The Loma Linda Medical Evangelists’ Class by George B. Starr

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 22, 1916

The Loma Linda Medical Evangelists’ Class

By George B. Starr

MORE interesting and more attractive than California’s sunshine, its mingled oranges and orange blossoms, and its profusion of roses, or its acres of poppies, geraniums, and other flowers, is the student body of one hundred and fifty earnest youth at Loma Linda, preparing for the work of God.

To observers here who are interested in the progress of the work of God, and who are praying the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his vineyard, the passing of these students over the green lawns to and from the assembly hall, the laboratory, the hospital, and the sanitarium, seems a daily promise of speedily answered prayers.

Into this earnest body of teachers, medical students, and nurses was introduced last fall a new class of matured persons,—graduate nurses, canvassers, church elders, and Bible workers,—to take the special training called for by the Spirit of prophecy to prepare for medical evangelistic work.

Hundreds, said the servant of the Lord, should be rapidly trained to be able intelligently to treat the sick poor, to diagnose their troubles, and minister to them both physically and spiritually.

This class opened Sept. 26, 1915, with a membership of thirteen. It rapidly grew to more than forty, and reached at its highest point a registration of fifty-one. The faculty are now hoping to open the next fall term with a medical evangelistic class numbering one hundred.

The daily school work of this class embraces: Study of diseases; anatomy and physiology; theoretical and practical hydrotherapy, including experience in the bathrooms; dietetics, both theoretical and practical experience in cooking and assisting in schools of health; infant feeding; obstetrics; and Bible doctrines in the form of Bible readings and class study in the Spirit of prophecy. The afternoons are occupied largely in field work, consisting of visiting and conducting meetings in the near-by cities and villages.

It is planned that the second year of this two-year course shall be spent in Los Angeles in advanced class work, clinical experience, public health work, and Bible work.

It is the design to adapt this medical evangelist course to especially meet the requirements of graduate nurses who desire postgraduate work to fit them for medical evangelism and soul-winning work.

We hope our people will pray especially for this medical evangelistic class and for those who ought to join it. There are hundreds of graduate nurses who ought to prepare to answer the call of the hour for workers in the ripened harvest of our own cities and in the regions beyond.

Such persons ought to be sought out by friends and acquaintances, by church and conference officers, and encouraged by counsel, and by financial help when necessary, and urged, for the salvation of their own souls as well as those for whom they might minister, to give themselves at once to the work of the Lord. A large number of “eleventh-hour” workers are needed just now to help finish the work, to hasten the coming of the Lord, and to bring to an end earth’s sufferings, and the sufferings of our sympathizing Lord, who shares the sorrows of every suffering soul.

A very precious spirit has attended this class all through this year.

G. B. STARR.