Adventist Teaching: Yes
Biblical Teaching: No
Ellen G. White explicitly taught that all of those waiting for Christ to return will give up meat entirely. She claimed that meat eating creates an appetite for liquor, and fills the system with disease. She also claimed that you are what you eat and meat eating weakens your moral faculties and incites animal passions. Not just that but it renders the mind incapable of understanding truth and corrupts the lifeblood of a person supposedly. Since it beclouds your mental capacities and she said that anything that does so is a sin, that would mean meat eating is a sin according to her, despite her claim that meat eating isn’t a sin. She also claimed that anything that does not make good blood is a violation of God’s law which would, by her own standard, make meat eating a sin.
Adventist ministers are also forbade from meat eating as she claimed it sets an evil example. Since the Adventist health message is a part of the Adventist gospel message, it must be adhered to in order to be a true Christian, it’s a part of salvation, and those who reject it, reject God. This message must be obeyed in order to be fitted for immortality. This is because she claimed it is impossible to attain to Christian perfection (their brand of sinless perfectionism) if one is partaking of meat and many other foods.
Since the Adventist Church upholds Mrs. White’s writings as divinely inspired and correct inaccurate interpretations of scripture because she is the infallible interpreter, they have to uphold these statements as being from God.
The Bible does not condemn the consumption of meat. Paul warned Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1-4 that people would come along teaching doctrines of demons, one of which includes forbidding the consumption of certain foods.
Paul also explains in Romans 14:1-4 that one person eats only vegetables and another doesn’t, but God accepts both people. This is also inline with what God told Noah after the flood (Genesis 9:1-3). The same Paul very plainly says that food does not bring us near to God and we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do (1 Corinthians 8:8, 10:25-9, Colossians 2:16-23).
Furthermore, Jesus himself said in Mark 7:14-23 that all foods are clean and it isn’t what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out of ones heart.
The Adventist Church typically points to Leviticus 11 to support their claim, setting that against the words of Paul and Jesus, making contradictions in the Bible.
