It was my highly esteemed privilege to be closely associated with Mrs. E. G. White in connection with the establishment and development of our sanitariums and medical missionary work throughout the United States and Australia, from the year 1886 until the time of her death in 1915. During all these years I was a diligent student of the messages which have been given by the Spirit of prophecy, for instruction, counsel, and warning concerning the various phases of the medical work. Scores of these messages came to me before they appeared in print, many of them being of personal or institutional application, and I had opportunity to observe their influence and results, according to the manner in which they were accepted or rejected.
This inspired instruction has been all-embracing. It has touched methods, plans, and policies for conducting sanitariums, restaurants, health-food factories, treatment rooms, and training schools for nurses, medical evangelists, and missionary physicians. It has outlined guiding principles in health reform and rational treatment of disease, and given warnings concerning false methods. It has set forth heavenly principles to guide in the social, moral, and religious association of workers and guests in our sanitariums, pointing out in detail the safety line and the danger line of conduct in institutional life. Nowhere else have I found such safe, sound, wholesome instruction for the conduct of life in the varied relationships which our institutional work involves, as is set forth in these messages.
It has been my privilege to witness the fulfillment of many of the predictions in these messages. I have watched with profound interest the development of strong, noble characters in our young men and women as they have obeyed these blessed messages of divine truth. And I have experienced an equally profound sense of sadness in witnessing the ruined characters of those who have dared to trifle with these messages. I have observed the physical results which have attended the adoption of right principles of diet and the treatment of disease, as demonstrated by the restoration of the weak and feeble to health and fitness to endure the burdens and responsibilities of life.
The results of disregarding the messages and continuing to follow false principles of diet and treatment of disease, have been just as apparent in the multiplied cases of strong, robust men and women who have gone down into a state of invalidism and death. I have read messages addressed to individuals, pointing out specific wrong courses of action. Sometimes these messages were given years before the action was really performed, providing ample time to correct the wrong and avoid the consequence.
When they were unheeded, the fulfillment of the predictions was seen to the very letter, although the individuals themselves sometimes continued to deny the truth of the statements in the messages.
I might refer to my own personal experience as further cause for my firm belief in the Spirit of prophecy. Messages have been sent to me describing property to be secured for sanitarium and medical work—property which I had never seen and of which I did not know the location, but which later came to my attention a thousand miles distant. Four years after receiving the messages, a property was brought to my attention which I recognized as fulfilling every condition and specification pointed out to me, with one exception, and that was the price. Within a very short time after we discovered the property, it dropped in price to the extent of $75,000, thus meeting the necessities of our situation. In the crisis connected with this experience, I was instructed to move forward at once. This meant that I must obligate myself to the extent of $40,000, when I did not have a dollar in sight, and did not know where to look for money. But the positive instruction to move forward came to me, and I was assured that as I did so, the Lord would open the way before me, and that money would come from unexpected sources. These predictions were fulfilled as marvelously as though the heavens had opened and the money had dropped down, $5,000 at a time. I saw strong men, who were questioning the whole transaction and urging that it be canceled, subdued to tears as the money came in by mail from persons thousands of miles distant, entirely unexpected, but just at the time needed to meet our obligations.
I might cite scores of similar experiences, showing how God has fulfilled His promises. I would have to deny many of the actual facts and experiences of my life were I to deny the demonstrated proof of the genuineness of these messages which have been given through the Spirit of prophecy.
