Testimony for the Church — No. 15

Epistle Number Five

Dear Bro. and Sr. ——: There are some things which the Lord has shown in regard to you which I feel duty to write. You were among the number who were presented before me as being backward in health reform. Light has shone upon the pathway in which the people of God are traveling, yet all do not walk in the light and follow as fast as the providence of God marks out and opens the way before them. Until they do this they will be in darkness. If God has spoken to his people, he designs that they shall hear and obey his voice. Last Sabbath, as I was speaking, your pale faces rose so distinctly before me as I had been shown them. Then the condition of health and the ailments you have suffered under so long. I was shown that you have not lived healthfully. Your appetites have been unhealthy and you have gratified your taste at the expense of the stomach. You have taken into your stomachs articles which it is impossible to convert into good blood. This has laid a heavy tax on the liver for the reason that the digestive organs are deranged. You both have diseased livers. The health reform would be a great benefit to you both, if you would strictly carry it out. This you have failed to do. Your appetites are morbid, and because you do not relish a plain, simple diet, composed of unbolted wheat flour, vegetables and fruits prepared without spices or grease, you are continually transgressing the laws which God has established in your system. While you do thus you must suffer the penalty; for to every transgression is affixed a penalty. Yet you wonder at your continued poor health. T15 55.1

Be assured God will not work a miracle to save you from the result of your own course of action. You have not had a liberal supply of air. Bro. —— has labored in his store, closely applying himself to his business, allowing himself but a limited amount of air and exercise. His circulation is depressed. He breaths only from the top of his lungs. It is seldom that he exercises the abdominal muscles in the operations of breathing. Stomach, liver, lungs and brain are suffering for the want of deep, full inspirations of air which would have the influence to electrify the blood and impart to it the lively bright color which alone can keep it pure and give tone and vigor to every part of the living machinery. T15 56.1

You, my dear brother and sister, can have a much better condition of health than you now possess, and can avoid very many ill turns, if you will simply exercise temperance in all things, temperance in labor, temperance in eating and drinking. Hot drinks are constantly debilitating the stomach. Cheese should never be introduced into the stomach. Fine flour bread cannot impart to the system that nourishment that you will find in the unbolted wheat bread. The common use of bolted wheat bread cannot keep the system in a healthy condition. You both have inactive livers. The use of fine flour aggravates the difficulties you are laboring under. T15 56.2

There is no treatment which can relieve you of your present difficulties while you eat and drink as you do. You can do that for yourselves which the most experienced physician can never do. Regulate your diet. Your digestive organs are frequently severely taxed by receiving into your stomachs food which is not the most healthful, and at times in immoderate quantities, if the taste is gratified. This wearies the stomach and unfits it for the reception of food, even the most healthful. You keep your stomachs constantly debilitated, because of your wrong habits of eating. Your food is made too rich. It is not prepared in a simple, natural state, but is totally unfitted for the stomach when you have prepared it to suit your taste. Nature is burdened, and makes efforts to resist your efforts to cripple her. Chills and fevers are the result of those efforts to rid herself of the burden you lay upon her. You have to suffer the penalty of nature's violated laws. God has established laws in your system which cannot be violated without your suffering the punishment. You have consulted taste without reference to health. You have made some changes, but have merely taken the first steps in reform diet. God requires of us temperance in all things. “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” T15 56.3

Of all the families I am acquainted with, none need the benefit of the health reform more than yours. You groan under pains and prostrations which you cannot account for, and you try to submit to it with as good a grace as you can, thinking affliction is your lot, and Providence has thus ordained it. If you could have your eyes opened, and could see the steps taken in your lifetime to walk right into your present condition of poor health, you would be astonished at your former blindness in not seeing the real state of the case before. You have created unnatural appetites and do not derive half that enjoyment from your food you would if you had not used your appetites wrongfully. You have perverted nature and have been suffering the consequences, and painful has it been. T15 57.1

Nature bears abuse without resisting as long as she can, then arouses and makes a mighty effort to rid herself of the incumbrances and evil treatment she has suffered. Then come chills, fevers, headache, nervousness, paralysis, and numerous evils too many to enumerate. A wrong course of eating or drinking destroys health, and with it the sweetness of life. Oh! how many times have you purchased what you called a good meal at great expense, a fevered system, loss of appetite, loss of sleep, inability to enjoy food, a sleepless night, hours of suffering for a meal in which taste was gratified at the cost of so much. Thousands have indulged their perverted appetites, have eaten a good meal, as they called it, and as the result, have brought on fevers, acute diseases and certain death. That was enjoyment purchased at immense cost. Yet many have done this over and over again, and these self-murderers have been eulogized by their friends and the minister, and carried directly to Heaven at their death. T15 57.2

What a thought! Gluttons in Heaven! No, no, such will never enter the pearly gates of the golden city of God. Such will never be exalted to the right hand of Jesus the precious Saviour, the suffering man of Calvary, whose life was one of constant self-denial and sacrifice. There is a place appointed for all such among the unworthy, who can have no part in the better life, the immortal inheritance. T15 58.1

God has claims upon every man to render to him their bodies a living sacrifice, not a dead, a dying sacrifice, a sacrifice which their own course of action is debilitating, filling with impurities and disease. A living sacrifice God calls for. The body, he tells us, is the temple of the Holy Ghost, the habitation of his Spirit, and he requires every one who bears his image to take care of their bodies for the purpose of his service and his glory. “Ye are not your own,” saith the inspired apostle, “ye are bought with a price,” wherefore “glorify God in your bodies and spirits which are God's.” In order to do this, add to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience. It is duty to know how to preserve the body in the very best condition of health, and it is a sacred duty to live up to the light God has graciously given. If we close our eyes to the light for fear we shall see our wrongs, which we are unwilling to forsake, our sins are not lessened but increased. If light is turned from in one case it will be disregarded in another. It is just as much sin to violate the laws of our being as to break one of the ten commandments, for we cannot do this without breaking God's law. We cannot love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, while we are loving our appetites, our tastes, a great deal better than we love the Lord. We are daily lessening our strength to glorify God, when he requires all our strength, all our mind. Lessening our hold of life by our wrong habits, and yet profess to be Christ's followers, preparing for the finishing touch of immortality. T15 58.2

You have a work to do, my brother and sister, which no one can do for you. Awake from your lethargy and Christ shall give you life. Change your course of living, your eating, your drinking, and your working. While you pursue the course you have been traveling in for years, you cannot clearly discern sacred and eternal things. Your sensibilities are blunted and your intellect beclouded. You have not been growing in grace and in the knowledge of the truth as was your privilege. You have not been increasing in spirituality, but growing more and more darkened. You have made too much haste to acquire property, and have been in danger of overreaching, looking out for your own interest and not regarding the interest of others as you would like to have them regard your interest. There is selfishness encouraged in yourselves which must be overcome. Closely examine your own hearts, and in your lives imitate the unerring pattern, and all will be well with you then. Preserve a clear conscience before God. In all you do glorify his name. Divest yourselves of selfishness and selfish love. Be not conformed to the 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. The customs and practices of men are not to be your criterion. However pressed may be your circumstances, never allow yourselves to overreach. Satan is at your hand tempting you to do this, and he will not let you rest in this matter. It is possible for a merchant to be a Christian and preserve his integrity before God. In order to do this constant watchfulness is necessary, and earnest supplication before God to be kept from the evil prevailing in this degenerate age to advantage self at others disadvantage. You are in a hard place to advance in the divine life. You have a principle, but you do not hang all your weight upon God. You trust too much in your own feeble strength. You have great need of divine aid, of a power not to be found in yourself. There is one to whom you can go for counsel, whose wisdom is infinite. He has invited you to come to him, for he will supply your need. If by faith you cast all your care upon him, who marks the falling of a sparrow, you will not trust in vain. If you will rest upon the sure promises, maintaining your integrity, angels of God will be round about you. Maintain good works in faith before God, then will your steps be ordered by the Lord, and his prospering hand will not be removed from you. T15 59.1

If you should be left to yourselves to mark out, to shape your own course, you would make poor work of the matter, would speedily make shipwreck of faith. Take all your cares and burdens to the Burden-bearer. But suffer not a blot to tarnish your Christian character. Never, never for the sake of gain stamp your life record in Heaven, which is viewed by all the angelic host, and by your self-denying Redeemer, with avariciousness, penuriousness, selfishness or false dealing. Such a course of action might bring you a profit so far as this world views the matter, but viewed in the light of Heaven, an immense, an irreparable loss. God seeth not as man seeth. In trusting in the Lord continually there is safety, there will not be a constant fear of future evil. This borrowed care and anxiety will cease. We have a Heavenly Father who careth for his children, and will and does make his grace sufficient in every time of need. When we take into our own hands the management of things that concern us, and depend upon our own wisdom for success, we may well then have anxiety and anticipate danger and loss, for it will most certainly come upon us. T15 60.1

Full and entire consecration to God is required of us. While the Redeemer of Sinful mortals was laboring and suffering for us, he denied himself, and his whole life was one continued scene of toil and privation. Had he chosen to do so, he could have passed his days on earth in ease and plenty, and appropriated to himself all the pleasures and enjoyments of this life. But he did not. He considered not his own convenience. He lived not to enjoy, not to gratify himself, but to do good and to save others from suffering, to help those who most needed help. He endured to the end. The chastisement of our peace was laid upon him, and he hath borne the iniquity of us all. The bitter cup was apportioned to us to drink. Our sins mingled it. Our dear Saviour took the cup from our lips and drank it himself, and in its stead presents to us a cup of mercy, blessing and salvation. Oh! what an immense sacrifice was this for the fallen race. What love, what wondrous and matchless love. Shall we, after all this manifestation of suffering to show his love, shrink from the small trials we have to bear? Can we love Christ and refuse to lift the cross? Can we love to be with him in glory, and not follow him even from the judgment hall to Calvary. If Christ be in us the hope of glory, we shall walk even as he walked. We shall imitate his life of sacrifice to bless others. We shall drink of the cup and be baptized with the baptism. T15 60.2

Heaven will be cheap enough at whatever sacrifice we may make. A life of devotion, and trial, and self-denial, will be welcomed for Christ's sake. T15 61.1

E. G. W.

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