Because of your leaving your parents in their suffering when they needed help, the church was obliged to take this burden and to watch with the suffering members of Christ’s body. In this heartless neglect you brought the frown of God upon yourselves. God does not lightly pass by such things. They are recorded by the angels. God cannot prosper those who go directly contrary to the plainest duty specified in His word, the duty of children to their parents. Children who feel under no more obligation to their earthly parents than you have done, but can so easily step out from the responsibilities upon them, will not have due respect for their heavenly Father; they will not reverence or respect the claims that God has upon them. If they disrespect and dishonor their earthly parents they will not respect and love their Creator. In neglecting her parents, your wife transgressed the fifth precept of the Decalogue: “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Exodus 20:12. This is the first commandment with promise. Those who disrespect or dishonor their parents need not expect that the blessing of God will attend them. Our parents have claims upon us that we cannot throw off or lightly regard. But children who have not been trained and controlled in childhood, and who have been permitted to make themselves the objects of their care, selfishly seeking their own ease and avoiding burdens, become heartless and do not respect the claims of their parents, who watched over them in their infancy. (3T 232.1) MC VC

Brother R, you have been selfish in these things yourself and greatly deficient in duty. You have required attention and care, but you have not given the same in return. You have been selfish and exacting, and have frequently been unreasonable and given your wife occasion for trial. Both of you have been unconsecrated and astonishingly selfish. You have made but little sacrifice for the truth’s sake. You, as well as your wife, have avoided burdens, and have occupied a position to be waited upon rather than to try to be as little burden as possible. (3T 232.2) MC VC

Ministers of Christ should feel it a duty binding upon them, if they receive the hospitalities of their brethren or friends, to leave a blessing with the family by seeking to encourage and strengthen its members. They should not neglect the duties of a pastor, as they visit from house to house. They should become familiar with every member of the family, that they may understand the spiritual condition of all, and vary their manner of labor to meet the case of each. When a minister bearing the solemn message of warning to the world receives the hospitable courtesies of friends and brethren, and neglects the duties of a shepherd of the flock and is careless in his example and deportment, engaging with the young in trifling conversation, in jesting and joking, and in relating humorous anecdotes to create laughter, he is unworthy of being a gospel minister and needs to be converted before he should be entrusted with the care of the sheep and lambs. Ministers who are neglectful of the duties devolving on a faithful pastor give evidence that they are not sanctified by the truths they present to others and should not be sustained as laborers in the vineyard of the Lord till they have a high sense of the sacredness of the work of a minister of Christ. (3T 232.3) MC VC