318
Life Sketches of Ellen G. White
appearance! Disease had gone, the skin was clear, the countenance
joyful; body and mind seemed animated with new life....
“Many of the sick and suffering will turn from the cities of the
country, refusing to conform to the habits, customs, and fashions of
city life; they will seek to regain health in some one of our country
sanitariums. Thus, though we are removed from the cities twenty
or thirty miles, we shall be able to reach the people, and those who
[402]
desire health will have opportunity to regain it under conditions most
favorable.
“God will work wonders for us if we will in faith cooperate with
Him. Let us, then, pursue a sensible course, that our efforts may be
blessed of heaven and crowned with success.”
Testimonies for the
Church 7:78, 79
.
The counsels regarding the extension of medical missionary work
were not limited to any one favored section. “God has qualified His
people to enlighten the world.” Mrs. White wrote while her mind
was especially exercised concerning the opportunities before Seventh-
day Adventists in southern California. “He has entrusted them with
faculties by which they are to extend His work until it shall encircle
the globe. In all parts of the earth, they are to establish sanitariums,
schools, publishing houses, and kindred facilities for the accomplish-
ment of His work.... In many lands medical missions are to be estab-
lished, to act as God’s helping hand in ministering to the afflicted.
“Christ cooperates with those who engage in medical missionary
work. Men and women who unselfishly do what they can to establish
sanitariums and treatment rooms in many lands will be richly rewarded.
Those who visit these institutions will be benefited physically, men-
tally, and spiritually—the weary will be refreshed, the sick restored
to health, the sin-burdened relieved. In far-off countries, from those
whose hearts are by these agencies turned from the service of sin unto
righteousness, will be heard thanksgiving and the voice of melody. By
their songs of grateful praise a testimony will be borne that will win
others to allegiance to and fellowship with Christ.”
Testimonies for the
Church 7:51, 52
.
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At the time of the dedication of the Loma Linda Sanitarium, April
15, 1906, Mrs. White reviewed some of the remarkable providences
that had attended the efforts of the brethren to secure sanitarium proper-
ties in southern California. She also outlined briefly the divine purpose