"THIS is my Father's world, O let me ne'er forget . . ." And he never did. Whenever Clifford Anderson was asked to occupy the pulpit as guest speaker he would invariably choose this traditional English melody as a favorite congregational song. He considered the gospel ministry the highest calling, although he was a successful physician, author, lecturer, and musician.
An Australian by birth, he trained in England, served as a hospital administrator in the West Indies, and combined all his talents in producing a powerful radio program known as Your Radio Doctor. Forty-five weekly broad casts carried the voice of one who dedicated himself to saving lost souls and healing diseased bodies and minds.
But death did not write finis to his globe-encircling vision, for the taped messages are still being heard, his medical books translated, printed, and sold the world around. Perhaps a few glimpses into the events that shaped these goals, as described by his former associates, will reveal more of the scope of medical ministry in its many and varied forms.
Street-Corner Evangelism
Eric Syme, professor of history and religion at Pacific Union College, recalls: "1 have one most vivid memory of arriving in South east London as an assistant speaker, and then discovering that Cliff had no open-air plat form. That's soon remedied,' he said. He went into a grocery shop, secured a few boxes, drove home, picked up a hammer and saw, and there on the corner where I was to speak, created the open-air plat form. The bystanders were quite delighted to witness a well-dressed young man, complete with black Homberg, striped trousers and spats, and a Melton overcoat, constructing a wooden platform on the corner of a busy London thoroughfare. So were the police! We had little difficulty in attracting a crowd that night."
Over the Airways
Elsie Rawson, former missionary in the Southern Asia Division, tells of the beginning of the Your Radio Doctor program. "While lying in a Washington, D.C., hospital in 1950, I had a real brainstorm. Why not ask my physician, Dr. Clifford Anderson, to provide a series of taped messages to take back with us to India. It was as if a bomb had hit him. It seemed his one great objective had suddenly come to life. The basement of the Anderson home was quickly turned into a recording studio. From that day till this, Ceylon, as one of the most powerful short-wave stations in the world, has carried the program. When all other religious broadcasts were taken off the air Your Radio Doctor continued to flow out into the many unentered countries of Southern Asia."
From Bombay to New Zealand, Japan to Indonesia, the health talks cut across national and religious barriers and became one of the most popular programs. The nearly 500 radio scripts written by Dr. Anderson included such topics as "Living With a Damaged Heart," "Help for Troubled Minds," and "Why Teenagers Act Like That."
A regular listener in India commented, "The programs give me the will and strength and confidence to face each day with fresh courage." Another avid radio fan wrote, "I have been listening to your program for more than ten years. You don't have to ask me whether I like it, for I see that no friends drop in at that particular time. If they do, they are made to keep their mouths closed for fifteen minutes!" Word came from Raratonga in the Cook Islands that non-Adventists were using the program as a health-education feature of their youth clubs. No hour of the night was too late, they said, to wait for the broad cast to be aired in the South Pacific.
Printer and Editor
Clifford Anderson was reared in a home of culture and intellectual excellence, his father being a pastor, musician, and editor of the Australian Signs of the Times. During high school and college days Clifford worked with his father, thus gaining an insight into the practical side of printing and editing.
During weekends he frequently preached in local churches. His ability as a speaker was soon discovered, and he was transferred to full-time evangelism in New Queensland, where he joined his brother Roy's crusade group.
Later, when in England, he edited the London Advent Messenger, a weekly evangelistic paper. In his senior year of medicine he was appointed as the first editor of The March of CME, which records with superb photography the history of the College of Medical Evangelists in a most significant period of the denomination's medical school.
Arthur S. Maxwell, longtime editor of Signs of the Times, first printed Dr. Andersen's articles under the series title "I Have a Question, Doctor." The Lord blessed those words in an incredible number of ways. Listen.
A Signs subscription was sent from northern California to Kara chi, Pakistan. Somehow it took more than three years for the February, 1958, issue to fall into the hands of Mr. Zafar, a Moslem factory foreman. For several years he had been seeking help for his little daughter who was suffering from a congenital heart defect. Now, in 1961, he was reading in the question-and-answer column what Your Radio Doctor had writ ten concerning the repair of "a hole in the heart."
An intriguing series of events ensued, as the desperate father contacted Editor Maxwell for special aid from the United States. The intervention of then-Vice- President Lyndon B. Johnson led to the surgery being performed in the fall of 1962 at the White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. The end result of that successful operation was the formation of the Loma Linda heart team, which has since served in Pakistan, India, Thailand, and Taiwan.
When the details of this thrilling account appeared in the Signs early in 1964, the story caught the attention of a non-Adventist hospital volunteer worker in southern California, who was befriending similar heart patients from Greece. Through the combined efforts of this woman and the Creek Orthodox Church, the heart team was able to fly to Athens, Greece, in December, 1967, where they operated on thirty patients needing immediate attention. Co-faculties have now been arranged between Loma Linda University and the 1,300-bed Evangelismos Hospital in Athens, thus making it possible for Greek patients to undergo heart surgery in their own country.
Books in Print
Requests from several publishing houses impressed Dr. Anderson that he should take time to write an up-to-date medical book for colporteurs to sell. The first manuscript, Modern Ways to Health, was printed in 1962 by Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, Tennessee. Now produced as a two-volume set, the books have had wide circulation in the United States and Canada. Thousands of copies have also been sold through the Signs Publishing Company located in Victoria, Australia.
The Middle East Press in Beirut, Lebanon, published a compilation of Dr. Anderson's writings in 1965, in both the Arabic and Farsi languages. Entitled Your Way to Health and Happiness, the Arabic book is now in its fifth printing. Another medical book prepared by Dr. Anderson is being translated and printed in our publishing houses in Poona, India; Manila, Philippines; and Cape Town, South Africa. Indonesia and Singapore have also negotiated to produce this same manuscript at some future time. Royalties from the seven medical books in ten proposed languages will remain in each country to be used in training ministerial students.
"Radiant Health," a sixteen-lesson correspondence course written by Dr. Anderson for the Voice of Prophecy, has been circulated around the world. These lessons have now been made available in the Arabic Braille for blind persons of the Middle East countries.
The Physician's Ministry
Roy Allan Anderson, former editor of The Ministry, summarizes his brother's medical missionary career as follows: "As a family physician or a heart specialist, his first love was always the ministering of the things of God to men and women, teenagers or geriatrics. His unique- ability of illustrating his messages by science, as well as Bible stories, made him a popular speaker and lecturer. In the pulpit, in the open air, or in the classroom he was equally at home, having trained many young men and women in the art of public address.
"To his fellow physicians he was known as a careful and thorough diagnostician; by his publishers he was recognized as a painstaking author; and to his patients he was loved as a sympathetic Christian doctor."
Here certainly was a medical missionary who translated into daily life in our times the pattern of gospel ministry established by the great Minister of healing when He was on earth long ago. Here is a practical demonstration of how it is possible to meet the challenge given the church today in such passages as the following: "Christ's servants are to follow His example. As He went from place to place, He comforted the suffering and healed the sick. Then he placed before them the great truths in regard to His kingdom. This is the work of His followers. As you relieve the sufferings of the body, you will find ways for ministering to the wants of the soul." --Christ's Object Lessons, p. 233.
