The Story of our Health Message

The Temptation to Compromise

A year earlier Elder White had felt free to recommend that those whose health was in a critical condition should place themselves under the care of the skillful physicians at Dansville. How to Live 1:18. Experience had now made it clear that conscientious Sabbathkeepers would find constant temptation to compromise with principle even in the very best and most advanced medical institutions. This difficulty was thus stated by Mrs. White in speaking of her vision at Rochester: SHM 141.2

“I was shown that those who are strongly fortified with religious principles and are firm to obey all God’s requirements cannot receive that benefit from the popular health institutions of the day that others of a different faith can. Sabbathkeepers are singular in their faith. To keep all God’s commandments as He requires them to do in order to be owned and approved of Him is exceedingly difficult in a popular water cure. They have to carry along with them at all times the gospel sieve and sift everything they hear, that they may choose the good and refuse the bad.”—Ibid., 489, 490. SHM 141.3

This instruction not only pointed out the difficulties confronting Sabbathkeepers who might seek to avail themselves of proper care and rational treatment in popular health resorts, but went further in giving them definite, practical instruction and counsel. The need was manifest, and the reasons could now be easily understood for the following proposal: SHM 141.4

“I was shown that we should provide a home for the afflicted and those who wish to learn how to take care of their bodies that they may prevent sickness. ... SHM 142.1

“Sabbathkeepers should open a way for those of like precious faith to be benefited without their being under the necessity of expending their means at institutions where their faith and religious principles are endangered, and where they can find no sympathy or union in religious matters. ... SHM 142.2

“Our people should have an institution of their own, under their own control, for the benefit of the diseased and suffering among us, who wish to have health and strength that they may glorify God in their bodies and spirits which are His.”—Ibid., 489-492. SHM 142.3

To establish and to conduct a denominational health institution might seem an impossible undertaking for the few Seventh-day Adventists of that time with their limited means and with almost no trained medical workers. But with the command came the faith and the enabling to obey. No one could have foreseen, in that day of small things, to what large enterprises and endeavors the instruction given in the vision of December 25, 1865, would lead. The sad afflictions of Elder White and other overburdened workers proved to be the birth pangs which marked the beginnings of our present system of health institutions and other medical missionary lines of service. SHM 142.4