Remarriage of Widows and Widowers
29
The father is seldom prepared, with his failing faculties, to properly
bring up his young family.—
Selected Messages 2:423, 424
.
Need of Sound Judgment—Dear Sister: I have just received a
letter from Charles B, a student in the school at Lodi, California,
pleading with me to inquire of the Lord concerning his mother, whom
he says is thinking of marrying a young man many years younger than
herself.
I am surprised to hear that a mother forty-six years of age will
imperil her happiness, her welfare, and her influence by marrying a
young man of twenty. This is a strange matter, and reveals lack of
sound judgment. The Lord would have this sister consider carefully
the sure result of such a course of action.
In this matter, our sister must be under a strange influence—an
influence contrary to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As the mother
of three children, she should feel her accountability to God to move
discreetly in all respects, that she may hold her influence over her
children, and not pursue any course that they and many others would
regard as so questionable. She should realize that her duty to her God
and to her children demands the most serious consideration.
My sister, the Lord is not in this matter. Such a marriage would
bring strange results—results that would destroy the influence that a
mother should earnestly seek to maintain over her own children. This
influence I entreat of you to guard sacredly. God has solemnly charged
you, as the mother of your children, to bring them up in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord. For you at this time to take a youth of
twenty as your husband would be strangely inconsistent with your
responsibilities as a mother of three sons now grown to manhood.
[38]
In the night season I was talking with you concerning these matters,
and setting before you the inconsistency of the course under contem-
plation. I advise you to exercise your ingenuity of mind in an effort to
help your children to understand the advantages of loving the Word of
God. Show your children that you are cooperating with the Lord in an
effort to save their souls.
In the night season it was presented before me that if you should
take this strange step, the enemy of all righteousness would use this as
a means of ruining the respect that your children would otherwise have
for you, and would create in their hearts a feeling of contempt for you
because of your lack of good judgment. Satan is seeking to destroy