DIVORCE HURTS. It hurts the separating persons. It hurts the children. It hurts relatives and friends. It hurts society.
So it was with Judah and Israel—originally one nation, called into existence to reflect the glory of God and to be His agent in winning back the world.
As is the case with so many relation ships, selfishness, desire to dominate, and increasing distance from God brought forth schism and finally out right militant division and even aggression. Not only did Judah and Israel suffer, but their relatives and other on-looking nations, and all of society—to this day—have been hurt.
Might there be an analogy with modern Israel, God's remnant church? He brought the church into existence to reflect the glory of God, to call His people out of modern Babylon, and to be His agent in winning back the world to loyalty to Him. He intended to blend into one body the restorative ministries em bodied in Christ, our Great High Priest and our Great Physician.
"Christ," we are told, "gave a perfect representation of true godliness by combining the work of a physician and a minister, ministering to the needs of both body and soul, healing physical disease, and then speaking words that brought peace to the troubled heart." —Counsels on Health, p. 528.
His church is to follow this example: "From the light that has been given me, I know that an intimate relationship should ever exist between the medical missionary work and the gospel minis try. They are bound together in sacred union as one work, and are never to be divorced." —Ibid.
Note the statement "are never to be divorced." To this we can add: "Medical missionary workers and workers in the gospel ministry are to be bound together by indissoluble ties." —Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 46. "Our physicians are to unite with the work of the ministers of the gospel. . . . Medical missionary work is in no case to be divorced from the gospel ministry. The Lord has specified that the two shall be as closely connected as the arm is with the body. Without this union neither part of the work is complete. The medical missionary work is the gospel in illustration." —Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 240, 241.
This was God's plan. But grasping selfishness, desire to dominate, an in creasing distance from God brought forth schism divorce, if you please that has injured the work of God ever since.
Union of the Two Sticks
God had a remedy for ancient Israel. In one of His graphic representations of His will and of the potential for His chosen nation, He told Ezekiel to take two sticks (Eze. 37:15-28). On one he was to write, "For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions," to the other, "For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions." The prophet was then commissioned, "Join them one to an other into one stick; and they shall be come one in thine hand."
Lest there be any doubt as to the meaning of this union of the two sticks, God said, "I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. ... And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them" (verses 22-24).
What a beautiful figure symbolizing the healing of the division of Israel and Judah. We suggest that it might also symbolize the combining of ministerial work and the medical missionary phases of modern Israel.
In Genesis 49 the characteristics and the respective futures of the sons of Jacob are delineated. There Judah is pictured as the scepter, the lawgiver; Joseph, as a fruitful bough by a well, sorely wounded but upheld by the hands of God. In 1 Chronicles 5:1, 2 we learn that Judah prevailed above his brethren, but the birthright that would customarily have been given to Reuben was given to the sons of Joseph. In Zechariah 10:1, under the reviving influence of the latter rain, Judah would be strengthened and Joseph saved.
Ellen White links Joseph to the healing ministry. In Testimonies, volume 8, page 153, written to the medical superintendent of a large sanitarium, she states, "Every institution that bears the name of Seventh-day Adventist is to be to the world as was Joseph in Egypt, and as were Daniel and his fellows in Babylon."
It is clearly God's will that the breach between Judah and Joseph, between the ministers of the gospel and the ministers of healing, be bridged. The two are to become "one stick" in the hand of the great Healer. Then God will make a covenant of peace with them—an everlasting covenant—and will set His sanctuary in the midst of them f or- evermore. He will be their God, and they shall be His people.
"And the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore" (Eze.37:28).