WALDENSIAN CHILDREN WERE ‘TRAINED UP IN THE WAY THEY SHOULD GO’ BY GODLY PARENTS

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WALDENSIAN CHILDREN WERE ‘TRAINED UP IN THE WAY THEY SHOULD GO’ BY GODLY PARENTS

“But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that FROM A CHILD [from childhood] thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” 2 Tim. 3: 13, 14, KJV.

The young moral heroes of the Bible represented by Joseph, Daniel and his three friends, etc. were not “overnight sensations” but were moral heroes in the making through the faithful parenting of their godly parents by precept and example. The “bountiful harvest” of their parents’ wise and faithful “sowing” that took place in distant lands where their children were totally denied the safety and comfort of godly surroundings, yet stood unflinchingly true and uncompromising even in the face of terrible death. They were the lights of truth in the midst of gross and appalling darkness in the citadels of heathenism and paganism in the ancient world. So were the Waldensian children in the beginning of the Dark Ages during the Christian Era.

“While the Waldenses regarded the feat of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, they were not blind to the importance of contact with the world, a knowledge of men of active life, in expanding the mind and quickening the perceptions.

“From their schools in the mountains some of the youth were sent to institutions of learning in the cities of France or Italy, where it was a more extended field of study, thought, and observation than in their native Alps.

“The youth thus sent forth were exposed to temptation, they witnessed vice, they encountered Satan’s wily agents, who urged upon them the MOST SUBTLE heresies and the MOST DANGEROUS deceptions.

“But their education FROM CHILDHOOD had been of a character to PREPARE them for all this. In the schools where they went, they were not to make confidants of any. Their GARMENTS were so prepared as to conceal their GREATEST TREASURE—the precious MANUSCRIPTS of the Scriptures. These, the FRUIT of months and years of toil, they carried with them, and whenever they could do so without exciting suspicion, they cautiously placed some portion in the way of those whose hearts seemed open to receive the truth.

“From their MOTHER’S KNEE the Waldensian youth had been trained for this purpose in view; they [particularly mothers] understood their work and faithfully performed it. Converts to the true faith [of Jesus, the religion of the Bible] in these institutions of learning and frequently its principles were found to be permeating the entire school; yet the PAPAL LEADERS, could not, by the closest inquiry, trace the so-called ‘corrupting heresy’ to its source.” – Great Controversy, 1911 ed., E. G. White, pp. 69, 70. Pacific Press Publishing Asso., Mt View, CA.

No wonder the same author says that there is a great need “for old-fashioned mothers and fathers in spiritual Israel.” Both men and God have been asking the question, Where can they can be found? They are “more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir! Bless all, NMF