All the lessons that we have had on the creation have taught us that all God’s works, and especially man, whom He made in His own image, are the temple or dwelling-place for His own Holy Spirit. And we have found, too, that all God’s works in this earth are made of the dust of the earth itself, and what gives form, beauty, wisdom, and power to anything, is God’s own Spirit of life, for when this is taken away the dust returns to the earth “as it was.”

Have you ever thought how God is still carrying on His great creative work? Let us see how He is still taking the dust of the earth, and forming from it beautiful temples for Himself to dwell in.

Your body is made up of the food that you eat. If you were kept without food for a time, you would not only stop growing, but you would become thin and wasted. So you see that besides the food you need to build up your body and make you grow, there is a certain amount of waste which has to be made up by the food that you take.

But did you know that no matter what kind of food you are eating you are really feeding upon the dust of the ground, and your body is being made up of just that out of which God formed man in the beginning? God “maketh grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth” from which he comes.

The plants and trees, which spring out of the ground, take the dust of the ground, and prepare it for food for us and the animals. What we call the “vegetable kingdom” makes all the food that is necessary for the “animal kingdom,” to which we ourselves belong. Different animals require different kinds of food, but each one can find growing out of the ground just the food that it needs.

As you take the food that God has provided, His creative power works in you, taking this material and building up your body from it. Learn what you can of the different organs of your wonderful body through which He works to do this, and see how “fearfully and wonderfully” He has made you.

Even what are called beasts of prey,—carnivorous animals—those which like lions and tigers feed upon the flesh of other animals, do not really get any food but what these animals have got from the plants. It was not God’s plan that the animals should feed upon each other, for in the beginning He said to man,

“Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed. . . . and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree bearing seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so.” The animals fed only upon that which God meant for their food, and man eat the grains, fruit, and nuts which his Heavenly Father had provided for him.

And as it was in the beginning, so it will be again when everything in the earth is brought back to purity and perfection. For then, God’s Word tells us, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” And men shall “plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them,” and eat of the fruit of “the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.”

“Jesus in His temple holy,
Where sweet angel anthems ring,
Dwelleth, too, in temples lowly,
Heareth, too, when children sing.”

 

The Present Truth – November 24, 1898
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  Our Food