21/01/2024
When Ellen White’s young sons begged to hang out with perhaps questionable friends or join a “party of amusement,” she told them:
“I cannot let you go, children; sit right down here, and I will tell you why. I am doing up work for eternity and for God. God has given you to me and entrusted you to my care. I am standing in the place of God to you, my children; therefore I must watch you as one who must give an account in the day of God. Do you want your mother's name written in the books of heaven as one who failed to do her duty to her children, as one who let the enemy come in and preoccupy the ground that I ought to have occupied? Children, I am going to tell you which is the right way, and then if you choose to turn away from your mother and go into the paths of wickedness, your mother will stand clear, but you will have to suffer for your own sins.”
The result?
Ellen White says, “This is the way I did with my children, and before I would get through, they would be weeping, and they would say, ‘Won't you pray for us?’ Well, I never refused to pray for them. I knelt by their side and prayed with them. Then I have gone away and have pleaded with God until the sun was up in the heavens, the whole night long, that the spell of the enemy might be broken, and I have had the victory. Although it cost me a night's labor, yet I felt richly paid when my children would hang about my neck and say, ‘Oh, Mother, we are so glad that you did not let us go when we wanted to. Now we see that it would have been wrong.’”
Ellen White adds, “Parents, this is the way you must work, as though you meant it. You must make a business of this work if you expect to save your children in the kingdom of God.”
— From AH 528-529
