Seite 153 - Testimonies for the Church Volume 3 (1875)

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Health Reform
149
through Christ, overcome appetite and through temperance in all things
regain Eden.
Ignorance is no excuse now for the transgression of law. The light
shines clearly, and none need be ignorant, for the great God Himself is
man’s instructor. All are bound by the most sacred obligations to God
to heed the sound philosophy and genuine experience which He is now
giving them in reference to health reform. He designs that the great
subject of health reform shall be agitated and the public mind deeply
stirred to investigate; for it is impossible for men and women, with
all their sinful, health-destroying, brain-enervating habits, to discern
sacred truth, through which they are to be sanctified, refined, elevated,
and made fit for the society of heavenly angels in the kingdom of glory.
The inhabitants of the Noachian world were destroyed because they
were corrupted through the indulgence of perverted appetite. Sodom
and Gomorrah were destroyed through the gratification of unnatural
appetite, which so benumbed the intellect that they could not discern
the difference between the sacred claims of God and the clamor of
appetite. The latter enslaved them, and they became so ferocious
and bold in their detestable abominations that God would not tolerate
them upon the earth. God ascribes the wickedness of Babylon to her
gluttony and drunkenness.
The apostle Paul exhorts the church: I beseech you therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
Men, then, can make their bodies unholy by sinful indulgences. If
unholy, they are unfitted to be spiritual worshipers and are not worthy
of heaven. If man will cherish the light that God in mercy gives him
upon health reform, he may be sanctified through the truth and fitted
for immortality. But if he disregards that light and lives in violation of
natural law he must pay the penalty.
God created man perfect and holy. But man fell from his holy
estate because he transgressed God’s law. Since the Fall there has been
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a rapid increase of disease, suffering, and death. Yet notwithstanding
man has insulted his Creator, God’s love is still extended to the race;
and He permits light to shine that man may see that in order to live
a perfect life he must live in harmony with those natural laws which
govern his being. Therefore it is of the greatest importance that he