Deuteronomy 30:19, commentary and pictures

Moses in his closing farewell called heaven and earth to witness that life and death, blessing and cursing were set before Israel and urged them to choose life so that they and their children after them might live. To choose life means to love the Lord, to obey His voice and to hold fast to Him, for He Himself is life and length of days. God sets the same choice before every person and leaves it free, for He compels no one to be saved or to serve Him, and each one fixes his own destiny. Obedience to His law and Word is the way to happiness and life, and disobedience and sin is the way to misery and death, an unchanging covenant between eternal life and eternal death to be settled at the judgment. Choosing life is coming to Jesus now while the Spirit invites, laying hold of His blood, enlisting under His banner and giving Him the service He purchased, and it must be done now before intercession closes and the choice is fixed forever.

Words and Historical Setting

Moses gave this as his closing farewell appeal after he had faithfully set blessing and curse before the people, calling heaven and earth to witness that life and death, blessing and cursing were set before Israel and urging them to choose life so that they and their children and descendants might live. It was a solemn call to decision made because he feared the people would depart from God their only helper, after setting before them the blessing that would follow obedience and the terrible curses that would follow departure. To choose life means loving the Lord God, obeying His voice, and cleaving and clinging and holding fast to Him, for He is life and the length of days and the source of days. It means patiently and humbly receiving eternal life as the free gift of God and keeping His law.

The choice is tied to obedience and loyalty to God, with life following loving God, walking in His ways, and keeping His commandments and statutes and judgments. Choosing life is the way to live and multiply and dwell and be blessed in the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, bringing spiritual and temporal prosperity on condition of obedience. Turning the heart away to worship and serve other gods and refusing to obey brings death and perishing and loss of days and loss of the land. The choice affects not only themselves but their children, so that obedience brings life and blessing and turning away brings death.

God's command in this choice is near and accessible, not hidden in heaven or beyond the sea, but plainly defined by the voice of God from the pillar of cloud setting before His people life and death, blessing and cursing, with the command to choose life. The same truth was repeated by Christ that those who do the commandments shall live in them. Walking contrary to these plainly defined principles insults God, abuses His honor, and misrepresents Him before men, even at the heart of His work and by men in responsible positions called by His name. Having great light requires walking in the light with humbled, changed, converted hearts that practice the truth and maintain justice and mercy and love for God and man so that equity can enter, rather than taking up truth while keeping old hereditary and cultivated character, mingling a human spirit with counsel, and confederating together to do what God has expressly forbidden.

Freedom of Human Choice

Life and death are set before every person, and the choice is left free and present, for salvation is not forced on anyone and no one is compelled to be saved or to serve God. Neither God nor angels control the will to force the decision, so each person is the arbiter of destiny with happiness in this life and in the future immortal life lying in his own hands and future welfare depending on the choice made. Every person is free to choose between right and wrong, and this choice decides eternal destiny, applying to choosing to serve God alone rather than following worldly examples. Minds have been given to understand the commands, consciences to feel their claims, hearts to love them, and wills to obey, and obedience is not compelled. Disobedience brings its penalty, while willing submission to God brings the highest joy human nature can experience.

Merely desiring life is not choosing it, for many desire life yet keep walking the broad road because they have not chosen life. Those who love the world, its fashion and its pleasure, and make this world their home and treasure show by their earthly treasure and way of life that they have not chosen eternal life. Those who choose life and salvation show it by their lives and conduct, living plainly as seekers of a better country, even a heavenly one, and the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God. Choosing life means freely and gladly accepting what Jesus has done in condescending to the shameful death of the cross. It requires in turn condescending and bowing, yielding up will and pleasure to follow the only road to heaven, living a life of continual yielding and choosing to cooperate with God in His work of restoration.

The course others have taken is no excuse, for God sets life and death before each person in plain requirements and calls for a present decision to obey. Life means acting on light received and carrying out conviction by doing what is known to be right instead of walking in darkness, while death means going on in a known wrong course to ruin. The decision fixes personal destiny and reaches others, because refusing to change entirely makes a person a proverb of reproach and drags others down to perdition. To choose is to decide what associates to keep, what thoughts, words, and morals to cherish, whether to give loose rein to appetite and passion, despise authority, use coarse language, and degrade to the lowest level, or to choose the way that leads to Christ, to right, to holiness, and to heaven. A wrong choice cheapens character and gives an influence that contaminates others and ruins souls who might have been brought to Christ, and in the judgment the lost will charge their stumbling and mocking of religion to that influence, saying the one who had light and knew the way to heaven left the ignorant to go blindfolded to destruction, so choosing life requires diligently counting the cost of influence, keeping eternity in reckoning, and continually asking whether a course will be pleasing to God and what its effect will be on minds that have had much less light and evidence as to what is right.

Meaning of Choosing Life

To choose life is to obey the law, commandments, statutes, judgments and Word of God, which is the way to happiness and life, while disobedience, transgression and sin is the way to misery, death and punishment. It is an unalterable covenant choice between eternal life and eternal death, to be brought forward at the heavenly judgment, where obedience is rewarded with life and transgression is sentenced to death. The same choice set before Israel stands before God's people now: humble separation from the world and obedience bring blessing, while joining with idolaters and turning to idolatry bring a curse and certain ruin, as the wilderness failures warn. Obedience received as the Word of salvation becomes the tree of life and shapes a perfect character, so that eternal destiny depends on the effect the Word has on the person.

Keeping the commandments is choosing life and disregarding the law is choosing death, even when obedience harms worldly interest. Eden shows the terms, for its dwellers could retain their happy state only by faithfulness to the Creator: they could obey and live, or disobey and perish. Adam in the smallest test ate the forbidden fruit, lost his Eden home, and opened the floodgates of woe upon the world. Disobedience blinds the eyes to truth and fastens souls in chains of eternal bondage.

The Sabbath belongs to this choice, for Israel's wilderness experience showed that despite God's care and separation from surrounding nations, breaking the Sabbath and other commandments brought punishment. Disregard for God's law and despising His Sabbath puts the world in rebellion and controversy with God, with sin abounding and wrath kindled. Keeping Sunday for the Sabbath because it is old and kept by all the world is choosing death, since age gives Sunday no sanctity as a papal institution raised in place of the Sabbath God established, honored, blessed and sanctified.

The Holy Spirit convinces people of the life-and-death importance of the commandments and draws to God all who are willing to be drawn. The choice stands as clearly defined as the road to the city of refuge, like a signpost with one arm pointing to loving obedience to the Creator as the road to happiness and life and the other to disobedience or sin as the path to misery and death. In an evil hour for the race the great enemy turned the signpost round, so that ever since multitudes have mistaken the true road to happiness and followed the wrong way.

Choosing life is coming to Jesus now while the Spirit invites, making peace with God, laying hold of the merits of Christ's blood, enlisting under His banner, heeding the instruction and warnings of the Word, and giving the service purchased with His blood. It means choosing Christ as Saviour to become a child of God and heir of glory, cherishing every tender conviction, fleeing to Jesus and taking hold of God's strength without hardening the heart or waiting until every objection is cleared, sowing to the Spirit to reap life everlasting while mercy is still heard. Choosing death robs God of that service and barters eternal life for worldly pleasure, idle talk and foolish amusement, for the pleasing things of the world, the service of Satan, the worship of self and the adorning of the person for flattery, ending in loss of heaven, reaping corruption, and sharing the humiliation and punishment of Satan and his angels.

Consequences of the Choice

Spiritual and temporal prosperity come only on condition of obedience, bringing life and multiplication and blessing in the land, prolonged days, and blessing in body and in spirit. To choose life is to love the Lord God, to walk in His ways, to keep His commandments and statutes and judgments, to obey His voice and to cleave unto Him, for He is life and the length of days, and those who do the commandments shall live in them. God as the source of life sets life before men because He wants them to live, and He does not willingly bring affliction and grief, being not the author of sickness and death. Choosing life therefore means obeying the laws of life and health, since nature will not long suffer abuse without protesting, and obedience has an intimate relation to health. The sick and suffering are to be taught to live in harmony with heaven, to cooperate against disease by natural agencies and to lay hold on divine strength through obedience.

Degrading the law of God brings the wickedness and violence under which the world groans. It causes blessing to be withdrawn from orchard and vineyard. The terms of blessing are given to all who hearken diligently to the law and teach it diligently in their families. God stays His judgments and extends His mercy because of His commandment-keeping people upon the earth who love and fear Him.

Choosing the way of life would have enabled Israel to become a praise in the earth and a blessing to all nations. The choice between life and death, blessing and cursing, was plainly set before them and repeatedly urged upon them.

Choosing life is rewarded with eternal life in God's everlasting kingdom. Choosing life means resisting sin, seeking heavenly wisdom, and taking pleasure in righteousness and true holiness, and it is the only safety against corrupt knowledge and corrupting pleasures. It means stopping murmuring, complaining, fault-finding and impulse, seeking thorough conversion of the inmost soul, subduing natural feelings, growing in grace and perfecting holiness, learning meekness and lowliness of heart to obtain rest, making mighty efforts to escape Satan's snare, and humbling the heart to seek meekness and righteousness. Choosing the opposite means corrupting the ways before the Lord, defiling the body, remaining unconverted, harsh and self-willed, being overcome by Satan and making shipwreck of faith. That course leads to the judgment sitting with the books opened, each judged out of what is written according to works, with secret thoughts and vile acts exposed in a fearful spotted record, followed by sentence pronounced, exclusion from the city of God with the ungodly, meeting great loss in days of peril with a foundation of sliding sand instead of the rock, failing of everlasting life, standing exposed in the day of fierce anger, and miserably perishing with the wicked. Those who do not choose the salvation so dearly purchased must be punished, but the punishment is utter destruction by fire until they become as though they had not been and return to dust, which is not endless misery shut up in hell nor taking the wicked to heaven where the company of the pure and holy would make them exceedingly miserable. Then justice is satisfied, all the heavenly host will say Amen, and this benevolence and compassion in destroying the wicked should lead all to admire the divine character.

Heaven is worth any and every effort, and to lose heaven makes life a terrible failure. Each person may choose eternal life in heaven if he will, but the choice must be made now by securing hope in Christ, gaining genuine piety and correct religious experience, being rich in good works, and making earnest effort to be sure of gaining everlasting life. Capability, even when consecrated to usefulness, cannot substitute for this choice. Through self-righteousness and carelessness confidence is lost, through the deceitfulness of sin the eternal reward is lost, and a false hope ends outside the city of God with hypocrites and unbelievers.

Prophecy and Final Crisis

The recounting of wonderful dealings with the people in the past is not historical only but prophetic, foreshadowing great events of the future and the final victory of the faithful when Christ comes the second time in power and glory. The setting of life and death, blessing and cursing before the people with the call to choose life so that they and their seed may live is by loving the Lord, obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is life and the length of days, that they may dwell in the land sworn to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Life follows loving God, walking in His ways, and keeping His commandments, while turning away and serving other gods brings death.

The choice applies to the people nearing the heavenly Canaan, who are free to obey or disobey, but only those who hear and obey will enter, and disobedience brings eternal death. Those who have reached years of accountability and received light are privileged to choose life or death. When light penetrates everywhere in the final loud proclamation, those in the churches who have any light and have not heard and rejected the three messages, including many who have come to years of accountability since those messages were given, are given light and the privilege of choosing life or death. Choosing life then means obeying the call and leaving the fallen churches and taking a stand with those who look for their Lord and keep all His commandments, while all are tested by the work of the third message and the precious are called out from the religious bodies.

Life and death are set before every person while mercy still invites and heaven is interested for salvation. Many desire life but make no effort to obtain it and do not choose to accept salvation, having no interest for themselves while warning, agonizing prayer, tears and burdens are still offered for them. Only two things are set before each person, heaven or hell, life or death, with no other place to lean, and the choice for life must be made now because mercy is closing to its close, for to lean too long on something else when the commandments are plain and to presume on mercy is to choose death. Once Jesus lays off His priestly work and His intercession closes, the choice is fixed forever, with no atoning blood to cleanse the sinner and no compassionate Saviour to plead to spare the sinner a little longer, and mercy invites no more. Those who refused the choice then face fearfulness and horror with the distinct knowledge that it is too late, after Christ finishes pleading His blood and holds out no longer but girds His sword for the deliverance of the captive with destroying angels, and the choice decides whether the name is enrolled among those established or among those separated. The message is meant to lead souls to make that choice between life and death, and its influence will bring about a work greater than is presently imagined.

Practical Applications for Life

Life and death are to be set before all people near and far, with the strongest motives brought forward to induce them to choose life by obeying the commandments of God, for keeping His commandments is choosing life and disregarding His law is choosing death. The reality of life and death set before each person decides the salvation of the soul, and therefore people must be appealed to in plainness, faithfulness, love, meekness, humility, seriousness, and fearful earnestness to make them understand it, to choose life, and to prepare for the day of God, for salvation is not a matter to be trifled with. The whole matter centers in the choice between life and death, blessing and cursing, where obedience means eternal life and disobedience means death, and those who claim to be messengers must go to the Word of life with honest, wise, prayerful research in the Spirit of Christ to know what the Lord says, and such searching will be rewarded. Teachers who instead voice the words of the great apostate bring shame and ruin on themselves and carry those they have deceived with them, as Satan in rebellion carried out of the heavenly courts those who accepted his words instead of the words of God.

God speaks to parents what He requires of them and expects obedience, having given His law to govern human minds and set before them life and death, blessing and cursing. Parents must understand God's will and requirements so they can obey them and diligently instruct and train their children to love, fear, reverence, obey, and become acquainted with the law and all the commandments, with God's will guiding every word and action regardless of the opinions and practices of those who disobey. No one is without excuse for failing to obtain a clear understanding, since nothing necessary for enlightenment has been kept back, and knowing for oneself what is right and wrong must be made the life-work so children can be taught and trained aright. Continuing the course of pride, show, appetite, failure to keep in the love of God, and failure to teach, restrain, and raise a standard against Satan is choosing death and leaves parents far from the kingdom, while faithful watchful labor with prayer, faith, broken hearts, jealous care, and fortification about the children decides salvation for both parents and children. Had parents obeyed and diligently trained their children, the world would not be in its present terrible state as in the days of Noah, for disregard for God's laws and despising His Sabbath puts the world in rebellion and controversy with God, transgression from generation to generation makes sin abound, and kindles wrath against teachers.

At the critical period of starting responsible life in youth both worlds are set before each person and each must choose which he will have, and all can choose life if they will. Choosing life is the only safety against corrupt knowledge and corrupting pleasures, meaning to seek heavenly wisdom, resist sin, and take pleasure in righteousness and true holiness, and it is rewarded with eternal life in God's everlasting kingdom. Choosing life means laying hold of eternal life by swerving not from integrity, resolutely preserving purity of soul and religious claims and privileges even when duty is unpleasant, sacrifice seems great, and faithfulness puts one in direct opposition to unconsecrated friends and relatives. God tests patience and faith through difficult positions to teach trust, and those who press forward in the fear of God will be blessed and recompensed a thousandfold, for what is sown in youth will be reaped in harvest, so neglect and indifference concerning eternal things brings great personal loss and through influence prevents others from fulfilling their obligations to God.

To choose life means to love the Lord, to obey His voice, and to cleave unto Him, for He is life and the length of days, so that they and their children may live. Obedience to the commandments has an intimate relationship to health, and through obedience days are prolonged and blessing comes in body and in spirit, for God as the source of life sets life before men because He wants them to live and does not willingly bring affliction and grief, being not the author of sickness and death. Nature will not long suffer abuse of the laws of life and health without protest, so choosing life means obeying those laws. Sanitarium physicians and helpers and ministers are to unite to lead men and women to obey, to cooperate with God in combating disease by using natural remedial agencies and by encouraging patients to lay hold on divine strength through obedience, teaching the sick how to live in harmony with heaven. Choosing spiritual life requires heart work and sincere earnest seeking, with deficiencies detected and overcome by self-examination and prayer, and obstacles in hereditary and cultivated tendencies that seem impossible overcome by steady, determined, persevering effort to the point, never giving up or yielding to discouragement even when failing again and again. For one in failing health, life means denying self, taking up the cross and following Christ to gain everlasting life, cleansing from all filthiness of flesh and spirit and perfecting holiness, glorifying God in body and spirit which are His by placing oneself in better health and giving up poisonous stimulants, while death means continuing habits that undermine the constitution and leave a wreck, indulging tea, coffee, snuff, and swine's flesh which tear down the system, waste nerve strength, use up future resources, and benumb the fine nerves of the brain so that discerning sacred things, valuing the atonement, and seeing the necessity of purity to meet God's measurement become impossible.

Life and death are set before every worker, with the strongest motives presented to induce them to choose life by obedience to God's law. Choosing life for workers means keeping pure principles garrisoned in the heart, truth as part of character, integrity in every business transaction, and careful attention to eternal interests. Choosing death means falsehood, deception, selfishness and corruption, forgetting God even for an hour, and tampering with evil until habit holds like an iron band, and the path of life being beset with perils and the tempter's nets, only the obedient are safe, for God despises the evil course and His blessing cannot attend those who do not turn from it. For the wealthy the choice is to deny self and live forever with the Lord or indulge self and face eternal death, and choosing life means following Christ's path of self-sacrifice, receiving an abundant entrance into His everlasting kingdom.

Life and death are set before each person in plain requirements and call for a present personal decision without delay, for each stands on the brink of destruction making decisions for the judgment, and life means acting on light received and carrying out conviction by doing what is known to be right instead of walking in darkness in a known wrong course to ruin. The course others have taken is no excuse, and the decision fixes personal destiny and reaches others, because refusing to change entirely makes one a proverb of reproach and drags others to perdition. Choosing life means securing hope in Jesus by laying hold of the merits of His blood, enlisting under the blood-stained banner of Prince Immanuel and leaving the black banner of sin, cherishing every tender conviction, fleeing to Jesus, taking hold of God's strength to make peace with Him, not hardening the heart or resisting the Spirit, making sure work for eternity, hasting to get ready, leaving vanity and folly, and sowing to the Spirit to reap everlasting life while Jesus pleads and mercy is still heard, while choosing death is perishing for a few short days of worldly pleasure and letting that pleading be in vain. Choosing life means taking hold of truth which elevates, refines taste, sanctifies judgment, and makes heavenly minded, redeeming time, enduring hardness as soldiers, setting godly example by restraining and disciplining children, and submitting to being hewed and refined in God's workshop now so that if found without blemish one will fill a place in God's building and see the King in His beauty and possess everlasting life. Choosing life requires constant watchfulness and unceasing prayer to be fortified against shipwreck, being firmly settled on principle rather than moving from impulse, not easily discouraged, having endurance, enduring hardness and contradiction as Christ endured, and being established, strengthened, settled, grounded and built up in the faith. Choosing life means stopping murmuring, complaining, fault-finding and impulse, seeking thorough conversion of the inmost soul, subduing natural feelings, growing in grace and perfecting holiness, learning of Jesus who is meek and lowly to obtain rest, making mighty efforts to escape Satan's snare, and humbling the heart to seek meekness and righteousness, while choosing death means remaining unconverted, harsh and self-willed, being overcome, making shipwreck of faith, meeting great loss in peril with a foundation of sliding sand instead of the rock, displeasing God, failing of everlasting life, and standing exposed in the day of fierce anger. Each person is the arbiter of destiny, and to choose is to decide what associates to keep and what thoughts, words, morals, appetite, language, and conduct to cherish, whether to give loose rein to passion, despise authority, use coarse language, and degrade oneself, or to choose the way that leads to Christ, to right, to holiness, and to heaven. A wrong choice cheapens character and gives a contaminating influence that ruins souls who might have been brought to Christ, and in the judgment the lost will charge their stumbling and mocking of religion to that influence, saying the one who had light left the ignorant to go blindfolded to destruction, so because life is lived in view of the eternal world, choosing life requires diligently counting the cost of influence, keeping eternity in reckoning, and continually asking whether a course will please God and what its effect will be on minds with much less light.