“The Church School Presents ‘a Heaven to Go to Heaven In’”
By M. Bessie De Graw
This was the thought presented by Elder Haskell in his lesson before the students of the summer school at Berrien Springs, Monday evening. The statement is a striking one, and we listened intently to the development of the thought. “There will be families in heaven,” said Elder Haskell. “There will be no births there, but there will be families. God is the Father, and Christ the elder Brother, of all those who are saved. This is but carrying out God’s original plan, for at creation all created beings constituted the family of God. “When sin came into the world, this part of the family was separated from the rest. Christ was born into a family, that he might show to the world that God wants to save families. The family of Christ will be brought together in the new earth, and will be made up of those who are bound together, not by fleshly relationship, but by the blood of Christ. This thought is taught all through the Word of God. Thus God would restore families, and he has chosen the Christian teacher to co-operate with parents in the building up of Christian families. This is the way the Christian school presents a heaven in which we may go to heaven. “In the sixty-eighth Psalm we read, ‘God setteth the solitary in families.’ We may be without family relationship on the earth, but if we are Christ’s, when we reach heaven we shall have a place in some family. No person will be saved independently of other people. We shall belong to the family of the one who has had the greatest influence on our lives. Every one who is saved will have children. These will be children in the faith. “Do you want to know how the families will be made up in heaven? We are told in the eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy. In verses 18-21 the Lord tells us to teach the law to our children. We are to teach them when sitting in the house, and when walking by the way, that our days may be ‘as the days of heaven upon the earth.’ Thus when we teach God’s law to our children, heaven will begin upon earth, and it will make our families like heaven. “If our children had early been taught in this way, they would not to-day be drifting into the world. Parents have missed an opportunity to establish a heaven upon earth. There is but one remedy, and God has told us what this is. We are to gather in, not only our own children, but the children of our neighbors, and teach them God’s truth. The only way this can be accomplished is by greatly increasing the number of Christian schools. The teacher in the Christian school should consider herself a missionary just as truly as if she were in India or Africa. This is what God has said, and when we so teach, the school will be a little heaven upon earth. I know, of no more joyous place on earth than a home where the father and mother and children are bound together by the blood of Christ. I have had parents come to me, saying, ‘I have little influence over my boy. Will you not do what you can for him?’ When parents acknowledge that they have lost their influence over their children, some one else must become the father of those children, and in heaven they will belong to the one who leads them to Christ. “Every Christian teacher goes into the schoolroom to supplement the work of parents. Teachers and parents should unite for the salvation of the children. It is because God has given this plan that I say that the Christian school presents a heaven in which we may go to heaven.” The lesson impressed itself strongly upon the minds of those who are preparing to teach. Can there be any higher calling? Can it be questioned whether the work of the Christian teacher has anything to do with hastening the coming of Christ? God is making up that family for heaven, and it makes us as teachers feel that we want to live very close to the Saviour’s side, that we may be instrumental in bringing to the birth thousands of children who shall make up that heavenly family.