GOD'S COMMANDMENT REMAINS IN FORCE

Norm & Linda Lindsay and their adult children (November 2008)

When our eight sons and daughters were growing up in the 1970s and 1980s and our family was in a store or some other public place, people would sometimes stare at us or even occasionally want to know if all of those kids were really ours? It was curious then to us as parents that such a question would even be asked, when just one generation before during the time my wife and I were children ourselves, large families were considered to be fairly typical.

And now in this present day removed in time by just another generation or two, families of any size are under attack as is the sacred institution of marriage itself. Many of the people of the world seem to have all but forgotten that God created them in His image and likeness, male and female created He them for the divine purpose of bringing other of His spirit children to this earth to obtain a body of flesh and bones.

Neil L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has taught that the family is ordained of God. Families are central to our Heavenly Father’s plan here on earth and through the eternities. After Adam and Eve were joined in marriage, the scripture reads,

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

"In our day," Elder Anderson continues, "prophets and apostles have declared, 'The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.' We believe in families, and we believe in children."

Sister Lindsay and I miss the little boys and girls who once filled our home with their laughter and their enthusiasm for life, but we love the responsible adults that our children have become. The youngest of our children is about to become a parent herself (as have all of her siblings before her); and with the expected arrive of this new grandchild in a few months, we will have been blessed by Our Father in Heaven with 20 grandchildren.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. (Henry Ward Beecher)