Flesh Foods
175
acting as a restorer, he leads the patient by his own example to indulge
perverted appetite.
The physicians employed in our institutions should be reformers
in this respect and in every other. Many of the patients are suffering
because of errors in diet. They need to be shown the better way. But
how can a meat-eating physician do this? By his wrong habits he
trammels his work and cripples his usefulness.
Many of the patients in our sanitariums have reasoned out for
themselves the question of meat-eating, and desiring to preserve their
mental and physical faculties from suffering, have left meat out of
their dietary. Thus they have obtained the relief from the ills which
have tortured their lives. Many not of our faith have become health
reformers because, from a selfish standpoint, they saw the consistency
of doing this. Many have conscientiously taken their position on
health reform in diet and dress. Will Seventh-day Adventists continue
to follow unhealthful practices? Will they not heed the injunction,
“Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the
glory of God”?
Manuscript 3, 1897
The meat diet is the serious question. Shall human beings live
on the flesh of dead animals? The answer, from the light that God
has given is, No, decidedly No. Health reform institutions should
educate on this question. Physicians who claim to understand the
human organism ought not to encourage their patients to subsist on the
flesh of dead animals. They should point out the increase of disease
in the animal kingdom. The testimony of examiners is that very few
animals are free from disease, and that the practice of eating largely of
meat is contracting diseases of all kinds,—cancers, tumors, scrofula,
tuberculosis, and numbers of other like afflictions. If man will subsist
on the food that God has so abundantly provided, without having it
first pass into the animal organism and become sinew and muscle, and
then take it second-hand by eating of the corpse, his health would be
much better insured
In
Luke 4:16-19
, Christ announces His mission and work for the
world: “And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up,
and as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath