Selected Messages Book 3

Chapter 35—Teaching Health Reform in the Family

Consistency of Parents With Children at the Dining Table

Our work now is a very solemn, earnest work. We cannot evade it. There is the greatest necessity of education in more lines than one. The one great need with you both is to feel that you must be under supervision to God. You are His property. Your children are His property to be trained as younger members of the Lord's family, not to consider themselves to be especially indulged in any whim and denied nothing. Were you an observer of the same plan of discipline you see others pursuing in managing their children, you would criticize them severely. 3SM 293.1

And again, do not indulge yourselves in sitting at the table spread with a large variety of food, and because you enjoy these things, eat them before your children and say, No, you cannot have this. You cannot have that, it will hurt you, while you eat largely of the very things you forbid them to touch. Your discipline in this line needs the reformation and the principle of practice. 3SM 293.2

It is cruelty to sit down yourself to the third meal, and take satisfaction in talking and enjoying yourselves while you have your children sit by and eat nothing, representing the excellent discipline your children are under to let them watch your eating and not rebel against your authority. They do rebel. They are young now, but to continue this kind of discipline will spoil your authority. 3SM 293.3