and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.” {EP 331.1} Moses closed with these impressive words: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him: for He is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” Deuteronomy 30:19, 20. {EP 331.2} The more deeply to impress these truths upon all minds, the great leader embodied them in sacred verse. The people were to commit to memory this poetic history and teach it to their children and children’s children, that it might never be forgotten. {EP 332.1} When their children should ask in time to come, “What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord our God hath commanded you?” then the parents were to repeat the history of God’s gracious dealings with them—how the Lord had wrought for their deliverance that they might obey His law: “The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He hath commanded us.” {EP 332.2}
Chapter 43—The Death of Moses This chapter is based on Deuteronomy 31 to 34. In all dealings of God with His people, there is, mingled with His love and mercy, the most striking evidence of His strict and impartial justice. The great Ruler of nations had declared that Moses was not to lead Israel into the goodly land, and the earnest pleading of God’s servant could not secure a reversing of His sentence. Yet he had faithfully sought to prepare the congregation to enter the promised inheritance. At the divine command, Moses and Joshua repaired to the tabernacle, while the pillar of cloud came and stood over the door. Here the people were solemnly committed to the charge of Joshua. The work of Moses as leader of Israel was ended. {EP 333.1} Still he forgot himself in his interest for his people. In the presence of the multitude Moses, in the name of God, addressed to his successor these words of holy cheer: “Be strong and of a good courage: for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware unto them: and I will be with thee.” He then turned to the elders and officers of the people, giving them a solemn charge to obey faithfully the instructions he had communicated to them from God. {EP 333.2} As the people gazed upon the aged man so soon to be taken from them, they recalled with new appreciation his parental tenderness, his wise counsels, and his untiring labors. They bitterly remembered that their own perversity had provoked Moses to the sin for which he must die. {EP 333.3}
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