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THOSE 40 MERCEDES YEARS GO BY FAST

I don't know if you've seen this TV ad where you live, but a very sober-faced doctor is telling a patient the bad news. "I'm sorry," he says, "but it looks like you only have, maybe, 35 more years to live. Forty if you're really lucky." And the guy, hearing that he has four whole decades still to go, immediately runs out and starts tearing around in a new Mercedes-Benz, screaming "Yippee" at the top of his lungs and jumping into swimming pools with all his clothes on. Forty more years before you're going to die . . . and a new 2001 Mercedes is for sure the way to react to that kind of terrible news.
But you know, I couldn't help thinking as I saw that commercial: right now 40 years feels like forever. But very soon 40 becomes 30. Then 20, and then 15 and ten. And before you can hardly blink, you're not going "Yippee" and jumping into the ocean in your Brooks Brothers suit. You're lying in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes, and looking at a piece of X-ray film showing that there's a shadow on your lung.
Time is so precious - and in a way, the Mercedes ad was telling us that. If you knew you could have extra years handed to you, it would be a cause for rejoicing and for splashing happily in the Fountain of Youth.
An exceptional book recently got handed to us at the Voice of Prophecy, and I want to spend some time here on the radio telling you about it. That guy in the Mercedes would want a copy; I can tell you that. Because here's the title: Live 10 Healthy Years Longer. It's published by our friends at Word, and it's written by two Christians, so it is a spiritual book - I won't make any bones about that. But the title is right there up front, and what this book promises, it actually delivers: Live 10 Healthy Years Longer.
Right in Chapter One, authors Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey ask this question: "How long would you like to live?" And we all say: "Forever. Dumb question." Okay . . . but being realistic, and staying away from the "eternal life, streets of gold" motif for a moment, really, how long would you like to live? Do you picture yourself getting to 75? Eighty? What? And what kind of life would you like to enjoy, especially there near the end?
These two excellent writers tell about a man named Richard. At age 35, his energy level began to go down. His weight went up 25 pounds and the proverbial love handles showed up. And the doctor asked him: "How long would you like to live?" Richard thought about it and then said: "I don't know, doc . . . 85 or 90 . . . if I can still be in good health." Well, at the time this book went to press, Richard had just turned 55. Still overweight. Blood pressure up. Cholesterol up. He recently did quit smoking cigarettes. But according to the iron-clad statistics in this book, he'll be lucky to get to 65. Because, as the writers put it, "For 55 years Richard has been preparing to die of a catastrophic illness: heart disease, cancer, or stroke."

Richard's wife, Carol, will be fortunate, statistically, to survive her husband by six years. How come? Well, at age 52, she's carrying around 40 pounds she really shouldn't have. She's been on nine diets in the last five years, and each time her escalator went down, and then up again, she added about five bonus pounds. And the facts are these: the way most Americans live, the average man can hope to get to age 72. For women, add six years to that. Seventy-two and 78. That's what the actuarial tables tell us.
But then here comes a marvelous ray of light, shining through all the numbers. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE AN AVERAGE STATISTIC. "You can beat those statistics," Jan and Cecil tell us, "and live healthier, longer, and happier for another decade." You can get ten extra years.
The flip side of the Richard-and-Carol story is a life sketch about Joe and Vicki Nichols. When Joe was 40, he had a physical . . . and the numbers weren't good for him either. But he joined a spa and lost 50 pounds. He learned to play tennis. He quit smoking. He never went on a diet, because his lifestyle eventually took off 60 pounds automatically. His hummingbird pulse settled in at a normal 70. His cholesterol came down to 185. Vicki - same thing. Today, as you're hearing this, Joe is 84, Vicki's 86. They still walk two miles a day and they both feel great. They might go many more years. And Jan and Cecil, here in chapter one, reach out to us in the audience and ask these questions. "Would you like to:
· Live into your eighties - even into your nineties?
· Be/stay in good physical health during those years?
· Remain mentally alert all your life?
· Be of normal weight without dieting?
· Feel good about yourself?
· Enjoy each day of your life?
· Release negative stress and live a calmer life?"
Well, they say, you can. That whole list is a doable one. The writers have done it. Joe and Vicki have done it. And they go on, for the next 19 chapters of this book, to tell about a whole bunch of other people who have done it too.
I know how we feel condemned by statistics. Because statistics don't lie. If the average American man lives to be 72, we figure that's about when the Grim Reaper's going to start sharpening his sickle for us. You can't beat Death, you shrug, and you start surfing the Internet for a good funeral plan.
But I want you to hear what Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey describe next. Because there is a mountain of numbers from the people who have added those ten years, and those statistics don't lie either. And everything they did, you can do too.
Beginning clear back in 1960, the well-known institution, Loma Linda University - right here in Southern California - "began an ongoing study in cooperation with the American Cancer Society." Now, get this: the study involved a test group of 27,514 people . . . stacked up against the "control group" of one million randomly selected Californians.
Here's the interesting thing. In past health studies, it's been hard to find more than a few hundred people who lived according to certain health principles. It was rare to be able to statistically log numbers on as many as a thousand people. How did the researchers, in this case, find 27,514 people who were on the health bandwagon?

Well, the answer is a simple one. They turned to a religious demographic group . . . and it's one I happen to know something about. The mention of Loma Linda University might be your clue - because the men in the white coats began to study the Seventh-day Adventist Church's membership.
Naturally, with this radio ministry being affiliated with the Adventist Church, you can understand how all of us began to read this new book from Word Publishing with great interest. And this statistical project, which they called the Adventist Health Study, or AHS, went on - beginning in 1960 - for decades. Jan Kuzma was involved for 23 years, becoming the director of research in 1982, a post he held until 1990. And they came up with a name for the lifestyle of the test subjects: the "Live-Longer Lifestyle."
Just for starters you probably know that Seventh-day Adventists don't smoke or drink. They tend to not drink coffee or other caffeinated drinks. Statistically, they do rather well in the field of exercise. And when it comes to nutrition, just about half the church is vegetarian . . . and virtually all of the people in this denomination stay away from what the Bible calls "unclean" meat - pork and some others in the Levitical list.
What's the result of living that way? Well, the book title isn't really accurate. Live 10 Healthy Years Longer? For those in the AHS group, the people in the program statistically beat the million average Californians by nine years. But those who went by ALL of the principles in this "LLL - the Live-Longer Lifestyle" - in other words, those who really went by the book, they added a whopping 13 years to their life expectancy. And again, this is a scientifically measured group of more than 27,000 people, studied and tested and prodded and poked for decades of research.
Tomorrow I'll tell you more of the startling numbers from this study, and how you can get on the gravy train - the fat-free gravy train, to be sure - and add nine, or ten, or thirteen years to your own life expectancy. But let's close with this point which Jan and Cecil make so beautifully. To live longer and better isn't just a dream that Loma Linda University has for you, or our friends at Word Publishing. Listen - it's God who wants you to add ten years. A billion years in His kingdom; that's for sure. But ten or 13 right now. He wants you to be healthy. He wants you to enjoy the abundant life - and more of it, not less. A long time before doctors began telling us about cholesterol, a missionary named John wrote these words, under divine inspiration from God, to his friends:

"Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well."