DAVID PAULSON, M. D by David Paulson, M. D.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 6, 1913

DAVID PAULSON, M. D

By David Paulson, M. D.

The Relation of Health and Medical Evangelistic Work to the Closing Work of the Third Angel’s Message

DAVID PAULSON, M. D

The original gospel commission included healing as well as preaching. See Luke 10:9. After the early church had backslidden from this ideal, the Reformation of the sixteenth century brought about a partial restoration; but “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mal. 4:5), the spirit and power of Elijah is to return to the earth to “prepare a perfect people for the Lord.” Luke 1:17, Syriac translation.

Early Health Reformers

John Wesley not only proclaimed mightily the sixteenth-century Reformation truths, but he was also a health reformer and medical evangelist.

A generation later God raised up a Presbyterian clergyman, Sylvester Graham, and gave him a mighty reformatory message, and there was such a revival of health reform in this country as had never been witnessed before. The people everywhere were stirred to the very depths to abandon defiling habits.

In 1830 a company of consecrated New England Congregationalist families was led to Oberlin, Ohio, by Rev. Shipherd, who in answer to prayer and fasting, was shown the exact spot to found a notable missionary training-school in what was then the wilderness.

They established a manual training missionary school which stood stiffly not only for educational reform, but also dress reform, temperance reform, and the disuse of tobacco, tea, coffee, and flesh-meats.

God in a wonderful manner led students to this humble “school of the prophets” in the wilderness. He sent C. G. Finney, the greatest evangelist of that generation, who was himself a health reformer, to be president of the school. The attendance soon exceeded a thousand. Hundreds of students went out, Spirit-filled, zealous to propagate the gospel and reform; but the Congregational Church would not receive them. They refused to grant them license to preach. They met with prejudice and persecution on every hand.

A Universal Backsliding

On this point Dr. Jennings, who joined the movement in those early days, wrote: “For a while the community did run well, but it is not surprising that Oberlin should shrink back under the weight of opprobrium that the arch-deceiver succeeded in raising against her, and retire to a more secure and sheltered position. She had pushed her reformatory operations farther into the heart of the seducer’s kingdom than had ever been done before, and of course was assailed with fiercer and more malign opposition than had fallen to the lot of any other community. It was impracticable for Oberlin to remain where she first dropped anchor; she must either go forward or go backward.”

Sad to say, the devil soon succeeded in introducing a general backsliding on reforms, and then Oberlin College and her students became popular; and as Jennings said later, “She now enjoys the common repose of the churches generally. She soon lived down popular prejudice and obtained wide-spread pleasant congratulations for herself among the great ones of the earth, and has accomplished much inferior good.”

God evidently sent these reformatory truths to the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational Churches to prepare them for the movement of 1844. Had they accepted those truths, they would have received more light; but when they repudiated them, then God raised up Joseph Bates, who proclaimed not only all the previous reformatory truths, including temperance and health reform, but also the long down-trodden Sabbath truth.

A “Called-Out” People

Light was given that this called-out people had a special mission to proclaim health and healing truths to the world. This was clearly stated in the following words: “To make plain natural law, and urge the obedience of it, is the work that accompanies the third angel’s message, to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. III, page 161. See Luke 1:17.

The pioneers in this movement were reformers and healers. The first health book among them was not written by a doctor but by a minister,—Elder J. N. Loughborough. When any one in the community was sick, he generally called and for some Seventh-day Adventist to come and give him simple treatments. Finally God led out in the establishment of a central health institution.

Why Our Sanitariums Differ From Hospitals

The Methodist foreign missions represent genuine spiritual conquests, while their hospitals at home have no particular reputation in that line. The reason for this no doubt is that the Methodists received their mission idea from the Bible, but their hospital idea they borrowed from the world.

In a vision given Sister White in 1865, a year before the Health Institute was opened, she was shown “that the health reform was a great enterprise closely connected with the present truth, and that Seventh-day Adventists should have a home for the sick, where they could be treated for their diseases, and also learn how to take care of themselves so as to prevent sickness. See ‘Testimonies for the Church,’ Vol. I, page 553.”

It was further stated: “It should ever be kept prominent that the great object to be attained through this channel is not only health, but perfection and the spirit of holiness, which cannot be attained with diseased bodies and minds. This object cannot be secured by working merely from the worldling’s standpoint.”—Id., page 554.

Spiritual Service Rather Than Miracles

This thought was included in this original instruction: “Let no one obtain the idea that the institute is the place for them to come to be raised up by the prayer of faith. That is the place to find relief from disease by treatment and right habits of living, and to learn how to avoid sickness. But if there is one place under the heavens more than another where soothing, sympathizing prayer should be offered by men and women of devotion and faith, it is at such an institute. Those who treat the sick should move forward in their important work with strong reliance upon God for his blessing to attend the means which he has graciously provided, and to which he has in mercy called our attention as a people, such as pure air, cleanliness, healthful diet, proper periods of labor and repose, and the use of water.”—Id., page 561.

The “work cure” that is now attracting such remarkable attention in the world, and which we have not properly developed in our sanitarium work even at this late day, was a part of this original program. “I saw the beneficial influence of outdoor labor upon those of feeble vitality and depressed circulation. . . . Instead of amusements to keep these persons indoors, care should be taken to provide outdoor attractions.”—Id., page 562.

It was specified that connected with sanitarium work there should be a definite educational propaganda so that nature could continue the cure after the patient had left the institution. “The object of the health reform and the Health Institute is not, like a dose of

‘Pain Killer’ or ‘Instant Relief,’ to quiet the pains of today. No, indeed! Its great object is to teach the people how to live so as to give nature a chance to remove and resist disease.”—*Id., page 643.

Transferring Responsibility From the Many to the Few

As a certain class of workers among us became experts in promulgating the health reform principles and the care of the sick, the great body of our people began to relinquish their personal responsibility in this respect, and those who became experts had constantly before them the temptation to become professional, and then commercial.

Christian healing is a sacred work, and not a business proposition. When we present these health truths from the popular instead of the spiritual standpoint, then it is far better for the cause and better for our own souls to leave the promulgation of health truths to worldly instructors.

We shall be tempted to unduly exalt certain health ideas which happen for the time to be tickling the popular fancy because they require no special self-denial while at the same time they ignore the more unpopular “weightier matters of the law.” The wine-cup is a thousand times more important consideration, both for here and hereafter, than the common drinking-cup. The securing of a physician’s health certificate before marriage is a commendatory measure, but it is not nearly so important as the ability to prepare wholesome food after marriage.

It is much easier to enlist people in a fly-swatting campaign than it is to enlist them in an anticigarette crusade, although the cigarette and tobacco evil is responsible for ten thousand times more sorrow, misery, sickness, and even death. We should spend our time and energy establishing those health reformatory truths that the devil is especially leading the people to trample underfoot, and at the same time we should not belittle these other minor truths.

It is preeminently our mission to propagate reformatory principles rather than health ideas, for we have been instructed “not to catch hold of isolated ideas, and make them a test, criticizing the others whose practise may not agree with your own opinion; but study the subject broadly and deeply.”—“Christian Temperance,” page 119.

“As we near the close of time, we must rise higher and still higher upon the question of health reform and Christian temperance, presenting it in a more positive and decided manner.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI, page 112.

We are not merely to talk temperance, but to secure pledges. “We should present to the people the principles of true temperance, and call for signers to the temperance pledge.” And the following instruction is given us regarding our duty toward other temperance workers: “In other churches there are Christians who are standing in defense of the principles of temperance. We should seek to come near to these workers, and make a way for them to stand shoulder to shoulder with us.”—Id., page 110.

“Wherever the truth is presented, the people are to be taught how to prepare food in a simple, yet appetizing way. They are to be shown that a nourishing diet can be provided without the use of flesh food.” “Cooking-schools should be established, and house-to-house instruction should be given in the art of cooking wholesome food.”—Id., Vol. IX, page 161.

Training Courses for the Laity

“There is a message regarding health reform to be borne in every church. . . . The Lord does not now work to bring many souls into the truth, because of the church-members who have never been converted, and those who were once converted but who have backslidden.”—Id., Vol. VI, pages 370, 371.

“Every church should be a training-school for Christian workers. Its members should be taught how to give Bible readings, how to conduct and teach Sabbath-school classes, how best to help the poor and to care for the sick, how to work for the unconverted. There should be schools of health, cooking-schools, and classes of various lines of Christian Help work. There should not only be teaching, but actual work under experienced instructors.”—“Ministry of Healing,” page 149.

Counterfeit Healing

We must be prepared to take advance ground, for the world is already permeated with the ordinary health ideas, and Christian Science is bringing to the people a counterfeit spiritual healing. Our workers must be prepared to meet this satanic delusion with divine truth and a ripe experience, ever remembering that “it is labor lost to teach people to look to God as a healer of their infirmities, unless they are taught also to lay aside unhealthful practises.”—Id., page 227. “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” Prov. 28:9.

We must cooperate with God to prepare a perfect people to stand in the near future without a Mediator in the heavenly sanctuary. This will require the whole message.

Hinsdale, Ill.