Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28, verse 19, go therefore and teach all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. What? Welcome to go teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through Australian and international speakers.
And here is today's presenter, pastor Robert Stankovich. Let's bow our heads. Father, God in Heaven, we just want to thank you this morning that your love is far greater than all the ink in the ocean and the massive parchment above in the sky could describe the love of God.
It just goes beyond our imagination. It goes beyond and surpasses our wow factor that you would send your son to live and die for us and rise again and come back, father, that is an amazing thing. And Lord, as we delve into a continuing series on health and wellness, may we have a purpose and a reason why we do what we do and appreciate the wisdom that you have given to us as a church with the health message and how that can only strengthen and help us as a people to serve you better.
Bless us now with your spirit. In Jesus name, amen. A month ago, I took a presentation and I shared some of the things from the book, The Blue Zones, and we've discovered that there were five particular strategic areas that he discovered in his journey of understanding better.
Why there were some pockets of places that lived to 100 or more, and that the predominant population in these areas were over 100. And why is it that in the Western world we struggle to get to 70 and 80? And not only that, we struggle. In that 70 and 80, there were people we discovered that lived in places like Sardinia in Italy, where they would be over 100 and still slashing grass instead of using a lawn mower and harvesting and hoeing at an old age and thinking your hip is going to dislocate or your bones are going to crack.
But they didn't even have those kind of what do you call it? Atherosclerosis? Is that what it's called? Thing of the bone? They don't experience osteoporosis. Sorry. That's the heart.
Sorry. They're all big words anyway. Oh, by the way, I'm not a medical doctor or anything like that.
I'm just sharing what I've discovered and learned, that it's going to help me in my journey in getting better health. And we learn in Greece, in Icaria, an island where dementia is not an issue at all. They don't go to nursing homes and retirement villages.
They retire, literally retire, when they stop working and their heart stops beating. And they don't forget their family. They don't forget anything around them.
Very sharp minds. It's like somebody just turned the switch off because of age, but not because of any illnesses. And then in Costa Rica, what contributed positively to the extensiveness of the longevity and quality of life was that sense of community living and doing things together that increased their longevity and being in the outdoors.
And then in Okinawa, Japan, there were females, over 70, longest living population in the world. And this particular lady, her name is Ushi Okushima. Sounds very Japanese gardening at the age of 109.
And then of course, the fifth one they discovered in a little town called Loma Linda, where there was many Advent and see if they got the similar stats. I don't know. But yeah, they imagine doing some of these things at over 100.
It's just unheard of in our day and age. And so we've been blessed as a church, and we've been given a message through a special messenger, Ellen White. And one of her very first visions, besides the vision of the nearness of Christ's coming, was the health message.
And it's important that it's not something that we follow a tradition or a movement created by a person, but rather principles that is derived from the word of God. God is not just interested in what we eat. He's interested in also in what we think and how we feel and how we engage with one another in our quality.
And we've read from Scripture that God wants us to prosper and be in good health, just as our soul prospers, just as we spiritually prosper in our walk with God. God wants to enhance our physical, our mental, our emotional and spiritual life so that we in our relationship with God, god wants us to be stronger. Because how I feel I don't know about you, but when I have a chronic flu, I feel like I don't want to do anything.
I'm sick, like nobody don't talk to me. I just want to close up in a room and just sleep it off, feel lousy. But God wants us to feel a lot better in our recovery time and minimize our getting sick and things like that.
And the Bible says that not only does he want us to serve Him better and prosper spiritually, but he wants to remind us that God created us of value and worth. And he doesn't want us to destroy our bodies by unhealthful practices. So whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, god wants us to glorify Him, not to glorify ourselves.
I mean, sometimes I go to the gym and here I am a rookie pushing 18 kilos, and there's a guy next to me pushing 100, okay, don't show off. And you can tell that he enjoys I don't enjoy the gym, but I'm doing it because I need to. I have to, or else I'm not going to live longer than my wife.
My wife says, I don't want to be a widow. And I says, okay, I'll run behind you or maybe beside you. But yeah, you see this guy going, keep it to yourself.
Just let me do my little 18 kilos. And then there's a few other verses that I've added in there. Serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you.
A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Say, even what we feel affects what affects the marrow in our bone. And what does the marrow do? Produce red blood cells to have a healthy flow in our body and a healthy organs and all that and blood that flows through our brain and heart.
And just by having a negative critical spirit dries up the bones. Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. Positive, affirmation words of encouragement builds up the immune system to fight disease and also fight doubts and deception and all those other things to have clarity of mind.
Gracious words are like a honeycomb sweetness to the soul and health to the body. Even what we say and how we say it, the tone of voice impacts it can either shatter somebody's courage or it can bolster them and build them. My son, be attentive to my words.
Incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh.
So even our devotions with God each day, even when we worship together and sing, it improves our health mentally, physically, spiritually. So we have an amazing Adventist message that surpasses and overrides all other organizations in the history of this world. There's no other organization, religious or not, that has not promoted a health message than the Adventist Church.
But unfortunately, we don't always live up to it. We don't always do well in promoting it in a way that leads people to Jesus rather than repulses people. There's extremism, I'm just going to breathe the air.
That's enough nutrition for me. You know what I mean? I mean, I'm not saying there is, but I'm just going on the one extreme. Or you can't have any oil.
You can't have even extra virgin olive oil because it will kill you. Well, I disagree, but sometimes when you overheat certain vegetable oils, yeah, we'll have some effects on our body, but it's about finding that balance that the health message isn't a message of salvation. We have to be clear of that.
What I do with my health is between me and God. While we're to encourage others to adopt a better, healthy lifestyle, it's for the reason that they can be happier in life and feel better about life and be able to make a positive contribution to life and not be a burden to society. And so God has written god has inspired Ellen White to write a few books that we are aware of, like the Ministry of Healing, councils on Health, councils on Diets and Foods.
And it's amazing that a lot of organizations, non Adventists, even medical and health fields have read some of these books, particularly this one, Ministry of Healing. And when someone goes to share a book, I remember reading a story and goes, oh, yeah, I know that book. I've had that for a few years in my library.
He's a neurosurgeon. He goes, yeah, good value, good value. Holistic.
Great. So God has given us eight laws of health, and if Derek would probably say there are ten, and that's okay, we can add those two into the area of sleep or rest, because it adds to that. But today I'm not going to talk about all these, because in two weeks time I'm doing part three, and I'll tell you about that bit later on.
But I want to focus on an area, particularly on nutrition, and a major study that's been done. So this is the current effects of health revolution in the modern person today. That's how man has evolved over the centuries, over the last century, well, over the last millenniums, according to evolution, they started as an ape and they somehow straightened up.
They started walking, and then they were holding this soda drink and a big pot belly. And so that's the kind of evolving that in people's thinking that people don't just evolve into something unless they make a choice, and it changes that in their body. So the choice is not determined by chance.
The choices in how I live affects the way I live towards others. It's not just, I was born that way. So what we put into our mouths, how we move around, does affect us.
So I want to just focus more. So on nutrition and this is so important. Out of all these eight, if you could choose one that you would religiously follow to the letter, which one would you choose? Sunshine.
Yeah. Now, what would happen if you set out in the sun? Not that you're worshipping it, but you're out in the sun enjoying the sunshine because of the benefits, and we'll talk about that in two weeks time, but you ate junk food all the time. Will the sunshine eventually be good for you? In fact, you might be more prone towards skin cancer because of what we eat and what we don't do.
It increases our risk in those areas. So, yes, sunshine is important. It's a great antidepressant, it's a disinfectant.
It's important to open the windows and all of that. That's good. If you chose water, if you don't drink water for seven, eight days, you will dehydrate and die where you can go without food for 40 days like Jesus did.
Well, I probably wouldn't last a few days, but yeah, I would say nutrition, if I could choose one of them. You know what? And you say what, Pastor? You didn't even choose that one. What? Really? Why not trust God that he will? Well, if I don't choose to follow his ways, trusting God's going to do anything because sometimes we fail to trust God.
We're trying to work hard, we're trying to eat well. We're trying to do all these good things, but we don't trust God with our heart, our walk with God. And we become more self centered, healthy sinners rather than healthy in a way in our mind and our body.
To reflect the wisdom of God, the pure wisdom of God that is gentle and peaceable, not critical and judgmental in how we present the beautiful health message. Very important. All right, let me share a few things.
This is one of the biggest studies that was done quite a few years ago, back in the early 1980s. And for 20 Long Years they Wanted To Discover how Is It that There Were Parts Of China, particularly In Rural Villages And Regions Of China, that There Were People That Didn't Experience Dementia or Osteoporosis or Atherosclerosis or Hardening Of The Arteries And High cholesterol and All These Lifestyle Practices That Is So predominant, these illnesses predominant In The Western World? They wanted to discover. And they spent 20 years and so Dr.
Colin Campbell, particularly at first with his son and then there was a few other groups in China as well as another Oxford University. And they came together. And New York Times called this study the Grand Prix of Epidemiology and the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease, any kind of disease.
The impact just our diet has on our well being, let alone exercise and all the other things that contribute to our holistic lifestyle. And so this study was done over a 20 year period and it began with 2400 Chinese regions and over eight to 10,000 people individually. And then there were whole villages studied, there were whole regions studied, all in all kinds of sections.
And they began to come up with some interesting discovery of what they came with from this study. And this is an overall results of the importance of this. So weight loss, maintenance lowers risk of cancers, heart disease, stroke, diabetes.
Lowers cholesterol and blood pressure, builds stronger bones, lowering risk of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis maintaining healthy, optimum immune system high in fiber, reducing risk of colon cancer high. In antioxidants fights aging and other cancers and makes you feel look younger by adopting a higher plant based diet. And we intentionally as a church, encourage a vegetarian luncheon.
Sometimes things do creep in. That's okay, there's no issue with that. But we want to encourage that because there is something, and I'm not here to say, you know what Pastor Rob said, we all got to become vegan otherwise we're going to burn in hell forever.
No, nothing changes overnight. Remember the story, children's story. Everything takes time.
It might be increasing plant based food. It might be decreasing other areas of animal products. So the biggest study that came there I just want to share a couple of interesting points about that.
Ten interesting conclusions of the China study. They discovered that the Western diet, particularly America, of all European Australia and everything, America was the worst when it comes to junk food and a high usage of animal products. And the increase of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer has been increasing dramatically and says, yes, we're eating a lot of better foods, but we are still holding older habits of high sugar and refined foods that are not beneficial to our health.
He said in here that in multiple peer reviewed animal studies, researchers discovered that they could actually turn the growth of cancer cells on and off by raising and lowering doses of dairy and animal products, particularly animal protein found in animal products. And they said that the decreased use of animal products and dairy and meats in fact were like switches that helps the body to switch around and work better and differently than if all that stuff was continually coming into our body. The food you eat affects the way your cells interact with carcinogens.
Making them more or less dangerous by what we eat will either trigger something on that will increase the risks of carcinogens and cancer growth in our bodies or by an increase of plant based diet, it would decrease the risks of switching off these carcinogen and cancer producing cells. The author Campbell says the results of these and many other studies showed nutrition to be far more important in controlling cancer promotion than the dose of the initiating carcinogen. So the carcinogen there we increase at tenfold the risk of getting cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, bell, all these different cancers that are common today, breast cancer, particularly dairy with breast cancer.
That was an interesting thing that he wrote here in that regards even heart disease they studied that could reverse heart disease through nutrition. The authors share the work of other respective physicians, that they supports their own data collections and some of the most interesting are on heart disease that by adopting a more plant based food the body is able to handle these intrusions of particular viruses in our body and be able to deal with it better so nothing doesn't become cancerous. Carbs, carbohydrates today it's lower the carbohydrates, increase the protein, it all depends the type of carbohydrates and the type of protein.
Is it a plant based protein or is it an animal products based protein? Makes all the difference in how we respond to that. It says highly processed refined carbohydrates are bad for you, but plant foods are full of healthy carbs. And he was saying there also that a high use of animal protein was detrimental to our health.
Not just bad, detrimental. It would be sowing seeds of discord in our cells and not be able to function. And the cells is like the cells are functioning at 50% with a sniffle.
Every cell in your body has a sniffle. Like you bet to come down with a cold. And he was saying it's like that.
And we're doing that over and over and over to the point our system gets so weakened we're not able to fight disease. Well, let me just share a couple more other things. So he concludes, he says this there are virtually about meats.
He says there are virtually no nutrients in animal based foods that are not better provided by plants. The author says protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, you name it, they've got it, along with major health benefits. Now.
He's not an Adventist. In fact, he was the biggest meat eater, according to himself and dairy use, of all people that he knew. He even promoted it for the importance of calcium in your body.
But he says this is false and to the fact, which is interesting. All of this has greatly this 20 year study. And you may notice for some of us who are older that over the last 2030 years that you've noticed maybe a shift in health direction and interest in our governments and in community organizations.
Because when I was a little kid, even a youth, smoking wasn't an issue. No one said anything about it. We were the ones running five day stop smoking programs.
The government didn't even lead out in that. Now they've gone ahead of us. They're running all these quit nows and quit campaigns and they're trying to get people off smoking and minimize on alcohol and increase plant based foods and all of that.
It's not just in Australia. The whole world, according to this research, has been impacted by this study, the China study, because they're saying, how is it that Chinese people are living better and longer overall? And that's what they discovered, besides other important activities. Yeah, they didn't use so much gyms over the years, but they got a hoe and a shovel and dug in the garden.
They were active in their bodies. The impact that this China study and this whole vegan revolution in nutrition has impacted the former US. President, sports people like Djokovic and other tennis players who have sworn by a plant based diet that gives them performance and physical stamina to pursue their sporting careers.
Even programs like Limitless by Chris Hemsworth. He did a six part series on the impact of lifestyle choices and fasting and eating a plant based diet and things like yeah, because he says, I don't want to grow up and forget my children and grandchildren. I don't want dementia.
Because he had a family that have issues with Alzheimer's and that and people like Lewis Hamilton, Formula One, a vegan. And quite a few of the others. People like Chris Pratt, Hollywood actor who's in Jurassic World and Guardians of the Galaxy.
A vegan. He even has created his own Chris Pratt diet. From these studies that have been done over the last 2030 years, even nonavanist Christians are beginning to see the benefits of even the Daniel diet or the Daniel Fast where fruits and vegetables and beans and legumes are essential and they've written recipe books.
And we should be the head and not the tail of this movement. And our church sanitarium that is owned by our church also promotes some very good health and nutritional information on their websites. Great Lady Sue Rad.
I grew up with her in Melbourne. She's about a couple of years older than me and she's a great nutritionist well recognized in the health and medical industries. People like Dr.
Darren Wharton. He's also a guru. He's appeared on Channel Ten and many other programs written on Live.
More happy about the impact of what we eat affects our moods and our relationships with others and how the importance of what we eat affects our mental wellness and our spiritual wellness. And the Bible says, Behold, beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers. Now, I want to encourage because next in two weeks time I'm going to look at the benefits of all these other areas in our health how that stems traditional experience and what that looks like.
So in two weeks time I want to look at wellness and how you and I can make a new start or a renewed start in increasing more of plant based and decreasing in other areas of animal products, increasing exercise. Don't go to the gym and lift 150 kilos. You probably injure yourself.
But take it moderately, little by little. Increase your ability, whether it's not the gym, going for walks or whatever it is. We'll talk more about that next in two weeks time.
So I want to encourage us that what we choose, what we eat, what we move and how we do life will impact how we serve Jesus better because there's nothing so much harder than being sickly and trying to be motivated and driven to serve God cheerfully when we're not well all the time. And God wants us to remove those obstacles and increase our stamina increase our capacity to serve and love God better. Choose to say, God, I want to learn a little bit more.
I want to grow more in my understanding of not just taking care of my relationship with you but how all the choices I make impacts that relationship how I feel in my body and in my mind. Let's bow our heads, Father. God, we want to serve you faithfully but we want to also serve you with clarity and strength of vigor and determination to feel at our best at our peak and not struggle through life.
I don't want to struggle. I'm already just over 50 and I don't want to get to 60 or 70 and I'm feeling a bit crippled. Whether it's physically or mentally or exhaustion or whatever it is, Father, I want to take care of myself.
Lord, I just pray that we can take care of ourselves because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And we want to honor you with our bodies, honor you with our choices in what we eat and what we do and how we do it, that we may honor you, not ourselves to honor you not to put others down, but to lift people up to Jesus. And may you bless us, Father, as we go forward, determined to serve you better.
In Jesus name, amen.
