The Story of our Health Message

Erroneous Teachings

According to this presentation, the most important feature of the work of the church is to give to the world the message “that this is God’s life—that it is His Spirit which fills all space; that air is a means of conveying His Spirit to us; and that it is God’s own life—then we see that air is the power of God to purify, to give life. You take in the life and live by it; thus we see the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanses from all sin.”—Ibid. SHM 313.3

Righteousness, according to this teaching, was received by manifesting faith that the very life of God is in the air, in food, and in drink. “Everything that God has given by which to convey life is the means of conveying righteousness to us.” SHM 314.1

Justification by faith was defined as recognizing the literal life of God in the air we breathe, in the food we eat, and in the water we drink. “We must let God live through us in everything; let God live His own life in us, and the power of that life will resist the disease, while we hold to that power by faith. That is justification by faith. So the doctors at the sanitarium should teach justification by faith, although they do not call it by just those words.”—Ibid. SHM 314.2

Health reform was defined as “the gospel of life, health, and peace.” “There is power, life, in the pure water, because God’s life is in it.” In reply to an inquiry as to whether the life of God is in the bread we eat, one speaker replied in the affirmative; and it was asserted that when Jesus said of the communion bread, “This is my body,” He was speaking not figuratively but literally, and that the error in the papal dogma regarding transubstantiation is therefore not in the recognition of the literal body of Christ in the wafer, but only in the belief that it was the word of the priest that changed it from ordinary bread into the very body of Christ. It was said that “the whole question of the Papacy is the question of disbelieving the Word of God, and putting one’s own work in the place of it.”—Ibid. SHM 314.3

It was even taught as a logical conclusion of such theories that if man would only recognize these “truths” and have faith in them, he might expect to live till the Lord should come. There would be a vitality to resist all the inroads of disease, for “the life of God” would swallow up all germs. “Suppose a man recognized that fact, and therefore let God have His own way in controlling the human body, so that He might fill it with His life. What disease could affect him? Would He not ward off all disease, as He did in Christ Himself? Certainly. That is why this gospel of good health has come up for us in these last days.”—Ibid. SHM 314.4