gustave, yes, there once was an SDA Church in San Francisco that was more liberal than the typical SDA church. I do not know that it ever allowed such marriages. In any case, that experiment ended some years ago. I once was a member of a large SDA congregation that had a homosexual couple who attended. But, they were not members. I am aware of another SDA congregation that accepted a homosexual couple into membership. The pastor was expelled from ministry. Other action resulted related to another clergy person. But, the couple remained members.

Tradition, any tradition, once something becomes a tradition, it is hard to give up. We are no different, for example: There is a fair amount of evidence that Mrs. White ended up disagreeing with Uriah Smith about the 7 trumpets and that she saw them as corresponding to the plagues and that both the trumpets and plagues are future. I was taught this in college with the evidence presented. In Seminary, they taught the tradition, but most were open to the possibility that the tradition might be wrong and that we may have to place it in the future. Today, you constantly hear Smith's view presented and defended. At the seminary, in my Daniel class the image of Daniel 2 was presented as 7 parts. I noticed that Stephen Haskell's book on Daniel presented it as basically the same 7 parts. It is interesting that these 7 parts happened to correspond to what I was taught as the 7 heads of the beast in Revelation 13 (which is also taught in George McCready Price "the Time of the End.") These 7 parts are: Babylon, Medio-Persia, Greece Rome, the feet of iron and clay (God molds the clay, but here it is being molded by the iron instead of God, a description of a church-state, and the empire we see was in the far east Islam, then Eastern orthodox, Roman Catholic, then within Roman Catholic was the Reformed Roman Catholics i.e. Protestants) then the toes of iron and clay = the deadly wound, no great world empire but independent nations, some more lamblike and more freedom, others more beastlike and controlling, then the toes to join together, the deadly wound is healed. But attend an evangelistic meeting and you hear Babylon, Medio-Persia, Greece, Rome and the Pope. Haskell's book was first published in 1901, George McCready Price in 1967, and in class in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tradition is always hard to change.

Reading Ellen white: How to understand and apply her writings, written by George Knight, is probably the best book that has been published on this subject. It can be purchased form Amazon.

A fundamental error that many Christians engage in, including SDAs, is to consider the main focus of the Sabbath to be that of worship. The purpose of the Sabbath, as it began in Eden, was to spend a day with God and to grow spiritually. It was a day separate from the routine duties that Adam and Eve had in Eden. Rather the focus was on God and getting to know God better in a close association with God. Worship is a small part of that, even if important. Worship can be on multiple days of the week. I have probably conducted more worship services on Sundays, than I have on Saturdays. Adventists often have worship services in a series of meetings that are held on multiple days of the week. There is nothing wrong with either my holding worship services on Sunday mornings, or with SDA clergy holding revival meetings on days other than the Sabbath. The spiritual error occurs with Christians, whether Adventist or otherwise, fail to understand the spiritual blessing that we experience in spending the day with God, on the Sabbath that God has established as a special day to commune with us.