Presented by Evangelist Wendell Stover

Our subject this evening involves the result of healthful living, and that is a healthy body and happiness. Some of the material this evening will be like a review. But not all of it. I mean, after all, we’re here to learn aren’t we?

I’m going to take part of the program this evening and my good friend Dr. Tom Klinner is going to help me out as we come to a very special part of our presentation. I believe tonight that the Lord has a message for every one of us.

So turn with me in your Bible to the book of 1 Corinthians. This will sort of give us the setting that I would like to begin with. The apostle Paul must have searched for just the right explanation to give to those people coming into Christianity from paganism. In 1 Corinthians 6 I think we have a wonderful basis here for studying about healthful living. 1 Corinthians chapter 6:19,20:

"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."

You’ve probably heard this text often referred to as you’ve attended church. But back then, when Paul originated this text, it came because of a unique design. A lot of those people coming into Christianity were coming out of paganism. They did all kinds of crazy things to hurt their bodies. For instance, it was not uncommon in those days to "appease the gods" by cutting themselves, watching the blood flow. To eat all kinds of food that God did not design to be eaten. But after being converted to Christianity Paul wanted some definition, some kind of method of reaching the minds of those people being converted so that they would realize how important the body really is. So he suggests that they are a temple just like in their former way of worship the temple was the most sacred place that they could go to worship. Every pagan converted to Christianity understood full well the importance of the temple. That was a very clean place; that was a holy place. They would take nothing into the temple to defile the temple. That was where they went to worship their gods. And now Paul comes and says, ‘I want you to recognize that your body is like a small temple. And because it is a temple it would be pleasing to the living God for you to keep this body-temple in the best shape possible."

Actually that’s what we’re studying here tonight. I’m going to suggest (among other things) that what we eat can have a very strong bearing on the way we feel, the way we act, how long we live. To exercise the optimum benefits of healthful living we need to talk about several things. Yes, proper diet is one of them, sunshine, exercise, pure water, peace with God, the right amount of rest.

Why don’t we begin this evening with a very special place? Turn with me to the book of Leviticus. We all know that "We are what we eat" and it influences on health to a large degree. In the book of Leviticus chapter 11, He tells us that there would be some animals that would be more appropriate to be eaten than others. For those of you who have never heard this before, there are thousands, actually millions of people from many different denominations who continue to exercise their faith, and they believe that what is taught in this text is still true today.

For instance, notice with me, Leviticus 11:1:

"And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying unto them, ‘Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth."

I wouldn’t want you to be like the one man that I worked with for a while, he was one of the most unique individuals that I’ve ever met. He brushed his teeth with Ajax and Clorox. Not very often, at that.

He said to me one day, "Wendell, if I can shoot it, if I can catch it, if I can skin it, if I can chew it, I will eat it."

There must be something that we’re born with. Have you ever watched a little child crawling around on the floor? They take those little chubby fingers and whatever is on the floor, instead of just looking at it and visually examining it, instead of just smelling it, those little chubby fingers wrap around it immediately, and it goes straight to the mouth.

Now, it really was not God’s plan that we should just eat anything at anytime at our leisure. Here in Leviticus 11 He gives us some guidelines that I believe are certainly appropriate. When it comes to eating meat one would want to consider this. Verse 3:

"Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat."

He breaks this down into three divisions; the large land animals, second, the aquatic life, and then the fowls of the air. If we choose to eat meat, He’s giving us the clarification here, that it should chew the cud, and divide the hoof.

I know some of you have grown up on the farm, someone tell me a type of meat, or animal that would meet that requirement. All right, cow…sheep, goat, deer, buffalo, antelope, we could continue the list that direction, but in our part of the country these are the ones that would qualify for chewing the cud, and having a divided hoof.

Let’s read the next couple of verses. Verse 4:

"Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you."

I see the anger in your faces right now, and I’m sorry for that. Some of you may have a freezer full of camel at home, now what are you going to do with it?

Verse 5: "And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you."

To my knowledge I’ve never seen a coney in this part of the country, it is described as being very similar to a rock badger. But we certainly can relate, in this part of the country, to verse 6:

"And the hare, because he cheweth the cud but divideth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you."

I was standing on the side of an auditorium one evening, and a man and his wife and her sister were sitting in the second row seats. I read this text of Scripture and then asked the question, "What is another name or word for hare?"

Immediately, one of those dear ladies, the wife of the gentleman, said, "It’s a rabbit!"

I saw that man take his elbow and angrily bury it into her side and very angrily he said, "It is not!"

Now, I’m standing right there, looking straight ahead, but I’m watching all that is taking place. What would you do in a situation like that? I acted as if I had not heard or seen a thing, I walked to the side of the auditorium and said, "We all understand that another name for a hare is a rabbit, don’t we?" Of course everybody affirmed that.

Now, it is true that the rabbits digestive system lends itself to some deep study as far as chewing the cud and so forth. But here God specifically says that the hare would not be the best food to eat.

There have been times when people have had to eat almost anything just to survive. It’s not that way today, at least, in our part of the country. Most of us have the means and resources, when we go to the store, we can choose from several hundred thousand items that are stocked on the shelves and in the freezers. We don’t exactly eat for survival. But maybe we should.

I remember a community supper I went to as a little boy. I don’t know why my mother would choose to sit me in the middle of the table, but there’s where I sat. In front of me, on the table, in a large baking pan . . . maybe I shouldn’t tell you this . . . I wish I could remember if it was an apple or a sweet potato in it’s mouth. Anyone care to guess what that might be? It wasn’t a pig. It was a possum.

Now, I’m just telling you something here, some of you may be privileged to a better diet than others are . . . be thankful. (No, I didn’t eat any of the possum, even as a child, I didn’t like it.) Notice verse 7:

"And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you."

When I was a kid growing up, poultry farming was just being introduced in the North Georgia. My dad had three sons coming along, and I guess he saw a wonderful opportunity for free labor.

He built a long chicken house. (Everything in those days was done manually.)

Next, or adjacent to the chicken house, was the hog lot. I’ve always been impressed with the design of a hog. Are you aware that a hog can eat anything and just make it appear like it’s the most wonderful meal in the world.

Some of you may have spent some time poultry farming. Every day chickens die. And you either mechanically harvest those chickens, or you take a wheelbarrow and pick them up and you dispose of them.

My daddy says, "We can’t throw away all that good meat, let’s let the hogs eat it." All the while knowing, that when fall would come, and the temperatures would drop, we would wind up eating the hogs.

Underneath the kitchen sink my mother kept a metal, 5-gallon bucket. Does anyone know the name of that bucket? Some of you said that like you were ashamed of it. But you know what that is, don’t you? It’s a slop bucket. Into that bucket would go anything that was left over. I always enjoyed lugging that old bucket out to the hog lot and watching those hogs eat.

If you have not had that experience in a long time, maybe you should. It would bring a smile to your face to watch a hog eat. Its jaws flap. The saliva just runs down. And he begs for more, no matter what you do. Every once in a while, just to get a response, I would feed that hog a big onion or some big peppers.

The Lord must have smiled when some creatures came along. Why would God place the condemnation here on the hog? Let’s read it again:

"The swine" (And that’s another name for hog.) "though he would divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean unto you."

I’ll never forget the last hogs that we killed, my cousin shot the hogs right above the eyes, and they had some large 50-gallon barrels of water there, but what I remember the most was two big black pots, with fires underneath and how good the chitlins tasted.

Some of you act like you’re a little bit ashamed of that knowledge, too. Some of you have eaten chitlins, haven’t you? And they do taste good, if you have a tendency that way. For those of you who do not know what they are, they are part of the intestines of the hog, and I’m sure that my mother washed those very thoroughly. You’d take a large butcher knife or shears or scissors and cut those up and drop them into hot, boiling oil or lard.

You want me to get off this subject? Let me tell you a story.

A friend of mine called (Years later, when I became a pastor.) and he said, "At prayer meeting tonight will you please ask the people at church to pray for my wife?"

Inquiring further, he told me how she was in the McGomery Medical Center, she was diagnosed with a very acute case of trichinosis, and weeping he said, "Pastor I don’t know if she’s going to live or die."

I knew the background of that story. He had decided that he could best serve his health by choosing to eat something other than pork, but his wife said, "Look, we’ve eaten it all our lives, my mother and daddy ate it, grandma and grandpa ate it, and I’m going to eat it any time I want to as much as I want to." So there had been some conflict resolution in that home over diet. And now she’s suffering because of eating pork that has not been prepared properly, most likely not been cooked long enough.

We took that request to the church in prayer meeting, and guess what happened? God answered the prayer and she lived!

If you choose to eat pork, here’s the recommended way to do this. Because pork carries with it several different dangers, but one of them being the idea that the trichina worm lays its eggs in the pork meat, and when you eat it, then the larva buries itself into your bones. Even going into the bone marrow, as I understand it. The best way to avoid that, really, would be to eat no pork at all . . . but if you choose to eat pork, I would cook it at at least 400° for at least twenty minutes. That kills all the worms and the larva and you should not be affected by the trichina. It probably would be better not to even eat it all.

Maybe the physician tonight could even comment on why it is that if you have a hardening of the arteries, or heart disease, or acute cases of sugar diabetes and a number of other sicknesses, one of the first foods the physician will ask you not to eat is pork. There must be a reason for that.

Let’s go another direction, notice this – verse 9:

"These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters." See how he moves from the land animals into the aquatic life? "Whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat."

Just like the large land animals should chew the cud and divide the hoof, he says here that the fish should have fins and scales. Read verse 10:

"And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you."

Let’s do the same thing we did earlier. Someone give me the name of some fish that would qualify here by having fins and scales.

List: Trout, perch, salmon, and how about Mr. Bass here?

Now, actually this list could be extended a long way tonight because there are many different fish that have fins and scales. A lot of what we eat, though, does not have fins and scales.

This is not a very popular message down around the sea coast communities, and you can understand why. Shrimp, lobster and oyster and crabs are very readily eaten. Can I tell you a crab story?

All my stories are true, I’ve not made up any of this.

As a matter of fact, I heard this from another pastor.

He told the story of how a man was fishing off a pier, and something happened, and he fell off and drowned. It was a few days before they found his body, and they brought it up onto the dock, and as they rolled him over, his stomach burst open and these crabs came out of him all over the dock. People got down on their hands and knees so they could catch those crabs, so they could take them home to eat.

What is it about the mind of people that says, "I’m a human machine, I can eat anything, any time I want to, and it will not hurt me." I don’t want to be that way, do you? If God has a plan, let’s study it carefully, let’s give it some thought. After all, He is the Creator God. He knows what’s best.

There is a fish that is readily eaten here in the south, with hush-puppies and slaw called the catfish.

Can I tell you a catfish story?

Where I grew up, in Hall County, Georgia, Lake Linear is a wonderful attraction.

There was a man who had the reputation of being able to catch catfish when no one else can find them.

One evening he brought home a large string of catfish, and I don’t know how he did this, he would catch the fish and then his wife would clean them. That’s a good arrangement if you ask me.

She started with the largest catfish, and if you’ve never cleaned a catfish, what you do is you roll them over with the stomach sticking up, cut them straight across the back of the throat, run the butcher knife down across the stomach.

She was doing that, standing at the kitchen sink. When she pulled that meat open, she began to scream. Her husband rushed in and he saw a large rat coming out of the stomach of that catfish.

It is true what we eat influences everything about our lives. Let’s go another direction, let’s talk about the birds of the air, for just a moment. See, I want to teach this class by association, that’s the idea. Verse 13:

"And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, (verse 14) and the vulture, and the kite after his kind." And then there continues several verses there, naming birds that most of us would never eat.

Those who have studied this out carefully, would recognise that those that are considered unclean are those that have long, sharp talons, for cooking flesh-meat, and tearing flesh-meat and those that have long, hooked beaks, used for the same purpose.

The fowl that is generally considered clean to eat, especially in this part of the country, would be the chicken. All of your game birds, such as quail and pheasant and turkey would certainly fit under this category. By the way, could I tell you a turkey story?

This is a true story.

A friend of mine’s father worked in a large office complex. He was invited to go with three other men on a special weekend hunting trip for wild turkey.

Well, my friend’s father did not go, but the other men went, and when they came back they brought with them several turkeys. Naturally their wives decided to celebrate and they had a large turkey prepared for supper.

I can see the table now. Chocolate chip cookies, homemade banana pudding, homemade fudge, green beans, cottage cheese loaf, a nice salad, finger-food on the side, some olives and carrots, homemade rolls.

They began to eat. It wasn’t long until the smallest child there said, "My stomach hurts."

Within a few brief moments they were all down at the local emergency room. The attending physician assumed that it was food related, and sure enough the only food they had all eaten was the turkey. He sent for the carcass and the feathers and with the help of a college he determined that what they had eaten was not a wild Native American turkey, but what they had actually been eating a turkey buzzard.

Now, there are those who will say, "When Jesus died on the cross everything was changed." You try to tell that to that lady who almost died from eating pork. You try to tell that to these families who were so affected by the turkey buzzard. You would never convince them that Jesus came to die to change the animal kingdom. There are some foods represented here that you may have never eaten.

Notice this: Leviticus chapter 11:22. There is no reason for any of you to be hungry or to be missing a snack, especially in the springtime.

"Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind."

I was so embarrassed one evening, I was reading this scripture and I said, "Now, most of us have never eaten locusts." And suddenly to my right a hand shot up in the air, and a gentleman stood to his feet.

And I said, "Do you have a comment?"

And he says, "Sir, I’ll have you to know that you have eaten food until you have eaten a locust sandwich made from my mother’s homemade bread."

He says, "I’m from Morocco. And every year when the locusts comes through it is our custom to catch them and grind them up into a paste and . . ." he went into some detail.

He said, "I’ll have you to know that it tastes good."

I just simply smiled and said, "Thank-you, sir." And we went on to the next verse.

May we do that here this evening. Notice verse 29:

"These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the weasel . . ." Now, you haven’t had any of that lately have you? "and the mouse," Can you imagine? No, let’s not imagine. "and the tortoise after his kind, and the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole. These are unclean to you among all that creep: whosoever doth touch them, when they be dead, shall be unclean until the even."

I wish we could all have a broader view of God’s idea of healthful living. He wants us to eat right, He wants us to exclude those things from our diet that would be harmful to us. I suppose in one sense it would be just as wrong to eat too much of the good things.

I was invited to speak at a lovely church. I can’t tell you where this was at, it was in another state, several hundred miles from here.

After the service the ladies had prepared a luscious fellowship meal for us to enjoy.

There was a small man in front of me, getting food onto his plate. And I don’t know why that particular day I was interested in what someone else was eating, but he began to pile food onto that nine-inch Styrofoam plate.

I’ve been to a lot of places, but I’ve never seen any man as gifted as he was. If there’s an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, he could have achieved that, he could have been noted there for his work. He piled that plate until it was just completely full. And I began to talk to him a little bit, because I wanted to see if it was humanly possible for someone his size to eat all of that food.

So I followed him from there over to the dessert-table and he secured another clean plate and onto that plate went some pie, some cake and some cookies, and would you believe that he piled that one up! I knew then, that if the Lord would let me, I wanted to sit with him.

And so as he was getting his last dessert, I asked him, "Where are you going to sit?"

And he said, "Oh, over here." So I just imposed to sit with him. Well, we sat and we talked and visited and I watched as that man consumed almost all of that food.

Now, healthful living must be more than just a list of foods that would be better to eat than other foods, would you agree? As a matter of fact, I don’t like lists that much, I would rather make reference to the principles involved.

If it’s good and it’s healthy and it sharpens the mind and the intellect, if it gives us strength. But to eat so much! Especially in some combinations of milk and sugar and eggs and different things all together . . . people all over the world are crying out. It’s just not the best choice to make, to eat so much and especially at one sitting.

Do you think healthful living could ever become a moral issue? You’re too quiet this evening. I suppose I could rephrase that question and ask, "Does God really care about what we eat, what we drink, and what we do?"

Notice this text in the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 31:

"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

We’ve been inviting those here who have a conviction that the use of tobacco is not the best choice to make, we’ve been giving the invitation to come and join us in a very special Stop-Smoking clinic, but I’m happy to tell you that we’ve had no one to this hour join that class. I guess that should be a positive thing! But it is true that the use of tobacco in any of its forms really does not produce a healthful end result. I’ve never met anyone yet that did not want to stop using it. No, I take that back. I have met someone. But he’s no longer living.

Back to verse 31:

"Whether therefore you eat or drink" is God interested in what we drink? I’m sure our friend tonight will comment on nature’s best liquid, which is water, to drink.

Many folks who are interested in the optimum benefits of healthful living and pleasing God, they are choosing not to drink nay thing with caffeine in it, or if they do, certainly not on a regular basis.

Alcohol would be something we could discuss for several hours the untold trauma and expense that the use of Alcohol has brought on mankind, it is just terrible! Over 1,400 new Alcoholics in this Country every day, and I read that the majority of those are women. Interesting isn’t it?

1 Corinthians 10:31 again:

"Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

I think God is best pleased and our service to Him is enhanced, when we can sort of pause and in a very calm way search through the Scriptures and through inspiration to determine that which we might have in our life that we could get rid of, and that which we could bring into our life that would help us to live a more healthy, happy, and more holy life.

There was a lady that I believe had a very special gift of inspiration. At a time when medical science was nothing like it is today, she was suggesting to people eight basic laws fundamental to healthful living, principles that really are not very expensive for us to practice.

And who better qualified than a physician to stand before you this evening and comment on those recommendations, so simple in nature, yet so complex and benefiting in the results that they would bring to us.

I would like to introduce to you my good friend, I call him my brother, we just have different last names, Dr. Thomas Klinner. He has a family practice in Ooltewah, and he graciously consented to spend some time with us this evening and I’m sure that you will enjoy his comments on these ideas.

"Wendell just asked me to do this two hours ago, and after I’ve been listening to him I don’t know where I should start or exactly what I should say.

"God spent six days creating a world for Adam and Eve to live in. Then He created Adam and Eve to live in that world. He put them in a garden and nothing died there, so what did they eat? Fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables, and we’re not even sure that they had fire to cook it with, so they might have eaten it raw.

"I was listening to an FDA researcher a couple of years ago and I assumed from his attitude that he was a Christian. He wasn’t talking about this particular thing, but right in the middle of his talk he threw in that about the time that we’re aged 50 that we’ve lost 50% of our ability to make digestive enzymes from our bodies. He said that we should be eating 50% of our fruits and vegetables raw so that we could replace those enzymes because we would get them in those raw fruits and vegetables.

"So they might not have had fire. What difference does it make what we eat, why does God care? I’m going to suggest that the two people that are most interested in what you eat are God and the Devil. God wanted us to live forever, didn’t He? He put us in that garden and He designed us to live on those things.

"How many of you remember those muscle cars that we used to have in the 60’s? You know you could order one of these cars from the factory, 425 horse-power, you went down to the gas-station, put 100 octane gasoline in it and the low octane gas then, I think, was 94, and if you happen to come and fill up with a 94 octane and you started to drive that car off, what happened? It sputtered and it ‘pinged’ and it smoked and it clanged, but you know, that car wasn’t designed to sputter and clang and smoke on the 94 octane, it was designed to really go on the good stuff.

"And God’s not punishing us by giving us diseases when we put these things that He told us not to put into our bodies, that’s just the natural result of putting them there, just like the natural result of putting 94 octane gas in a muscle car. We were designed to run on the good stuff.

"You know, He gave us permission to eat meat, didn’t He? Most of us know when that was. That was when there weren’t any vegetables on the earth, wasn’t it? After the Flood, Noah came out of the Ark . . . what happened to their life spans? One generation decreased by 67% didn’t they?

"What do we know about life-spans today from those people who lived their entire lives and don’t eat animal products? They live 10 to 12 years longer than people that do. The average American, and that’s us sitting right here in this room, if you live to be the average age before you die you have a 38% chance of having cancer. Five people in this row, two of you.

"If you eat a high fiber, low-fat diet, lots of fruits and vegetables and not a lot of meat than it goes from 38% down to about 24%. For somebody who has lived their entire life and has not eaten meat that risk drops to 4%.

"There is going to be disease in this world just because the devil is here. God really wants us to be healthy, He wants us to have strong bodies, He wants us to have sharp minds because our minds are our antenna to heaven. That’s why the devil is so interested in what you eat. And that’s why for the last 6,000 years he’s been trying to get us to change our diets. And he’s been very, very successful. He knows that if you’re mind is clouded with Alcohol or not getting oxygen from smoking tobacco or your mind is clouded from pain medicines because you have cancer or if you’re just sick or you just hurt somewhere, you just have arthritis he knows that its hard to have a good relationship with God when you’re miserable. He has a plan and he’s been working it hard and in this country he has been very, very successful.

"I talk to people every day that talk about being tired all the time. Usually the first thing we ask them is, ‘What do you drink? How much water do you drink?’ A lot of my patients never drink any water. All day long something caffeinated: coffee in the morning, some have Coke for breakfast: they never drink anything that doesn’t have caffeine in it! What does caffeine do to you? It’s a diuretic. When your drinking caffeine your urinate more out than what you take in. So all these people are running around all the time in a chronic state of dehydration. What happens when you’re dehydrated? You’re t-i-r-e-d.

"Every once in a while a person listens and the next visit they come in smiling and say, ‘I’m drinking eight glasses of water a day and, oh, I feel so much better! My digestion is so much better, I don’t have the GI problems I used to have.’

"I saw a thing recently where they were interviewing teachers and they were talking about their 5^th class of the day, which is the one after lunch. They can’t get the kids to settle down, to sit down, to stop talking, to concentrate. Why? Because they’ve just been to the cafeteria and what do you think they have to drink with lunch? So they’ve had their caffeine fill so now they can’t concentrate and they’re not doing well on their schoolwork.

"Sleep. Millions and millions of Americans are sleep deprived. They’re tired all the time because they just don’t get enough sleep. How important is it?

"I saw some research recently where they took a group of people and the first night in the study they let them sleep eight hours. The next morning they drew some blood and they tested for certain kinds of cells and one of them was a kind of white blood cell called CD4 cell.

That is the helper cell, this is the cell that when something is there, it turns your immune system on. This is the one that in aged patients the body quits making. So when you get any kind of infection the CD4 cell’s turn on your immune system: ‘Let’s kill this thing, let’s get rid of it.’

"So they counted the number of CD4 cells they had and then the next night, the very same people, they let them sleep for 4 hours instead of eight. They drew the blood again and the number of their CD4 cells had decreased by 30%. 30% just from being deprived 4 hours sleep in one night. So, is rest important?

"Exercise.

Wendell Stover: "That’s a bad word, be careful."

"Hm-mm.

"You know, when we think about exercise for most of us something horrible comes into our minds; we think about marathoners, the people doing the Iron Man. It really doesn’t take that much: a twenty-minute walk a day. You know, it didn’t use to be such an issue because most people had jobs in this country most people were primarily farmers.

"Farmers, they didn’t need a membership at a gym, did they? No. They were outside in the sunshine; the sunshine was making the vitamin D to make strong bones and bodies and the exercise was lowering their blood pressure, lowering their cholesterol, decreasing their chances of having heart disease, stimulating their immune system, to decrease their chances of having cancers or infections. Stimulating their GI tracks so they weren’t having heartburn and gastroesophageal reflux disease as we call it today.

"So, it doesn’t take a lot. We don’t have to be jogging, we don’t have to be riding bikes, we don’t have to be marathoning, but we do need to replace some of the exercise that we used to be getting in our lives with the work that we did, that we used to do.

"Sunshine. How important. It’s not just important for the vitamin D that helps you absorb the calcium so that you don’t get weak bones: Have you heard of a thing called Cabin Fever? It’s more prominent in the Northern states, but there’s a lot more depression in the wintertime, even here, where we live. But the further north you go the more depression people get in the wintertime and they’ve discovered that you can treat that by having these people put bright lights in the area that they spend most of the time in their house to replace the lack of sunshine that they don’t get in the wintertime because the days are so short. And then they don’t get depressed.

"70,000,000,000 (Seventy million.)Americans are taking pills, trying to keep from being depressed and most of those people are sitting inside during the day, a lot of them aren’t working and they never go outside in the sunshine, they’re sitting there watching this little tube in front of them. They’re eating a lot of things that should be on that list that we put on the board tonight.

"God put 15,000 nutrients in fruits and vegetables. You know, I have patients say, ‘Oh, I’m taking antioxidants in a pill.’ or ‘I’m taking multiple vitamins.’ Well, a multiple vitamin you may get 60 nutrients, so what do you do about the other 14,940 nutrients?

"Did you know that some of the latest research, it looks like it really doesn’t matter how high your cholesterol is, if you can get enough antioxidants into your body that you may not have heart disease from them? But there’s LDL, a bad cholesterol doesn’t go under your arteries until these free radicals that you’ve been hearing so much about damage it. That if you can get a cascade of these antioxidants, so you can’t just go in and get this A,C,D and E thing that you see in the magazines, there’s a whole cascade of these things that you have to have in effect. But the very last one is this big old vitamin E that sits on top of this bad cholesterol and every time these free radicals come charging down there, the vitamin E just gobbles them up.

"So, if you can get enough fruits and vegetables in your diet, and you can get enough antioxidants, then these LDL’s never become bone cells and you probably wouldn’t get heart disease from it. Isn’t that amazing!

"Did God know what he was doing when he put Adam and Eve in a garden where they only had fruits and vegetables to eat? What we eat affects whether we’re going to have cancer, whether we’re going to have heart disease, whether we’re going to catch colds.

"Our diets are so bad in this country that they’ve done studies, and these studies were done to Europe. But it’s the same here.

"There are people that just took a multiple vitamin, reduced the number of infections that they got by 53%. That’s replacing just 60 of these 15,000 nutrients that God put in fruits and vegetables. The things that they were testing for, they tested five perimeters of immune systems, and four of those perimeters were in the forefront of your bodies ability to kill cancer down when it’s one cell. So what can you do for your body if you get the 15,000 nutrients that’s there?

"So what you eat affects heart disease, cancer, your digestive track, how long you going to live, whether you’re going to have a stroke, whether you’re going to have dementia. All of these things affect your relationship with God. If you mind is clouded by the medicines or the disease, the devil doesn’t care which. That’s why God cares what you eat. And that’s why, after he gave man permission (And it wasn’t His original plan for man to eat meat, but that was the only thing available at that time.) but after He gave them permission to eat meat He gave up some guidelines as to which ones would be the least harmful to our health.

"The pastor talked about pork and some of these animals. We don’t know why we’re really not supposed to, but God tells us not to eat them.

"I was listening to a lady on a talk show one day and she was a specialist in female diseases. They were going through a list of things, and as they were talking about these things, I recognized them as things that came from Leviticus about women and sex. They were things, as I had been taught in medical school, that really didn’t matter. And here was this specialist, that specialized in doing research in these things, going and giving, step by step, although she didn’t know she was going through Leviticus; but talking about all these things that God said that women shouldn’t do and clicking off the medical reasons why they were harmful.

"I firmly believe that if God said, "Don’t do it." that there are things about these animals that He tells us not to eat, that we’ll not know the real reason we’re not supposed to eat them until we’re in the Kingdom. Being in the Kingdom should be our goal, shouldn’t it?

"So, whatever we eat, or whatever we drink we should do it to the glory of God, amen?

How many of you appreciate those words of wisdom?

That is our intention, to live by the Word of God. If the Bible approves it, then we want to approve it. If the Bible condemns it, then that is the position that we should take, too.

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Copyright 1999 by Wendell Stover and McDonald Road SDA Church