The Story of our Health Message

Other New Volumes

A companion volume, Medical Ministry, issued in 1932, brings together counsel and instruction directed especially to physicians and other medical missionary workers at a time when they were but few, and these could be reached by documents sent out in manuscript form. As the medical missionary work had grown to many, many times its original size, it was felt that this instruction should be made available to the many professional workers today. SHM 431.6

A fourth Spirit of prophecy volume dealing with health lines was published in 1938 and bears the title Counsels on Diet and Foods. This is a comprehensive compilation of the full realm of statements by Mrs. Ellen G. White on the subject of diet and foods, and represents not only that which had been published in pamphlets in earlier days, in periodical articles, and in books, but also many counsels from her manuscript files. SHM 432.1

Another volume, a compilation consisting of 309 pages, was issued under the title Temperance in 1949. In her writings and her public discourses, Mrs. White stressed the importance of practicing temperance as a religious duty. A hundred pages of Selected Messages, Book Two, published in 1958, are devoted to health topics. Embodied here are the six E. G. White articles “Disease and Its Causes,” published originally in 1865 in Health or How to Live, chapters dealing with drugs, simple remedies, and Mrs. White’s experience in applying the health principles. SHM 432.2

The wealth of instruction found in these volumes has been the guide and blueprint through the years in the conduct of the health work, and these books continue to keep this counsel before all who are engaged in these lines of service today. It is largely due to these writings that Seventh-day Adventists are a health-minded people teaching the great health principles, the importance of which though impressed upon this people through revelations has been substantiated by scientific research work. SHM 432.3

The reasons for a change in living habits were clearly set forth by Mrs. Ellen G. White in 1890 in these words: “Let it ever be kept before the mind that the great object of hygienic reform is to secure the highest possible development of mind and soul and body. All the laws of nature—which are the laws of God—are designed for our good. Obedience to them will promote our happiness in this life and will aid us in a preparation for the life to come.”—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 120. (Quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 23.) SHM 432.4

Deeply grateful as Seventh-day Adventists may well be for the blessings that have come to them individually, and to the progress of the message of truth they are endeavoring to give to the world, in the light of such earnest counsel candor compels us to ask the question as to whether or not the ideals of health education and practice have yet been reached. SHM 433.1

It is obvious that there are many who have not gained the fullness of the blessing that an adoption of the principles of health reform would bring to them. Not a few have failed to appreciate the value of the wealth of counsel that has come to the church on this practical subject of everyday application. At times there has been on the part of some a careless attitude toward the physical laws that are ordained of God as verily as are the moral laws. SHM 433.2