Closer To Heaven
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16 December 2025 | Sometimes, one to two weeks is all it takes to change a life. Seven widows from the Kukum Seventh-day Adventist Church in Honiara, Solomon Islands heard of Adventist Disaster Relief Agency’s (ADRA) Cocoa Farmers project and asked to take part. According to ADRA, “The Sustainable Economic and Agriculture Solutions (SEAS) for […] Source: https://atoday.org/adra-cocoa-farmers-project-empowers-citizens-in-solomon-islands/
15 December 2025 | Raúl Esperante, senior scientist at The Geoscience Research Institute (GRI), published a landmark article in the open-access journal PLOS One regarding what is now considered one of the most extensive Dinosaur tracksites. Containing over 16,000 dinosaur footprints at the Carreras Pampas tracksite in Bolivia, the find has made a new record, […] Source: https://atoday.org/new-dinosaur-tracksite-in-bolivia-leads-to-significant-paleontological-research/
15 December 2025 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, My wife asked me the other day why I thought there were unfallen people on other worlds in the universe. After researching my Bible, I can’t find any clear references to this. Is this another belief derived from Ellen White? Gentle reader: Yes. Aunt Sevvy Aunt Sevvy has […] Source: https://atoday.org/where-in-the-bible-do-we-read-of-unfallen-people-on-other-worlds/
Daily Lesson for Tuesday 16th of December 2025
Using the same words that were addressed to him at the beginning of the book (Joshua 1:7-8), Joshua states that the task that lay ahead of Israel is not primarily military in nature. It is spiritual. It has to do with obedience to God’s revealed will in the Torah.
Image © Educational Concepts Collection at Goodsalt.com
The danger facing Israel is not the threat of the remaining nations’ animosity but the risk of their friendship. Their weapons might not represent any challenge to Israel; however, their ideology and values (or counter-values) could prove to be more harmful than any military force. Joshua draws the attention of the leaders to the crucial fact that the conflict they have been involved in is first, and ultimately, spiritual. Therefore, Israel has to maintain its unique identity.
The prohibition of invoking the name of a god, swearing by it, and serving or bowing to it has to do with idolatry. In the ancient Near East, the name of a deity represented his or her presence and power. Invoking or mentioning the names of foreign gods in everyday greetings or business transactions meant recognizing their authority and helped lead the Israelites to seek their power in time of need (compare with Judges 2:1-3,11-13).
The danger of intermarriage with the remaining Canaanites consisted in losing Israel’s spiritual purity. The intent of Joshua’s admonition is not to promote racial or ethnic purity but rather to avoid idolatry, which can lead to the spiritual collapse of Israel. The case of Solomon is a dramatic example of the sad spiritual consequences of intermarriage (1 Kings 3:1, 1 Kings 11:1-8); in the New Testament, Christians are openly warned against seeking marital relationships with nonbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14), although, in the case of existing marriages, Paul does not advise divorce from the unbelieving spouse but calls them to live an exemplary Christian life in hope of winning the spouse to the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:12-16).
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Joshua’s warning against harmful associations inevitably leads to the question of the Christian’s relationship to the “world.” How can we find a balanced relationship with the society that surrounds us? |
As we work our way through the book of Joshua this quarter, we will see that he is ready to
Fight The Good Fight – Hymn 613 and to move forward into the Promised Land. We may still use last quarter’s theme hymn as this will pop up throughout this quarter as well:
Hymn 620 – On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand. These two hymns will resound throughout the quarter.
The title of this week’s lesson studies give us our first hymn:
Hymn 100 – Great Is Thy Faithfulness. This hymn returns a number of times throughout the week.
Sabbath afternoon’s introduction we find that “on earth God’s work must truly be our own” so that we can
Work For The Night Is Coming – Hymn 375 and be
Working, O Christ With Thee – Hymn 582. . Joshua chapters 23 and 24 “focus more on the future and on how to worship God”, giving us two wonderful hymns:
Hymn 6 – O Worship The Lord and
Hymn 83 – O Worship The King.
Obedience to God’s Word in presented to us on Monday and Tuesday where we learn to
Trust And Obey – Hymn 590.
Faith Is The Victory – Hymn 608 is an “unchangeable reality for Israel” (Monday).
Aside from God’s wrath against the straying Israelites, “Whoever believes in Him will not have to face God’s wrath (John 3:36, Eph. 2:3, 1 Thess. 1:10)”:
I Know Whom I Have Believed –Hymn 511 and
Hymn 486 – I Do Believe.
When we Cling To God (Thursday) we can sing
I Love Thee – Hymn 236 as there is “the command to love God”.
Please continue to search the scriptures this week to be blessed, and to bless others.
To learn unknown hymns, you will find the accompaniment music for each one at: https://sdahymnals.com/
Another great resource is for when there is a hymn you wish to sing but can’t find it in your hymnal. Go to https://www.sdahymnal.org/
2 Timothy 2:15 KJV – “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
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