The Gift of Prophecy (The Role of Ellen White in God’s Remnant Church)

Health and medical work

Joseph Bates had become committed to living healthfully prior to 1843, but during the first twenty years of our history, the rest of our pioneers were anything but health reformers. At the 1848 Sabbath conferences we have to imagine our pioneers chewing tobacco while they studied the Bible and eating pork chops for lunch. Health reform was not on their agenda. GP 109.2

In the autumn of 1848, Ellen White was shown that tobacco, tea, and coffee are harmful, but no special effort was made “to induce Sabbathkeeping Adventists to discontinue the use of tobacco until the latter part of 1853.” ⁵ Two years later, it was decided to disfellowship people who refused to give up tobacco. ⁶ GP 109.3

On June 6, 1863, Ellen White received a forty-five-minute vision in Otsego, Michigan, in which she was shown the need for health reform. “I saw that it was a sacred duty to attend to our health, and arouse others to their duty, . . . we have a duty to speak, to come out against intemperance of every kind,—intemperance in working, in eating, in drinking and in drugging— and then point them to God’s great medicine, water, pure soft water, for diseases, for health, for cleanliness, and for a luxury. . . . GP 109.4

“I saw that we should not be silent upon the subject of health but should wake up minds to the subject” (3SM 280). GP 109.5

Two years later, on December 25, 1865, Mrs. White had a vision in Rochester, New York, in which she was shown that Adventists “should provide a home for the afflicted and those who wish to learn how to take care of their bodies that they may prevent sickness. . . . GP 109.6

“Our people should have an institution of their own, under their own control, for the benefit of the diseased and suffering among us who wish to have health and strength that they may glorify God in their bodies and spirits, which are His” (1T 489-492). Nine months later, in September 1866, the Western Health Reform Institute, our first health institution, was opened in Battle Creek, Michigan. Today, Seventh-day Adventists operate more than seven hundred hospitals, clinics, and dispensaries around the world. GP 109.7

Many of the principles of healthful living found in the writings of Ellen White were already being taught in a limited way by other health reformers of her day. But in their teaching we find many errors and extremes—which Ellen White was able to avoid because of the instructions she received from God. For example, Sylvester Graham and James Jackson, two prominent nineteenth-century health reformers, both taught that people shouldn’t eat salt. Mrs. White, however, wrote, “I use some salt, and always have, because salt, instead of being deleterious, is actually essential for the blood” (9T 162). And Ellen White avoided other erroneous beliefs of the nineteenth- century health reformers, such as that people shouldn’t cut their hair, that they shouldn’t drink water but get the liquid they need only from fruit, that the fat in meat offers the best nutrition, that people shouldn’t use soap, and that overweight people are healthy people. ⁷ GP 110.1

As Ellen White introduced the subject of health to church members, some said to her, ” ‘You speak very nearly the opinions taught in the Laws of Life , and other publications, by Drs. Trall, Jackson, and others. Have you read that paper and those works?’ ” She replied that she had not read them, “neither should I read them till I had fully written out my views, lest it should be said that I have received my light upon the subject of health from physicians, and not from the Lord” (3SM 277). GP 110.2

Drs. Leonard Brand and Don S. McMahon note, “During the first half of the twentieth century, up to the late 1950s, medical and nutritional knowledge made Adventist health principles seem like an unfortunate mistake. For example, nutritionists considered a vegetarian diet very inadequate for maintaining good health. Since that time, research in medical and nutritional science has increased greatly, and it has reversed this opinion. Medical authorities now regard the Adventist lifestyle as the epitome of desirable lifestyles.” ⁸ GP 110.3

While for the most part, current medical authorities commend the health practices Ellen White recommended to the church, some of the reasons she gave for the various health principles seem somewhat strange today. Dr. McMahon made a comparative study of the writings of Ellen White and those of other health reformers of her time. His study led him to the conclusion that she received the health principles she promoted (the “whats”) through inspiration, as evidenced by the fact that without any medical education she was able to recognize valid concepts and reject faulty ones. But he came to believe that she often borrowed from her contemporaries the explanations or reasons (the “whys”) for the principles that she taught. The reason for this, says McMahon, was that God “could not have explained some of the ‘whys’ correctly at that time without inventing medical vocabulary and revealing physiological concepts that were not known until decades after Ellen White wrote.” ⁹ GP 110.4