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Counsels on Diet and Foods
Let none who profess godliness regard with indifference the health
of the body, and flatter themselves that intemperance is no sin, and
will not affect their spirituality. A close sympathy exists between the
physical and the moral nature.—
The Review and Herald, January 25,
1881
Decision of Character Required
255. To deny appetite requires decision of character. For want of
this decision multitudes are ruined. Weak, pliable, easily led, many
men and women fail utterly of becoming what God desires them to
be. Those who are destitute of decision of character cannot make a
success of the daily work of overcoming. The world is full of besotted,
intemperate, weak-minded men and women, and how hard it is for
them to become genuine Christians.
What does the great Medical Missionary say?—“If any man will
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
Me.” It is Satan’s work to tempt men to tempt their fellow men. He
strives to induce men to be laborers together with him in his work of
destruction. He strives to lead them to give themselves so wholly to
the indulgence of appetite and to the exciting amusements and follies
which human nature naturally craves, but which the word of God
decidedly forbids, that they can be ranked as his helpers—working
with him to destroy the image of God in man.
Through the strong temptations of principalities and powers, many
are ensnared. Slaves to the caprice of appetite, they are besotted and
degraded....
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“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your
own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your
body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Those who have a constant realization that they stand in this re-
lation to God will not place in the stomach food which pleases the
appetite, but which injures the digestive organs. They will not spoil
the property of God by indulging in improper habits of eating, drink-
ing, or dressing. They will take great care of the human machinery,
realizing that they must do this in order to work in copartnership with
God. He wills that they should be healthy, happy, and useful. But in