32
Counsels on Health
Men have polluted the soul temple, and God calls upon them to
awake and to strive with all their might to win back their God-given
[23]
manhood. Nothing but the grace of God can convict and convert the
heart; from Him alone can the slaves of custom obtain power to break
the shackles that bind them. It is impossible for a man to present his
body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, while continuing to
indulge habits that are depriving him of physical, mental, and moral
vigor. Again the apostle says, “Be not conformed to this world: but be
ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what
is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Romans 12:2
.
As in the Days of Noah
Jesus, seated on the Mount of Olives, gave instruction to His
disciples concerning the signs which should precede His coming: “As
the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man
be. For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered into the ark, and knew not until the Flood came, and took them
all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
Matthew
24:37-39
. The same sins that brought judgments upon the world in
the days of Noah exist in our day. Men and women now carry their
eating and drinking so far that it ends in gluttony and drunkenness.
This prevailing sin, the indulgence of perverted appetite inflamed the
passions of men in the days of Noah, and led to widespread corruption.
Violence and sin reached to heaven. This moral pollution was finally
swept from the earth by means of the Flood.
The same sins of gluttony and drunkenness benumbed the moral
sensibilities of the inhabitants of Sodom, so that crime seemed to be
the delight of the men and women of that wicked city. Christ thus
[24]
warns the world: “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did
eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but
the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone
from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day
when the Son of man is revealed.”
Luke 17:28-30
.
Christ has left us here a most important lesson. He would lay
before us the danger of making our eating and drinking paramount. He
presents the result of unrestrained indulgence of appetite. The moral