Seventh-day Adventists have God's last warning message to give to a dying world. This message is to go to every kindred and tongue. We are a comparatively small people. Why should we spend a major portion of our budget in the establishment and maintenance of expensive medical institutions for the care of the sick? Why should not this be left to the state and to other religious organizations while we devote our entire energies to preaching the message? These are good questions that demand an answer. We believe they can be adequately answered.
The great medical-missionary chapter of the Bible is Isaiah 58, which also has much to say about other lines of our work, especially that of Sabbath reform. "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in" (Isa. 58: 12).
This is our special work. We are to search out the foundations of truth. We are to re-establish doctrine in its proper perspective, and we are also to re-establish the original methods of working for souls.
We base our medical ministry upon the life and work of the Lord Jesus. In Matthew there is a description of His comprehensive ministry: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them" (Matt. 4:23, 24).
An analysis of this record indicates that the multitudes followed Jesus, not because of His birth or wealth, nor because He had a publicity agent and expensive effective advertising, but rather because He healed the sick.
When David Livingstone, home from Africa, addressed a group in Edinburgh, Scotland, he said, "God had only one son to give to the world, and He sent Him not only as a foreign missionary, but also as a medical missionary."
Yes, Jesus is the great medical missionary, the true pattern for the ministry of the church.
Christ stands before us as the pattern Man, the great Medical Missionary,—an example for all who should come after.. . . We are to do the same work that the great Medical Missionary undertook in our behalf.—Medical Ministry, p. 20.
In His complete and perfect ministry Jesus preached to the soul, taught the mind, and healed the body. It is interesting to note that He emphasized the healing ministry. A careful study of the New Testament will reveal that what is said in The Ministry of Healing is correct: "During His ministry, Jesus devoted more time to healing the sick than to preaching."—Page 19.
Jesus had but three and one-half years in which to establish the Christian church, develop its theology, and train its ministry. Three and one-half years is not a long time. It is less than the time required to finish high school or to get a Bachelor's degree. It is about half a term in the mission field. If Jesus, with so many important things to do, considered the medical work of such significance that He spent more time in healing the sick than He did in preaching, what emphasis should the church in these last days place upon it?
A study of the Bible plan of church work reveals that Christ intended that His people should place continued emphasis upon this ministry. The church today is to work as He worked. "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world" (John 17:18).
Our work is clearly defined. As the Father sent His only-begotten Son into our world, even so Christ sends us, His disciples, as His medical missionary workers.—Medical Ministry, p. 24.
Should ordained ministers heal the physically sick? Read the record of the original ordination of the Christian ministry, the ordination charge which is as binding today as when first given by the Master to the apostles. "And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach" (Mark 3:14).
All too often in considering the work of the ministry we stop here and do not read the next verse. Verse 14 ends with a comma and the sentence continues: "And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils" (verse 15).
The work of the Christian ministry in the days of Christ to this present time is not alone to preach but also to heal the sick. The dedicated, God-fearing physician is a part of this ministry of the church.
In the gospel according to Luke, a regular physician, the first evangelistic campaign is recorded. It was organized by the Master and all the apostles took part:
"Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick. . .. And they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and healing every where" (Luke 9: 1-6).
That this healing ministry was not to be confined to the ordained ministry is obvious. In Luke also is the record of the organizing and sending forth of the laymen in the beginning of the great lay movement:
"After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come" (Luke 10:1).
What were they to do? "And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you" (verse 9).
Some may have thought that this work was restricted to the time of Christ and the apostolic church, but the Master intended it to continue to the end of time, for in Mark the last chapter is a special emphasis on healing. "And he said unto
them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. . . . They shall
lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he wasP received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God" (Mark 16: 15-19).
I am persuaded that there is something significant about these words as they were the last uttered by the Saviour: "They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Did He emphasize this because the church would be prone to forget this important phase of ministry?
The medical ministry occupied an important place in the apostolic church. Peter healed the sick, as did Paul and Dr. Luke. At times Paul and Luke worked together, and at other times Luke, an accredited physician, engaged in evangelistic and pastoral work.
In the process of time apostasy appeared —not alone in doctrine but also in methods of labor. The church began to downgrade the physical. The body was to be mortified literally. Saints, so called, appeared who heaped abuse upon their physical bodies.
Simeon Stylites, revered as one of the greatest saints of his time, spent years on the top of a pillar. Because he did not bathe he was said to be the most filthy man in Christendom—and also the most holy. When this new and strange doctrine came into the church, the medical ministry went out.
There was an organization, however, that spanned the ages between the apostolic church and the churches of the Reformation, the prophetic church in the wilderness —the church of the Waldenses.
Some years ago while in Europe we visited the valleys of the Valdenses. We drove to the Italian Piedmont Alps and stayed at Torre Pellice. While there we explored the valleys and the places made sacred by the blood of martyrs. We especially wanted to visit the valley where the Waldenses held their annual synods and their camp meetings and where the school of the Barbes, that "school of the prophets," was located. This alpine valley, the Torre del Pra, is said to be the most inaccessible place in Christendom. We had some difficulty in talking our guides into taking us there. We went up historic narrow defiles along the mountain streams on the trails that led to the Torre del Pra. There we were shown the remains of a building that once housed the school of the Barbes. In one room is a large flat rock upon which the Scriptures were laboriously copied by hand for distribution by the colporteurs and others. Here was a publishing work before printing was invented.
While there, it seemed to me that I was on sacred ground and that I should take off my shoes and rededicate my life to the finishing of the task for which so many Waldenses, our spiritual forefathers, gave their lives. They are in the true apostolic succession from Christ, through the apostles and the Reformation church, to us.
As I considered their doctrine—for they believed and kept the Sabbath and understood the nature of man as we do, and held most of our other beliefs—the thought suddenly struck me that while they had an educational system, a publishing and an evangelistic work, and many other things comparable to what was established in the apostolic church, where was the medical ministry? I wondered whether I was wrong in my conception of the importance of this work. When I returned to the States I did some investigating. I wrote to Prof. A. Vaucher in Geneva, Switzerland, and to others, and discovered that the Waldenses actually had a "College of Medical Evangelists" as a part of the school of the Barbes in the Torre del Pra. There they trained well-qualified physicians and surgeons who went down to the cities of the plain to practice medicine and to place portions of Scripture in the hands of honest-hearted people they met. The church in the wilderness did have a medical ministry as had the apostolic church, and thus they were following in the footsteps of the apostles and the Master Himself.
"Those Barbes, who remained at home in the Valleys, (besides their officiating and labouring in the work of the Ministry) took upon them the disciplining and instructing of the youth (especially those who were appointed for the Ministry) in Grammar, Logick, Moral Philosophy, and Divinity. Moreover the greatest part of them gave themselves to the study and practise of Physick, and Chinn.- gery [surgery]; and herein they excelled (as their Histories tell us) to admiration, thereby rendring themselves most able and skilful! Physicians both of soul and body. Others of them likewise dealt in divers Mechanick Arts, in imitation of St. Paul, who was a Tent-maker, and Christ himself."—MoRLAND, quoted in L. E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1, pp. 841, 842.
With the coming of the great Reformation there were those who stressed this phase of the ministry. Martin Luther was one. Savonarola, the Italian Reformer, was slated to be a physician. And later, in the great revival in the Protestant church that took place in the eighteenth century, the Wesleys were much interested in the healing arts. John Wesley not only practiced health reform, being a vegetarian and a promoter of many of the principles for which we stand today, but he treated the sick. As he went by horseback on circuit, covering thousands of miles in preaching the Methodist faith, he carried with him a bag of medicines and treated those who were ill. On one occasion his bishop, for he remained through life a member of the Church of England, chided him for this. He replied that of necessity a minister of the Christian church must take care of the physical along with the spiritual and mental. The Pietists in Germany believed the same. They insisted on their theology students studying medicine for at least two years. They founded hospitals and emphasized the healing ministry of the Master.
In time God's great prophetic timepiece struck the hour and the remnant church came into existence. Here is an organization that would be known as "the repairer of the breach; the restorer of paths to dwell in." Here is an organization that would restore the ministry of Christ in its great threefold application for the soul, the mind, and the body. And the church is living today in "the time of restitution of all things" (Acts 3:21). If the Adventist Church did not have a medical ministry, it would not be a complete church doing the will of God in these last days. Of necessity it must carry on the same ministry of the Master.
The question is, Are we using it as effectively as we should?
How slow men are to understand God's preparation for the day of His power! God works today to reach hearts in the same way that He worked when Christ was upon this earth. In reading the word of God, we see that Christ brought medical missionary work into His ministry. Cannot our eyes be opened to discern Christ's methods? Cannot we understand the commission He gave to His disciples and to us?—Medical Ministry, p. 246.
He designs that the medical missionary work shall prepare the way for the presentation of the saving truth for this time—the proclamation of the third angel's message. If this design is met, the message will not be eclipsed nor its progress laindered.—Counsels on Health, p. 518.
