DAY 76    Read Deuteronomy 27 and 28.

Today's reading:  Moses gives explicit instructions, including the words of blessing and of cursing that were to be used for the solemn service on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim when the Israelites entered the Promised Land.

Memory gem:  "Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out"  (Deuteronomy 28:6).

Thought for today:
In the Rocky Mountains of western Canada one comes to the Great Divide.  In fact, you see a sign by the road, "The Great Divide"; but there is no great mountain.  You are not climbing up a ragged cliff and looking thousands of feet on either side.  You are not on top of a gigantic ridge.  The change is so gradual you don't notice it.  A little spring comes forth and trickles along and strikes a rock.  Each drop of water seems to hesitate--one goes to the right side of this little stone, one to the left.  That which goes to the left goes down to those great rivers which flow into the Arctic Ocean--into the frozen zone of ice and snow and cold, the long winter midnight.  The other drop that hesitates finally turns to the right and goes down to the Fraser River into the Pacific Ocean and washes the shores of Hawaii and islands of the tropics.

There might be a Great Divide for you, just now.  You may not know it, you may not feel it, and you may not even see it.  You may be trembling on the great decision, the width of a hair, as it were, in your own heart.  You might be a church member; but still some decision,which here and not at this moment may seem little, but could change your whole life for all eternity, for all ages to come.

Make that decision now.  May the good Lord speak to your heart through His Holy Spirit.  I only wish I could speak to you with the love and kindness and blessing and power of Jesus.  May our dear heavenly Father help you to put Christ above all and at last be with Him forever.

DAY 75    Read Deuteronomy 24 through 26; Psalm 90.

Today's reading has instructions about being fair to the poor, to widows, and to servants.  Tucked in among other civil laws we find a warning to deal justly in business.  Also we read a psalm, apparently composed by Moses near the end of his earthly life.

Memory gem:  "O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days"  (Psalm 90:14).

Thought for today:
"An honest man, according to Christ's measurement, is one who will manifest unbending integrity.  Deceitful weights and false balances, with which many seek to advance their interests in the world, are abomination in the sight of God.  Yet many who profess to keep the commandments of God are dealing with false weights and false balances.  When a man is indeed connected with God and is keeping His law in truth, his life will reveal the fact; for all his actions will be in harmony with the teachings of Christ.  He will not sell his honor for gain.  His principles are built upon the sure foundation, and his conduct in worldly matters is a transcript of his principles.  Firm integrity shines forth as gold amid the dross and rubbish of the world.  Deceit, falsehood, and unfaithfulness may be glossed over and hidden from the eyes of man, but not from the eyes of God.  The angels of God, who watch the development of character and weigh moral worth, record in the books of heaven these minor transactions which reveal character.  If a workman in the daily vocations of life is unfaithful and slights his work, the world will not judge incorrectly if they estimate his standards in religion according to his standards in business....

"It is not the magnitude of the matter that makes it fair or unfair.  As a man deals with his fellowmen, so will he deal with God....The children of God should not fail to remember that in all their business transactions they are being proved, weighed in the balances of the sanctuary."--Testimonies, vol. 4, pp. 310311.

DAY 74    Read Deuteronomy 21 through 23.

Today's reading gives us another look at the civil laws governing many aspects of community living in the ancient Israelite commonwealth.

Memory gem:  "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it"  (Ephesians 5:25).

Thought for today:
We are talking today about the victims of divorce.  There are at least three, and others to a minor extent--the husband, the wife, and especially the children.  Many a divorce could be avoided if the wronged party were willing to forgive and forget.

When a child is deprived of a father or mother, he is cheated out of half his home.  Remarriage often occasions jealousy, so the child suffers mentally, spiritually, and often physically.  He becomes baffled, ashamed, embittered.  When he tries to hide the situation from his friends, maladjustments follow which affect his entire life as well as the lives of others with whom he comes in contact.  Children desire to belong to somebody and to be somebody.

These children are "orphans of divorce."  Without a doubt, a great deal of our modern juvenile delinquency comes from broken homes, and these orphans of divorce are more likely to acquire dishonest habits, lax morals, and perverted personalities than are children who have the security of a normal home.

Homelife is the foundation of civilization.  It is the foundation of every solid nation.  The breakup of the home, of which divorce is the outward evidence, is the great danger facing every civilized government of earth, directly or indirectly.  The victims of divorce are not only the heartbroken husband and wife, embittered, skeptical, dissatisfied; the children uprooted and denied the association of a father or mother; but society itself, the world itself.

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Difficult or obscure words:
Deuteronomy 22:19.  "Amerce"--fine.
Deuteronomy 23:18.  "Dog"--not a canine animal, but the "sodomite" of verse 17.

DAY 73    Read Deuteronomy 17 through 20.

Today's reading mentions again the cities of refuge that were to be established in the land.

Memory gem:  "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

Thought for today:
Now let us look for a moment at the beautiful and pure gospel that is taught by the cities of refuge.  The apostle seems to refer to them in Hebrews 6:18, when he says that "we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us."  And in Philippians 3:9, he speaks of believers as being found in Christ.  By the shedding of His own blood, our merciful Saviour has provided a sure retreat for the repentant transgressors of God's law.  The refuge of Christ provides pardon for the repentant sinner, and there no power on earth can destroy him.  Says the apostle Paul: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit"  (Romans 8:1).

He who fled to the city of refuge could not delay.  He had to leave his family, his house, his property, his job--everything!  He had no time to say good-bye.  His life was at stake, so he couldn't wait, or delay, or neglect, or procrastinate.  He had to forsake everything and make one supreme effort to reach the city of refuge before the avenger of blood found him.  He did not walk--he fled, he ran.

And so it is with those who are sinners, without Christ.  Let me say just now: Do not wait--do not delay--"now is the accepted time"  (2 Corinthians 6:2).

DAY 72    Read Deuteronomy 14 through 16.

Today's reading covers a number of the rules and regulations governing the Hebrew economy.  Among other things it lists again the clean and unclean meats.

Memory gem:  "Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself"  (Deuteronomy 14:2).

Thought for today:
The health laws written down by Moses forbade the use of unclean animal foods and particularly the flesh of swine (see Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14).  Dr. David Macht, a noted authority on drug and animal poisons, squeezed out the juices of more than seventy different species of fish and injected them into mice, and also used them in  tests on seedling plants.  Tissue extracts from unclean fish killed some of the mice and retarded the growth of the seedlings.  Extracts from the edible fish were seen to have no injurious effects on either mice or plants.

It was not until 1847 that Joseph Leidy discovered in pork the parasitic worm Trichinella spiralis.  If this is why the use of swine's flesh as food was forbidden by God in the law of Moses, we are not told; but certainly modern science has at least one good reason to be wary of it.  Who wants to be infected by trichina worms?  But the fact is that millions are and wonder what is wrong with them.  Unless pork products are thoroughly cooked, there is always a dangerous possibility of trichina infection.

If any reader wishes to encourage himself to avoid the danger of eating such infected meat, I suggest that he write to the United States Department of Agriculture and request the bulletin on trichinosis.

One of the greatest prophets of the Bible wrote about certain ones who continually provoked the Lord to His face.  You can read it for yourself in Isaiah 65, verses 3 and 4.

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Difficult or obscure words:
Deuteronomy 14:2.  "Peculiar people"--better: private or treasured, the real meaning of "peculiar."

DAY 71    Read Deuteronomy 11 through 13.

Today's reading:  Moses repeats warnings against various kinds of false religion.

Memory gem:  "Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice"  (Deuteronomy 13:4).

Thought for today:
The Voice of Prophecy, we believe, is a part of the great worldwide proclamation calling men away from modern idols to the worship of the God who created all things.  And just now, as the universe itself is seen to be greater than men ever dreamed, so our God is greater than men have ever known.  The God who marshals the electrons in their ceaseless vibrations finds nothing too little in our lives to draw His interest, and the God who guides the constellations in their ceaseless march amid the uncounted universe revealed by modern astronomy is great enough to look after all of our affairs.  Let us worship Him.

Where are the modern idols placed--these idols that usurp the place of the living God?  In Ezekiel 14:3 we read the secret of their power: "Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts."

Modern men do not believe in the lesser gods of antiquity--the graven images, the sacred trees, the fetishes--but in spite of this fact, millions are polytheists.  They no longer think of Mars as a person, of Saturn as a sacred deity; but men today worship the things for which these ancient pagan idols stood with the same devotion as was shown in the long ago.  No longer do men bow at the shrine of Venus, the goddess of immorality; but the things for which Venus stood, still enslave and defile millions.  Men today never dream of worshiping Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry, but he has never been shown greater honor nor had more willing worshipers, though they know it not.

This challenge comes to us today: "Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth"  (Revelation 14:7).

Let us turn from these modern idols of the heart--turn to the living and true God as revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ.

DAY 70    Read Deuteronomy 8 through 10.

Today's reading:  Moses recalls the worship of the golden calf and the breaking of the stone tablets at Sinai almost forty years earlier.

Memory gem:  "The Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward"  (Deuteronomy 10:17).

Thought for today:
After the people had gone through their purification, and the sacrifices had been offered in their behalf for the sin of worshipping the golden calf, what did the Lord tell Moses to do?  He instructed Moses to make two new tables of stone.  God had made the first tables, but Moses made the second tables.

Moses cut out of stone two tables, just like the first, and took them up to God on the mountain.  There God wrote on them the words that were on the first tables.

Friend, did you ever stop to think what Moses had to do?  He had to hew out two tables like the first.  Suppose you had been in Moses' place, with broken and crushed pieces of stone lying at your feet, and God should say: "Now, you must cut out two tables of stone just like the first."  What would you have to do first of all?  You would have to get down on your knees and pick up those pieces, wouldn't you?  You would have to pick up all the pieces and put them together in order to get the proper and exact dimensions--the length, width, thickness, and shape.  Oh, I imagine Moses spent a good deal of time down here on his knees, bending over, poking around, picking up those broken pieces, and fitting them together.  It was a big task.  It was a humble work, humiliating work, back-breaking work; it was knee work.  But he finally got the pieces together and the measurements taken.  Then he had to find some stone, like the stone of the first tables, and go to work with a chisel and hammer and cut it out from the ledge. smooth it off, and prepare it.  I often think what a job that was, carrying these heavy tables of stone to the top of Mount Sinai.  It wasn't a notebook job; it was a great burden to be carried up that mountain.  And there in the cloud and fire and glory, God wrote the words again.

DAY 69    Read Deuteronomy 5 through 7.

Today's reading includes a repetition of the Ten Commandments and gives some good advice to parents.

Memory gem:  "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations"  (Deuteronomy 7:9).

Thought for today:
In 1 John 3:4 we read that "sin is the transgression of the law."  But Jesus came to save us from our sins--in other words, our transgression of the law.  This shows His relationship to God's law, or the Ten Commandments.  If Christ did not consider the law of God to be the very character of God Himself, He would not have come to this world to die for the sins of men.  It is good for us to remember that the cross of Jesus is the absolute proof of the eternal validity of the Ten Commandments.

In Christ's time there were people who hated the Ten Commandments, just as there are today.  One modern writer and would-be political aspirant in the United States said some time ago: "There is no law save the law of man's own being; no check upon his will save that which he himself imposes.  True pleasure is the end of being."

On the other hand, it is written in the Scriptures: "It is time for thee, Lord, to work: for they have made void thy law"  (Psalm 119:126).

One of the latest of these godless theories comes from the realm of science.  A professor of an institute of scientific learning diagnosis the whole thing this way: "Crime is simply the result of too much pyruvic acid in one's thalamus cells; or it may be from no cocarboxylase operating in the thalamus and not enough acetylchlorine being delivered to the midbrain."  But the apostle said: "Sin is the transgression of the law," not a physical defect.

The Lord never says "must not" about anything that is harmless or good.  But He has put up some warning signs which are like lighthouses.  These signs say: "This is a bad place--keep out.  Danger--you will wreck your ship."  The Ten Commandments are God's lighthouse.  They help us to sail our bark past places that would wreck our lives.

DAY 68    Read Deuteronomy 3 and 4.

Today's reading gives us an insight into the close relationship between Moses and the Lord.  Tucked in between military records and solemn warnings is a pathetic prayer and the Lord's response.

Memory gem:  "I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon"  (Deuteronomy 3:25).

Thought for today:
Poor Moses!  He was human.  Like so many of us, he spoke "unadvisedly with his lips"  (Psalm 106:33).  Someone says, "Well, Moses had enough to provoke him."  Yes, he did indeed--more than enough--but that was no excuse for sin.  "Ye rebels," he said.  Well, they were rebels; but it was God's authority, not his, to say it.  Even truth is not be spoken in passion and impatience.

"Must we fetch you water out of this rock?"  Moses asked?  Numbers 20:10.  Here he failed to give glory to God, who alone could give water in the wilderness; and, by smiting the rock the second time, Moses took away the force of the lesson which the Lord designed to teach His people.  Christ is the true Rock.  And the rock, being a symbol of Christ, had been smitten once, just as Christ was to be offered only once.  The second time it was necessary only to speak to the rock, as we too have only to ask for blessings in the name of Jesus.  So you see, by smiting the rock twice, Moses marred the symbolism representing Christ.

Sin is sin, and God does not play favorites.  He is "no respecter of persons"  (Acts 10:34).  In his life and death, Moses teaches us that no transgression escapes its appropriate punishment.  "The wages of sin is death"  (Romans 6:23).  The loftiest saint who disobeys does not escape the law of retribution.

Friend, let us learn from the story of Moses that sin is sin; that God's law is immutable; but that, through Christ's atoning blood shed for us upon the cross, God's grace is greater than all our sin; that we may find forgiveness and eternal salvation in Him.

DAY 67    Read Deuteronomy 1 and 2.

Today's reading:  The book of Deuteronomy records Moses' farewell to his people.  Imagine the old leader--twice as old as the "elders" of the people (except two, Joshua and Caleb)--as he pours out his heart to them.  He wants them to remember the lessons of the past.

Memory gem:  "The Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing"  (Deuteronomy 2:7).

Thought for today:
As a leader appointed by God, Moses had led the host of Israel ``out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"  (Exodus 20:2).  To deliver more than two million slaves from the oppression of the strongest military power on earth was a deed to be remembered as long as time should last.  It took courage, intelligence, wisdom, humility, and, above all, faith--faith in the living God.  Moses had all these virtues and more.  He was a prophet of God and wrote the first five books of the Bible as he was moved by the Holy Ghost (see 2 Peter 1:21).  Through him mighty miracles of divine power were performed.  The Ten Commandments, written on two tables of stone by the finger of God Himself, were handed to Moses on Mount Sinai.  He was God's appointed leader of God's people, at God's appointed time.

      Note:  The Four Orations of Deuteronomy

      I.  Chapters 1:6 to 4:43.
      III. Chapters 5 through 26.
      IV. Chapters 27 and 28.
      V.  Chapters 29 and 30.

(The last four chapters of Deuteronomy concern the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua, Moses' song of victory, his words of farewell, and an epilogue, probably written by Joshua.)