Scripture:

Scripture teaches that it is not good for man to be alone. Married individuals are encouraged to be fruitful and multiply, and enjoy the blessing of intimacy often. Children are a blessing from God. 

• "'It is not good for Man to be alone; I will make a helper for him.'...For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." Genesis 2:18, 24

 

• But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” 1 Corinthians 7:2-5

 

• "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" Genesis 1:28

 

• "Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children like olive plants around your table." Psalm 128:3

 

• "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." Psalm 127:3-5

 

Ellen G. White:

• “Let the husband and wife in their married life prove a help and a blessing to one another. Let them consider the cost of every indulgence in intemperance and sensualism. These indulgences do not increase love, nor ennoble and elevate. Those who will indulge the animal passions and gratify lust will surely stamp upon their offspring the debasing practices, the grossness of their own physical and moral defilement.” Manuscript 3 (1897)

 

• "Now Satan lays his plans to defeat the purpose of God. He helps you plan for yourselves...robbing God of the labors of Adelia...The care of children will so preoccupy the mind that Christ and His work will be neglected. The strongest earthly affection would be awakened, the mother for her children, which would make the work of God all secondary...no selfishness must come in to mar the work of God...it is not really wise to have children now. Time is short, the perils of the last days are upon us, and the little children will be largely swept off before this...Adelia, my heart is pained because you have made a failure, because you have robbed God." Letter 48, par. 9 (1876,)

 

• "When I learned that you were to soon have an increase in your family, I knew that you were not doing the will of God...I have special light in regard to these things...Brother and Sister Enoch professedly gave themselves to the missionary work...how much better would have been their influence if they had not married...Brother Cudney could have done a very good work for the Master...when married, his work has not been more than half of what it might have been. Then he must bring a child into the world, and now he can do one third what he might have done had he studied how he could best serve God who called him to be a soldier of the cross of Christ. These cases were illustrate all. The expenses are increased largely, and without the real managing ability there will not be more than one third to the cause of God that might have been. And the time is, and has been for years, that the bringing of children into the world is more of an occasion of grief than joy. The very atmosphere is polluted. Satan controls these children, and the Lord has but little to do with them. If our workers were walking close with God, they would see the situation and would feel that it is no matter of rejoicing to bring a child into the world." Regarding Minister's Families, Feb 15 (1885)/ Letters and Manuscripts, Manuscript 34a (1885)

 

• "I was shown that Brother and Sister Van Horn had departed from God's counsel in bringing into the world children. God had required all that there was of them in His work, and Both could have done good for the Master; but the enemy came in, and his counsel was followed, and the cause of God was robbed of the attention it should have had." Letter 48 (1876)

 

In the examples above, Ellen claims to know the expressed will of God in each of these instances.

 

Ellen endorsed the writing of her husband James, who wrote on sexuality as well:

Ellen supported her husband James’ writings, even to the degree of threatening condemnation upon those who did not use their own money to distribute his paper. 

• “I saw the paper and that it was needed. That souls were hungry for the truth that must be written in the paper. I saw that if the paper stopped for want of means, and those hungry sheep died for want of the paper, it would not be James' fault, but it would be the fault of those whom God had lent his money to be faithful stewards over, and they let it idle; and the blood of souls would be upon their garments. I saw that the paper should go, and if they let it die, they would weep in anguish soon. I saw that God did not want James to stop yet, but he must write, write, write, write, and speed the message and let it go. I saw that it would go where God's servants cannot go.” Manuscript 2 (1850)

 

James White:

• “Frequent (sexual) indulgence in any of its forms, will run down, and run out, any one, of either sex. Those who would write, or speak, or study, must forego this intellectual exertion, or else die. Mere animal temperaments are less injured, because they, by supposition, their vitality is abundant, and its drain by other functions is slight; nor do they enjoy this function as do those more highly organized, and hence are proportionally exhausted. Such live, to be sure; so do brutes. Carnal, groveling, sensual, low-lived animals, living mainly on a single pleasure, when their nature serves up so many! Let such revel in lust, because capable of little else. But those highly organized must partake rarely, else it will excite to distraction, and proportionally exhaust. Besides, they can expend their less-abundant, perhaps deficient, vitality to better advantage. Frequent indulgence must necessarily be lustful, and therefore debasing to their higher feelings. Those whose intellectuality and morality are feeble, may spend their surplus vitality on this passion with less injury, yet cannot cultivate their higher faculties while they thus revel in lust. Let such remain all animal and revel on. But for those who have already too little vitality to sustain their higher faculties - For such to rob all their nobler, godlike elements of vitality, just to expend it on a sensual, debasing passion, is physical, mental, and moral suicide. Red-faced, bloated, course-grained, gouty subjects - it matters little of what becomes of them. About as well go to Texas and be shot as any way, or stay and kill themselves, because worth little anyhow. But for the light-built, fine-skinned, fine-haired, spare-built, sharp-featured, light-eyed persons, of either sex, to indulge, even in wedlock, as often as the moon quarters is gradual but effectual destruction of both soul and body; because they already work off vitality faster than their feeble vital apparatus manufactures it. This excess of expenditure over supply occasions their sharpness. A surplus would render them fleshy. Now to add the most powerful drain of all to their already sparse supply, must sooner or later, according to their vigor of constitution, render them bankrupts of life." A Solemn Appeal: It Enfeebles The Mind, Steam Press: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Assoc., Battle Creek, Mi (1870)