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Section 13—Medical Missionary Work and the Gospel Ministry
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to Him for relief. He was the greatest physician the world ever
knew, and yet He combined with His healing work the imparting of
soul-saving truth.
And thus should our physicians labor. They are doing the Lord’s
work when they labor as evangelists, giving instruction as to how
the soul may be healed by the Lord Jesus. Every physician should
know how to pray in faith for the sick, as well as to administer the
proper treatment. At the same time he should labor as one of God’s
ministers, to teach repentance and conversion, and the salvation
of soul and body. Such a combination of labor will broaden his
experience, and greatly enlarge his influence.
One thing I know, the greatest work for our physicians is to get
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access to the people of the world in the right way. There is a world
perishing in sin, and who will take up the work in our cities? The
greatest physician is the one who walks in the footsteps of Jesus
Christ.—
Counsels on Health, 544.
A Blended Ministry
The physician should reveal the higher education in his ability to
point to the Saviour of the world as one who can heal and save the
soul and the body. This gives the afflicted an encouragement that is
of the highest value. The ministry to the physical and the spiritual
are to blend, leading the afflicted ones to trust in the power of the
heavenly Physician. Those who, while giving the proper treatments,
will also pray for the healing grace of Christ, will inspire faith in
the minds of the patients. Their own course will be an inspiration to
those who supposed their cases to be hopeless.
This is why our sanitariums were established—to give courage
to the hopeless by uniting the prayer of faith with proper treatment,
and instruction in physical and spiritual right living. Through such
ministrations many are to be converted. The physicians in our
sanitariums are to give the clear gospel message of soul healing.—
Letter 146, 1909
.