Physical Ailments Must Often Have First Attention—The Master So Taught and Practiced—The Church Should Be Active in Helping the Sick in Body as Well as Soul
By J. A. BURDEN
Business Manager College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, California
As a preparation for missionary work, all things being equal, no other education can excel a medical missionary training. Christ, the greatest of all missionaries, recognized this principle in His labors, and also in the training of His twelve disciples. He spent more time in ministering to the physical needs of the people than in simply preaching the gospel.
TOUCHED THE HEART BY RELIEVING PAIN
A GROUP OF MEDICAL STUDENTS AND NURSES AT LOMA LINDA COLLEGE OF MEDICAL EVANGELISTS
In ministering to the physical ailments of the multitude, He found access to their hearts, and their minds were open to receive the divine truths He presented.
When sending out the twelve disciples on their first missionary tour, He instructed them to combine physical healing with their gospel teaching. By following this plan of ministry, their labors would be more successful.
He commissioned the seventy to heal the sick as well as to announce the advent of the promised Redeemer. “The gospel that Christ taught was one of spiritual life and physical restoration. Deliverance from sin and the healing of disease were linked together.” At the close of His ministry, when He commissioned His followers to go into all the world, He said they should lay hands on the sick, and they should recover. Through their ministry of healing in His name, they would testify of His power to heal the soul. To many of the afflicted Christ said, “Sin no more,” thus indicating that there is a close connection between sin and disease.
NEEDED IN THAT FIELD
So great is the world’s need of gospel medical missionary evangelists, that all who are prepared by study and training, from the graduate nurse to the most efficient physician, can find an open field of labor either at home or abroad. The world is becoming a vast hospital, and there is need of an army of soul winners who have been trained in this double ministry.
“God is calling for young men and women in the strength and vigor of youth to qualify themselves with His ministry of healing, not with drug medication, but with nature’s remedies, ever realizing their dependence on God. As they unite the work of teaching and healing, they will reap a rich harvest of souls.” “And while God is calling upon young men and women who have already gained a practical knowledge of how to treat the sick, to labor as gospel medical missionaries in connection with experienced evangelistic workers, He is also calling for many recruits to enter our medical missionary training schools to gain a speedy and thorough preparation for service. Some need not spend so long a time in these schools as do others, whether three or four or five years in preparation before beginning to engage in active field work. Some, after studying for a time, may develop more rapidly by working along practical lines in different places under the supervision of experienced leaders than they could by remaining in an institution. As they advance in knowledge and ability, some of them will find it to their advantage to return to one of our training schools for more instruction. Thus they are to become efficient in medical missionary work.”
“Every physician, every nurse, who has anything to do in God’s service, must aim at perfection. Nothing short of this standard is pleasing to Him who has called us to be co-laborers with Him. And especially should those who are in training for medical missionaries turn resolutely from every temptation to be satisfied with a superficial knowledge of their profession. Let them rather reach upward toward perfection. There is the most exalted calling, and their preparation must be painstaking and thorough.”
The cause of Christ would have been far in advance of what it is, had the church been more active in the training of nurses who, in addition to their acquirement of more than ordinary skill in the care of the sick, had also learned to labor as evangelists in soul-winning service.
WHY IT WAS FOUNDED
“It is for the training of such workers as well as for the training of physicians that the school at Loma Linda has been founded. In this school many workers are to be qualified with the ability of physicians to labor not in professional lines as physicians but as medical missionary evangelists. This training is to be in harmony with the principles of true higher education. The cause is in need of hundreds of workers who have received a practical and thorough education in medical lines, and who are also prepared to labor from house to house as teachers and Bible workers. Such students should come out of our schools without having sacrificed the principles of health reform or their love for God and righteousness.”
Those who take advanced training in nursing, and go forth into all parts of the world as medical missionary evangelists, cannot expect to receive from the world the honor and the rewards that often come to fully accredited physicians; yet as they go about their work of teaching and of healing, and are linked up closely with God’s servants who have been called to the ministry of His word, His blessing will rest upon their labors, and marvelous transformations will be wrought. In a special sense they will be His helping hand.
