Comprehensive Health

The year 1863 brought serious challenges for Seventh-day Adventists! Early that year, two of James and Ellen White’s children got diphtheria, causing severe sore throats and high fevers. Meanwhile, the American Civil War (1861–1865) was raging on, and the Military Draft Act of March 3, 1863, was a serious threat for all who refused to join the Union Army. If that was not enough, much energy was spent on developing a church organizational structure. It culminated in the establishment of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in May 1863.

No wonder James White and other leaders were exhausted and needed to fortify their own health. On Friday evening, June 5, 1863, Ellen White was at the Aaron Hilliard home in Otsego, Michigan, when she received her most comprehensive health reform vision. It outlined a “general plan” of “reformation in habits and practices.”9 She saw that “it was a sacred duty to attend to our health” and to speak “against intemperance of every kind,—intemperance in working, in eating, in drinking and in drugging.” Much emphasis was placed on the need for cultivating “a cheerful, hopeful, peaceful frame of mind” to strengthen one’s health. Several other aids to good health were pointed out, including pure soft water as “God’s great medicine.” This vision was the beginning of a new Adventist lifestyle that continued to develop as it was enhanced by subsequent visions and scientific discoveries. As most of us know by experience, changing habits and reeducating tastes are not always easy tasks. Being “a great meat eater,” Ellen White had a hard time giving up meat and enduring the taste of bread. When she struggled with the temptation, she put her arms across her stomach and said to herself, “I will not taste a morsel. I will eat simple food, or I will not eat at all.” Our sinful nature tends to twist God’s principles to fit our own habits and tastes, but we must stay in control of our appetites. God wants us to be as healthy as possible in every dimension of life (3 John 2).

Why don’t we bring ourselves, by His grace, into conformity with His principles? After all, it is “a sacred duty”!