Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 17 (1902)

Ms 217, 1902

Cautions Regarding Restaurant Work

1902

Previously unpublished.

There are those youth who are acting as mere servants. If they were doing the work God has appointed, they would have some earnest experience in seeking to save souls. They ought to be beholding Jesus, becoming changed into His image, forming characters after the divine similitude. We have no time that we dare venture to be one with the powers of darkness. Our cities are like Sodom, and I am instructed to say, If there is no more spiritual discernment and spiritual wisdom manifested than has been manifested, a warning must come to our youth, forbidding them to act in the capacity in which they have acted, for they are losing all sense of what it means to be in service to Jesus Christ. 17LtMs, Ms 217, 1902, par. 1

Whenever there is a restaurant to be set in operation, if there are no better methods adopted than have been, the workers will become linked to the world by being in a worldly society, mingled with those who are connected with the restaurant merely to supply their temporal wants. Nothing is done to create an appetite higher than their daily desire and appetite for food. The question was asked by One who has authority, Will it pay to have the youth, who have been [led to believe] that here was a place where they might do good and obtain an experience by representing the truth, placed in a position of waiting upon worldlings when there is no special teaching given to these youth? The restaurants are opened even on the Sabbath, and worldlings are fed and the servants have to serve. They have very little time to serve God, and the longer they are serving in this way the less disposition they will have to serve Him. 17LtMs, Ms 217, 1902, par. 2

As those who have great light we have to be converted and to become Christians, wearing Christ’s yoke and learning of Christ daily His meekness, His lowliness of heart, and by a living, personal experience obtaining the rest in Jesus Christ. We are all to be demonstrating that there is rest in Christ Jesus in any line of service. There is a better life. We are to prepare to meet Jesus and in the preparation be conformed to His image. 17LtMs, Ms 217, 1902, par. 3

Now our work is to reveal the foundation and reality of truth to all persons we have anything to do with. He brings the heavenly treasures. He must be revealed unto men through His human agents as representatives of Christ in our world. 17LtMs, Ms 217, 1902, par. 4

If those who have the charge of restaurants have no moral remedy to give to the souls ready to perish, then let this kind of work be done by worldlings; and let the talent of youth, the talent of physicians, and the talent of ministers of the gospel be exercised with the full understanding that they are laborers together with God to give the Word of life in a variety of ways to souls ready to die; for unless they are being led to see the light and the salvation they may have, what is the use to play at a work of everlasting importance and not have the fruit? Nothing but leaves is found on the tree, and God forbids His people to carry on work under false pretenses. We want our own young people to be placed where sacred influences are surrounding them and where they will be qualifying themselves for important positions of trust. We are to watch for souls as they who must give an account. 17LtMs, Ms 217, 1902, par. 5