To gain a clear conception of the true relationship of the health message to evangelism, we should study intensively Jesus' methods of soul winning. The miracles He performed in both the physical and the spiritual realm "were not recorded to incite us to long to perform miracles just as He did, but rather to teach us the general method we should use to win souls to God. In "Ministry of Healing," pages 112, 113, we read:
"The Saviour in His miracles revealed the power that is continually at work in man's behalf, to sustain and to heal him. Through the agencies of nature, God is working, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, to keep us alive, to build up and restore us. ... The words spoken to Israel are true today of those who recover health of body or health of soul. 'I am the Lord that healeth thee.' . . .
"He it is who 'forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies.'"
During the three years of His public ministry, Jesus showed that the ministry to body and soul must go hand in hand. With this thought in mind, as we study Jesus' miracles, we soon grasp the first principle in His ministry. He sensed the greatest desire and need of those who came to Him for help, and proceeded to minister to that need. Sometimes the sufferer longed for physical healing, and Jesus healed the body and then. ministered to the soul. John 5:5.15: Again, sensing that the greatest longing was freedom from condemnation of sin, He forgave the sin and then healed the :physical malady. Matt. 9:2. The case of the woman who touched Jegus' garment and was made whole in bodj, and, soul, is another illustration of the close association of physical and spiritual healing. Often the two ministries were so closely associated that one could not be distinguished from the other.
As we study Jesus' miracles, we see that He sensed that humanity presented various needs, and His heart so throbbed with sympathy that the longing soul found in Him a ready helper, whether that need presented a physical or a spiritual aspect. Never did He fail to minister to the physical when that need predominated, nor to give spiritual help when He had given physical help.
With six thousand years of transgression of God's moral and physical laws in the background of the world today, both mental anguish and physical suffering abound in the people who come in touch with our organized evangelistic efforts. To meet the double need, any evangelism, to be complete and meet the pattern, must be able to serve the greatest need of each individual seeking for healing of body or soul. Therefore while there must be in the evangelistic group specialization in ministry of the word, every worker should in some degree be a representative of the Great Evangelist.
The evangelist should be a master in the technique of soul winning, and to exemplify the Pattern, he should be able to urge an intelligent obedience to God's natural as well as moral laws. The Bible worker, while a master in personal presentation of Bible truths. should be able to some extent to relieve physical suffering when that need seems to demand first attention. Likewise, the evangelistic nurse, while skilled in preventive and curative work as a health educator and a nurse, must also be able first, in. many instances, to give relief to the sin-sick soul. Many a soul needs to cast his burden of sin on the Saviour before physical healing can be realized. This trio of workers,—the minister, Bible worker, and nurse, with a doctor as consultant, should exemplify in the highest degree the combined ability to minister to the spiritual and physical needs of men and women, as Jesus did two thousand years ago.
Suffering humanity is much the same now as then. Through physical ministry some are led to see the full light of God's truth; through spiritual ministry others are encouraged to seek to bring their lives into harmony with God's natural as well as moral laws. Others, through the ministry of song, develop a changed mental attitude; while social ministry may lead others to realize how empty are their lives without the Saviour.
With this conception of true evangelism, should we not give the health message the evangelistic ring it deserves in God's plan of soul winning? Can we not put it in its true reform setting? Should not prayer precede the presentation of even a twenty-minute health talk in the regular evening service? If the health message tends to the intellectual alone, and the setting of our moral obligation to serve God is not given, those who listen might as well hear any public health worker. It is the moral setting of this health message that makes it different from the world's message of health. 01In is a reform message, and as we lead men and women to understand that to conform to God's natural laws leads them to health and happiness, they will more readily understand that it is not an arbitrary God who asks them to obey His moral law. "To make natural law plain, and to urge obedience to it, is a work that accompanies the third angel's message."—"Counsels on Health," p. 21.
The health work which is not in harmony with natural law, or if genuine is used only to attract, to entertain, to act as a bait to enlist the interest of the multitude, brings discredit to God's cause and transgresses the very spirit of the Saviour's methods of evangelism. For in "Ministry of Healing," page 31, we read:
"Jesus was not satisfied to attract attention to Himself merely as a wonder worker or as a healer of physical disease. He was seeking to draw men to Him as their Saviour. . . . Mere worldly success would interfere with His work. And the wonder of the careless crowd jarred upon His spirits."
Washington, D. C.
