MR No. 831—This Material Was Published in Review and Herald, October 14, 1902
MR No. 832—Training for Heaven
Lay Work in the Neighborhood—We are living in the last days of this earth's history, and it is time we understood what we must do to be saved. The Lord will work intelligently for all who will work intelligently for Him. My brethren and sisters, there is something more for you to do than to sit in your churches Sabbath after Sabbath and to listen to the preaching of the Word. You have a work to do for friends and neighbors. God requires of you that you visit these families and seek to create an interest in the truth for this time. You are not laboring together with God if you neglect the work of helping others to take hold upon eternal realities.10MR 320.1
Our ministers are not to be encouraged to hover about the churches to repeat to the believers week after week the same truths. We have a truth that is saving and precious. The Word of God must be planted in many hearts, the bread of life must be dealt out to many hungering souls. If we will study carefully the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, with these words I have read to you from the 54th and 55th chapters, you will see that there is a precious and an extended work to be done by the people of God. It is a blessed work to lift up Christ before the world.10MR 320.2
When the work of the judgment is finished and decisions have been made for eternity, it will be seen that it is those who have given themselves wholeheartedly to the service of God who will stand right with heaven. Some of these may not have been able to leave their families to go to some mission field, but they have been missionaries in their own neighborhood. Their hearts have been so filled with the love of God that their great anxiety has been to win souls for Him. This has been more to them than silver and gold and the precious things of this world. And as they have labored in simplicity to minister the word of truth, the Spirit of God has sent home the word to the hearts of the people.10MR 320.3
My brethren and sisters, let us study the simplicity there is in the Word of God. Let us see what we can do to advance the cause of Christ in the earth. Christ was in this world as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. There were many who set themselves against His work. There will be those who will oppose you. But your work is to preach Christ and Him crucified; and when you do this, the salvation of God will be revealed in the conversion of souls.10MR 321.1
When your minister is called away to some other place to labor, you can speak words of encouragement and blessing to one another. If you have that living faith which it is the privilege of every believer to possess, you will not hold your minister here to labor for you when there is greater need of his ministry elsewhere. Let the light shine where you are. Lay hold of the power that there is in Christ, and learn to overcome through the merits of His blood and the word of your testimony.10MR 321.2
Since I left my home in California in April I have visited many places and have spoken to thousands of people. This is the last stop I expect to make before reaching my home again. I would leave these words with you: Carry the work forward in faith and humble dependence upon God. Let each believer have light in himself; then the blessing of God will rest upon you, and you will see the salvation of God in the advancement of His work in this place.—Manuscript 93, 1909, pp. 5-6. (.)10MR 321.3
Severity and Indulgence in the Rearing of Children—The Bible is a guide in the management of children. Here, if parents desire, they may find a course marked out for the education and training of their children, that they may make no blunders. If the rules laid down for parental authority were obeyed, the workers would not so often be called upon to settle church trials, and be made to weep and mourn over the perversity of those members of the church who seem uncontrollable because when they were children they followed their own way and have brought into their religious experience their unbending will. But when this guide is followed, parents, instead of giving unlimited indulgence to their children, will use more often the chastening rod. Instead of being blind to their faults, their perverse tempers, and alive only to their virtues, they will have clear discernment, and will look upon these things in the light of the Bible. They will know that they must command their children in the right way.10MR 322.1
If parents, instead of abusing their children and provoking them to wrath by their own uncontrollable tempers, would see in the Word of God that they must learn as parents and guardians of children in the school of Christ the lessons of self-control, of meekness and lowliness of heart, there would not be so great inconsistencies as are revealed in the government of the children in professedly Christian families. Threatenings, scoldings, and blows are dealt out under the control of blind passion. Then, when they are not out of patience or in a passion, they go to the other extreme, caressing, and kissing, and indulging them in the very things they have once forbidden.10MR 322.2
Many parents who are called the best of men and women are thus educating their children to become transgressors of the law of God, to become inmates of prisons or almshouses. They bring them up with passions unrestrained, tempers ungoverned, and with but little painstaking effort on their part to educate them in moral principle. Could such parents look into the future and see the path into which they are placing the feet of their children, they would come to their senses before it is too late, before the evil that has been left uncorrected has molded and fashioned the character. But they allow them to be controlled by the enemy of man. Satan is their chosen leader. It is while men sleep that the enemy sows his tares in the heart.10MR 323.1
The Lord bade Moses enjoin upon the Israelites to teach their children the commandments of God, when they should rise up, when they should sit down, when they should go out, and when they should come in, and when they should walk with them by the way.—Manuscript 57, 1897, pp. 2-4. (.)10MR 323.2
The Family an Educational Agency—In His wisdom the Lord has decreed that the family shall be the greatest of all educational agencies. The education of the child is to begin in the home. There it is to learn the lessons that are to guide it throughout life. From its infancy it is to be taught to obey and honor its parents. Never should it be allowed to show them disrespect. Self-will, hasty words, are never to be allowed to go unrebuked. Parents should realize the sacredness of family discipline. The children are to be taught to respect themselves, because they are the Lord's property, bought with an infinite price.10MR 323.3
Parents have been entrusted with a most important stewardship, a sacred charge. They are to make their family a symbol of the family in heaven, of which they hope to become members when their day of test and trial here below shall have ended. The influence exerted in the home must be Christlike. This is the most effective ministration in the character-building of the child. The words spoken are to be pleasant. No boisterous, arbitrary, masterful spirit is to be allowed to come into the family. Every member is to be taught that he is to prepare to be a member of the royal family.10MR 324.1
The father and the mother are to place themselves decidedly on the Lord's side. It is their part to bring light and peace and joy into the home circle. They are to exert an influence which shows that they are guided and controlled by the principles of heaven. They are to draw in even cords. Their every act is to be in harmony with heaven.10MR 324.2
The parents in the home and the teacher in the school are to cooperate. The instruction given the child in the home is to be such as will help the teacher. In the home the child is to be taught the importance of neatness, order, and thoroughness, and these lessons are to be repeated in the school. Our schools are to be built up. They are to be as the schools of the prophets. We are to expect that angels of God will be the helpers of the teachers in all the service that is done to the glory of God.10MR 324.3
But remember that the child's first school is the home. There it is to learn its most important lessons. Parents, remember that your home is a training school in which your children are to be prepared for the home above. Deny them anything rather than the education that they should receive in their earliest years. Allow no word of pettishness. Teach your children to be kind and patient. Teach them to be thoughtful of others. Thus you are preparing them for higher ministry in religious things.10MR 325.1
The history of everyone is written in the books of heaven, that all may know that their reward or punishment is according to their works—their service in this life. Let parents remember that every day makes part of their history, and that no neglect must be permitted in the home, because they never know how soon sickness and death may come to them or their children.10MR 325.2
In the church, in the home, children are to learn to pray and to trust in God. They are to learn that they are to prepare to become members of the family of heaven and that therefore they must be kind and dutiful to their parents, respecting their wishes.10MR 325.3
The father and mother should work together, in full sympathy with each other. They should make themselves companions to their children.10MR 325.4
Do not give the children playthings that are easily broken, and thus teach them lessons of destructiveness. The influence thus made upon their minds is not the most helpful to them. Let them have few playthings and let these be strong and durable.10MR 325.5
Such things, small though they may seem, mean much in the education of a child. When children reach a suitable age, they should be provided with tools. Both boys and girls should learn to use these tools. You will find them apt pupils.10MR 325.6
If the father is a carpenter, he should give his boys lessons in house-building, ever bringing into his instruction lessons from the Bible, the words of Scripture in which the Lord compares human beings to His building.10MR 326.1
If possible, let your home be out of the city, that your children may have ground to cultivate. Let them each have a piece of ground as their own, and as you teach them how to make a garden, how to prepare the soil for the seed, and the importance of keeping all the weeds pulled out, teach them how important it is to keep unsightly, injurious practices out of the life. Teach them to keep down wrong habits as they keep down the weeds in their gardens. It will take time to teach these lessons, but it will pay, yes, greatly pay.10MR 326.2
God demands of parents a faithful study of His Word and a determined effort to make a success of the church in the home. Then parents, with their converted children—the result of their obedience with God—can carry into the church their self-denial and sacrifice and their spiritual strength.10MR 326.3
The Lord created man out of the dust of the earth. He made Adam a partaker of His life, His nature. There was breathed into him the breath of the Almighty, and he became a living soul. Adam was perfect in form—strong, comely, pure, bearing the image of his Maker. God gave him a companion, a wife, to share with him the beauties of nature. In order for this holy pair to continue to be happy, God gave them something to do. The fact that they were holy did not debar them from working. God is never idle. To every one of the angelic host is given an appointed task.10MR 326.4
Adam and Eve were given the garden of Eden to care for. They were “to dress it and to keep it.” They were happy in their work. Mind, heart, and will acted in perfect harmony. In their labor they found no weariness, no toil. Their hours were filled with useful work and communion with each other. Their occupation was pleasant. God and Christ visited them and talked with them. They were given perfect freedom. Only one restriction was placed on them. “Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat,” God said, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16, 17).10MR 327.1
This was the test of their obedience. God was the owner of their Eden home. They held it under Him.—Manuscript 102, 1903, pp. 8-12. (.)10MR 327.2
White Estate
Washington, D. C.,
January 27, 1981.