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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

David DeRose

Q&A with David DeRose

Any thoughts, any comments, any questions?

Okay, I'll pick this gentleman right here.

Rose, I have a question about how this fits into evangelism.

I see some, there are some things that are clear to me, like say I'm witnessing to friends and we go out to eat.

I'm not going to order meat, I'm not going to drink tea if it's served to me, and I've had that happen before.

What is your counsel about other things, like They want to go out to eat at 9 p.m.

We know, you know, all of my head says it's not good to eat late at night.

Or they feed you and it's in between your meals.

She says you should never have a particle of food between meals.

Okay, no, I think these are excellent questions.

First of all, 1 of my favorite examples of this problem is actually Jesus, because 1 of the health reform issues is actually rest.

This is 1 of the things that our pioneers were greatly neglecting, and God called them to rest.

This was actually a significant part of some of God's original health counsel.

Now today, that's another 1 of those things that many of us don't do as well with, and it seems to be a sanctified area.

Some of us do better with the, the way I put it, the active virtues rather than the passive virtues.

You know, you can go out and exercise, you can be disciplined with doing that, but when it comes to getting adequate rest, and I speak from some experience as someone who deluded myself for many years as to how little sleep I really needed, And some of you may be under the same delusion.

If you're falling asleep right now, that might be some evidence of the good meal you had.

But it might be evidence of something else.

Let me tell you just 1 other bit about this.

My students at Weimar often find this somewhat illuminating.

1 of the best tests of sleep deprivation is something that used to make my wife somewhat jealous of me.

I didn't realize it was a sign of sleep deprivation, but we call it sleep latency, the amount of time it takes you to go to sleep.

And if you go to sleep right when your head hits the pillow, Your spouse might think this is an amazing talent, but really this is an amazing piece of evidence that suggests you were sleep deprived.

So if you're just so thankful that you have no trouble going to sleep, you may want to reassess that.

Now, what does all this have to do with this question?

It has to do with this, because Jesus, when he was on this earth, sometimes was up all night.

And those of you that are in health ministry and you're health professionals and you take call or you're on duty in the evenings, what do you do if you get a call at 2 in the morning saying that 1 of your patients is having chest pain?

Do you say, well, I'm a health reforming doctor, please explain that my hours start at 8 and I need my rest to give my best to my patients.

Well, if it does happen, it probably won't happen all that much because there's plenty of people that will see to it that you probably will not have a medical license all that long, right?

How could Jesus apparently, from our human perspective, violate something that seems to be a law of health.

Well, Jesus didn't violate any laws of health.

Jesus lived in perfect harmony with his father's will that includes the laws of health.

So the way I understand it is God will individually guide us at each point to know where we draw a line and where we don't.

There are many times when I have not eaten a late evening meal on the matter of principle, but there have been times especially, in fact all of them that I can think of right off hand, when I've been overseas ministering to people who didn't know me, where I've, and it's always the same scenario, it's happened now 3 times, where we've arrived in some village or some town or something much later than we were anticipated, and there's a huge group of people waiting to do the greatest act of hospitality they can and serve us a midnight meal.

And in those situations, I've never felt that the Lord was calling me to tell them, you should be ashamed of yourself, and of course I will not eat this late at night.

Now some of you might say, well, you were deluded, and you should have, and you missed a teachable opportunity for these people, but all I can tell you is we individually seek the Lord in these difficult times.

I can tell you I've also been embarrassed in these difficult situations.

It was right here in Loma Linda, where a family, and I'm not sure if I knew they were Seventh-day Adventists or not, but I sensed that this was a family that I didn't want to offend.

They were from another culture, and they served me a nice meal from their culture, and then they brought out a dessert that I normally wouldn't eat.

So as I'm eating the dessert, they tell me, well, we never eat things like this, but we know the Americans like them.

And I think I revealed to them my distaste for that as well.

And I think we did end up laughing about it.

So none of us have a direct connection that's never obstructed with heaven.

So I'm not telling you that any of us are perfect examples, but we do, I think, more often than not compromise when we often should be taking a stand for things.

But there are times where we do need special spiritual discernment to know we're making a stand for something a person's just not ready for that aspect of our truth.

1 of the principles is, and this is written about in the book of evangelism, when we're dealing with people who are not of our faith we shouldn't push to the fore the more distinctive aspects of our message.

We should focus with them on common ground.

Another time when I don't make any issues about meal timing is when I'm speaking for a group and it includes dinner.

I don't want the first thing they know about me is that I don't eat supper.

So I typically don't choose to eat at that hour of the day, but I will eat in those circumstances.

Before I speak, I don't want them to think, well, what kind of a weird guy is this?

You know, we serve him a meal and he doesn't eat.

You know, there's actually, just on that note, there's an interesting statement in this book, the story of our health message by D.E.

Robinson that actually refers to this practice.

It wasn't what I was planning to talk about.

But the 2 Meal a Day program, and he writes something, and this was written many years ago, this book, I think in the 50s, maybe early 60s.

He says, no matter what we think of the 2 Meal a Day program today, This was a major issue or significant issue in the early health reform visions.

Whatever we today may think of the merits of the 2 meal a day system, There is no questioning the fact that it constituted an important part of the reform message then.

And then it actually gives some of James White's comments, somewhat graphic illustration about the value of 2 meals per day on page 165 of this book.

And I just mention it because a lot of these things that we would say we don't have a lot of good medical data for, I think there is some medical data that supports it.

If you have questions, we could even touch on some of those things.

But we don't have these things nailed down like some of the other aspects of our message.

And the more we move to more of a cerebrally-driven health message, If we can back it up in the medical literature, and we've got all the references lined up, and we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is important, then I'm going to do it.

But if there's a question, if I can't prove that some caffeine, a little bit of caffeine, is bad for you, then I'm not going to tell anyone that it's not good to use.

And if I can't prove the little bit of alcohol is harmful, if they show it helps longevity in such and such a study, well then, why should I take a stand against that?

Remember, though, since I've touched on alcohol already this morning in very brief order, mentioning the Oxford Vegetarian Study showing no health benefits to frequent consumers of vegetables and fruits who drink alcoholic beverages.

And that is I came here to Loma Linda from Weimar.

I did have to drive through some interesting weather yesterday morning.

But I ultimately boarded a plane in a place called Sacramento.

There were many pilots flying planes that day.

How many of them do you think were probably drinking socially shortly before the flight?

I'm not going to hazard a guess, but let's put it this way.

How much social drinking does the FAA tolerate before a flight?

What blood alcohol level is acceptable for a pilot?

There That's right, there is no amount of alcohol that does not affect our perceptions.

That's right, or as my mother said, don't use 2 negatives.

No matter how low your blood alcohol level is, if it's measurable, it's affecting your frontal lobe, where your morality and your will and your judgment reside.

And it's also affecting, yes, your motor coordination and your reaction speed, a number of things.

And they don't want a pilot to have that when there are lives on board.

You're called as a priest, every 1 of us.

Are there lives that are hinging on how you live your life.

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Q&A with David DeRose

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