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(Note: In what follows “Te 11.3” means “Temperance, page 11, paragraph 3 and so on.”)

Section 1—The Philosophy of Intemperance

The Original Perfection of Man

Created in Perfection and Beauty—Adam was a noble being, with a powerful mind, a will in harmony with the will of God, and affections that centered upon heaven. He possessed a body heir to no disease, and a soul bearing the impress of Deity.—The Youth’s Instructor, March 5, 1903. {Te 11.3}

God’s Pledge to Maintain the Body’s Healthful Action—The Creator of man has arranged the living machinery of our bodies. Every function is wonderfully and wisely made. And God pledged Himself to keep this human machinery in healthful action if the human agent will obey His laws and co-operate with God.—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 17. {Te 11.5}

God Appointed the Inclinations and Appetites—Our natural inclinations and appetites … were divinely appointed, and when given to man, were pure and holy. It was God’s design that reason should rule the appetites, and that they should minister to our happiness. And when they are regulated and controlled by a sanctified reason, they are holiness unto the Lord.—Manuscript 47, 1896. {Te 12.1}

The Inception of Intemperance

His Most Effective Temptation Today—Satan comes to man, as he came to Christ, with his overpowering temptations to indulge appetite. He well knows his power to overcome man upon this point. He overcame Adam and Eve in Eden upon appetite, and they lost their blissful home. What accumulated misery and crime have filled our world in consequence of the fall of Adam. Entire cities have been blotted from the face of the earth because of the debasing crimes and revolting iniquity that made them a blot upon the universe. Indulgence of appetite was the foundation of all their sins. {Te 14.1}

Through appetite, Satan controlled the mind and being. Thousands who might have lived, have prematurely passed into their graves, physical, mental, and moral wrecks. They had good powers, but they sacrificed all to indulgence of appetite, which led them to lay the reins upon the neck of lust.—Testimonies for the Church 3:561, 562. {Te 14.2}

Satan Triumphs at His Ruinous Work—Satan exults to see the human family plunging themselves deeper, and deeper, into suffering and misery. He knows that persons who have wrong habits, and unsound bodies, cannot serve God so earnestly, perseveringly, and purely as though sound. A diseased body affects the brain. With the mind we serve the Lord. The head is the capital of the body…. Satan triumphs in the ruinous work he causes by leading the human family to indulge in habits which destroy themselves, and one another; for by this means he is robbing God of the service due Him.—Spiritual Gifts 4a:146. {Te 14.3}

Impairment Through Indulged Appetite

Satan Gains Control of the Will—Satan knows that he cannot overcome man unless he can control his will. He can do this by deceiving man so that he will co-operate with him in transgressing the laws of nature in eating and drinking, which is transgression of the law of God.—Manuscript 3, 1897. {Te 16.2}

Every Function Enfeebled—Many groan under a burden of infirmities because of wrong habits of eating and drinking, which do violence to the laws of life and health. They are enfeebling their digestive organs by indulging perverted appetite. The power of the human constitution to resist the abuses put upon it is wonderful; but persistent wrong habits in excessive eating and drinking will enfeeble every function of the body. In the gratification of perverted appetite and passion, even professed Christians cripple nature in her work, and lessen physical, mental, and moral power.—The Sanctified Life, 20. {Te 16.3}

The World Taken Captive—Satan is taking the world captive through the use of liquor and tobacco, tea and coffee. The God-given mind, which should be kept clear, is perverted by the use of narcotics. The brain is no longer able to distinguish correctly. The enemy has control. Man has sold his reason for that which makes him mad. He has no sense of what is right.—Evangelism, 529. {Te 17.2}

Fitted for Immortality—If man will cherish the light that God in mercy gives him upon health reform, he may be sanctified through the truth and fitted for immortality. But if he disregards that light and lives in violation of natural law he must pay the penalty.—Testimonies for the Church 3:162. {Te 19.5}

Importance of Christ’s Victory Over Appetite

Victory in Behalf of the Race—Satan was defeated in his object to overcome Christ upon the point of appetite. And here in the wilderness Christ achieved a victory in behalf of the race upon the point of appetite, making it possible for man, in all future time in His name to overcome the strength of appetite on his own behalf.—Redemption; or the Temptation of Christ, 46. {Te 20.3}

We, Too, May Overcome—Our only hope of regaining Eden is through firm self-control. If the power of indulged appetite was so strong upon the race, that, in order to break its hold, the divine Son of God, in man’s behalf, had to endure a fast of nearly six weeks, what a work is before the Christian! Yet, however great the struggle, he may overcome. By the help of that divine power which withstood the fiercest temptations that Satan could invent, he, too, may be entirely successful in his warfare with evil, and at last may wear the victor’s crown in the kingdom of God.—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 167. {Te 20.4}

Section 2—Alcohol and Society

An Incentive to Crime

Sequence of Drinking and Crime—When the appetite for spirituous liquor is indulged, the man voluntarily places to his lips the draft which debases below the level of the brute him who was made in the image of God. Reason is paralyzed, the intellect is benumbed, the animal passions are excited, and then follow crimes of the most debasing character.—Testimonies for the Church 3:561. {Te 23.4}

Nature of Crimes Committed Under Alcohol— Houses of prostitution, dens of vice, criminal courts, prisons, almshouses, insane asylums, hospitals, all are, to a great degree, filled as a result of the liquor seller’s work. Like the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse, he is dealing in “slaves, and souls of men.” Behind the liquor seller stands the mighty destroyer of souls, and every act which earth or hell can devise is employed to draw human beings under his power. {Te 24.3}

An Economic Problem

Millions Spent to Buy Wretchedness and Death—“Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; … that saith, I will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows; and it is ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion. Shalt thou reign, because thou closest thyself in cedar? … Thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.” {Te 27.4}

This Scripture pictures the work of those who manufacture and who sell intoxicating liquor. Their business means robbery. For the money they receive no useful equivalent is returned. Every dollar they add to their gains has brought a curse to the spender. {Te 28.1}

Every year millions upon millions of gallons of intoxicating liquors are consumed. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent in buying wretchedness, poverty, disease, degradation, lust, crime, and death. For the sake of gain, the liquor dealer deals out to his victims that which corrupts and destroys mind and body. He entails on the drunkard’s family poverty and wretchedness.—Drunkenness and Crime, pages 7, 8. {Te 28.2}

Alcohol and the Home

God’s Blessings Changed to a Curse—Our Creator has bestowed His bounties upon man with a liberal hand. Were all these gifts of Providence wisely and temperately employed, poverty, sickness, and distress would be well-nigh banished from the earth. But alas, we see on every hand the blessings of God changed to a curse by the wickedness of men. {Te 31.1}

There is no class guilty of greater perversion and abuse of His precious gifts than are those who employ the products of the soil in the manufacture of intoxicating liquors. The nutritive grains, the healthful, delicious fruits, are converted into beverages that pervert the senses and madden the brain. As a result of the use of these poisons, thousands of families are deprived of the comforts and even the nece

A Cause of Accidents

Judgment Impaired Through Liquor—Liquor drinkers are under Satan’s destroying influence. He presents to them his false ideas, and no confidence can be placed in their judgment.—The Review and Herald, May 1, 1900. {Te 34.3}

Some official on a railway train neglects to heed a signal, or misinterprets an order. On goes the train; there is a collision, and many lives are lost. Or a steamer is run aground, and passengers and crew find a watery grave. When the matter is investigated, it is found that someone at an important post was under the influence of drink.—The Ministry of Healing, 331. {Te 35.1}

Section 3—Tobacco

Effects of Tobacco Use

What It Does to the Body—Tobacco is a slow, insidious poison, and its effects are more difficult to cleanse from the system than those of liquor.—Testimonies for the Church 3:569. {Te 55.1}

Tobacco using is a habit which frequently affects the nervous system in a more powerful manner than does the use of alcohol. It binds the victim in stronger bands of slavery than does the intoxicating cup; the habit is more difficult to overcome. Body and mind are, in many cases, more thoroughly intoxicated with the use of tobacco than with spirituous liquors, for it is a more subtle poison.—Testimonies for the Church 3:562. {Te 55.2}

Beginnings of Tobacco Intemperance—There is no natural appetite for tobacco in nature unless inherited.—Manuscript 9, 1893. {Te 56.5}

By the use of tea and coffee an appetite is formed for tobacco.—Testimonies for the Church 3:563. {Te 57.1}

The highly seasoned flesh meats and the tea and coffee, which some mothers encourage their children to use, prepare the way for them to crave stronger stimulants, as tobacco. The use of tobacco encourages the appetite for liquor.—Testimonies for the Church 3:488. {Te 57.2}

Food prepared with condiments and spices inflames the stomach, corrupts the blood, and paves the way to stronger stimulants. It induces nervous debility, impatience, and lack of self-control. Tobacco and the wine cup follow.—The Signs of the Times, October 27, 1887. {Te 57.3}

Tobacco’s Polluting, Demoralizing Influence

It Curses and Kills—Women and children suffer from having to breathe the atmosphere that has been polluted by the pipe, the cigar, or the foul breath of the tobacco user. Those who live in this atmosphere will always be ailing.—Testimonies for the Church 5:440. {Te 58.4}

The infant lungs suffer, and become diseased by inhaling the atmosphere of a room poisoned by the tobacco user’s tainted breath. Many infants are poisoned beyond remedy by sleeping in beds with their tobacco-using fathers. By inhaling the poisonous tobacco effluvia, which is thrown from the lungs and pores of the skin, the system of the infant is filled with poison. While it acts upon some infants as a slow poison, and affects the brain, heart, liver, and lungs, and they waste away and fade gradually, upon others, it has a more direct influence, causing spasms, fits, paralysis, and sudden death. {Te 58.5}

The bereaved parents mourn the loss of their loved ones, and wonder at the mysterious providence of God which has so cruelly afflicted them, when Providence designed not the death of these infants. They died martyrs to filthy lust for tobacco. Every exhalation of the lungs of the tobacco slave, poisons the air about him.—The Health Reformer, January, 1872. {Te 59.1}

An Economic Waste

God’s Money Squandered—The love of tobacco is a warring lust. Means are thereby squandered that would aid in the good work of clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and sending the truth to poor souls out of Christ. What a record will appear when the accounts of life are balanced in the book of God! It will then appear that vast sums of money have been expended for tobacco and alcoholic liquors! For what? To ensure health and prolong life? Oh, no! To aid in the perfection of Christian character and a fitness for the society of holy angels? Oh, no! But to minister to a depraved, unnatural appetite for that which poisons and kills not only the user but those to whom he transmits his legacy of disease and imbecility.—The Signs of the Times, October 27, 1887. {Te 66.1}

All Must Give an Account—Millions of dollars are spent for stimulants and narcotics. All this money rightfully belongs to God, and those who thus misappropriate His entrusted goods will someday be called to give an account of how they have used their Lord’s goods.—Letter 243a, 1905. {Te 66.2}

Tea and Coffee

What Tea Does—Tea … enters into the circulation and gradually impairs the energy of body and mind. It stimulates, excites, and quickens the motion of the living machinery, forcing it to unnatural action, and thus gives the tea drinker the impression that it is doing him great service, imparting to him strength. This is a mistake. {Te 76.2}

Tea draws upon the strength of the nerves and leaves them greatly weakened. When its influence is gone and the increased action caused by its use is abated, then what is the result? Languor and debility corresponding to the artificial vivacity the tea imparted. {Te 76.3}

When the system is already overtaxed and needs rest, the use of tea spurs up nature by stimulation to perform unwonted, unnatural action, and thereby lessens her power to perform and her ability to endure; and her powers give out long before Heaven designed they should. Tea is poisonous to the system. Christians should let it alone…. The second effect of tea drinking is headache, wakefulness, palpitation of the heart, indigestion, trembling of the nerves, with many other evils.—Testimonies for the Church 2:64, 65. {Te 76.4}

Coffee Still More Harmful—The influence of coffee is in a degree the same as tea, but the effect upon the system is still worse. Its influence is exciting, and just in the degree that it elevates above par it will exhaust and bring prostration below par. Tea and coffee drinkers carry the marks upon their faces…. The glow of health is not seen upon the countenance.—Testimonies for the Church 2:64, 65. {Te 76.5}

Coffee is a hurtful indulgence. It temporarily excites the mind, … but the aftereffect is exhaustion, prostration, paralysis of the mental, moral, and physical powers. The mind becomes enervated, and unless through determined effort the habit is overcome, the activity of the brain is permanently lessened.—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 34. {Te 77.1}

Preparing the System for Disease—It is these hurtful stimulants that are surely undermining the constitution and preparing the system for acute diseases, by impairing Nature’s fine machinery and battering down her fortifications erected against disease and premature decay.—Testimonies for the Church 1:548, 549. {Te 78.3}

The Whole System Suffers—Through the use of stimulants, the whole system suffers. The nerves are unbalanced, the liver is morbid in its action, the quality and circulation of the blood are affected, and the skin becomes inactive and sallow. The mind, too, is injured. The immediate influence of these stimulants is to excite the brain to undue activity, only to leave it weaker and less capable of exertion. The aftereffect is prostration, not only mental and physical, but moral. As a result we see nervous men and women, of unsound judgment and unbalanced mind. They often manifest a hasty, impatient, accusing spirit, viewing the faults of others as through a magnifying glass, and utterly unable to discern their own defects.—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 35, 36. {Te 78.4}

Section 5—Milder Intoxicants

Psychological Effects of Mild Intoxicants

Inherited Tendencies Aroused by Wine and Cider—For persons who have inherited an appetite for stimulants, it is by no means safe to have wine or cider in the house; for Satan is continually soliciting them to indulge. If they yield to his temptations, they do not know where to stop; appetite clamors for indulgence, and is gratified to their ruin. The brain is clouded; reason no longer holds the reins, but lays them on the neck of lust. Licentiousness abounds, and vices of almost every type are practiced as the result of indulging the appetite for wine and cider.—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 32, 33. {Te 92.3}

Perversion of Mind Through Mild Intoxicants—So gradually does Satan lead away from the strongholds of temperance, so insidiously do wine and cider exert their influence upon the taste, that the highway to drunkenness is entered upon all unsuspectingly. The taste for stimulants is cultivated; the nervous system is disordered; Satan keeps the mind in a fever of unrest; and the poor victim, imagining himself perfectly secure, goes on and on, until every barrier is broken down, every principle sacrificed. The strongest resolutions are undermined, and eternal interests are too weak to keep the debased appetite under the control of reason. Some are never really drunk, but are always under the influence of mild intoxicants. They are feverish, unstable in mind, not really delirious, but as truly unbalanced; for the nobler powers of the mind are perverted.—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 33. {Te 93.2}

Unfermented Wine and Cider—The pure juice of the grape, free from fermentation, is a wholesome drink.—Manuscript 126, 1903. {Te 93.3}

Cider and wine may be canned when fresh, and kept sweet a long time, and if used in an unfermented state, they will not dethrone reason.—The Review and Herald, March 25, 1884. {Te 93.4}

The Intoxicating Effects of Wine and Cider

Persons may become just as really intoxicated on wine and cider as on stronger drinks, and the worst kind of inebriation is produced by these so-called milder drinks. The passions are more perverse; the transformation of character is greater, more determined, and obstinate. A few quarts of cider or sweet wine may awaken a taste for stronger drinks, and many who have become confirmed drunkards have thus laid the foundation of the drinking habit.—The Review and Herald, March 25, 1884. {Te 94.5}

Temperance and Total Abstinence

If anything is needed to quench thirst, pure water drunk some little time before or after the meal is all that nature requires. Never take tea, coffee, beer, wine, or any spirituous liquors. Water is the best liquid possible to cleanse the tissues.—The Review and Herald, July 29, 1884. {Te 101.1}

Section 6—Activating Principles of a Changed Life

Only as the Life Is Changed

Christ Works From Within—Men will never be truly temperate until the grace of Christ is an abiding principle in the heart…. Circumstances cannot work reform. Christianity proposes a reformation in the heart. What Christ works within, will be worked out under the dictation of a converted intellect. The plan of beginning outside and trying to work inward has always failed, and always will fail.—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 35. {Te 102.2}

Futility of Attempts to Stop by Degrees—Shall those who have had more opportunities and much precious light, who enjoy the advantages of education, make the plea that they cannot cut away from unhealthful practices? Why do not those who have excellent reasoning powers reason from cause to effect? Why do they not advocate reform by planting their feet firmly on principle, determined not to taste alcoholic drink or to use tobacco? These are poisons, and their use is a violation of God’s law. Some say, when an effort is made to enlighten them on this point, I will leave off by degrees. But Satan laughs at all such decisions. He says, They are secure in my power. I have no fear of them on that ground. {Te 103.2}

But he knows that he has no power over the man who, when sinners entice him, has moral courage to say “No” squarely and positively. Such a one has dismissed the companionship of the devil, and as long as he holds to Jesus Christ, he is safe. He stands where heavenly angels can connect with him, giving him moral power to overcome.—Manuscript 86, 1897. {Te 103.3}

A Hard Battle, but God Will Help—Do you use tobacco or intoxicating liquor? Cast them from you; for they becloud your faculties. To give up the use of these things will mean a hard battle, but God will help you to fight this battle. Ask Him for grace to overcome, and then believe that He will give it to you, because He loves you. Do not allow worldly companions to draw you away from your allegiance to Christ. Rather let your mind be drawn from these companions to Christ. Tell them that you are seeking for heavenly treasure. You are not your own; you have been bought with a price, even the life of the Son of God, and you are to glorify God in your body and in your spirit, for they are His.—Letter 226, 1903. {Te 103.4}

Seek Help of God and the Righteous—I have a message from the Lord for the tempted soul who has been under the control of Satan, but who is striving to break free. Go to the Lord for help. Go to those who you know love and fear God, and say, Take me under your care; for Satan tempts me fiercely. I have no power from the snare to go. Keep me with you every moment, until I have more strength to resist temptation.—Letter 166, 1903. {Te 104.1}

The Will the Key to Success

Man Must Do His Part—God cannot save man, against his will, from the power of Satan’s artifices. Man must work with his human power, aided by the divine power of Christ, to resist and to conquer at any cost to himself. In short, man must overcome as Christ overcame. And then, through the victory which it is his privilege to gain by the all-powerful name of Jesus, he may become an heir of God and joint heir with Christ. {Te 111.1}

This could not be the case if Christ alone did all the overcoming. Man must do his part. Man must be victor on his own account, through the strength and grace that Jesus gives him. Man must be a co-worker with Christ in the labor of overcoming, and then he will be partaker with Christ of His glory.—The Review and Herald, November 21, 1882. {Te 111.2}

“Show Thyself a Man.”—The victims of evil habit must be aroused to the necessity of making an effort for themselves. Others may put forth the most earnest endeavor to uplift them, the grace of God may be freely offered, Christ may entreat, His angels may minister; but all will be in vain unless they themselves are roused to fight the battle in their own behalf. {Te 111.3}

The last words of David to Solomon, then a young man, and soon to receive the crown of Israel, were, “Be thou strong, … and show thyself a man.” 1 Kings 2:2. To every child of humanity, the candidate for an immortal crown, are these words of inspiration spoken, “Be strong, and show thyself a man.” {Te 111.4}

The self-indulgent must be led to see and feel that great moral renovation is necessary if they would be men. God calls upon them to arouse, and in the strength of Christ win back the God-given manhood that has been sacrificed through sinful indulgence. {Te 111.5}

Enduring Victory

A Fisherman Gains the Victory—In this place a fisherman has recently been converted to the truth. Although formerly a habitual user of the poisonous weed, he has, by the grace of God, determined to leave it alone for the future. The question was asked him, “Had you a hard struggle in giving it up.” “I should think I did,” he answered, “but I saw the truth as it was presented to me. I learned that tobacco was unhealthful. I prayed to the Lord to help me to give it up, and He has helped me in a most marked manner. But I have not yet decided that I can give up my cup of tea. It braces me, and I know that I should have a severe headache did I not take it.” {Te 118.3}

The evils of tea drinking were laid before him by Sister Sara McEnterfer. She encouraged him to have moral courage to try what giving up tea would do for him. He said, “I will.” In two weeks he bore his testimony in meeting. “When I said that I would give up tea,” he said, “I meant it. I did not drink it, and the result was a most severe headache. But I thought, Am I to keep using tea to ward off the headache? Must I be so dependent on it that when I let it alone I am in this condition? Now I know that its effects are bad. I will use it no more. I have not used it since, and I feel better every day. My headache no longer troubles me. My mind is clearer than it was. I can better understand the Scriptures as I read them.” {Te 119.1}

I thought of this man, poor as far as worldly possessions are concerned, but with moral courage to cut loose from smoking and tea drinking, the habits of his boyhood. He did not plead for a little indulgence in wrongdoing. No; he decided that tobacco and tea were injurious, and that his influence must be on the right side. He has given evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on his mind and character to make him a vessel unto honor.—Manuscript 86, 1897. {Te 119.2}

The contents above are excerpts taken from the book entitled “Temperance” by Ellen G. White.

You can read all of the writings of Ellen G. White for free at egwwritings.org. Other official websites related to Ellen White are whiteestate.org and ellenwhite.org. There is also a free smartphone app named EGW Writings 2 for Android phones and the iPhone with which you can freely read, search, and download the Ellen G. White writings to your phone. One great feature of the app is that once you have downloaded books to your phone, you can read them offline.

Further Reading

Read online or download my free Ebook “Victory in Christian Warfare.” This book teaches you how to have a close, intimate relationship with God who rewards those who know Him in this way with eternal life with Him. The book is also available for sale at Amazon marketplaces worldwide.

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