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SAVED BY FAMILIES

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 23, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 4.

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SAVED BY FAMILIES.

By S. M. I. H.

The gospel is a means to an end. It is a lift out of the darkness of death into the light of life. Its fulcrum is the home, its burden is the family, which must be raised to the altitude of the eternal home and the glorious presence of the Eternal Father.
The terms “home” and “family” are often used as synonymous; but they are the same only as the wheat stock is the wheat. While there can be no home without a family, the family may exist without any local habitation such as could properly be called a home. It was the family that made the home a necessity. The family idea anticipated the home.
The family principle is at the foundation of all things that have ever existed to the glory of God. It is the visible revelation of him who calls himself the Eternal Father, and who all through the word that he has given speaks of man as related to himself by ties of which the family is simply an object lesson.
This principle runs through all the universe of created beings and things. It is indestructible, and so full of all that is most precious that it hallows everything that it touches. And among all other gospel truths none is so comprehensive, so full of that which should give us cause for singing as that God intends, and is able, to save us by families. This is the heart of the message, the keynote of its trumpet call. And the fact that it has been sounded in our ears should make us a singing people.
In the words spoken to Abraham, God uttered a prophecy and a promise, as, in referring to the mission of Abraham’s most distinguished descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
That the word “family” in this scripture may also mean “nation” I know; but this does not interfere with the fact that it also means family. Nations are constructed out of families, and partake of their character. There could be no nation without a settled family life. A mass of men, women, and children who had not taken root in home soil, could never make a nation. And in arranging to build up a people who should be the Israel of God, his delight through the eternal ages, the Lord Jesus cast the gospel magnet into the mass of fragments into which Satan had broken the human unit, so as to gather and again unite it in family relations, and so preserve it, an indestructible whole, that it should be a witness to angels and men as to the purpose of God in social conditions. Whatever is consummated in the church must first be perfected in the family. The channel of individual experience must be kept open, or the whole body will become diseased and ineffective; and the family is the place where personal experience is made.
No man all alone by himself can give a complete testimony to the power of the gospel in human life. Rom. 14:7. This is why the hermit or cloister system has been inoperative. There must be association with other human beings in order to make a witness to either the effects of sin or of salvation. The object of the gospel is to meet sin in every place where it can possibly manifest itself, and the work of a witness is to prove that it has been so met and overcome.
The family was so organized as to provide the best opportunity for the development of every sinful tendency, as well as for the freest exercise of the power by which alone it can be destroyed.
It will be impossible to give to the world the testimony that it must have concerning the truth without families so reorganized, out of the sinful disorder into which they have fallen, into the divine order that they shall clearly reveal the life, light, power, and presence of the Holy Spirit in every detail. The boy or girl on the street or at school can nullify the best profession that any father or mother can make.
Jesus can not come again until that perfect testimony has been given which will leave every soul without excuse. The unbelieving must be compelled to say, “That people show by their homes, the family life, the character of their children, that they are living the truth; for whatever is good or evil in any man, woman, or child, will come out in the family; and since only those things that are lovely, of good report, Christlike, and pure, appear in the families of that people, we must accept their witness. They have the truth.”
The purpose of God is always good,—blessing, not cursing. The gospel can not be a blessing short of salvation to the uttermost. Hence blessing by families means salvation by families. This blessing was sent to the families of the earth in that earthen vessel, which was known as the Lord Jesus Christ, and which contained the eternal principles of God. Outside of him there could be no blessing for any family; but in him, conditional upon its acceptance by those to whom has been given the power to say upon what principles any especial family shall be produced, there is absolute protection from the destroyer.
The condition of the body depends upon that of the head and heart. Of the family the father is the head, the mother the heart; and between them they determine what shall be the status of the entire body. If the head is insane with selfishness, and the heart is sick with despair, there can be no health anywhere. But if the head is sound, however sick the heart may be, by the application of the power that God has placed at the disposal of a true intelligence, this infirmity may be relieved. Conversely, if the heart is sound, its every beat in tune to the pulsations that keep time for the universe, then the disordered head may, by the same power, be healed of its insanity, and filled with the mind that was in Christ. 1 Cor. 7:14, 16; 1 Peter 3:1–6. S. M. I. H.