EXTRACT FROM CORRESPONDENCE.
I THOUGHT I would write and ask you about the doctrine taught by some in our denomination,—that we should not live with our husbands as wives. I have been told that you taught it in the book entitled “The Abiding Spirit.” My husband is not in the truth; and if I should take such a step, it would cause a separation. Now is that a truth for these days? I do wish to live the life of Christ in my home, so as to bring all the members of my family into the kingdom. My whole desire is to live as my Saviour would have me to. I have been told that we are to refuse to live with our husbands as wives; and then, if the husband will depart, 1 Cor. 7:15 is quoted as applying in such a case. I have been told that no true Seventh-day Adventist will have children in these days. I am glad to receive your letter, since I have been misunderstood in the matter quoted. It is my firm conviction that among all the experiences that come to men and women, none are so salutary, so used of God as a means of salvation, as that of fatherhood and motherhood; and that up to the close of probation there will be many a man and woman who can never know enough about God to make salvation possible without those revelations of him that can come only through these channels. “She shall be saved in childbearing,” says Paul; and that childbearing shall be a means of salvation is certainly one meaning of these words, as has been demonstrated in the experience of every woman who has ever been a true Christian mother. She may have been a Christian before she was a mother, but her children have helped her to be a better one than she could ever have been without them; and the same is true of the father. If the children have not been a help, the parents need yet to know what it means to be born again. The point where there has been any possible question is not as regards the bringing of children into the world under proper conditions for their care, education, and training for immortality; but in the selfish yielding to appetite, which has been the curse of the marriage relation ever since sin came into the world; and from which the Lord’s people—those at least who are candidates for translation—must be delivered before the close of probation. It is in trying to make this point clear that I have been misunderstood. I refer every man and woman to the plain teaching of the word of God in 1 Corinthians 7, the entire chapter, and also Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3. But some may raise a question just here concerning the statement of our Lord as found in Matt. 24:19; to which I reply that a warning is not a prohibition. In the woe pronounced the Lord simply stated a difficulty which must be met by any woman under the conditions mentioned; but I am convinced that it is a perversion of the teaching to quote this as a prohibition against the bringing of children into the world at any time in its history. If people have children, they must provide for them. They must reckon with them in every experience which can come. If they bring hardship with them, or toil and sorrow, these things must be bravely met. If one is pursued, and must flee, the children must hinder; but in meeting and overcoming any difficulties, or enduring any adversity or labor for the sake of the little ones, any father and mother will learn more of how God deals with his children than they could ever learn through all the sermons they have ever heard.