Ellen G. White

Only in the light that shines from Calvary can nature's teaching be read aright. Through the story of Bethlehem and the cross let it be shown how good is to conquer evil, and how every blessing that comes to us is a gift of redemption.

To transgress [God's] law, physical, mental, or moral, is to place one's self out of harmony with the universe, to introduce discord, anarchy, ruin.

The same Spirit that in His stead was sent to be the instructor of His first co-workers, Christ has commissioned to be the instructor of His co-workers today. "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20), is His promise.

Through the co-operation of the divine Spirit the labors of the humble men whom Christ had chosen stirred the world. To every nation under heaven was the gospel carried in a single generation.

[Jesus] takes men as they are, with all their faults and weaknesses, and trains them for His service, if they will be disciplined and taught by Him.

When Edan shall bloom on earth again, God's law of love will be obeyed by all beneath the sun.

Jesus took the nature of humanity, in order to reveal to man a pure, unselfish love, to teach us how to love one another.

A secretive encounter with a Bedouin in a desert valley led to the discovery of two fragments from a nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll — the first such finding in decades, an Israeli archaeologist said Friday.

The finding has given rise to hope that the Judean Desert may yield more treasures, said Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University.

The two small pieces of brown animal skin, inscribed in Hebrew with verses from the Book of Leviticus, are from "refugee" caves in Nachal Arugot, a canyon near the Dead Sea where Jews hid from the Romans in the second century, Eshel said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The scrolls are being tested by Israel's Antiquities Authority. Recently, several relics bearing inscriptions, including a burial box purported to belong to Jesus' brother James, were revealed as modern forgeries.

More than 1,000 ancient texts — known collectively as the Dead Sea Scrolls — were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves overlooking the western shores of the Dead Sea.

"No scrolls have been found in the Judean Desert" in decades, Eshel said. "The common belief has been that there is nothing left to find there."

Now, he said, scholars may be spurred on to further excavations.

Archaeologist and Bible scholar Steven Pfann said he had not seen the fragments. If authenticated, they would "in general not be doing more than confirming the character of the material that we have from the southern part of the Judean wilderness up until today."

But "what's interesting and exciting is that this is a new discovery," Pfann added. "This is the first time we've seen anything from the south since the 1960s."

Eshel said he was first shown the fragments last year during a meeting in an abandoned police station near the Dead Sea.

A Bedouin said he had been offered $20,000 for the fragments on the black market and wanted an evaluation.

The encounter that both excited and dismayed the archaeologist who has worked in the Judean Desert since 1986.

"I was jealous he had found it, not me. I was also very excited. I didn't believe I would see them again," said Eshel, who took photographs of the pieces he feared would soon be smuggled out of the country.

But in March 2005, he discovered the Bedouin still had the scroll fragments. Eshel bought them with $3,000 provided by Bar Ilan University and handed them over to the Antiquities Authority, he said.

"Scholars do not buy antiquities. I did it because I could not see it fall apart," Eshel said.

The finding constitutes the 15th scroll fragments found in the area from the same period of the Jewish "Bar Kochba" revolt against the Romans, and the first to be discovered with verses from Leviticus, Eshel said.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes, a monastic sect seen by some as a link between Judaism and early Christianity. The scrolls comprise more than 1,000 ancient texts found a half century ago in the caves above Qumran in the West Bank, one of the most significant discoveries in the Holy Land.


By DANIELLE HAAS, Associated Press Writer

He is our sacrifice, our Advocate, our Brother, bearing our human form before the Father's throne, and through eternal ages one with the race He has redeemed--the Son of Man.

God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest heaven.

The Scriptures plainly declare [Rev.22:11, 12] that every person's destiny is forever fixed at the coming of the Lord.

The very One who gave his precious life for them, who by His grace moved their hearts to repentance, who awakened them to their need of repentance, receives them now into His joy.

When Christ came to this earth the first time, He came in lowliness and obscurity, and His life here was one of suffering and poverty… At His second coming all will be
changed.

[In Heaven] we shall know even as also we are known. There the loves and sympathies that God has planted in the soul will find truest and sweetest exercise.

The selfish principles excercised on the earth are not the principles which will prevail in heaven. All men stand on an equality in heaven.

Heaven is full of joy. It resounds with the praises of Him who made so wonderful a sacrifice for the redemption of the human race.

God's law is given to men as a hedge, a shield. Whoever accepts its principles is preserved from evil.

He who with sincere and teachable spirit studies God's word, seeking to comprehend its truths, will be brought in touch with its Author; and, except by his own choice, there is no limit to the possibilities of his development.

As a safeguard against this degeneracy, and a stimulus to development, nothing else can equal the study of God's word.