Medical Ministry

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Disadvantages of Large Institutions

“Break up the large centers,” has been the word of the Lord. “Carry the light to many places.” Those who are desirous of receiving a training for effective medical missionary work should understand that large sanitariums will be conducted so much like institutions of the world that students laboring in such sanitariums cannot obtain a symmetrical training for Christian medical missionary work. MM 158.4

The proclamation of the truth in all parts of the world calls for small sanitariums in many places, not in the heart of cities, but in places where city influences will be as little felt as possible. MM 159.1

I am obliged to say that the making of so large a plant in ----- and the calling together of those who should be engaged in medical missionary work in many places, is doing just what God has specified should not be done. MM 159.2

The fact that many patients are coming to the new sanitarium at ----- is not to be read as a sign that the planning for so large work there was for the best. To this large institution will come many men and women who are not really sick. Workers will be required to wait on them; our nurses will become the servants of worldly men and women who are not inclined to piety or religion. But this is not the work that God has given to His medical missionaries. Our charge has been given us by the greatest Medical Missionary that this world has ever seen.—Letter 210, 1903. MM 159.3