It would be unbalanced to assume that every instance of disease can be traced to faulty lifestyle habits. After all, even great men of God such as Job and Elisha experienced sickness not attributed to such causes. However, the pen of Inspiration is nonetheless clear that there are things we can do—factors within our power to control—that can make a tremendous impact on how likely we are to suffer from certain common illnesses.

Let us briefly consider how the Lord revealed the three great risk factors for death to Ellen White long before science discovered them.

“Tobacco is a poison of the most deceitful and malignant kind, having an exciting, then a paralyzing influence upon the nerves of the body. It is all the more dangerous because its effects upon the system are so slow, and at first scarcely perceivable. Multitudes have fallen victims to its poisonous influence. They have surely murdered themselves by this slow poison.”3

“Inactivity is a fruitful cause of disease. Exercise quickens and equalizes the circulation of the blood, but in idleness the blood does not circulate freely, and the changes in it, so necessary to life and health, do not take place.”4

“Every year millions upon millions of gallons of intoxicating liquors are consumed. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent in buying wretchedness, poverty, disease, degradation, lust, crime, and death. For the sake of gain, the liquor seller deals out to his victims that which corrupts and destroys mind and body.”5

Now let us examine the fourth main risk factor for nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, a poor diet. Not everybody smokes tobacco, not everybody is deficient in physical activity, and not everybody drinks alcohol, but the fourth risk factor affects all of humanity, for everyone eats food. This is why the food we eat becomes the main risk factor in determining our level of health or disease. Either the food we consume promotes good health or it promotes disease and sickness. Let us consider another interesting statement of recommendation from the World Health Organization for today’s population. Within this statement are the nutritional recommendations for a healthy diet and the warnings against foods which will lead to sickness and disease. “An unhealthy diet is one of the major risk factors for a range of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and other conditions related to obesity. Specific recommendations for a healthy diet include: eating more fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts and grains; cutting down salt, sugar, fats. It is also advisable to choose unsaturated fats, instead of saturated fats and towards the elimination of trans-fatty acids.”

The leading world health experts have made some specific recommendations to the world’s population around the globe. It doesn’t matter whether we live in the northern or southern hemisphere, whether we live in a third-world country or in an affluent western one, it doesn’t matter what age, race, color, or condition we are in—the basic principles remain the same. In the above statement of dietary recommendation there is not a single mention of flesh foods, such as pork, beef, lamb, poultry or fish, and no mention of dairy foods such as milk, cheese, yogurt, cream, or even eggs. The only family of foods recommended for increased consumption are fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and grains. This means that the optimal foods which the World Health Organization recommends are the ones all found within a vegan, vegetarian diet. This reminds me of some statements which have been penned by the Spirit of Prophecy for the Advent people to heed, “In order to know what are the best foods, we must study God’s original plan for man’s diet. He who created man and who understands his needs appointed Adam his food. . . . Grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables constitute the diet chosen for us by our Creator.”6 Before the world even begun to think which types of food could help prevent disease, the Lord already revealed it through Ellen White. The Lord declared that a vegan, vegetarian diet contained the best foods to prevent sickness, disease, and death in these last days.

Notice the diet of choice which the Lord wants for His people, “Again and again I have been shown that God is trying to lead us back, step by step, to His original design—that man should subsist upon the natural products of the earth. Among those who are waiting for the coming of the Lord, meat eating will eventually be done away; flesh will cease to form a part of their diet. . . . All who are connected with our health institutions especially should be educating themselves to subsist on fruits, grains, and vegetables. If we move from principle in these things, if we as Christian reformers educate our own taste, and bring our diet to God’s plan, then we may exert an influence upon others in this matter, which will be pleasing to God.”7

“Let us make intelligent advancement in simplifying our diet. In the providence of God, every country produces articles of food containing the nourishment necessary for the upbuilding of the system.”8 The greatest staples in our diet should be a variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds; for it is within these foods we find vitality for life.

What would happen if God’s people adopted such a simple vegetarian diet? The World Health Organization tells us that we would reduce our risk of dying from major diseases like heart disease, cancers, lung diseases, and diabetes. What has the Lord said?“I was shown that intemperance would prevail in the world to an alarming extent, and that every one of the people of God must take an elevated stand in regard to reformation in habits and practices. . . I was shown that God would give to His commandment-keeping people a reform diet, and that as they received this, their disease and suffering would be greatly lessened. I was shown that this work would progress.”9

God in His love and mercy has given to the Advent people the greatest advancement in medicine that could ever be discovered, a disease-preventative diet. The great reform diet is the key to alleviating millions upon millions of cases of suffering and disease. You cannot find good health in a bottle of pills, you cannot find good health in a syringe, but the Lord says we can find good health in the very food He has created for our bodies. The medical world spends billions of dollars each year in the search for cures and treatments for disease. Thousands upon thousands study to become scientists, researchers, chemists, doctors, in the quest of finding wonder cures for the diseases that so afflict humanity. And yet despite all this immense effort, more and more people are getting sicker each year from heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and lung disorders.

The world has its ear glued to the latest developments and breakthroughs in drug medicine. Unfortunately, nobody wants to listen to an uneducated woman who never studied any form of medicine or chemistry in her life. Nobody wants to listen to someone—who lived long before the terms “vitamin” and “antioxidant” were even known—say that God has put all this wonder treatment not in a pill, but in an apple, in a stalk of broccoli, an almond, a bean, a sesame seed, or a kernel of corn. Vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, disease-preventing chemicals were actually created long ago, they have already been designed and researched, they have already been manufactured and mass produced, and they have already been bottled for everyone’s consumption. It’s called food, good-old-healthful-vegetarian food! Science simply discovers that which God has already created! There is one thing which God has given in food and which a pharmaceutical pill can never provide: The vitality of life. God’s food is packed with the bounties of life-giving nutrients to ward off sickness and disease. Sickness and disease do not result because God didn’t provide enough nutritious food, but often because humanity doesn’t want to eat it.

Another warning the World Health Organization gave in their dietary recommendations was to reduce the consumption of sugar, salts, and fats; especially saturated and trans fats. If we are counselled to cut down our consumption of sugar and salt, then obviously science recognizes them as foods which promote disease rather than health. If we are counselled to reduce saturated fats, which are found heavily within animal foods, and trans-fats found heavily in fried foods such as potato chips and other fast foods, then obviously these also are deemed as foods that only promote sickness and disease. To the world today all this nutritional news is a completely new paradigm, but for God’s people it is only the fulfillment of prophecy. Once again I draw our attention to the warning given by God through the pen of inspiration:

1. Too much sugar. “The free use of sugar in any form tends to clog the system and is not unfrequently a cause of disease.”10

2. Too much salt. “We have our food prepared with but little salt and have dispensed with spices of all kinds.”11

3. Too much saturated animal fats. “The meat is served reeking with fat, because it suits the perverted taste. Both the blood and the fat of animals are consumed as a luxury. But the Lord gave special directions that these should not be eaten. Why? Because their use would make a diseased current of blood in the human system. The disregard for the Lord’s special directions has brought a variety of difficulties and diseases upon human beings. . . . If they introduce into their systems that which cannot make good flesh and blood, they must endure the results of their disregard of God’s word.”12

4. Too much fried trans-fats. “We do not think fried potatoes are healthful, for there is more or less grease or butter used in preparing them.”13

“Be very careful in regard to your eating and drinking, Brother __, so that you will not continue to have a diseased body. Eat regularly, and eat only food that is free from grease.”14

“A plain diet, free from spices and flesh meats and grease of all kinds, would prove a blessing to you.”15

“Grains and fruits prepared free from grease, and in as natural a condition as possible, should be the food for the tables of all who claim to be preparing for translation to heaven.”16

You will not find a credible scientific recommendation advising someone to increase their consumption of sugar, salt, or animal saturated fats and trans-fats. You will not find an unbiased, credible nutritional recommendations to increase your consumption of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, cheese, milk, and so forth in order to reduce your risk of developing heart disease, cancer, lung disease, and diabetes. Why not? Simply because it is well known that these are the very foods which increase the risk of developing these diseases in the first place.

Some say we must eat fish, because fish is high in unsaturated fats which will help reduce one’s risk factors. It is true that fish is high in unsaturated fats such as omega-3 oils, but it is also true that fish is high in cholesterol, equivalent to that of chicken. It is also true that many fish are high in mercury and other contaminants which they have absorbed from the polluted waters of this world. “In many places fish become so contaminated by the filth on which they feed as to be a cause of disease. This is especially the case where the fish come in contact with the sewage of large cities. The fish that are fed on the contents of the drains may pass into distant waters, and may be caught where the water is pure and fresh. Thus when used as food they bring disease and death on those who do not suspect the danger.”17 It is misleading to recommend that food such as fish be eaten just because it contains one good nutrient while at the same time it contains other bad ingredients. It would be like saying we should eat a “Snickers” candy bar because it contains high quantities of nuts, even though it is mixed with chocolate, dairy, and sugar. That would be absurd. The best form of fats and oils that contain nothing but good healthful ingredients alongside them are those derived from plant-based vegetarian foods. For example flaxseed (linseed) and walnut also contain high levels of omega-3 unsaturated fats and yet neither of them contain the many detrimental elements which you may find in fish. On the contrary, they contain an array of other powerful nutrients which only nourish the body without providing any detriment to it. A balanced, nourishing, vegan, vegetarian diet provides an arsenal of attack against the number four killers of our modern day, and all we have to do is it eat it!

As God’s professed remnant people, the challenge we face today in being vegetarians is not that we may be moving too fast for the world, but that we will be left behind. The world is blowing the trumpet in proclaiming the benefits of eating the foods which belong to a vegan diet, and what are we proclaiming? Are we the head or the tail? Are we proclaiming to the world the right arm of the three angels’ messages—the arm of health and happiness? Or are we instead guilty of murmuring against the Lord’s directions as did the children of Israel? “Now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes” (Numbers 11:6).

Some seem to cry: “I love my meat, my cheese, my butter, my milk, and my cream. I love my eggs, my chocolate, my sugar, and my cakes. I love my spices and salt and my fried foods. If you take all these away from me, my soul will dry away, and there will be nothing left but this manna of fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds! You know it is true. If we take away all this, we will be left with nothing. Nothing, that is, that will clog our arteries and give us heart disease. Nothing, that is, that will destroy our cells and give us cancer. Nothing, that is, that will destroy our tissues and give us lung disease. Nothing, that is, that will destroy our organs and give us diabetes. If we follow the counsel of the Lord and eat only those things He has prescribed, then there will be nothing left to make us sick and contract these last-day fatal diseases.

The Bible tells us very simply: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:7, 8). What the Lord has spoken will not be changed. The question we have to ask ourselves is, Am I willing to make the change? Am I willing to live and eat healthily? Am I willing to help ease the sufferings of disease which is so afflicting humanity right now? Am I willing to sow in the Spirit by walking in the directions of the Lord in relation to what I should eat? Or am I, like Israel before me, willing to sow in the flesh and eat whatever I want according to my fleshly desires and tastes? The choice is ours and the destiny of following the flesh and following the Spirit has been plainly set before us. The Lord cries to His people today as He did to Israel of old “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Who will stand up for the Lord and be true reformers? Who among us will find the courage and determination to lead the way in healthy living? Who among us are willing to lift up the trumpet and proclaim to the world the blessings of the health message before the world proclaims it all to us? “Only when we are intelligent in regard to the principles of healthful living, can we be fully aroused to see the evils resulting from improper diet. Those who, after seeing their mistakes, have courage to change their habits, will find that the reformatory process requires a struggle and much perseverance; but when correct tastes are once formed, they will realize that the use of the food which they formerly regarded as harmless, was slowly but surely laying the foundation for dyspepsia and other diseases.”18 Ask yourself honestly, are you healthy? Is your diet as the Lord wants it to be? Or are you being left behind because of the desires and tastes of your flesh?

“God requires of His people continual advancement. We need to learn that indulged appetite is the greatest hindrance to mental improvement and soul sanctification. With all our profession of health reform, many of us eat improperly. Indulgence of appetite is the greatest cause of physical and mental debility and lies largely at the foundation of feebleness and premature death. Let the individual who is seeking to possess purity of spirit bear in mind that in Christ there is power to control the appetite.”19

The Lord wants us to lift up the trumpet to proclaim and personally experience the benefits of healthful eating and living. Let each member feel their calling to this work, let each church raise themselves up as light bearers amidst the darkness of sickness and disease. Let us all rise to the call of the Lord. “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Amen.