Seventh-day Adventists believe that Christians should have a concern for health, not because of any ceremonial or legalistic significance, but for the practical reason that only in a sound body can they render the most effective service to God and to others. The reason for emphasis on health principles is health. Health is related to religion in that it enables people to have a clear mind with which to understand the will of God and a strong body with which to do the will of God.
Seventh-day Adventists believe that at the Fall all three aspects of humanity’s nature—the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual—were affected; and that Jesus, who said He had come to restore that which was lost ( Luke 19:10 ), seeks to save the whole person. In His ministry Christ touched these three aspects: He preached the gospel of the kingdom (spiritual), He healed those who were mentally deranged (intellectual), and He restored those afflicted with disease (physical).
Apart from this divine example of our Lord, SDA s find elsewhere in the New Testament a recognition of the importance of a healthy, sound body. For example, Paul declares: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” ( Rom. 12:1 ). “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” ( 1 Cor. 6:19 , 20 ). He further taught that belief in the soon coming of Christ calls for a dedication of the complete man to God: “The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” ( 1 Thess. 5:23 ).
Accountability for Health. On these biblical bases rests the belief that there is an accountability to God for the preservation of health, and that the person who knowingly violates simple health principles, thereby bringing on ill health, disease, or disability, is living in violation of the laws of God. The smoker who brings upon himself or herself cancer of the lungs; the drinker who develops cirrhosis of the liver; the irregular eater, or the overeater, or the one who indulges in excessive quantities of heavy or rich food and develops serious digestive disease; the corpulent, intense, nonexercising business or professional person who is overtaken with a heart attack-all these are in greater or less measure responsible for the ills they suffer and bear some guilt for neglect of the bodies entrusted to them. This fact makes our relationship to the entire question of health a highly practical one, not an emotional or a legalistic one. If, as SDA s believe, Christians have the same responsibility to preserve the health as they have to preserve their character, then promotion of a wider understanding of basic health principles assumes an important role in religion and theology.
It is in the light of these facts that SDA s concern themselves with the care of the sick, helping to bring relief to those who suffer. They further endeavor to promote through education desirable habits and practices of health whereby disease is lessened or prevented and the body preserved in health.
Health Reform and Seventh-day Adventist Leaders. The emphasis on healthful living and the sense of responsibility for the individual’s body as a Christian duty arose in the SDA movement in the same year in which the General Conference was organized. It was natural that a people who endeavored to apply biblical precepts to their daily lives should consider seriously the physical aspect of life.
However, many years before, at least one of the pioneer leaders, Captain Joseph Bates, practiced what was known as health reform. Emphasizing health principles as part of his message, he preached abstinence from stimulants and narcotics, though he did not urge on others his dietary habits.
James and Ellen White brought the subject of healthful living as an issue before the Adventists. As early as 1848 Ellen G. White spoke of the harmful effects of tobacco, tea, and coffee. In 1853 and 1855 James White reprinted in the Review and Herald, of which he was editor, articles against tobacco (4:178, Dec. 13, 1853; 7:9, July 24, 1855). J. N. Andrews in 1856 wrote that the use of tobacco was “a sin against God.” In 1854 Ellen White admonished SDA s to adopt a simple, wholesome diet without grease and rich foods. In January 1863, during a diphtheria epidemic, James and Ellen White applied successfully to their two sick children the home treatments recommended in a newspaper article by Dr. James C. Jackson, of Dansville, New York, who emphasized the importance of healthful diet, fresh air, and water treatments.
Health principles as part of the Seventh-day Adventist emphasis may be dated from June 1863, when Mrs. White set forth in greater detail the cultivation of health as a part of the Christian’s duty: “It is not safe nor pleasing to God to violate the laws of health, and then ask Him to take care of our health, and keep us from disease, when we are living directly contrary to our prayers” ( MS 1, 1863).
“I saw that it was a sacred duty to attend to our health, and arouse others to their duty. . . . We have a duty to speak, to come out against intemperance of every kind-intemperance in working, in eating, in drinking, in drugging, and then point them to God’s great medicine, water, pure soft water, for diseases, for health, for cleanliness, for luxury. . . . We should not be silent upon the subject of health, but should wake up minds to the subject” ( ibid. ).
At the same time, she spoke against drugs and flesh meats, and urged the importance of pure air and a proper diet. She published these principles in the summer of 1864 in Spiritual Gifts , volume 4 ( pp. 120–151), and prepared six articles entitled “Disease and Its Causes” that were to form parts of a tract series, How to Live (1865). It was not until she had sketched out these articles that she read some of the writings of J. C. Jackson, R. T. Trall, Sylvester Graham, and others who were protesting against the popular customs in diet and dress, and the prevalent medical practices that now seem rather barbarous. Some of these “health reformers” held a number of extreme views from which she strongly dissented, but she was surprised to find agreement on many points. Mrs. White incorporated extracts from some of these health reformers, along with her own articles, in the six tracts How to Live , selecting and rejecting on the basis of the principles she had set forth ( Review and Herald 30:260, Oct. 8, 1867).
When her husband suffered a stroke in 1865, she placed him in Dr. Jackson’s Dansville health institution, but took him away because she disapproved of some of the treatments prescribed for him.
Regarding the health principles outlined during this early period by Ellen White, which were far in advance of medical practices prevalent in that day, J. H. Waggoner wrote: “We do not profess to be pioneers in the general principles of the health reform. The facts on which this movement is based have been elaborated, in a great measure, by reformers, physicians, and writers on physiology and hygiene, and so may be found scattered through the land. But we do claim that by the method of God’s choice it has been more clearly and powerfully unfolded, and is thereby producing an effect which we could not have looked for from any other means.
“As mere physiological and hygienic truths, they might be studied by some at their leisure, and by others laid aside as of little consequence; but . . . it comes to us as an essential part of present truth , to be received with the blessing of God, or rejected at our peril” ( ibid. 28:77, Aug. 7, 1866).
Again in 1865 Ellen White stressed the essential nature of health principles and their relation to other truths of the Bible. She wrote: “We as a people must make an advance move in this great work. Ministers and people must act in concert. . . . There are but few as yet who are aroused sufficiently to understand how much their habits of diet have to do with their health, their characters, their usefulness in this world, and their eternal destiny. . . . Sabbathkeepers who are looking for the soon appearing of their Saviour should be the last to manifest a lack of interest in this great work of reform. Men and women must be instructed, and ministers and people should feel that the burden of the work rests upon them to agitate the subject” ( 1T 486–489).
Furthermore, she urged the 4,000 members of the SDA Church that the progress of health principles was not to depend wholly upon teaching the principles from the desk and by means of publications. An institution was to be founded for the treatment of the sick on rational principles, and for teaching the patients how to preserve their health: “We should provide a home for the afflicted and those who wish to learn how to take care of their bodies that they may prevent sickness. We should not remain indifferent and compel those who are sick and desirous of living out the truth to go to popular water cure institutions for the recovery of health, where there is no sympathy for our faith” ( ibid. 489).
The result was the founding of the forerunner of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Ellen White pointed out that such an institution, if rightly conducted, would be a means of helping the patients spiritually as well as physically; that while their bodies were being treated their minds might be opened to spiritual truths and their lives brought into a closer relation with the will of the heavenly Father. In addition, she proposed a plan whereby such an institution might assist the poor: “Those to whom God has intrusted means should provide a fund to be used for the benefit of the worthy poor who are sick and not able to defray the expenses of receiving treatment at the institution” ( ibid. 494, 495).
Thus the gospel of health became a part of the Seventh-day Adventist message, “just as closely connected with it as are the arm and hand with the human body” ( ibid. 486).