How do we learn from failure, especially when looking at the end of an organization as large as a kingdom, or even two kingdoms?

Today, as we look at the end of both kingdoms of Israel, I hope that we can explore what it means to understand the people's historical failures,

and recognize that modern peoples are just as susceptible to failure, despite being God's chosen peoples as ancient nations.

How do we avoid the hubris of declaring

ourselves indestructible? How do we embrace the humility needed to rely on God and trust his word?

We discussed that, and much more, in today's episode of Abide, a Maxwell Institute podcast.

My name is Joseph Stewart. I'm the public communication specialist of the Neill A. Maxwell Institute

for a religious scholarship at Brigham Young University.

Christian Heel is a research fellow at the Maxwell Institute. In each week, we discuss the week's

block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, come follow me curriculum.

We aren't here to present a lesson, or rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block,

so as to help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints and their testimonies of the restored

gospel of Jesus Christ and engage the world of religious ideas. Today we are once again joined by

Carolyn Lohman, one of our research assistants. Carolyn is an ancient Near Eastern history, Hebrew

Bible major here at BYU from Southern California.

After she graduates, Carolyn plans to be a seminary teacher. Carolyn, welcome back.

Thank you. Glad to be here. We are thrilled to have you here. Now, Christian, we are looking at

Second Kings, chapters 17 through 25, although of course we may bleed over a little bit into other chapters

as well, but what's going on in this part of Second Kings?

So the Book of Kings recounts both the glorious zenith and the bitter end of kingship in

the land of Israel. The end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is described in 2nd

Kings 17, and the end of the southern kingdom of Judah is described in 2nd Kings 24 and 25.

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