The power of Christ alone can work the transformation in heart and mind that all must experience
who would partake with Him of the new life in the kingdom of God…. In order to serve Him aright,
we must be born of the divine Spirit. This will lead to watchfulness. It will purify the heart and
renew the mind, and give us a new capacity for knowing and loving God. It will give us willing
obedience to all His requirements. This is true worship.
God requires continual advancement from His people. They 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….
Flesh foods are injurious to the physical well-being, and we should learn to do without them. Those
who are in a position where it is possible to secure a vegetarian diet, but who choose to follow their
own preferences in this matter, eating and drinking as they please, will gradually grow careless of
the instruction the Lord has given regarding other phases of the present truth, and will lose their
perception of what is truth; they will surely reap as they have sown….
I appeal to old and young and to middle-aged: Deny your appetite of those things that are doing you
injury. Serve the Lord by sacrifice. Let the children have an intelligent part in this work. We are all
members of the Lord’s family, and the Lord would have His children, young and old, determine to
deny appetite, and to save the means needed for the building of meetinghouses and the support of
missionaries.
I am instructed to say to parents: Place yourselves, soul and spirit, on the Lord’s side of this
question. We need ever to bear in mind that in these days of probation we are on trial before the
Lord of the universe. Will you not give up indulgences that are doing you injury? Words of
profession are cheap; let your acts of self-denial testify that you will be obedient to the demands
that God makes on His peculiar people.—The Review and Herald, February 24, 1910.