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Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
body and mind are related, and show the need of keeping both in the
very best condition....
All who indulge the appetite, waste the physical energies, and
weaken the moral power, will sooner or later feel the retribution that
follows the transgression of physical law.
Christ gave His life to purchase redemption for the sinner. The
world’s Redeemer knew that indulgence of appetite was bringing
physical debility and deadening the perceptive faculties so that sa-
cred and eternal things could not be discerned. He knew that self-
indulgence was perverting the moral powers, and that man’s great
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need was conversion,—in heart and mind and soul, from the life of
self-indulgence to one of self-denial and self-sacrifice. May the Lord
help you as His servant to appeal to the ministers and to arouse the
sleeping churches. Let your labors as a physician and a minister be in
harmony. It is for this that our sanitariums are established, to preach
the truth of true temperance....
Christ entered upon the test upon the point of appetite, and for
nearly six weeks resisted temptation in behalf of man. That long fast
in the wilderness was to be a lesson to fallen man for all time. Christ
was not overcome by the strong temptations of the enemy, and this is
encouragement for every soul who is struggling against temptation.
Christ has made it possible for every member of the human family
to resist temptation. All who would live godly lives may overcome
as Christ overcame, by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their
testimony. That long fast of the Saviour strengthened Him to endure.
He gave evidence to man that He would begin the work of overcoming
just where the ruin began,—on the point of appetite.
As a people, we need to reform, and especially do ministers and
teachers of the Word need to reform. I am instructed to say to our
ministers and to the presidents of our conferences: Your usefulness as
laborers for God in the work of recovering perishing souls, depends
much on your success in overcoming appetite. Overcome the desire
to gratify appetite, and if you do this your passions will be easily
controlled. Then your mental and moral powers will be stronger.
“And they overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their
testimony.”
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