The Gospel of Health

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 24, 1903

The Gospel of Health

LEXICOGRAPHERS define the gospel as good news, but the Bible tells us that it is “the power of God unto salvation.” Salvation implies a lost condition, or an imminent danger of being lost. There is but one source of reliable information upon a subject of this character, and that is the Word of God. By consulting it we find that in the beginning God made man upright; he gave him noble traits of character, with no bias toward evil. He endowed him with high intellectual powers, and presented before him the strongest possible inducements to be true to his allegiance. Obedience, perfect and perpetual, was the condition of eternal happiness. On this condition he was to have access to the tree of life. The holy pair were not only children under the fatherly care of God, but students, receiving instruction from the all-wise Creator. They were visited by angels, and were granted communion with their Maker, with no obscuring veil between. They were full of vigor, imparted by the tree of life, and their intellectual power was but little less than that of the angels.

By transgression, man in the beginning of his history lost his innocency; lost the dominion God had given him over all the earth; lost his beautiful home, and access to the tree of life; and thus became subject to sickness, decay, and death.

Results of Sin

The abnormal and uncontrolled appetite that opened the flood-gates of human woe upon the world, has been the bane of mankind from that day until the present time. Excessive eating and drinking, which produced lustful desires and practices, caused the destruction of the antediluvians. Our Saviour says of them, “They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away.” Pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness caused the destruction of Sodom.

There is abundant evidence both in the Word of God and in secular history to show that the declension in virtue and the degeneracy of the race are chiefly attributable to the indulgence of perverted appetite. The average length of life, having dropped from nine hundred and twelve years in the days of Noah to thirty-five years in our time, is a significant fact that should arrest our attention, and cause us seriously to consider these things.

Amid the general ruin and sadness that came as the result of the first transgression, there was, however, a ray of hope; for even before they were expelled from the garden, the promise was given that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.

A few men of every age in the past grasped this promise by faith, and overcame through the strength imparted. But in the fullness of time, when the world had reached its most corrupt stage, Jesus Christ, the promised Seed, the second Adam, was born into the world, and in human form took up the controversy right where the first Adam failed—on the point of appetite. Seemingly to impress the fact upon the minds of all that the battle would turn upon this point, the one who was sent to prepare the way for the coming Messiah was a man of abstemious habits, subsisting upon a simple diet.

In order to make the victory complete, and once for all secure eternal redemption for man, our Saviour, at the beginning of his public ministry, was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. After a fast of forty days and nights, while hungry, weak, and emaciated, the tempter came to him, and said, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”

Although suffering the pangs of hunger, and having the power as the Son of God, he would not obey Satan to work a miracle in his own behalf, but trusted his Heavenly Father to supply his need in his own time and way. Christ’s reply to the tempter, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” was the turning point in the contest, so that after two other minor temptations the enemy left the field a beaten and vanquished foe. As Eden was lost through the indulgence of appetite, it was regained by denial, and our only hope of regaining it is by entering into the victory of Christ through faith, and by a firm denial of appetite.

A Complete Gospel

Any so-called gospel that ignores man’s physical condition and needs, or sanctions his giving loose rein to the appetite, will fail of meeting the case. “The good news,” or “power of God unto salvation,” must be as broad as the offense and its consequences. That this includes the body as well as the soul, is clearly proved, not only by the nature and consequence of the transgression, but by the teaching and practice of him who came to seek and save that which was lost. The Scriptures clearly teach that the curing of disease and the healing of physical maladies were considered a very important part of the gospel. Furthermore, we find upon a careful study of his earthly ministry, that our Saviour devoted more time to the healing of the sick than to preaching.

Satan is the originator of disease. Jesus came to “destroy the works of the devil.” “In Him was life,” and he says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Christ, in his own person, was the embodiment of the gospel in its fullness and completeness. As he passed through towns and cities, he was like a vital current diffusing life and joy wherever he went.

The aged apostle John, in writing to his friend Gaius, reveals clearly his belief in regard to the intimate relation that exists between physical health and soul prosperity, when he says, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”

Of the great apostle to the Gentiles, it is recorded that “God wrought special miracles by the hand of Paul: so that from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs, or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.” Yet later we read these words from his own pen, showing his belief in regard to healthful living, and its influence and effect upon one’s spiritual welfare and prosperity: “Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by

any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”

We are not our own. Our bodies are God’s property, having been purchased at an infinite cost, even the blood of the Son of God. So whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, we are to do all to the glory of God. The laws governing our being are just as much the law of God as are the ten commandments, and to violate either is sin; for sin is defined as the transgression of the law. The gospel is salvation from sin, both moral and physical; hence the “gospel of health,” or a complete gospel, enjoins a thorough knowledge of the laws governing our being, and a conscientious and faithful compliance therewith.

A constant recognition of God’s ownership in us lies at the foundation of all true education and reform, and will result in peace and happiness in this life, and insure us an entrance into our Edenic home when it is restored to its original place never again to be removed.