Pastoral Ministry

Medical Missionaries

The medical missionary work and the gospel ministry must not be separated—The medical missionary work is not to be carried forward as something apart from the work of the gospel ministry. The Lord's people are to be one. There is to be no separation in His work. Time and means are being absorbed in a work which is carried forward too earnestly in one direction. The Lord has not appointed this. He sent out his twelve apostles and afterward the seventy to preach the Word to the people, and He gave them power to heal the sick and to cast out devils in his name. The two lines of work must not be separated. Satan will invent every possible scheme to separate those whom God is seeking to make one. We must not be misled by his devices. The medical missionary work is to be connected with the work of the third angel's message, as the hand is connected with the body; and the education of students in medical missionary lines is not complete unless they are trained to work in connection with the church and the ministry.—Counsels on Health, 557. PaM 108.2

Ministers and medical workers should cooperate with each other—He calls upon His people to work in harmony. He calls upon those engaged in our medical work to unite with the ministry: He calls upon the ministers to cooperate with the medical missionary workers: and He calls upon the church to take up their appointed duty, holding up the standard of true reform in their own territory, leaving the trained and experienced workers to press on into new fields.—Testimonies for the Church 6:292. PaM 108.3

The faithful physician should have as much claim to the prayers of God's people as the minister—The duties of the physician are arduous. Few realize the mental and physical strain to which he is subjected. Every energy and capability must be enlisted with the most intense anxiety in the battle with disease and death. Often he knows that one unskillful movement of the hand, even but a hairbreadth in the wrong direction, may send a soul unprepared into eternity. How much the faithful physician needs the sympathy and prayers of the people of God. His claims in this direction are not inferior to those of the most devoted minister or missionary worker. Deprived, as he often is, of needed rest and sleep, and even of religious privileges on the Sabbath, he needs a double portion of grace, a fresh supply daily, or he will lose his hold on God and will be in danger of sinking deeper in spiritual darkness than men of other callings. And yet often he is made to bear unmerited reproaches and is left to stand alone, the subject of Satan's fiercest temptations, feeling himself misunderstood, betrayed by his friends.—Testimonies for the Church 5:446. PaM 108.4