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FMM

Are We Preparing for the Latter Rain?– Part XXIX
A Working People (Continued)

Photo Credit by Flickr/JD Hancock
Photo Credit by Flickr/JD Hancock

FRIDAY MORNING MANNA               May 9, 2014

Nathaniel Fajardo                                    Email:[email protected]

Are We Preparing for the Latter Rain?– Part XXIX 

A Working People (Continued)

 

Sunday, May 11, is Mother’s Day. It’s the mothers, not the day that truly matters.

Responsible, especially godly mothers are the hardest-working, often unrecognized and certainly “uncanonized” living saints on earth by heaven’s estimate for they have a position of a missionary in the highest sense and are co-workers with the minister in the home. They joyfully yet solemnly realize that: “The child’s first teacher is the mother. During the period of greatest susceptibility and most rapid development his education to a great degree is in her hands. To her first is given opportunity to mold the character for good or evil. She should understand the value of her opportunity, and above every other teacher, should be qualified to use it to the best account.”- E. G. White, Child Guidance, p. 63. Southern Publishing Asso.1953. 

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Monthly Studies

Study for the Month of March 2010: Temperance (Page 4)

Instruction Concerning a Change in Diet. —“It is a mistake to suppose that muscular strength depends on the use of animal food. The needs of the system can be better supplied, and more vigorous health can be enjoyed without its use. The grains, with fruits, nuts, and vegetables, contain all the nutritive properties necessary to make good blood. These elements are not so well or so fully supplied by a flesh diet. Had the use of flesh been essential to health and strength, animal food would have been included in the diet appointed man in the beginning!

When the use of flesh is discontinued, there is often a sense of weakness, a lack of vigor. Many urge this as evidence that flesh food is essential; but it is because foods of this class are stimulating, because they fever the blood and excite the nerves, that they are so missed! Some will find it as difficult to leave off flesh eating as it is for the drunkard to give up his dram (a small drink, or draft, especially of liquor), but they will be the better for the change.

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Monthly Studies

Study for the Month of March 2010: Temperance (Page 3)

Unclean Meats

The SDA Dictionary says: “The expression ‘unclean’ is a rendering generally of the Hebrew tame, “ceremonially polluted,” “defiled,” “unclean, and the Greek akathartos, “impure,” “defiled,” “unclean.” Animals declared by the Law of Moses [as given by God himself] to be unfit for either food or sacrifice. The purpose in distinguishing certain animals as clean and others as unclean was apparently two-fold—dietary and religious.

There are Christians who claim that the prohibition to eat the flesh of animals God classified as “unclean” in the Old Testament was only for the Hebrews and Jews, or that such was “done away with at the cross,” implying that it was part of the ceremonial law. This is preposterous if not absurd. First of all Christ did not die on Calvary in order that “non-Jews” and the so-called “New Testament Christians” may eat the flesh of dead animals that He himself declared as unclean and an abomination! Second, the animals declared as unclean in the days of Moses and Noah, are still the same animals today! That is the reason why the Bible goes as far as to name them specifically. See Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14: 1-20; cf. Genesis 7: 1-3. 

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Monthly Studies

Study for the Month of March 2010: Temperance (Page 2)

…The wise man said, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Training up a child, in its fullest sense, is by example and by instruction or teaching. Many Christian parents are either scared, do not know how, or simply balk at the idea of teaching their child what God says in His Word because they themselves need to learn these lessons first. Elgar, the well-known classical composer who, unlike the great composers of his ilk doubled up as music teachers in between composing their great masterpieces, said in disdain, “Teaching is like turning a grindstone with a dislocated shoulder.” Parents may detest the idea of instructing their children of the way of the Lord but it certainly does not excuse nor spare them the certain heartaches later in life.

Such is the lesson conveyed in the example of Manoah and his wife, parents of Samson. But no parent or child need despair. The plan of salvation of the gospel is redemption and deliverance from not only the power of sinful habits and practices but also over hereditary tendencies transmitted from the gene pool from the parents. Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Grace and faith, particularly in these last days, are given particularly to those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” in order that they may overcome all their sins and emerge triumphant in the end.        

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Monthly Studies

Study for the Month of March 2010: Temperance

Study for the Month of March 2010

Temperance

(The Physical and Natural Laws, Part II)

By Nathaniel Fajardo
Email:[email protected]

Temperance is the last but far from being the least important in the list drawn up by Apostle Paul of the eight “fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5: 22, 23. If these fruits actually being manifested in the life of the person, it is the unmistakable proof the Holy Spirit is being allowed to do its appointed work in the plan of salvation.

The popular idea of temperance is “a little of everything won’t hurt” or the abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and now, drugs. Webster has long defined temperance as “habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetite or passions; moderation, specifically moderation in, or narrowly, abstinence from, the use of intoxicants.” Temperate is “moderate; not excessive; as a moderate in the indulgence of appetite or passions; abstemiousness in the use of intoxicating liquors.”-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 1942 (emphasis mine).

Two words stand out in these definitions, namely, moderation and intoxicating liquors.” Moderate, according to the same source means “kept within due bounds; observing reasonable limits; not excessive; restrained; sparing; temperate; abstemiousness; reasonable; calm; tempered.” As to what and who determines what “due bounds” and “reasonable limits” means are as varied in degrees and range as there as many sets of values in all dimensions of the human society but always tending towards permissiveness, a few on the fanatical but narrow interpretation.