“The health reform is just what the name indicates it to be.” {8MR 172.1}
THE HEALTH REFORM.
December 10, 1871, I was again shown that the HEALTH REFORM IS one branch of the great work TO FIT A PEOPLE FOR THE COMING OF THE LORD. And it is as closely connected with the third angel's message as the hand is united to the body. The law of ten commandments has been lightly regarded by man. The Lord would not come to punish the transgressors of his law without first sending them a message of warning. The third angel proclaims the warning message. Had men ever been obedient to the law of ten commandments, carrying out in their lives the principles of these ten precepts, the curse of disease now flooding the world would not be. {PH138 1.1}
“Men and women cannot violate natural law in the indulgence of depraved appetite, and lustful passions, and not violate the law of God. Therefore God has permitted the light of health reform to shine upon us, that we may see our sin in violating the laws God has established in our being. All our enjoyments or sufferings may be traced to obedience or transgression of natural law. Our gracious Heavenly Father sees the deplorable condition of men while living in violation of the laws he has established. Many are doing this ignorantly, some knowingly. The Lord, in love and pity to the race, causes the light to shine upon health reform. He publishes his law, and the penalty that will follow the transgression of it, that all may learn, and be careful to live in harmony with natural law. He proclaims his law so distinct, and makes it so prominent, that it is like a city set on a hill. All accountable beings can understand his law if they will. Idiots will not be responsible.” {PH138 1.2}
To make plain natural law, and urge the obedience of it, is the work that accompanies the third angel's message, to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord. {PH138 2.1}
Adam and Eve fell, through intemperate appetite. Christ came and withstood the fiercest temptation of Satan, and, in behalf of the race, he overcame appetite, showing that man may overcome. As Adam fell, through appetite, and lost blissful Eden, the children of Adam may, through Christ, overcome appetite, and through temperance in all things regain Eden. {PH138 2.2}
Ignorance now is no excuse for the transgression of law. The light shineth clearly, and none need to be ignorant, for the great God himself is man's instructor. All are bound by the most sacred obligations to God to heed sound philosophy and genuine experience in reference to health reform which he is now giving them. {PH138 2.3}
God designs the great subject of health reform shall be agitated, and the public mind deeply stirred to investigate, for it is impossible for men and women, with all their sinful, health-destroying, brain-enervating habits, to discern sacred truth, through which they are to be sanctified, refined, elevated, and made fit for the society of heavenly angels in the kingdom of glory. {PH138 3.1}
The inhabitants of the Noachian world were destroyed, because they were corrupted through the indulgence of perverted appetite. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed through the gratification of unnatural appetite, which benumbed the intellect, and they could not discern the difference between the sacred claims of God and the clamor of appetite.
The latter enslaved them, and they became so ferocious and bold in their detestable abominations, God would not tolerate them upon the earth. God ascribes the wickedness of Babylon to her gluttony and drunkenness. {PH138 3.2}
The apostle exhorts the church, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” Man, then, can make the body unholy by sinful indulgences. If unholy, they are unfitted to be spiritual worshipers, and are not worthy of Heaven. If man will cherish the light God in mercy gives him upon health reform, he may be sanctified through the truth, and fitted for immortality. If he disregards light, and lives in violation of natural law, he must pay the penalty. {PH138 3.3}
God created man perfect and holy. Man fell from his holy estate, because he transgressed God's law. Since the fall, there has been a rapid increase of disease, suffering, and death. Notwithstanding man has insulted his Creator, yet God's love is still extended to the race. And he permits light to shine, that man may see that, in order to live a perfect life, he must live in harmony with those natural laws which govern his being. Therefore, it is of the greatest importance that he have a knowledge of how to live, that his powers of body and mind may be exercised to the glory of God. {PH138 4.1}
It is impossible for man to present his body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, while he is indulging in habits that are lessening physical, mental, and moral vigor, because it is customary for the world to do thus. The apostle adds, “And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” Jesus, seated upon the Mount of Olives, gave instruction to his disciples, of the signs which should precede his coming. He says, “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” {PH138 4.2}
The same sins exist in our day of carrying their eating and drinking to gluttony and drunkenness. The same sins exist in our day which brought the wrath of God upon the world in the days of Noah. Men and women now carry their eating and drinking to gluttony and drunkenness. This prevailing sin, of indulgence of perverted appetite, inflamed the passions of men in the days of Noah, and led to general corruption, until their violence and crimes reached to Heaven. And God washed the earth of its moral pollution by a flood. {PH138 5.1}
The same sins of gluttony and drunkenness benumbed the moral sensibilities of the inhabitants of Sodom, so that crimes seemed to men and women of that wicked city to be their delight. Christ warns the world. He says, “Likewise, also, as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” {PH138 5.2}
Christ has left us here a most important lesson. He does not in his teaching encourage indolence. His example was the opposite of this. Christ was an earnest worker. His life was one of self-denial, diligence, perseverance, industry, and economy. He would lay before us the danger of making eating and drinking paramount. He reveals the result of giving up to indulgence of appetite. The moral powers are enfeebled, so that sin does not appear sinful. Crimes are winked at, and base passions control the minds, until general corruption roots out good principles and impulses, and God is blasphemed. All this is the result of eating and drinking to excess. This is the very condition of things he declares will exist at his second coming. {PH138 6.1}
Will men and women be warned? Will they cherish the light? or will they become slaves to appetite and base passions? Christ presents to us something higher to toil for than merely what we shall eat, and what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed. Eating and drinking and dressing are carried to such excess that they become crimes, and are one of the marked sins of the last days, and constitute a sign of Christ's soon coming. Time, money, and strength, which are the Lord's, that he has entrusted to us, are wasted in needless superfluities of dress, and luxuries for the perverted appetite, which lessen vitality, and bring suffering and decay. It is impossible to present to God our bodies a living sacrifice, when they are full of corruption and disease by our own sinful indulgence.” {PH138 6.2}
KNOWLEDGE IN REGARD TO HOW WE SHALL EAT, AND DRINK, AND DRESS, IN REFERENCE TO HEALTH, MUST BE GAINED. Sickness is caused by violating the laws of health. Therefore, sickness is the result of nature's violated law. Our first duty we owe to God, to ourselves, and our fellow-men, is to obey the laws of God, which include the laws of health. If we are sick, we impose a weary tax upon our friends, and unfit ourselves for discharging our duties to our families and to our neighbors. And when premature death is the result of our violation of nature's law, we bring sorrow and suffering to others. We deprive our neighbors of the help we ought to render them in living. Our families are robbed of the comfort and help we might render them, and God is robbed of the service he claims of us to advance his glory. Then, are we not transgressors of God's law in the worst sense? {PH138 7.1}
God, all pitiful, gracious, and tender, accepts the poor offering rendered to him from those who have injured their health by sinful indulgences, and when light has come, and convinced them of sin, and they have repented and sought pardon, God receives them. Oh! what tender mercy that he does not refuse the remnant of the abused life of the suffering, repenting sinner. In his gracious mercy, he saves these souls as by fire. But what an inferior, pitiful sacrifice at best, to offer to a pure and holy God. Noble faculties have been paralyzed by wrong habits of sinful indulgence. The aspirations are perverted, and the soul and body defaced.” {PH138 7.2}
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