A Rational Health Message

The health reform program of this mes­sage should be presented through an array of facts abundantly proved by sci­ence, and a line of Scriptural evidence that fully substantiates the claims of the proponent.

By H. W. MILLER, M.D., Secretary, Medical Department, China Division

The health reform program of this mes­sage should be presented through an array of facts abundantly proved by sci­ence, and a line of Scriptural evidence that fully substantiates the claims of the proponent. To deal with theories still in the process of experimentation, to quote personal experience as the basis for a certain diet, to draw upon a scripture taken out of its setting, or to make claims in excess of that which general experi­ence, inspiration, and science will unquestion­ably prove, is to lose one's cause with the thoughtful, and to create inevitable prejudice in the minds of those who may be searching for light.

We should aim not so much to emphasize the exclusions from the diet, as to present the inclusions to be made in a new and better pro­gram, by which those interested in health bet­terment and a nondisease regime may find something to adopt or to add to the good they may already have, and thus enrich their dietary. Perhaps nothing brings the health message into trouble and disrepute more than merely to point out the many things that are harmful and disease producing and ask people to exclude from their dietary that which they have been accustomed to all their lives. They then find themselves limited to a very meager diet of foods that are insipid and unappetizing, as well as lacking in the nutrient elements re­quired for health.

Seventh-day Adventists have a wonderful health program today, and are really the most favored people in all the world, with the bless­ings brought to them through the adoption of God's program for His people, in diet, tem­perance reform, and hygienic living. These principles are intended as an aid in fitting God's people for translation, and are for uni­versal adoption by His church. We shall en­deavor to review them in the light of facts abundantly substantiated by inspiration and science, to which general experience attests and with which it coincides. Since all science is but the unfolding of the laws of life and creation, together with the powers that apper­tain thereto, and since the Scriptures are a re­liable revelation and explanation of those laws, they form the basis of all true investigation of the health program of mankind.

Generally speaking, the world views Sev­enth-day Adventists as having a program so restricting and demanding that the joy is taken out of life. But just the opposite is intended by our Maker. Those who follow God's pro­gram are the happiest, the most contented, and the least conscience-troubled people in all the world. When any man or woman has his life illuminated with the truth-filled message of the advent people, the greatest fortune possible has come to him. God has always given to His people a better program than the nations around them have. He desires His children in all ages to be the "light of the world," the "salt of the earth."

So parallel are the operations of physical and spiritual laws that Christ used the former continually to make clear and forceful the explanation of the latter. We do well to keep in mind the fact that man, and all that pertains to him in environment, such as the air, the climate he dwells in, the soil and its products, are all the creation of the same God. We be­lieve there is an interdependence between man and the things created for his use and sus­tenance. Disease and sickness are the result of departure from the program of God. Cure and prevention will be found in the adoption again of God's program, and His special bless­ing will be upon those thus conforming. Man cannot afford to be without one thing that God plans for him to have, and nothing is withheld from man by God, that would make him a happy, contented, useful, courageous being. To enter into this blessed state, man­kind need not wait until this life is past; for Christ says of those who have learned to follow His program that they "shall receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." Luke 18:30.

Christ always has something better to re­place that which is taken away. Those who adopt the rational health program of the ad­vent people realize a great benefit and feel that they are the gainers thereby.


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By H. W. MILLER, M.D., Secretary, Medical Department, China Division

February 1938

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