Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies

Lee Wellard

A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies - Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you, Lord, for the sunshine of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for the hope of eternal life that frees us not only from the guilt of sin, but the grip of sin.

I pray that we will be able to move forward and that you will add value to what we hear today so that it may illumine each individual heart, that we may hear with the reasoning of the Holy Spirit and not even the orientation of our own hearts.

We pray for clarity, we pray for wisdom, We pray for your presence in this room today.

Okay, so I don't have to spend 20 minutes with my disclaimers.

All right, so to this presentation, I want to share a little bit more into specific herbs that could be used for specific conditions, okay?

This isn't medical advice, this is education, right?

If we could swallow some education, we can avoid a lot of what?

So we're getting back to this approach on herbal remedies that what we need is these things coming together.

I remember a saying that said, it said, common sense is not a gift, it's a punishment, because you have to deal with all the people that don't have it.

So anyway, but so as this sister was saying, just because a little is good doesn't mean you can take 4 times the amount, right?

And then we also need a clinical-based approach.

We need to see the scientific evidence, and we also need to see that it's working in a realistic way in people's lives, that we have not just the science to support it, but we have the manifestation of seeing it in people's lives.

And then we also need to have it based upon the word of God.

And I think if you've got all those things together, All those things converging together, you're on a very safe path when it comes to herbal remedies.

In a study entitled, A Gap Between Acceptance and Knowledge of Herbal remedies by physicians, the need for educational intervention, it revealed that of 192 physicians interviewed, most or 60.4% believed that herbal remedies were beneficial to health.

78 physicians, that's 40.6%, admitted having used herbs in the past and 60 of these, or 76.9%, were satisfied with the outcome.

So even doctors are actually sort of closet herbalists, in a way.

So there's A lot more doctors that are using herbs personally and also even recommending them.

And if we were to go back to 1970s, that would be a totally different picture than we have today.

In fact, from 1930s to 1970, herbalists were run out of town in the United States.

But we have much more acceptance even in the medical community than we've ever had in the recent history in America.

Patients are reluctant to tell doctors about their herbal medicines.

Unfortunately, a study in New England Journal of Medicine found that nearly 70% of people taking herbal medicines, most of whom were well-educated and had a higher than average income, were reluctant to tell their doctors that they use complementary and alternative medicine.

So there is a fear about that because they're maybe afraid that their doctor will berate them or maybe tell them to avoid it.

And as I mentioned earlier, you know, it's a good idea to tell your doctor what you're doing.

They, they probably, they may be taking the same herb as you are.

So just tell them, but sometimes there is a problem, because if they don't know that you're taking a herb for a particular problem, it could potentially conflict with a medication.

So let's look at some of the common herbs that you could find, even in some cases your backyard, that you could use for many different complaints.

And anyone know what we're looking at here?

Now we have an American elderberry that you need to cook.

If you use elderberry wild, make sure you cook it because it has cyanide in it.

It's, it's, it's not enough to kill you, but it can cause a stomach problem, indigestion, or you may have a little bit of nausea.

So we use the Sambucas nigra, which is from Europe.

You could take it raw, but we use it dry and we make a tea or decoction out of it.

This is a great way to get your children.

And 1 of the reasons for that was because we had a son that couldn't breastfeed.

My wife had Reinhardt syndrome of the breast, and so the milk wasn't letting down.

And so we had to put him on a formula, and he was getting sick half his life.

And so we thought there's gotta be a remedy for this, and the Lord directed us to a natural remedy called elderberry.

Didn't necessarily stop him getting sick, however, it did greatly reduce his symptom time.

So instead of having a cold for 3 weeks, we found 2 or 3 days oftentimes would be his recovery time.

So we're really, really thankful for that.

Elderberry has been used in times of pandemics when there's been viruses going around that cannot be contained or quarantined.

Historically, elderberry has been a go-to herb for viruses.

And remember a few years ago, Ebola was, looked like it was just starting to break out.

In the United States, people were buying up elderberry.

You just could not get a hold of elderberry.

So if you've got viruses, Getting a cold, starting to feel run down, maybe you should think about taking some elderberry.

It's, it tastes great and it doesn't take too long to kick in.

Most of the time you'll find that, you know, if you get it early enough, that's the key.

If you, If you start to feel run down and you take it quickly, you've got more of a chance for it to be effective.

Boy, I better change my presentation here.

Now, hemp looks very similar to marijuana.

So let me talk a little bit about CBD because this is a big topic.

Just a few of you, okay, so most of you are familiar with CBD.

And CBD is to do what we call cannabinoids.

And this is particularly helpful for pain, and so it's often advocated in the place of opioids.

So these are some phytochemistry here that helps with blocking the pain transmission.

Now, CBD you can get from hemp and you can also get from marijuana.

A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies - Part 1

Father in heaven, thank you for this beautiful day, for the opportunity to commune together, to learn together, and to absorb the presence of your Holy Spirit, which is why we're here.

And it's really only the wisdom from above that can help us to rightly apply the word of truth.

And so I pray you'd give that wisdom to our brother today.

Speak to our hearts, illumine us, we pray.

Would you like me to speak to you in Australian this morning?

I speak 3 languages, English, American, and Australian.

Oh that I could talk in the language of Canaan.

All right, Well, it's been a few little trials that have happened along the way, so I anticipate a big blessing this morning.

Just to give you a little bit of a background, as was mentioned, My mother was a herbalist growing up as a young man, and I was a guinea pig, I had to hold my nose and hope for the best.

And so that was my introduction to herbs.

I had no interest whatsoever in studying them.

But my wife and I, we traveled to the Philippines just after we married, about 14 years ago now.

And my wife got a very serious case of insomnia that lasted nearly 6 years.

She could not sleep past midnight every night.

We were there to teach the locals about health and here's my wife, very sick.

We sought out the best of the best, no 1 could tell us what was wrong or how to treat it.

I often tell people, you know, our suffering is someone else's medicine.

So whatever you're going through, whatever God is bringing you through, just know this, that it's working out to be for someone else's salvation.

So that was something that really put us on a different track because I had been a little cynical actually of herbs and it's amazing how the Lord works to change us around.

I used to teach lifestyle medicine, especially applied physiology.

I used to teach nutrition And somehow there's a bit of a block there.

You know, I was advocating lemon juice and garlic and all the good culinary herbs, but I didn't realize there was another component there that was lacking.

And so through our own journey, God put us in the position where we could learn this.

And I know there's a lot of misconceptions with herbs, and there's a lot of things that we need to be aware of.

There's some good things and bad things about it, so I hopefully Want to present to you today a little bit of a balance to herbal remedies Okay So we're going to be looking at an evidence-based approach to herbal remedies.

I'd like to, actually I was thinking that probably a better title would be a Christ centered approach to herbal remedies.

And looks like this isn't gonna work for us.

Okay, now in the end you go back to the beginning, right?

And he said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing, thank you, it didn't work for me, turn it on.

We didn't have a herb for that 1, thank you very much.

All right, God said behold I've given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.

Yes, yes, and you will understand that they're all herbs if you understand what is the definition of a herb.

Now the Bible uses the word herb in a very broad sense, as we read in Genesis chapter 1, 29, in the sense of plants, right?

Vegetation, fruits and vegetables and nuts and grains and so forth.

But it also uses in the context of medicinal herbs as well.

But basically, all your food is a medicine, right?

If God has made it, it has some medicinal properties in there.

So really, the definition of a herb is a medicinal plant.

And because there's medicinal value in all these things that you see here, that puts them all under the category of herbs.

But classically we think of herbs as things like red clover or echinacea or golden seal, things like that.

But in a broad sense, it's a lot more than that.

Now I hope I can show you something here.

A little seed, it's a herd, and it's sending out a shoot.

You know, this gives me chills just thinking about this.

Now There is a little root, the first root that goes out is called a radical.

Now have you ever seen a tree growing out of a rock?

That what you believe was that the seed, it was in a crack in the rock and it just grew out of the crack.

Seeds have such incredible power, they basically, oh, can we get the next 1?

They don't let anything get in their way.

A radical doesn't let anything get in the way of its growth.

Now this is, you can't see very well here, but this is actually cement.

This is cement and we've got some shepherd's purse in there.

Well, I typed in Google cement, so it may be asphalt, you may be more, yeah, maybe asphalt, but it works with both, works with both.

You've probably seen, Maybe some of you haven't seen Shepard's Purse, but it is so powerful, it will recycle concrete, recycle asphalt.

If we didn't have weed killers, it would just recondition it.

And the reason why this is so powerful, friends, is because of the spiritual application that we can all be a radical, right?

We can all be like that little seed that doesn't let anything get in the way of its growth.

You've probably been, I don't know if any of you have been in a herb shop like this, but The problem is that over 90% of herbalists that you meet do not give glory to God.

They give glory to the plants, they give glory to the spirits of the plants, And this is a problem because the devil, he hijacks things.

And he tries to get things in his control and give it a certain twist and flavor and it becomes poison.

Doesn't mean the plants become poison, but the philosophy that spikes the plants become poisonous.

By the way, this is our store, our herb shop in Granger, Indiana.

We carry thousands of different herbs there.

We do not use herbs that create side effects or that are toxic or that are addictive.

And so We are very glad to help people walk in the door a lot of people Think that we are a place that sells marijuana When they see herb shop All right, so now in America you say herb Yeah, we so we say herb, So I tell people we should have called it the Australian herb shop.

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A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies

A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies - Part 2

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A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies - Part 2

1h 3m

A Practical Guide to Herbal Remedies - Part 1

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