Ellen G. White Comments on the Use of Tithe Funds

3. Medical Missionary Work, to a Very Limited Degree

On May 4, 1898, the General Conference Committee authorized a tithe-for-tithe exchange with Dr. Kellogg. Concerning this special fund, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg wrote Ellen White on March 17, 1901: EGWCUTF 21.1

“Tithe which is paid by our sanitarium workers is all paid into the conference treasury just the same as other tithes, every cent of it. But at our request, and with your approval, an equal sum is appropriated to be used in carrying forward the missionary work connected with the sanitarium. This is the way the matter has always been conducted and I have never asked for anything else.”

Ellen White apparently approved of Dr. Kellogg’s use of tithe funds for medical missionary purposes, for three years earlier she had written to our leading brethren: EGWCUTF 21.2

“Why, I ask you, have not special efforts been made to employ medical missionary workers in our churches? Dr. Kellogg will make some moves that I would feel sorry to have him feel compelled to make. He says if no means is allowed to carry the message by medical missionary laborers into the churches, he shall separate the tithe that is paid into the conference, to sustain the medical missionary work. You should come to an understanding and work harmoniously. For him to separate the tithe from the treasury would be a necessity I greatly dread. If this money in tithe is paid by the workers into the treasury, why, I ask, should not that amount be apportioned to the carrying forward of the medical missionary work?”—Letter 51a, 1898.

“If no help is given by the presidents of our conferences and ministers to those engaged in our work, Dr. Kellogg will no longer pay in the tithe from the workers at the sanitarium. They will appropriate this to carrying forward the work that is in harmony with the light of God’s Word.... EGWCUTF 22.1

“When the Lord moves upon the churches, bidding them do a certain work, and they refuse to do that work, and someone consents to reach to the very depths of human woe and misery, God’s blessing will rest upon him.”—Letter 51, 1898. EGWCUTF 22.2

Ellen White cautioned that this type of work, while important, should not absorb all the energies of the church. She queried, EGWCUTF 22.3

“If we should all engage in the work that Dr. Kellogg has been doing for the lowest class of people, what would become of the work that is to be done in the places where the third angel’s message, the truth upon the Sabbath and the second coming of our Lord, has never been proclaimed?”—Letter 18, 1900. EGWCUTF 22.4