Reasons for Reform
447
Testimonies for the Church 2:399-400
You have not regarded the light that the Lord has graciously given
you upon the health reform. You have felt to rise up against it. You
have seen no importance in it, no reason why you should receive it.
You have not felt willing to restrict your appetite. You could not see the
wisdom of God in giving light in regard to the restriction of appetite.
All that you could discern was the inconvenience attending the denial
of the taste. The Lord has let His light shine upon us in these last
days, that the gloom and darkness which have been gathering in past
generations because of sinful indulgences, might in some degree be
dispelled, and that the train of evils which have resulted because of
intemperate eating and drinking, might be lessened.
The Lord in wisdom designed to bring His people into a position
where they would be separate from the world in spirit and practice,
that their children might not so readily be led into idolatry, and become
tainted with the prevailing corruptions of this age. It is God’s design
that believing parents and their children should stand forth as living
representatives of Christ, candidates for everlasting life. All who are
partakers of the divine nature will escape the corruption that is in the
world through lust. It is impossible for those who indulge the appetite
to attain to Christian perfection.
Testimonies for the Church 2:404
Brother and Sister G, arouse yourselves, I beg of you. You have
not received the light of health reform and acted upon it. If you had
restricted your appetites, you would have been saved much extra labor
and expense; and what is of vastly more consequence, you would have
preserved to yourselves a better condition of physical health, and a
greater degree of intellectual strength to appreciate eternal truths; you
would have a clearer brain to weigh the evidences of truth, and would
be better prepared to give to others a reason of the hope that is in you.
Manuscript 120, 1901
A failure to care for the living machinery is an insult to the Creator.
There are divinely-appointed rules which if observed will keep human
beings from disease and premature death.