Manuscript Releases, vol. 17 [Nos. 1236-1300]

MR No. 1287—Workers in Food Business to Emphasize Spiritual Values and Witnessing

I am entrusted with a message. In our food work have we not been walking and working more nearly after the pattern of the world than after the pattern of Christ? What words have we spoken to the large multitudes we have fed? How are we presenting to these souls the Bread of Life? Can Christ say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”? Can each worker truthfully say, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work”? 17MR 300.1

There is great danger that some will devote their entire energies in commercial work, trying to maintain large food factories without financial loss, and thus lose a sense of the necessity of eating that Bread which is life to the soul. For years I have seen that in our food work we have been on the losing side. This work has not been the means it should—to reveal Christ as the One who can give to us eternal life. 17MR 300.2

We cannot afford to keep up a strife for gain, in our ambitious endeavor to manufacture a large variety of foods, losing our time for prayer and for feeding upon the Word. We must, by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of God, perfect a character fitted for the heavenly courts. 17MR 300.3

Said Christ, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” Shall we take up a work of preparing food for multitudes of unbelievers, and yet leave unspoken the words of life? Shall we so busy ourselves in the preparation of many lines of food that we cannot give an example of what it means to receive and to practice the Word of life?—Manuscript 79, 1906, 3, 4. 17MR 300.4

Ellen G. White Estate

Washington, D. C.,

August 6, 1987.