Scriptures Perverted by J. H. Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 15, 1874

Scriptures Perverted.

By J. H. Waggoner

Any Scripture is perverted when it is made to prove what it was not designed to prove, or made to teach what a harmony of the Scriptures will not teach. As an instance, we may refer to Luke 20: 27–38, which is made to prove that the patriarchs have not died. But the Saviour spoke these words to prove that they will have a resurrection from the dead. Whenever they are quoted to prove another doctrine, or a contrary doctrine, they are perverted.

Not long since I was conversing with a family who are not of our faith; the failing health of one of the family led me to recommend to them the Health Reformer and the practice of the hygienic system. The man, who was a professor of religion, and a church member, promptly objected to the system, quoting the words of the Saviour: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man.” He asserted that it was perfectly right for a man to eat and drink whatever he pleased. He chewed tobacco, of course.

I told him, I feared he did not understand the intention of the Saviour in speaking those words; we are admonished to do all, even to eating or drinking, to the glory of God, and we are informed that a drunkard cannot enter the kingdom of God. Therefore we are shut up to the conclusion that the liquor which the drunkard takes into his mouth defiles him, for it shuts him out of the kingdom of God.

His answer to this was that it was not wrong to drink the liquor, but it was wrong to drink it to excess! so as to get drunk.

But, I inquired, if a man drinks to excess, and gets drunk, is it not true that it is all taken into his mouth? And if the words of the Saviour will apply to a pint of whisky, will they not also apply to a gallon, used in the same manner? To this he made no reply.

This modification of the Saviour’s language, to make it except only the excessive use of that which is shown to be wrong in itself, is a virtual acknowledgment that the language is misapplied or perverted. Ceremonially, that is, as to Jewish customs and traditions, a man is not defiled by eating without washing his hands if he has been into the market place, or in contact with his fellow-men. But it is a truth not contradicted by our Saviour, that a man may be defiled, ruined for time and eternity, by what he eats and drinks, and this is more clearly proved by the New Testament than by the Old.

Eve was ruined by eating that which she ought not to eat. And this first gratification of self and appetite “brought death into the world, and all its woes.” Israel fell under a curse by reason of their perverted appetite. “Eating and drinking,” for self-gratification, were among the sins of the wicked in the days of Noah, and of which we are warned in the last days. Luke 21: 34.

How easy it is to see that to quote these words of the Saviour as applying against the health reform is to pervert them.

J. H. WAGGONER.