Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 15 (1900)

Lt 143, 1900

McClure, N. C.

Granville, New South Wales, Australia

November 5, 1900 [typed]

Portions of this letter are published in TDG 318. +^Note

[N. McClure:]

I am not able to sleep. Your case, Brother M., has been presented to me. I will try, at the early hour of two o’clock a.m. to make some record of the matters presented before me. You seemed to be confused in your head, and were in danger of apoplexy. While you were thus afflicted, prayer was offered in your behalf. When we were again seated, One of authority stood up among us, and said, as He looked upon you with great sorrow, “My brother, you are a sick man. You are in need of a physician who understands your case; for physically and spiritually you are diseased. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 1

“You should have given up your position of responsibility before this, but you were not willing to be released. Without a thorough change, you cannot be a faithful shepherd of the flock of God. You cannot be a wise director or a successful minister. You need to be ministered unto, else you will lose your life. You are ignorant of your true condition. If you will to do the will of God, if you are willing to be converted, soul, body, and spirit, you will realize a great change. You are in need of a reform, of a change.” 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 2

You eat largely. You would be much better if you were strictly temperate in your eating. You need to know yourself. Take time to educate yourself. You are a man entrusted with good and precious talents, but you have been making a mistake in educating, by indulgence of appetite, the animal side of your nature. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 3

The enemy is corrupting your thoughts. Sensuality is weaving itself into your mind. As you are, you cannot be depended on. You need that some one should teach you how to take care of the house you live in. Premature old age is coming upon you, and your wife, by her appetizing dishes, is helping to bring this on. Your course of action, if continued, will result in a loss of spiritual and physical soundness. But you can do much for yourself by studying physiology and hygiene. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 4

You appear to know something of the needs of others and give them good advice, but you have not felt the necessity of knowing your individual self. You are sick and in need of a physician. You need to become better acquainted in regard to the house in which you live. You are bringing this house into a diseased condition, and the result will be a failure to discern spiritual things. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 5

You ought not to be ignorant of the structure of your body. You ought to know how to use to the best advantage the talents God has entrusted to you. But I will say that you are almost as ignorant of the powers of the mind as of the functions of the body. You are not a reformer in the full sense of what reform includes. When a man is in your condition of health, his only hope is to reform. You need to learn the right use of the machinery of the body. How little you know of the parts composing the human structure, and how little regarding the care they should receive. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 6

There is a physical, a moral, and an intellectual nature. Your body is the temple of God. Do you not wish to become acquainted with its parts? You have qualities which, if cultivated, would make you a man of bright conceptions. But you do not properly care for your house. There are in the body the nervous system, the circulatory system, and the digestive system. The last of these you have ill-treated. You eat in a lawless manner, placing in your stomach at the same time several kinds of food. This creates a disturbance in the stomach, and often it becomes a cesspool, in which fermentation takes place. Your head then begins to ache, because of the congestion in the brain. You do not reason from cause to effect. Under such abuse is it any wonder that your digestive organs are quarrelsome? It is only through the mercy of God that you have your reasoning facilities at all. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 7

Those who labor in the ministry should have outdoor exercise. Their physical nature demands it. You need much physical exercise in the open air in order that brain, bone and muscle may be kept in perfect working order. Your faculties have become dull. Your perceptions of right and wrong are confused. You need to wake up to the fact that your body needs to be treated more sensibly than it has in the past. You are stumbling along like a blind man, sacrificing physical, mental, and moral power to a diseased appetite. You fail to understand what is right and what is wrong. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 8

Who among the human family understand thoroughly the use of the hand? This is a wonderful member of the body, but few appreciate it, and fewer understand the extent to which its powers may be cultivated. Many fold their hands, failing to put them to the use for which they were designed by the Creator. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 9

You should live an active life. You should bring every part of the human machinery into active service, or you will lose the power to employ them. God has given you advantages which you little appreciate. God requires every human being to become intelligent in regard to the use of his limbs and his brain. We should understand the right use of every organ, for God has given us powers to use for His glory and for the blessing of the world. We are to do works of righteousness. It is for this purpose that God has created us. We are to know ourselves physically, but this is not enough. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 10

Our spiritual perceptions must be kept in a state of healthy, progressive development. We are to understand and how to make the most perfect use of every organ God has given, that He may be glorified in the beings He has created. Human beings are the Lord’s by creation, and doubly so by redemption, for He gave His only begotten Son to redeem them. Said the apostle, “Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” [1 Corinthians 6:19, 20.] 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 11

As becomes beings to whom the Lord has given the faculties of reason and of action, we should use our powers in accordance with the divine purpose. God desires to be honored and glorified in the work of His hands. Every human being will have to give an account to God for the way in which he has used his entrusted talents. We are under obligations to use our powers aright, that we may be qualified for eternal life in the kingdom of God. God demands perfection from every human being. We are to be perfect in this life of humanity, even as God is perfect in His divine character. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 12

God made every provision in man’s behalf, creating him only a little lower than the angels. Adam disobeyed and entailed sin upon his posterity; but God gave His only begotten Son for the redemption of the race. Christ took on Him the nature of man, and passed over the ground where Adam fell, to be tested and tried as all human beings are tested and tried. Satan came to Him as an angel of light, to induce Him if possible to commit sin, and thus place the human race entirely under the dominion of evil. But Christ was victorious. Satan was defeated, and the race was placed on vantage ground with God. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 13

When the Father gave His Son to live and die for man, He placed all the treasures of heaven at our disposal. There is no excuse for sin. God has given us all the advantages He possibly could give, that we may have strength to withstand the temptations of the enemy. Had man, when tested and tried, followed the example of Christ, he would have given his children and his children’s children an example of steadfast purity and righteousness, and the race would not have deteriorated, but improved. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 14

God is the owner of man. He required the human family to perfect faultless characters, and leave the results to future generations. In this our day, many act as though this were a matter of small importance; but had the human family after the fall of Adam worked according to the example of Christ, every father and every mother would leave their children an example of how to conduct themselves so as to fulfil their obligations to God. Then the world would have been as Eden. The earth, now a desert of sin, would have rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 15

My brother, I must urge you a reformation. You are not what you might have been had you co-operated with God in His purposes for you. God desires to restore His moral image in you. He has given you every advantage, that by being a partaker of the divine nature, you may escape the corruption that is in the world through lust. What a wonderful lesson for all to learn! The Lord has need of all the powers He has entrusted to human beings. He calls upon men and women to place themselves under the bloodstained banner of Prince Emmanuel, and learn the lesson of what it means to be a soldier of Jesus Christ. 15LtMs, Lt 143, 1900, par. 16