Basic HTML Version
A Goal to Reach, February 23
The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23
.
When Paul wrote, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly,” he
did not exhort his brethren to aim at a standard which it was impossible for
them to reach; he did not pray that they might have blessings which it was
not the will of God to give. He knew that all who would be fitted to meet
Christ in peace, must possess a pure and holy character.
If Seventh-day Adventists practiced what they profess to believe, if
they were sincere health reformers, they would indeed be a spectacle to the
world, to angels, and to men. And they would show a far greater zeal for
the salvation of those who are ignorant of the truth.
Greater reforms should be seen among the people who claim to be
looking for the soon appearing of Christ. Health reform is to do among our
people a work which it has not yet done. There are those who ought to be
awake to the danger of meat-eating, who are still eating the flesh of animals,
thus endangering the physical, mental, and spiritual health. Many who are
now only half converted on the question of meat-eating will go from God’s
people, to walk no more with them.
The controlling power of appetite will prove the ruin of thousands, when,
if they had conquered on this point, they would have had moral power to
gain the victory over every other temptation of Satan. But those who are
slaves to appetite will fail in perfecting Christian character. The continual
transgression of man for six thousand years has brought sickness, pain, and
death as its fruits. And as we near the close of time, Satan’s temptation to
indulge appetite will be more powerful and more difficult to overcome.
Again and again I have been shown that God is trying to lead us back,
step by step, to His original design—that man should subsist upon the
natural products of the earth. Among those who are waiting for the coming
of the Lord, meat-eating will eventually be done away; flesh will cease to
form a part of their diet. We should ever keep this end in view, and endeavor
to work steadily toward it.
[63]
60