Led Step by Step

Psychologically, it could not have been otherwise. It was the method of Jesus: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). People cannot relate to too much change at once. Early Adventists proclaimed the seventh-day Sabbath at a time when a six-day work week was common, and to get Sabbath privileges was virtually impossible. Their enthusiastic announcement of a very near Second Coming seemed farfetched to their neighbors who remembered the Millerite embarrassment in 1844. To declare further, in those early years, that Adventist Christians should not smoke tobacco, drink alcoholic beverages, use tea and coffee, or eat swine’s flesh—would have been too much to contemplate. Change takes time, even today.MOL 282.1

And now the Otsego health vision. Many items in it were extremely relevant to the Whites themselves as to how they could improve their health by setting better priorities for their time and energies, by a more “cheerful, hopeful, peaceful frame of mind,” and by not leaving their own health care to God “to take care of that which He has left for us to watch and care for.”MOL 282.2

Further, the Lord instructed the Whites and others to speak out “against intemperance of every kind ... in working, in eating, in drinking, and in drugging.” But they were not to have only a negative message. They were to guide Seventh-day Adventists and others to a life style that harmonized with the laws of the spiritual and natural world. The sweep of the vision “astonished” Ellen White. She wrote: “Many things came directly across my own ideas.” ^{37Manuscript 7, 1867, cited in Robinson, Our Health Message, p. 81.}MOL 282.3

In May 1866, she visited Dr. H. S. Lay, an Adventist physician in Allegan, Michigan. Fascinated with her vision summary, he wanted a full interview. Mrs. White responded reluctantly because she “was not familiar with medical language,” and because “much of the matter presented to her was so different from the commonly accepted views that she feared she could not relate it so that it would be understood.” ^{38Robinson, Our Health Message, p. 83.}MOL 282.4

Dr. Lay was impressed. Her insights were accurate and the overall coherency profound. He knew that the interacting nature of these principles did not come from human sources. He often related to others what he learned that day.MOL 282.5

One of his medical friends with whom he much later shared this special information was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. In 1897 Dr. Kellogg said: “It is a very interesting fact that the Lord began giving us this light thirty years ago. Just before I came to the Conference I had a talk with Dr. Lay, and he told me of how he heard the first instruction about health reform away back in 1860 and especially in 1863. While he was riding in a carriage with Brother and Sister White, she related what had been presented to her upon the subject of health reform, and laid out the principles which have stood the test of all these years—a whole generation.” ^{39General Conference Daily Bulletin, March 8, 1897, p. 309; cited in Robinson, The Story of Our Health Message, 83, 84.}MOL 282.6

Speaking to the assembled delegates at the 1897 General Conference, Dr. Kellogg added: “It is impossible for any man who has not made a special study of medicine to appreciate the wonderful character of the instruction that has been received in these writings. It is wonderful, brethren, when you look back over the writings that were given us thirty years ago, and then perhaps the next day pick up a scientific journal and find some new discovery that the microscope has made, or that has been brought to light in the chemical laboratory—I say, it is perfectly wonderful how correctly they agree in fact.... There is not a single principle in relation to the healthful development of our bodies and minds that is advocated in these writings from Sister White, which I am not prepared to demonstrate conclusively from scientific evidence.” ^{40The Story of Our Health Message, 84.}MOL 282.7

While traveling on a brutal schedule, still mourning the sad death of Henry, their firstborn, Ellen White rushed to completion Spiritual Gifts, volumes 3 and 4. Volume 4 contained a section called “Health,” which contained the first comprehensive statement on health principles since the Otsego vision.MOL 283.1

Were Adventists ready for this next call for personal reform? So many orders were received that an announcement was made in the The Review and Herald, August 23, 1864: “The call for Spiritual Gifts is so great that we are unable to fill orders as soon as they are received. We have two binders at work, but today have not a single copy in the office.”MOL 283.2

Reports of immediate and beneficial results began to pour into the Review and Herald, the Adventist clearing house for information. Pastor Isaac Sanborn wrote that for ten years he had tried many remedies for his inflammatory rheumatism. Then, in the spring of 1864 he gave up pork, and a few months later he adopted a two-meal-a-day program, without meat of any kind. He joyfully reported: “I enjoy as perfect health as probably can be enjoyed in this mortal state. I would not return to my old habits of eating for any consideration.... I thank God for the light He has given upon this subject.” ^{41The Review and Herald, April 11, 1865.} M. E. Cornell recounted how his wife lay at the point of death with typhoid: “We knew that to take the drugs of physicians would be in this case certain death.” They applied hydrotherapy treatments, giving “nature a chance to throw off the disease.” In a short while, as they united in prayer, Mrs. Cornell was out of danger. ^{42Robinson, Our Health Message, p. 96.}MOL 283.3

Ellen White was forthright about the changes that had come to her as she applied the counsel she passed on to others, counsel that “came directly across my own ideas.” In her “Health” article, one year after the vision, she wrote: “Since the Lord presented before me, in June, 1863, the subject of meat-eating in relation to health, I have left the use of meat. For a while it was rather difficult to bring my appetite to bread, for which, formerly, I have had but little relish. But by persevering, I have been able to do this. I have lived for nearly one year without meat. For about six months most of the bread upon our table has been unleavened cakes, made of unbolted wheat meal and water, and a very little salt. We use fruits and vegetables liberally. I have lived for eight months upon two meals a day.” ^{43Spiritual Gifts 4a:153, cited in Robinson, Our Health Message, p. 94. For a continuing record of Ellen White’s experience with health reform principles, plus her principles of common sense, see Testimonies for the Church 2:362-390. For a discussion of her dietary record and personal growth, see p. 311.}MOL 283.4