A. E. LEMON, M. D by A. E. Lemon

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Feb 4, 1904

A. E. LEMON, M. D

By A. E. Lemon

The Holy Temple—No. 4

A. E. LEMON, M. D

“STRAIT is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.” If Satan sees that he can not get us to turn to the left, he will be just as much pleased if we turn the other way.

The Lord has been giving this people light upon the subject of diet reform for many years, and at length that light has been largely accepted. But if the enemy of souls can induce us to make a wrong use of that light, he will have accomplished his sinister purpose as surely as if he had led us to reject the light altogether.

Health reform is temperance,—nothing more; nothing less. And temperance, or health reform, whichever we may choose to call it, is one of the fruits of the Spirit; or in other words, one of the results of conversion.

It is the old, settled plan of the arch-deceiver to exalt the creature, and cheat the Creator of his glory. And in order to do this he is constantly laying plans whereby to get men to try to save themselves by some effort of their own.

Now if he can get us to look at health reform not simply as one of the fruits of a godly life, but as a cause of godliness, and as a means of grace by which we can prepare ourselves for translation, he will have accomplished the double design of leading us to make a wrong use of the light of health reform, and to depend more or less on our own efforts for salvation.

Who can deny that many have come to believe that by maintaining a rigid “Edenic diet” we shall be enabled to go through the seven last plagues untouched by the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday? Is that not salvation by works? But let God tell us how he expects us to escape the plagues: “It shall not come nigh thee . . . because thou hast made the Lord . . . thy habitation.” Ps. 91: 5-9. And is it not “through the Spirit” rather than by works that we become the “habitation of God”? Eph. 2: 22.

Some believe that we may, by obedience to natural laws, rise above the physical degeneration caused by the errors of our ancestors, and live in defiance of the diseases of the present day. Devoted, faithful brethren lie beneath the sod in distant lands, silent witnesses against this assumption, to say nothing of the long list of deaths from consumption, cancer, and even Bright’s disease in our weekly obituary reports. Disease is the result of sin, of generations of transgression against God’s law. Ex. 15: 26. If we expect to obtain physical salvation by our own works of obedience, are we not in that thing right where the Pharisees were in Christ’s time, and where the church was in the time of Luther, denying the fundamental truth of justification by faith?

When we, as believers, obey the light of health reform as given in the Testimonies, because we delight in God and love to do his will, because our temperate manner of living will keep our minds in harmony with the infinitely greater truth of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and because our obedience to this light will prevent us from suffering the direct result of indulgence, that is one thing; but if we expect by such obedience to obtain redemption from the effects of the sins of our forefathers, and to accomplish the preparation necessary for translation, that is another thing altogether.

God did not give us health reform to take the place of Christ, that we by it should accomplish our own redemption, either physically or spiritually. Let us be health reformers because temperance is one of the fruits of the Spirit, an evidence of faith; and let Jesus Christ be our Redeemer and our temple builder.