Reasons for Reform
15
Christ’s purchased property, and we are not at liberty to do with them
as we please. Man has done this. He has treated his body as if its laws
had no penalty. Through perverted appetite its organs and powers have
become enfeebled, diseased, and crippled. And these results which
Satan has brought about by his own specious temptations, he uses to
taunt God with. He presents before God the human body that Christ
has purchased as His property; and what an unsightly representation
of his Maker man is! Because man has sinned against his body, and
has corrupted his ways, God is dishonored.
When men and women are truly converted, they will conscien-
tiously regard the laws of life that God has established in their being,
thus seeking to avoid physical, mental, and moral feebleness. Obe-
dience to these laws must be made a matter of personal duty. We
ourselves must suffer the ills of violated law. We must answer to
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God for our habits and practices. Therefore, the question for us is
not, “What will the world say?” but, “How shall I, claiming to be a
Christian, treat the habitation God has given me? Shall I work for my
highest temporal and spiritual good by keeping my body as a temple
for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or shall I sacrifice myself to the
world’s ideas and practices?”—
Testimonies for the Church 6:369, 370,
1900
Penalty for Ignorance
11. God has formed laws which govern our constitutions, and
these laws which He has placed in our being are divine, and for every
transgression there is affixed a penalty, which must sooner or later be
realized. The majority of diseases which the human family have been
and still are suffering under, they have created by ignorance of their
own organic laws. They seem indifferent in regard to the matter of
health, and work perseveringly to tear themselves to pieces, and when
broken down and debilitated in body and mind, send for the doctor
and drug themselves to death.—
The Health Reformer, October, 1866
Not Always Ignorant
12. When persons are spoken to on the subject of health, they
often say, “We know a great deal better than we do.” They do not
realize that they are accountable for every ray of light in regard to their