"IT WAS not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be thus delayed. God did not design that His people, Israel, should wander forty years in the wilderness. He promised to lead them directly to the land of Canaan, and establish them there a holy, healthy, happy people. But those to whom it was first preached, went not in 'because of unbelief.' Their hearts were filled with murmuring, rebellion, and hatred, and He could not fulfill His covenant with them. . . .
"The same sins have delayed the entrance of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. ... It is the unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord's professed people that have kept us in the world of sin and sorrow so many years."--Evangelism, p. 696.
Here is recorded a most solemn message for the church today. Jesus has been waiting a long time for us to meet the conditions forsake our sins, lay down our murmuring and rebellion, our unbelief and strife, turn from our worldliness and unconsecration and become the holy, healthy, happy people He wishes us to become. His plan is still the same for us as it was for ancient Israel. God's hope is that physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually, we shall be a demonstration to the world of what God can and will do with a people who will surrender totally to Him and seek to do His will in all things.
In His great love, He has sent us messages with specific counsel as to how we may become all that He desires. The message of righteousness by faith, including justification, is given to make us a holy people. Our beautiful health reform message, so very burdensome to some but so beneficial when put into practice, is intended to make us a uniquely healthy people. And both of them together, along with the great and precious promises, are intended to make us a happy people. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."
The urgent call of the 1973 Annual Council was for us to so fully cooperate with God that His gracious purposes might be completely fulfilled in us. We desperately need the revival that righteousness by faith in the setting of the three angels' messages brings. As individuals throughout the whole world church, we need to fully accept and respond to the call to reformation in many areas, and especially in regard to our total health message, so that we might be His healthy people. You see, God knows that true and full happiness is possible only when men are holy and healthy.
The reason that God seeks for this kind of people is that He, Himself, is that kind of God. Our God is a holy, healthy, happy God. It is only natural, therefore, that He seeks for a holy, healthy, happy people to live with Him throughout eternity. When He develops such people in this world, He will use them in a mighty way to re veal His power and glory and thus give to the world such a demonstration of the love of God as has not been witnessed since the fall of man, except in the experience of Christ our Saviour and the few others who now share with Him in the glory of His kingdom.
We, therefore, appeal to every minister in our ranks to make the full commitment to the total message of the Lord, which is intended to bless the whole man, and to seek by the power of the Spirit to prepare a people a holy, healthy, happy people to meet the Lord at His coming.
