Adventist Podcast Network

In today’s Episode, Chandler and guest Nate Odom discuss the topic of pride. Being prideful is something everyone struggles with, either to some extent or another. Pride is known as the thief of joy, and it is important to be aware of the destruction that pride can bring to our spiritual lives and relationships with other people.

What is it in our restless hearts that cannot graciously receive a gift?

A friend invites us to a grand, delightful meal, and even before dessert is served, we’re busy evening the score. We fail to taste the kindly moment because we’re painfully obsessed with making certain our account with one we call a friend is “balanced”—even though it is a dinner spread and not a spreadsheet gleaming in the candlelight.

And so we say to God when He so kindly offers us eternity through what His Son has sacrificed: “That’s truly nice—and in exchange I’ll do 10,000 good, obedient things that makes it seem I’m less in Your debt, and somehow more deserving.”

Grace wounds our pride by disallowing all our offers of equivalence. There is no service we can offer God that even starts to mitigate His gift. Our prayers, our gifts, our sweat, our pain do not begin to make us anything but debtors to the kindness we’ve been given. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Grace teaches us the habit of receiving what we never can repay—of reveling in it, and telling strangers just how blessed we are.

A heartfelt “thank you” is the best response when offered joy, and peace, and freedom.

Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

What is it in our restless hearts that cannot graciously receive a gift?

A friend invites us to a grand, delightful meal, and even before dessert is served, we’re busy evening the score. We fail to taste the kindly moment because we’re painfully obsessed with making certain our account with one we call a friend is “balanced”—even though it is a dinner spread and not a spreadsheet gleaming in the candlelight.

And so we say to God when He so kindly offers us eternity through what His Son has sacrificed: “That’s truly nice—and in exchange I’ll do 10,000 good, obedient things that makes it seem I’m less in Your debt, and somehow more deserving.”

Grace wounds our pride by disallowing all our offers of equivalence. There is no service we can offer God that even starts to mitigate His gift. Our prayers, our gifts, our sweat, our pain do not begin to make us anything but debtors to the kindness we’ve been given. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Grace teaches us the habit of receiving what we never can repay—of reveling in it, and telling strangers just how blessed we are.

A heartfelt “thank you” is the best response when offered joy, and peace, and freedom.

Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Allusions Images Symbols: How to Study Prophecy — The Nations: Part 2 — Prophesy Again

Join us as we study the Bible Study Guide for the second quarter of 2025 called Allusions Images Symbols: How to Study Prophecy. We are studying the lesson for week 5 called The Nations: Part 2.    

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The remnant church was born in the New World, precisely where those seeking religious liberty had fled during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Given the long-standing religious and political obstacles that existed elsewhere, it is doubtful that the launch of this movement would have been as swift or powerful in some other location as it was in the new land that became the United States.

Read Revelation 10:1–11, which describes the birth of the movement. Look for some of the elements we have studied, such as “the nations,” the land, and the sea. Applying appropriate caution so that you do not read too much into the passage, what potential insights can you find in this account?

The angel cries with a loud voice, much as the three angels of Revelation 14 and the angel of Revelation 18 do. This is an urgent moment in history when the work of the remnant church is established for the sake of “ ‘many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings’ ” (Rev. 10:11, NKJV).

The angel holds a “little book”—likely the book of Daniel (see Dan. 12:4)—which is open for the first time in many generations. He has one foot on the sea and another on the earth. This might be in reference to the idea that the message covers the globe, both the Old World and the New. It might also be a reference to the idea that this message is for all nations: those who live on the land and those who live in the “Gentile” sea.

The world, at long last, will be lighted up with the glory of God, and the final messages of Revelation 14 are carried to everyone. As with Israel, our mandate as a church is to preach the gospel “ ‘in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come’ ” (Matt. 24:14, NKJV).

God is pushing human history toward its grand conclusion: the end of human empires and the permanent enthronement of Christ. Read Daniel 2:34, 35, 44, 45. The Bible makes it perfectly clear, without any ambiguity, that all these worldly kingdoms will be eradicated, without a trace of them and their ugly legacies left, and will be replaced by God’s eternal kingdom, where sin, suffering, sickness, evil, and death will never rise again.

Look at how accurately the prophecies of Daniel 2 and 7 predicted the rise and fall of all these worldly empires. Why should that accuracy, amazing if you think about when Daniel was written, help us trust Him on the promise of God’s final and eternal kingdom?