Nebraska Church Baptisms and Health Reform Gains
By Chas. L. Boyd
JULY 3 and 4, met with the church at Stromsburg, it being the time of their monthly meeting. On first-day, five were baptized, and four united with the church. There are now twenty-one in full membership, and about the same number keeping the Sabbath besides these. But few of these persons ever heard the third angel’s message till last fall. “Present truth” has been doing a cleansing work in this company. Some who have been keeping the Sabbath for many years think the health reform cannot be adopted here in the far West; but this church has found that such articles as pork, tobacco, &c., can be laid aside, and that this change is a decided reform. The principles of health reform teach people to eat and drink, at proper times, those things which God has placed within our reach which are the most conducive to health. One gray-headed Methodist brother was received into the church, who from his younger days had been using tobacco to keep his food on his stomach, but who found when keeping the commandments of God it was no longer needed. Others who are keeping the Sabbath, and whose sympathies are with us on other points, did not ask admittance, saying it was not right that a “clean company should be polluted with a filthy person.” May God help them to get the victory. CHAS. L. BOYD.