Francis Harper Message for 4/26/2019

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Francis Harper
wbfrmsup@iowatelecom.net


Francis Harper Message for 4/26/2019

Dear Ones,

The Lord said to Peter: “Feed my lambs;” “Feed my sheep.” The spiritual nurturing of children is often neglected. Most of our preaching is directed toward the adults in our congregations. Some branches devote a portion of the preaching service to the children. I have observed where this is done, everyone is edified; the children and the adults also.

The well-known proverb: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6) has proven to be true for the majority of children.

Rufus Jones, 1863-1948, a Quaker, an American religious leader, writer, magazine editor, philosopher, and college professor, said on his 80th birthday, “I am most of all thankful for my birthplace and early nurture in the warm atmosphere of a spiritually-minded home, with a manifest touch of saintliness in it; thankful indeed that from the cradle I was saturated with the Scriptures and immersed in an environment of religion of experience and reality. It was a particular grace that I was born into that great inheritance of spiritual wisdom and faith, accumulated through generations of devotion and sacrificial love.

“I never can be grateful enough for what was done for me by my progenitors before I came on the scene. They provided the spiritual atmosphere of my youth.”

For his sentiments, expressed so eloquently, I am very grateful. His words describe my sentiments also! Surely it is God’s will that every child be nurtured in the way described by Rufus Jones.

Jesus warned: “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:5 IV; 18:6 KJV).

Parents will be held accountable for how they care for their children. The stewardship of parenthood is a grave responsibility! “And again, inasmuch as parents have children . . ., that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance; faith in Christ the Son of the living God; and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands when eight years old, the sin [shall] be upon the head of the parents; . . . and they shall teach their children to pray and walk uprightly before the Lord. And the inhabitants of Zion shall also observe the Sabath day to keep it holy” (Doctrine and Covenants 68:4a-d).

Every child is precious in the sight of God and should be precious to us also. After his ascension, Jesus visited the saints in Meso-America, “and he said unto them, Blessed are ye because of your faith. . . . and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them . . . and he spake unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold your little ones.

“And as they looked to behold, they cast their eyes towards heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw angels descending out of heaven . . . in the midst of fire; and they came down and encircled those little ones . . . and the angels did minister unto them, and the multitude did see and hear, and bear record; and they know that their record is true, for all of them did see and hear, every man for himself” (3 Nephi 8:22-26).

My Love to All,
Francis Harper

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Feed My Lambs . . . Sheep

Seven of the apostles had fished all night on the Sea of Galilee and had caught nothing (John 21:3). In the first light of dawn, they could see a man standing on the shore. They wondered who it was. They were fishing 200 cubits [100 yards] off shore. At that distance personal features could not be seen.

Suddenly the man called out to them the usual fisherman’s greeting, “Have you caught anything?” When they answered they had caught nothing, the unknown man suggested they cast their net on the right side of their boat. The voice carried a familiar ring of authority, so they did as he suggested. Their net was immediately filled with “a hundred and fifty and three great fish. Fishermen always count their catch.

John said to Peter, “it is the Lord.” Now when Simon Peter heard that it was Lord, he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, and did cast himself into the sea” (John 21:7). “This is now the third time that Jesus showed himself to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead” (John 21:14).



At the place called Saint Peter’s Landing, near the little town called Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, there is a monument of the broken hearted Peter kneeling at the feet of Jesus. Three times Jesus asked him, “Do you love me,” once for each of Peter’s three denials. Each time after Peter answered “yes,” the Lord asked him to feed his flock; his lambs and sheep.

During January of 1990, when I visited Saint Peter’s landing I could identify with the feelings of Peter. I had also denied Jesus, not in words, but in some of my actions. I too went to my knees and asked the Lord to forgive me. During my meditations, I picked up a small black stone, as a souvenir of my experience there. After returning home, I discovered my souvenir stone was shaped like a human heart, as depicted in a medical encyclopedia. A few weeks later I noticed the stone was nearly identical in size and shape as a map of the Sea of Galilee, pictured in a magazine article.

A year later I purchased a satellite map of Israel in Tel Aviv, and as before, the stone was nearly identical in size and shape as the Sea of Galilee, photographed from space! Three times, as with Peter, I had been asked by the Lord, “Do you love me?” And three times, he asked me to prove my love for him by feeding his lambs and sheep.

Since that day in January 1990, I have made a greater effort to be a faithful servant of Jesus. He was asked by his disciples upon one occasion “who then is that faithful and wise servant? And the Lord said unto them, It is that servant who watcheth, to impart his portion of meat in due season. Blessed be that servant whom his Lord shall find, when he cometh, so doing” (Luke 12:50-52 IV; 12:42-43 KJV).

The Lord will give his good and faithful servants the appropriate and timely words to impart to his lambs and sheep. Isaiah wrote: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season unto thee. O house of Israel, when ye are weary. He waketh morning by morning, he waketh mine ear to hear as the learned” (Isaiah 50:4)