Relationship to Gospel Ministry
457
The Conference Medical Missionary Secretary—The medical
missionary work is to be closely connected with the work of preaching.
[522]
Men should be appointed to do this work who have shown themselves
trustworthy, who are true to principle. In every conference one man
should be set apart to have the oversight. He should be a man who
gives evidence that he is conscientious, that he is straightforward when
dealing with worldlings and those of our faith. He should be free from
covetousness and selfishness.—
Letter 139, 1898
.
Caution Against an Independent Work—As the medical mis-
sionary work becomes more extended, there will be a temptation to
make it independent of our conferences. But it has been presented to
me that this plan is not right. The different lines of our work are but
parts of one great whole. They have one center....
In the work of the gospel the Lord uses different instrumentalities,
and nothing is to be allowed to separate these instrumentalities. Never
should a sanitarium be established as an enterprise independent of the
church. Our physicians are to unite with the work of the ministers of
the gospel. Through their labors, souls are to be saved, that the name
of God may be magnified....
God did not design that the medical missionary work should eclipse
the work of the third angel’s message. The arm is not to become the
body. The third angel’s message is the gospel message for these last
days, and in no case is it to be overshadowed by other interests and
made to appear an unessential consideration. When in our institutions
anything is placed above the third angel’s message, the gospel is not
there the great leading power.—
Testimonies For The Church 6:235-
241
(1900).
[523]
Medical Ministry Not to Take the Place of Evangelism—
Medical missionary work is not to take the place of the ministry of the
Word. It is not to absorb the means which should be used to sustain
the Lord’s work in foreign fields. From wheresoever the money in the
treasury shall come, it is the Lord’s, and it is not to be used so largely
in erecting buildings in America. The donations of the people are not
to be sunk in lines of work which show little results. The truth is to be
proclaimed, that the way of the Lord may be prepared. The trumpet
must give no uncertain sound....
Medical missionary work must leave room for the ministry of the
Word. Contempt is never to be expressed in regard to the promulgation