Control of Appetite
127
Christ gave His life to purchase redemption for the sinner. The
world’s Redeemer knew that indulgence of appetite was bringing
physical debility and deadening the perceptive faculties so that sa-
cred and eternal things could not be discerned. He knew that self-
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indulgence was perverting the moral powers, and that man’s great
need was conversion,—in heart and mind and soul, from the life of
self-indulgence to one of self-denial and self-sacrifice. May the Lord
help you as His servant to appeal to the ministers and to arouse the
sleeping churches. Let your labors as a physician and a minister be in
harmony. It is for this that our sanitariums are established, to preach
the truth of true temperance....
As a people, we need to reform, and especially do ministers and
teachers of the word need to reform. I am instructed to say to our
ministers and to the presidents of our conferences: Your usefulness as
laborers for God in the work of recovering perishing souls, depends
much on your success in overcoming appetite. Overcome the desire
to gratify appetite, and if you do this your passions will be easily
controlled. Then your mental and moral powers will be stronger. “And
they overcame ... by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their
testimony.”—
Letter 158, 1909
An Appeal to a Fellow Worker
252. The Lord has chosen you to do His work, and if you work
carefully, prudently, and bring your habits of eating in strict control
to knowledge and reason, you would have many more pleasant, com-
fortable hours than if you acted unwisely. Put on the brakes, hold your
appetite under strict charge, and then leave yourself in the hands of
God. Prolong your life by careful supervision of yourself.—
Letter 49,
1892
Abstemiousness Increases Vigor
253. Men who are engaged in giving the last message of warning
to the world, a message which is to decide the destiny of souls, should
make a practical application in their own lives of the truths they preach
to others. They should be examples to the people in their eating,
in their drinking, and in their chaste conversation and deportment.
Gluttony, indulgence of the baser passions, and grievous sins, are