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Lessons from Past Experiences

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 2, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 14.

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Lessons from Past Experiences

By GEO. O. STATES

— No. 25

GEO. O. STATES
As the light came to us on the health reform, and our people were in danger of making hasty moves and laying aside a meat diet without putting something else in its place, the Lord gave counsel on the very points where some were in danger of going to extremes. “We advise you to change your habits of living; but while you do this, we caution you to move understandingly. I am acquainted with families who have changed from a meat diet to one that is impoverished. There should not be many kinds at any one meal, but all meals should not be composed of the same kinds of food without variation. Food should be prepared with simplicity, yet with a nicety which will invite the appetite. You should keep grease out of your food. Will the people who are preparing to become holy, pure, refined, that they may be introduced into the society of heavenly angels, continue to take the life of God’s creatures and subsist on their flesh and enjoy it as a luxury? From what the Lord has shown me, this order of things will be changed, and God’s peculiar people will exercise temperance in all things. . . . Light has shone upon the pathway in which the people of God are traveling, yet all do not walk in the light and follow as fast as the providence of God marks out and opens the way before them. Until they do this, they will be in darkness. If God has spoken to his people, he designs that they shall hear and obey his voice.”
It hardly seems possible that this counsel was given forty years ago. If the health reform was important at that time, it certainly must be now when we are so much nearer the coming of Christ. In this same Testimony we were told that “fine flour bread can not impart to the system the nourishment But that you will find in unbolted wheat bread. The common use of bolted wheat can not keep the system in a healthy condition.”
In the early days of the message people were ridiculed who would eat unbolted wheat bread. When it was first introduced they used to call us bran-bread eaters. Now it is hard to go where you can not find Graham flour. All along the way as our people have been in danger of departing from the light, the Lord has sent us counsel; and those who have heeded this counsel are the ones who have advanced in the message.
In the REVIEW of May 27, 1902, we were told that “health reform is to do among our people a work which it has not yet done. There are those who ought to be awake to the danger of meat eating, who are still eating the flesh of animals, thus endangering the physical, mental, and spiritual health. Many who are now only half converted on the question of meat eating will go from God’s people to walk no more with them. . . . Ministers should be strictly temperate in their eating and drinking, lest they make crooked paths for their feet, turning the lame—those weak in the faith—out of the way. If while proclaiming the most solemn and important message God has ever given, men war against the truth by indulging wrong habits of eating and drinking, they take all the force from the message they bear. . . . The failure to follow sound principles has marred the history of God’s people. There has been a continual backsliding in health reform, and as a result God is dishonored by a great lack of spirituality. Barriers have been erected which would never have been seen had God’s people walked in the light.”
For years I have noticed that our people have not been as strict in living out the health reform as they were in the early days, and I am sure it has been brought about by neglect on the part of the ministry in teaching health reform. During the past year I have visited some of our churches, and have found that part of the ministers in laboring in our churches are very neglectful in teaching the principles of health reform, or even in living to up to them.
In the early days of the health reform movement our ministers were united on this question, and one ministerdid not visit a church and teach us that the principles of health reform are as closely allied to the third angel’s message as the right arm is to the body, and another, by his practise, teach the opposite. I was much pleased to notice in a late REVIEW a suggestion that the time has come for holding health schools at our camp-meetings and public gatherings. Twelve years ago we were told that “the light which God has given upon health reform can not be trifled with without injury to those who attempt it; and no man can hope to succeed in the work of God while, by precept and example, he acts in opposition to the light which God has sent.”
I believe as our people unitedly start health schools, we shall see an improvement in our ranks upon this matter, and that this will be one thing that will prepare us for the loud cry of the message.
Cedaredge, Colo.