The Story of our Health Message

A Difficult Task for the Leaders

Upon the leadership of the recently organized Seventh-day Adventist Church was now placed not only a great responsibility but a seemingly impossible task. Two decades before that, they had been called of God to lead out in the advocacy of unpopular reforms in religious teachings, and through His blessing the believers had grown to a united people, numbering about ten thousand Sabbathkeeping Adventists. Now they were called upon to unite with these doctrines still other unpopular reforms in physical habits, changes that called for self-denial and a breaking away from popular customs and practices. SHM 104.1

They had begun the first task with three public laborers, no publications, and no financial support. They faced the second call to duty with one physician among them, who was a modest, retiring gentleman with no experience either as a public speaker or as a writer. There were among them no trained nurses, no physiologists, and no lecturers in the health field. Points of agreement among them were limited to the certain preliminary reforms, such as discarding the use of tobacco, alcohol, tea, and coffee. Beyond this both leaders and laity were quite ignorant of the evils of many other articles of common use in diet, and of the proper treatment for the common ailments. SHM 104.2