98
Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
message to save your life. You have been too strenuous in restricting
your diet to certain articles of food. While I was praying for you,
words were given me for you to set you in the right path. The message
was sent that you were to allow yourself a more generous diet. The
use of flesh-meat was not advised. Directions were given as to the
food to be taken. You followed the directions given, rallied, and are
still with us.
I often think of the instruction then given you. I have been given
so many precious messages to bear to the sick and the afflicted. For
this I am grateful, and I praise the Lord.
Testimonies for the Church 2:377-379
At the time of the yearly conference at Adams Center, N. Y.,
October 25, 1868, I was shown that the brethren in-----were in great
perplexity and distress because of the course pursued by B and C.
Those who have the cause of God at heart, can not but feel jealous for
its prosperity. I was shown that these men were not reliable. They were
extremists, and would run the health reform into the ground. They
were not pursuing a course which would tend to correct or reform
those who were intemperate in their diet; but their influence would
disgust believers and unbelievers and would drive them farther from
reform, instead of bringing them nearer to it.
Our views differ widely from those of the world in general. They
are not popular. The masses will reject any theory, however reasonable
it may be, if it lays a restriction upon the appetite. The taste is consulted
instead of reason and health. All who leave the common track of
custom, and advocate reform, will be opposed, accounted mad, insane,
radical, let them pursue ever so consistent a course. But when men
who advocate reform carry the matter to extremes, and are inconsistent
in their course of action, people are not to blame if they do become
disgusted with the health reform. These extremists do more injury in
a few months than they can undo in their whole lives. By them the
entire theory of our faith is brought into disrepute, and they can never
bring those who witness such exhibitions of so-called health reform
to think that there is anything good in it. These men are doing a work
which Satan loves to see go on.