42
Counsels on Diet and Foods
not reach His arm low enough to raise such from their degraded state,
while they persist in pursuing a course to sink themselves still lower.
All are required to do what they can to preserve healthy bodies
and sound minds. If they will gratify a gross appetite, and by so doing
blunt their sensibilities, and becloud their perceptive faculties so that
they cannot appreciate the exalted character of God, or delight in the
study of His word, they may be assured that God will not accept their
unworthy offering any sooner than that of Cain. God requires them to
cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of the Lord. After man has done all in his power to
ensure health, by the denying of appetite and gross passions, that he
may possess a healthy mind, and a sanctified imagination, that he may
render to God an offering in righteousness, then he is saved alone by a
miracle of God’s mercy, as was the ark upon the stormy billows. Noah
had done all that God required of him in making the ark secure; then
God performed that which man could not do, and preserved the ark by
[50]
His miraculous power.—
Spiritual Gifts 4a:148, 149, 1864
65. The abuses of the stomach by the gratification of appetite,
are the fruitful source of most church trials. Those who eat and work
intemperately and irrationally, talk and act irrationally. An intemperate
man cannot be a patient man. It is not necessary to drink alcoholic
liquors in order to be intemperate. The sin of intemperate eating, eating
too frequently, too much, and of rich, unwholesome food, destroys the
healthy action of the digestive organs, affects the brain, and perverts
the judgment, preventing rational, calm, healthy thinking and acting.
And this is a fruitful source of church trials. Therefore, in order for the
people of God to be in an acceptable state with Him, where they can
glorify Him in their bodies and spirits, which are His, they must with
interest and zeal deny the gratification of their appetites, and exercise
temperance in all things. Then may they comprehend the truth in its
beauty and clearness, and carry it out in their lives, and by a judicious,
wise, straightforward course, give the enemies of our faith no occasion
to reproach the cause of truth.—
Testimonies for the Church 1:618,
619, 1867
66. Brother and Sister G, arouse yourselves, I beg of you. You
have not received the light of health reform and acted upon it. If you
had restricted your appetites, you would have been saved much extra
labor and expense; and what is of vastly more consequence, you would