Posted on Thursday, July 19, 2007 - 4:24 pm:

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What issue inspired the evangelistic fervor of these Adventist students and won the approval of their community? The meetings were held to promote a proposed law to abolish the sale of alcoholic beverages in Berrien County. When the law passed, the manager of the local Anti-Saloon League called the college one of the most influential factors in the successful campaign.
These young temperance activists were by no means isolated zealots among Seventh-day Adventists in the early 1900s. Indeed, their efforts merited an enthusiastic report in the general church paper, the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. Support for legal prohibition of alcohol was the mainstream position of Adventist Church leaders and laity at the time. In calling for an end to the curse of liquor in America, Adventists were joining a popular cause of the day advocated by both Christians and social reformers. The temperance movement, as it was called, began in the early 1800s with efforts to reform drinkers. The movement progressed to establishing local and state laws banning alcohol. It culminated in 1919 with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages nationwide.
Adventist support for alcohol prohibition had been swelling steadily since the late 1850s. The church had long championed temperance and healthful living, and legal prohibition seemed an effective way to promote these virtues. Like other prohibition advocates, Adventists believed that banning alcohol would end the misery caused to individuals, families, and society by drunkenness. They also saw prohibition as a means to accomplish their mission of saving souls by giving people clearer minds to receive the gospel and the end-time message of Adventism. In fact, Adventists believed they had a divine mandate to work for the abolition of liquor. Ellen White had frequently spoken in favor of the prohibition cause. She believed Seventh-day Adventists should "stand in the front ranks" of the temperance movement. In 1881 White had written: "The advocates of temperance fail to do their whole duty unless they exert their influence by precept and example--by voice and pen and vote--in favor of prohibition and total abstinence." She repeated this counsel in 1914, just as national prohibition organizations were beginning a concerted effort to pass a constitutional amendment enforcing nationwide prohibition.
http://www.adventistreview.org/2004-1504/story1.html

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