Inside Story for Friday 28th of November 2025

Kim Sun is associate director of the 1000 Missionary Movement, whose headquarters in Silang, Philippines, were constructed with the help of a 1996 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering. Read more next week.

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Image © Pacific Press

Kim Sun, a South Korean teen studying at the Adventist University of the Philippines, wondered if he could make a career out of going door-to-door after a man whom he had invited to evangelistic meetings got baptized. He wasn’t Adventist, and it had been his first time going door-to-door.

“What’s this that we were doing?” he asked a pastor who had accompanied the students going door-to-door. “Is it called community service?”

The pastor smiled. “No,” he said. “It’s called mission.”

“Is there a full-time job like this?” Sun said.

“Yes,” the pastor said. “It’s called being a missionary.”

“Can I have this job, too?”

“Yes. The income isn’t so much, but you can do it.”

“How can I do it?”

“You’ll have to change your studies from nursing to theology.”

“Oh. I’ll need to ask my mom.”

Sun was studying in the Philippines because his parents had wanted him to make something of his life. Before, he had been living for himself.

When Sun spoke to his mother, he asked if he could change his major.

Mother was confused. “What is theology?” she said.

“Theology is serving the church,” he said, adding that the pay may be low.

Mother said he could take theology if he also finished his nursing studies.

“But nursing isn’t meaningful to me,” Sun said.

Then Mother had an idea. Her goal wasn’t for him to be rich but to be a good person. “If you take theology, can you drink or smoke?” she said.

When he said no, she exclaimed, “Then please change your studies!”

Sun loved theology. He learned the biblical basis for the seventh-day Sabbath. He read the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. He got baptized.

When he returned home for vacations, he tried to persuade his parents to accept his new beliefs. “Mom and Dad, sit down and let me talk to you,” he said. “Sunday is not the Sabbath day. Saturday is the Sabbath. Do you know Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream?”

He couldn’t understand why his parents weren’t open-minded. He was dismayed when Mother finally asked him to stop, saying, “You take your God, and I’ll take my God,” she said.

“But they’re the same God!” he said. “We have to follow God’s Word.”

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25d-09-inside-story-not-winsome-witnessing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=25d-09-inside-story-not-winsome-witnessing

Daily Lesson for Friday 28th of November 2025

Further Thought:

Read Ellen G. White, “The Controversy Ended,” Pages 672–678, in The Great Controversy.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

“We shall be saved eternally when we enter in through the gates into the city. Then we may rejoice that we are saved, eternally saved. But until then we need to heed the injunction of the apostle, and to ‘fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of us should seem to come short of it’ [Hebrews 4:1]. Having a knowledge of Canaan, singing the songs of Canaan, rejoicing in the prospect of entering into Canaan, did not bring the children of Israel into the vineyards and olive-groves of the promised land. They could make it theirs in truth only by occupation, by complying with the conditions, by exercising living faith in God, by appropriating his promises to themselves.”—Ellen G. White, Youth’s Instructor, February 17, 1898.

“In the Bible the inheritance of the saved is called ‘a country.’ Hebrews 11:14-16. There the heavenly Shepherd leads His flock to fountains of living waters. The tree of life yields its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree are for the service of the nations. There are ever-flowing streams, clear as crystal, and beside them waving trees cast their shadows upon the paths prepared for the ransomed of the Lord. There the wide-spreading plains swell into hills of beauty, and the mountains of God rear their lofty summits. On those peaceful plains, beside those living streams, God’s people, so long pilgrims and wanderers, shall find a home.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 675.

Discussion Questions

<–Thursday

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25d-09-further-thought-heirs-of-promises-prisoners-of-hope/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=25d-09-further-thought-heirs-of-promises-prisoners-of-hope

Daily Lesson for Thursday 27th of November 2025

During the Babylonian exile, the Israelites experienced not only the sad reality of being rootless but also the promise that their relationship with God, though made concrete through the promise of the land, was not conditioned on, and limited to, possessing the land. When the Israelites confessed their sins, repented, and looked for the Lord with all their hearts, God fulfilled His promise again, and He brought them back to their land as a sign of their restoration. That is, He was still their God, even while they were not in the land.

Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com

However, as the promise that Israel would possess the land forever was conditional (Deuteronomy 28:63-64; Joshua 23:13,15; 1 Kings 9:7; 2 Kings 17:23; Jeremiah 12:10-12), so was the promise to resettle and make Israel prosper in the land after the exile. At the same time, prophets of the Old Testament pointed to a restoration that a future Davidic king would bring (Isaiah 9:6-7; Zechariah 9:9,16). This promise was fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in whom all the promises to ancient Israel would have their fulfillment.

In the New Testament, the Promised Land is not mentioned directly, but we are told that the promises of God have been fulfilled in and through Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20, Romans 15:8). Thus, in the light of Christ, the land is reinterpreted, and it becomes the symbol of the spiritual blessings that God plans to give to His faithful people here and now (Ephesians 2:6) and in the hereafter.

The ultimate fulfillment of the divine promise of rest, abundance, and well-being in the land will take place on the new earth, liberated from sin and its consequences. In that sense, as Christians, our hope is based on Christ’s promise that He will return and, after a 1,000-year period in heaven, establish His eternal kingdom on the earth made new. This will be the ultimate fulfillment of all the promises about the land.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25d-09-the-land-restored/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=25d-09-the-land-restored

Daily Lesson for Wednesday 26th of November 2025

The land was so central to the existence of Israel as God’s people that it could not be apportioned as a whole. It had to be divided by tribes, clans, and families (Numbers 34:13-18) in order to prevent it from becoming the possession of a few leading elites.

Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com

By contrast with Egypt, where citizens regularly lost their land and became Pharaoh’s serfs, the purpose of God for the Israelites was that they would never become indefinitely disenfranchised. Nobody, outside the clan and family to whom it had been originally allotted, could own the land. In fact, according to God’s plan, the land could literally never be sold; it could only be leased according to its value established by the number of years left until the next jubilee. Therefore, the relatives of a person who was obliged to “sell” his ancestral land had the duty to redeem it even before the jubilee (Leviticus 25:25).

The allotment of the land becomes a window into God’s heart. As our heavenly Father, He wants His children to be generous with those who are less fortunate and to allow their lands to feed them every seventh year. The sabbatical year applied the principle of the Sabbath commandment on a larger scale. Besides valuing and encouraging hard work, ownership of the land also calls for respect and kindness to those facing financial challenges.

Land ownership legislation provided every Israelite with the opportunity to be freed from inherited or self-induced oppressive circumstances and to have a fresh start in life.

In essence, this is the main purpose of the gospel: to erase the distinction between rich and poor, employer and employee, privileged and underprivileged, putting us all on equal footing by recognizing our complete need of God’s grace.

Unfortunately, Israel neglected to keep the standard set by God and, after centuries, the warnings of dispossession were fulfilled (2 Chronicles 36:20-21).

<–Tuesday Thursday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25d-09-the-jubilee/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=25d-09-the-jubilee

Join It Is Written Sabbath School host Eric Flickinger and this quarter’s author, Dr. Barna Magyarosi, as they provide additional insights into this week’s Sabbath School lesson.”

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/9-heirs-of-promises-prisoners-of-hope-it-is-written-discussions-with-the-author/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=9-heirs-of-promises-prisoners-of-hope-it-is-written-discussions-with-the-author