136
Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
All the elements of nutrition are contained in the fruits, vegetables and
grains.
Patriarchs and prophets, 92
But after the fall, men chose to follow their own sinful desires; and
as the result, crime and wretchedness rapidly increased. Neither the
marriage relation nor the rights of property were respected. Whoever
coveted the wives or the possessions of his neighbor took them by
force, and men exulted in their deeds of violence. They delighted in
destroying the life of animals; and the use of flesh for food rendered
them still more cruel and blood-thirsty, until they came to regard
human life with astonishing indifference.
Patriarchs and prophets, 107
As Noah looked upon the powerful beasts of prey that came forth
with him from the ark, he feared that his family, numbering only eight
persons, would be destroyed by them. But the Lord sent an angel to
His servant with the assuring message: “The fear of you and the dread
of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of
the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of
the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that
liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you
all things.” Before this time God had given man no permission to eat
animal food; He intended that the race should subsist wholly upon
the productions of the earth; but now that every green thing had been
destroyed, He allowed them to eat the flesh of the clean beasts that had
been preserved in the ark.
How to Live, 1:52-53
The human family have been growing more and more self-
indulgent, until health has been most successfully sacrificed upon
the altar of lustful appetite. The inhabitants of the Old World were
intemperate in eating and drinking. They would have flesh-meats,
although God had given them no permission to eat animal food. They
ate and drank to excess, and their depraved appetites knew no bounds.
They gave themselves up to abominable idolatry. They became violent,
and ferocious, and so corrupt that God could bear with them no longer.