Health and Health Principles
575
Overburdened, a minister is often so hurried that he scarcely finds
time to examine himself whether he be in the faith. He finds very little
time to meditate and pray. Christ in His ministry united prayer with
work. Night after night He spent wholly in prayer. Ministers must
seek God for His Holy Spirit, in order that they may present the truth
aright.—
Manuscript 127, 1902
.
A Firm Stand-an Appeal to a Popular Evangelist—It has been
clearly presented to me that God’s people are to take a firm stand
against meat eating. Would God for thirty years give His people the
message that if they desire to have pure blood and clear minds, they
must give up the use of flesh meat, if He did not want them to heed this
message? By the use of flesh meat the animal nature is strengthened
and the spiritual nature weakened. Such men as you, who are engaged
in the most solemn and important work ever entrusted to human beings,
need to give special heed to what they eat.
Remember that when you eat flesh meat, you are but eating grains
and vegetables secondhand; for the animal receives from these things
the nutrition that makes it grow and prepares it for market. The life that
was in the grains and vegetables passes into the animal, and becomes
part of its life, and then human beings eat the animal. Why are they so
willing to eat their food secondhand?
In the beginning, fruit was pronounced by God as “good for food.”
The permission to eat flesh meat was a consequence of the fall. Not till
[664]
after the Flood was man given permission to eat the flesh of animals.
Why, then, need we eat flesh meat? Few who eat this know how full it
is of disease. Flesh meat never was the best food, and now it is cursed
by disease.
The thought of killing animals to be eaten is in itself revolting.
If man’s natural sense had not been perverted by the indulgence of
appetite, human beings would not think of eating the flesh of animals.
We have been given the work of advancing health reform. The
Lord desires His people to be in harmony with one another. As you
must know, we shall not leave the position in which, for the last thirty-
five years, the Lord has been bidding us stand. Beware how you place
yourself in opposition to the work of health reform. It will go forward,
for it is the Lord’s means of lessening the suffering in our world and
of purifying His people.