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Appendix B Typical Temperance Addresses By Ellen G. White
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which are God’s.” This is the value God places upon man, and again
He says, “I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even
a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.” But God will do nothing
without the co-operation of the human agent.
Beclouded by Intemperance
—“And Nadab and Abihu, the
sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein,
and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord,
which He commanded them not. And there went out fire from the
Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Then
Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I
will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me, and before all the
people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.... And the
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Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink,
thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the
congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute forever throughout
your generations: and that ye may put difference between holy and
unholy, and between unclean and clean.” The minds of Nadab and
Abihu were beclouded because of intemperance, and in the place of
taking the fire God had commanded them they took the common fire,
and God destroyed them. If they had kept themselves free from wine
they would have distinguished the difference between the sacred and
the common. But they went directly contrary to God’s requirements.
A Cause of Accidents
—We read of steamboat disasters, and
railroad accidents, and what is the matter? Somebody in many,
many cases has beclouded the mind with intoxicating drink. He did
not feel the weight of responsibility resting upon him. Many, many
lives have been lost because somebody got drunk. Thus lives will be
charged to the man that put the bottle to his neighbor’s lips.
In olden times when a man had a vicious animal he paid for it.
It says in
Exodus 21:28, 29
: “If an ox gore a man or a woman, that
they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not
be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were
wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to
his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man
or woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to
death.”
Now we wish to carry this principle right out to those that brew
the deadly poison. Here is the law that the God of heaven gave to