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Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
Excessive indulgence in eating, drinking, sleeping, or seeing, is sin.
The harmonious, healthy action of all the powers of body and mind
results in happiness; and the more elevated and refined the powers the
more pure and unalloyed the happiness.
Testimonies for the Church 4:408-409
The reason why many of our ministers complain of sickness is,
they fail to take sufficient exercise, and indulge in overeating. They
do not realize that such a course endangers the strongest constitution.
Those who, like yourself, are sluggish in temperament, should eat very
sparingly, and not shun physical taxation. Many of our ministers are
digging their graves with their teeth. The system, in taking care of the
burden placed upon the digestive organs, suffers, and a severe draught
is made upon the brain. For every offense committed against the laws
of health, the transgressor must pay the penalty in his own body.
Testimonies for the Church 4:454-455
Some do not exercise control over their appetites, but indulge taste
at the expense of health. As the result, the brain is clouded, their
thoughts are sluggish, and they fail to accomplish what they might
if they were self-denying and abstemious. These rob God of the
physical and mental strength which might be devoted to His service if
temperance were observed in all things. Paul was a health reformer.
Said he, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that
by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a
castaway.” He felt that a responsibility rested upon him to preserve
all his powers in their strength, that he might use them to the glory
of God. If Paul was in danger from intemperance, we are in greater
danger, because we do not feel and realize as he did the necessity of
glorifying God in our bodies and spirits, which are His. Overeating is
the sin of this age.
The word of God places the sin of gluttony in the same catalogue
with drunkenness. So offensive was this sin in the sight of God that
He gave directions to Moses that a child who would not be restrained
on the point of appetite, but would gorge himself with anything his
taste might crave, should be brought by his parents before the rulers of
Israel, and should be stoned to death. The condition of the glutton was