Gems of Reminiscence: Seventeenth Book of the Faith Promoting Series, Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Religion
Gems of Reminiscence: Seventeenth Book of the Faith Promoting Series, Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Missions
Brother Brown seemed to be very slow about learning that the Lord
required the missionaries engaged in his ministry to use wisdom in
the matter of conserving their health, to avoid undue exposure, the
drinking of impure or contaminated water, going heedlessly in the way
of epidemics, etc. While the Lord has the power to heal them, and they,
being in His service, should have a special claim upon His protection
and blessing, they should not knowingly "tempt the Lord." The account
given us in the Bible of Satan taking the Savior up on to the pinnacle
of the Temple and proposing that he cast Himself down, may serve as
an illustration of the principle under consideration. Of course, the
Father had it in His power to save Him, but the injunction was, "Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." In the ordinary nature of things
certain penalties follow the breaking of certain laws. One of the laws
of nature is that the human body is incapable of enduring an intense
heat. If it comes in contact with fire the flesh is burned, and pain
and suffering and perhaps dissolution follows. Of course, the Almighty
is able to arrest the operation of a law of nature, as He did in the
case of the three Hebrew children that the Bible tells us of being cast
into the fiery furnace, but there was special reason for His doing so
in their case. They were in the line of their duty, and it was because
of their devotion to His cause that they were cast into the furnace,
and there was therefore more reason for the Lord coming to their rescue
than there would have been had they voluntarily gone into the fire, and
thus "tempted the Lord" to suffer them to be destroyed.
Every missionary owes it to himself, to his family, to the people among
whom he is sent to labor and to the cause he represents, to take good
care of his health, to consider differences in climate, and food, and
water and altitude, any or all of which may affect him injuriously
unless great care be exercised on his part until he become acclimated
or accustomed thereto.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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