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Counsels on Diet and Foods
nurture of the Lord. But Satan has passed right in before you and
has woven strong bands around them. And yet you sleep on. May
Heaven pity you and your children, for every one of you needs His
pity.—
Testimonies for the Church 2:359-362, 1870
Things Might Have Been Different
Had you taken your position upon the health reform; had you
added to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge
temperance, things might have been different. But you have been
only partially aroused by the iniquity and corruption that is in your
houses....
You should be teaching your children. You should be instructing
them how to shun the vices and corruptions of this age. Instead of
this, many are studying how to get something good to eat. You place
upon your tables butter, eggs, and meat, and your children partake of
them. They are fed with the very things that will excite their animal
passions, and then you come to meeting and ask God to bless and save
your children. How high do your prayers go? You have a work to do
first. When you have done all for your children which God has left for
you to do, then you can with confidence claim the special help that
God has promised to give you.
You should study temperance in all things. You must study it in
what you eat and in what you drink. And yet you say, “It is nobody’s
business what I eat, or what I drink, or what I place upon my table.” It
is somebody’s business, unless you take your children and shut them
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up, or go into the wilderness where you will not be a burden upon
others, and where your unruly, vicious children will not corrupt the
society in which they mingle.
Teach Children How to Meet Temptation
365. Set a guard over the appetite; teach your children by example
as well as by precept to use a simple diet. Teach them to be industrious,
not merely busy, but engaged in useful labor. Seek to arouse the moral
sensibilities. Teach them that God has claims upon them, even from
the early years of their childhood. Tell them that there are moral
corruptions to be met on every hand, that they need to come to Jesus
and give themselves to Him, body and spirit, and that in Him they will