Onko

olevan parempia ja ainakin minä olen iloinen, että muutkin ovat (vihdoin ja viimein) ymmärtäneet tämänkin asian. Kun adventtikirkko alkoi julista terveyssanomaa yhtenä osana kokonaisuutta, silloin nykyistä tiedettä ei ollut lainkaan eikä muu maailma tiennyt oikeastaan mitään siitä, mitä me Jumalalta saimme. Nykyisinhän tiede on osoittanut samat asiat ja siksi monet niihin ilomielin yhtyvät ja hyvä niin. Ei minua kiinnosta ajatus paremmuudesta. Minua kiinnostaa se, että ihmiset kuulevat Jumalan lähettämän sanoman.

yx advari

Pre-Ellen White Health Reformers
Was Ellen White Really Ahead of Her Time?
Compiled by D. Anderson


Contrary to popular myth, Mrs. White brought few, if any, new health reforms to the world. Other popular health reformers were promoting most, if not all of her teachings on health, before she began teaching them.

Influence of Methodist Founder John Wesley

Having been raised up in the Methodist church, Mrs. White was most likely familiar with the writings and practices of church founder John Wesley. Wesley believed that health and healing were an integral part of the gospel message. In 1746, as a young evangelist Wesley studied medicine and began visiting the sick, prescribing various natural remedies for their health problems. By 1753 he was testing the curative powers of electricity, which he described as the "most efficacious medicine, in nervous disorders of every kind, which has ever yet been discovered."

He authored a number of books on health reform. Here are some of the health reforms he practiced and advocated in the 1700s:

·   Moderation in food and drink
·   Warned against intemperance, indolence, excessive passions
·   Frowned upon medicines such as opium and quinine
·   Recommended two hours of walking a day
·   Advised the ill to exercise in the fresh air
·   Avoided highly seasoned foods
·   Abstained from tea for years
·   Stressed that cleanliness promotes health
·   Advised Methodists to avoid snuff and tobacco

In addition to his many books and tracts on health, Wesley founded a system of Methodist hospitals that is one of the largest private healthcare systems in the world today.

Influence of Elder Joseph Bates

Health reform was an important subject amongst the Adventist pioneers, particularly to Captain Joseph Bates. There is no doubt that Bates had a strong influence on the Whites and the early Adventist church. Bates was a health reformer who crusaded against "tobacco and snuff boxes, and pipes." He further decried the use or trafficking of "alcoholic drinks, from brandy to cider, and beer." (The Sealing Message, pp. 67-68)

Health Reforms of Mrs. M.L. Shew

In 1844, a full 19 years before Mrs. White's first "vision" on health reform, Mrs. M.L. Shew published the third edition of an 156-page book on health reform entitled Water Cure for Ladies: a Popular Work on the Health, Diet, and Regimen of Females and Children, and the Prevention and Care of Diseases. In it she teaches:

·   Alcohol is a deadly poison
·   Drug medicines are "most pernicious"
·   Get rid of salt in the diet
·   Spices, such as mustard, pepper, and vinegar are "pernicious"
·   Tea is "one of the most destructive poisons"
·   Tobacco is a very powerful poison
·   Daily bathing, exercise, and fresh air are important for good health
·   Use cream instead of butter
·   A vegetarian diet will promote health
·   Cheese is hard for the body to digest
·   Meals should be six hours apart. Two meals a day is "better for sedentary persons"
·   Bread is the "staff of life." Fresh bread should not be eaten while still warm.

Fellow Prophet Joseph Smith

In 1833, thirty years before Ellen White's first health reform "vision", the Prophet Joseph Smith received his health reform vision. In Doctrine and Covenants (section 89, verses 5-17) Smith reveals the following health reforms:

·   Use of "wine" and "strong" alcoholic drinks is proscribed.
·   Tobacco is forbidden.
·   "Hot drinks [coffee and tea] are not for the body".
·   Fruits, vegetables, and grains will bring health to the body.
·   Meat is allowed, but should be eaten "sparingly".

Today Mormons proclaim that Joseph Smith was "years ahead" of modern-day science. As further proof of the divine origin of Prophet Smith's revelation they point to the fact that the average Latter Day Saint outlives the average American by approximately 10 years.

Health Reforms of Sylvester Graham

Sylvester Graham, in his Lectures on the Science of Human Life, (published in 1849, pp. 224-286) expounded on the following:

·   Avoid all simulating and unnatural foods, living "entirely on the products of the vegetable kingdom and pure water."
·   Butter should be used "very sparingly."
·   Fresh milk and eggs were frowned upon but not proscribed.
·   Cheese was permitted only if mild and unaged.
·   Condiments and spices, such as pepper, mustard, and cinnamon, were banned as being "all highly exciting and exhausting."
·   Tea and coffee, like alcohol and tobacco, poisoned the system.
·   Pastries, with the exception of fruit pies, were "among the most pernicious articles of human ailment."
·   Sleep was preferable before midnight.
·   Sleep should be taken in a well-ventilated room.
·   A sponge bath every morning was desirable.
·   Clothing should not be restrictive.
·   "All medicine, as such, is itself an evil."

Furthermore, Graham was opposed to both marital excess and self-abuse (masturbation). Graham believed that stimulating foods aroused the sexual passions. Therefore, he concluded that one of the best ways to control sexual urges was to adopt a vegetarian diet and forsake condiments, spices, alcohol, tea, and coffee (Lecture to Young Men on Chastity, pp. 83, 144-148).

Two-Meals-a-Day from Dio Lewis

In the 1850's Dio Lewis became a nationally known lecturer on health reform. He taught many of the same things as Graham, but he added the reform of eating only two meals a day. The Whites were well acquainted with Dr. Lewis. In Mrs. White's biography, grandson Arthur notes that in the early 1860's:

"The Review and Herald, edited by James White and Uriah Smith, occasionally carried items on rest, fresh air, exercise, et cetera, selected from other journals or from the writings of a Dr. Dio Lewis. Quite often articles and admonitions discouraging the use of tobacco, tea, and coffee were included." (Ellen White, vol. 2, p. 73)

Not only were the Whites familiar with Dr. Lewis' health writings, in 1871 they actually visited his home in Boston and held a private discussion with him (see letter 15, 1871 to Edson and Emma White, November 15, 1871, 5MR 397.1}

Millerite Reformer Larkin Coles

Larkin B. Coles was less known than Graham or Lewis. However, he is of special interest to Adventists because he was a Millerite preacher-physician. Before his death in 1856 he authored two books on health. In his books he advocated fresh air, exercise, a vegetarian diet, non-use of stimulants, reform in dress, sexual purity, and drugless medicine. A number of Mrs. White's writings on health reform appear strikingly similar to Coles' writings.

Coles not only warned against meat eating because it increased the animal propensities, but he also discussed the connection between meat-eating and disease. He was notable for sounding a warning (which others health reformers had already voiced) that there was a relationship between tobacco use and carcinomas. (The Beauties and Deformities of Tobacco-Using, 1853, p. 142)

Ellen White and Health Reform

Ellen White was a "late-comer" to health reform. She did not receive her first "vision" on health reform until 1863, a full 30 years after Prophet Joseph Smith's vision. While Mrs. White was still feasting on pork in the early 1850s the health reform movement was in full swing in America. Health and temperance lecturers traveled throughout the country, speaking in churches and halls, promoting the vegetarian diet, and warning against alcohol, tobacco, and corsets. A full decade before Mrs. White received her "vision" on health reform, all the major tenets of her health teachings were being taught by nationally-known non-Adventist Christian health crusaders.

Her First Attempt at Health Reform

Mrs. White's first attempt at health reform was to write a book called Appeal to Mothers, published in 1864. Like Sylvester Graham's efforts two decades earlier, Mrs. White decided her church members needed to be warned about the health dangers of masturbation. On the first page she warns of the astonishing numbers of deaths caused by masturbation:

"Have you observed the astonishing mortality among the youth?" (Appeal, p. 5)

According to Mrs. White, not only does masturbation cause death and a wide range of physical ailments, it also causes mental health problems:

"The mind is often utterly ruined, and insanity takes place." (Appeal, p. 27)

Needless to say, Appeal to Mothers is no longer available in print. Like so many other of her writings and visions that were proven incorrect, this book simply disappeared from the public sight.

Later Attempts

While she never achieved the fame in the health reform arena attained by fellow prophet Mary Baker Eddy--whose first book Science and Health, published in 1875, sold over 10 million copies--Mrs. White's later efforts proved more successful. With the assistance of her staff of professional writers and editors, she was able to produce a much better health reform book which is still available today: Ministry of Healing. Perhaps Mrs. White had the opportunity to read Mrs. Eddy's book.


Sources of the above material:
1.   E. Brooks Holifield, Health and Medicine in the Methodist Tradition, 1986.
2.   Dr. Ronald Numbers, Prophetess of Health, 1992.
3.   Sydney Cleveland, White-Washed, 1998.

Copyright © 1996-2007 by Ellen White Research Project
And many false prophets shall rise, and deceive many. Matt. 24:11

Vanhan Testamentin - siis myös adventismin - pohjalta löytyy erikoisuus, jota adventismin sopisi käyttää koukkuna ja vetonaulana.

Herramme ei V.T:n mukaan siedä possua tai jänistä - vaan suosittelee KEVYTTÄ heinäsirkkaa.

3. Moos. 11:22
   
Niistä te saatte syödä seuraavia: heinäsirkkalajeja, solam-sirkkalajeja, hargol-sirkkalajeja ja haagab-sirkkalajeja.

Mutta siinä tapauksessa adventistien uudesta raamatusta olisi pitänyt tykkänään jättää pois seuraavat irtojakeet:

5. Moso 12:15
"Omilla asuinsijoillanne voitte teurastaa eläimiänne mielin määrin ja syödä lihaa niin paljon, kuin Herra, teidän Jumalanne, teille hyvyydessään suo. Lihaa saavat syödä niin epäpuhtaat kuin puhtaatkin, aivan kuin söisitte gasellin tai peuran lihaa.

5. Moos 14:26
Ostakaa sillä rahalla kaikkea, mitä mielenne tekee, nautoja, lampaita ja vuohia, viiniä tai olutta tai muuta mieleistänne, ja syökää ja iloitkaa siellä perheinenne Herran, Jumalanne edessä.