Manuscript Releases, vol. 4 [Nos. 210-259]

Appeal For a Balanced Work

Dear Brother and Sister Irwin,

4MR 426.3

A happy new year to you.... I am so very much interested in the work that I have told you was presented before me. I saw large companies and small companies stretching out their hands and saying, “Come and help us. We want you to open to us the word of God.” In all my experiences I have not seen so general inquiring interest to be taught the truth. There have been some backsets, but the Lord has not left His people.... 4MR 426.4

I think that so far twelve have taken their stand at Maitland; but we must have more, and shall have many converts who believe. The best of house-to-house labor is being done. There is a wide extended circle to be worked. Such kindness and courtesy as we have received from the people makes us more urgent for their souls, and we will labor to the utmost of our ability. These people are not of the depraved class, but their souls are just as much value as are the souls of the most abandoned characters.... 4MR 426.5

I see that your difficulties are becoming more settled and pronounced because Dr. Kellogg refuses counsel and chooses to do the very things that God has told him not to do. But the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. If Dr. Kellogg refuses to change his methods of labor, then the sure result will come.... 4MR 427.1

Seek to save Dr. Kellogg from himself. He is not heeding the counsel he should heed. He is not satisfied because the Lord has signified that the missionary work does not consist alone in the slum work in Chicago. That work, thought to be the great and important thing to be done, is a very defective and expensive work. It has absorbed the means, and has deprived our poverty-stricken foreign mission fields of the help God designed them to have. The use of means in what is called the medical missionary work needs most thorough investigation. Means have been consumed and will continue to be consumed in a work which is not the greatest or most important to be done in our world.... 4MR 427.2

The Lord has signified that the missionary, health-restorative gospel shall never be separated from the ministry of the word. The Lord Jesus has in His own example shown us the way in which His work is to be done in the restoration of suffering humanity. It is the Lord's purpose that in every part of our world health institutions shall be established as a part of the gospel work. If men feel that God has called them to devote all their missionary efforts to the worst part of the cities, no one should forbid them to work. But the Lord has in His own wisdom established sanitariums as a special illustration of the gospel work to be done in magnifying the truth. But medical missionary work is not to be made a separate work, under a separate organization from the gospel ministry, after one man's mind and one man's judgment. The work in all its branches is to be one. 4MR 427.3

The medical missionary work God has set in operation as a practical illustration of the gospel, but there is not to be in any place a mammoth settlement to be supported, while in many other places there is the very same need of a representation of the gospel truth. 4MR 428.1

Plants must be made in all parts of the world. America is not all the world. The expenditure of means to set in operation the medical missionary work as it now stands has not been made under the divine theocracy. There needs to be a decided change. The money consumed in one line has brought a great dearth of means in other lines where it should be invested to make the medical missionary work the very thing God designed it should be. 4MR 428.2

Dr. Kellogg must understand that God is not best glorified by his all-absorbing interest in the past, the present, and the future of the medical missionary work after the same practice. The sanitarium needs all that there is of him to keep its healthful position and standing. This has been greatly neglected in carrying out a work that God has not ordered. The means coming into the sanitarium have been devoted to a work that was not after the Lord's order. This was why I was bidden to call upon the sanitarium for means to establish a health institution in this new world [Australia]. With this means we could be provided with facilities to do missionary work which would tell with great power in this country. 4MR 428.3

Donations large and abundant have come into the hands of Dr. Kellogg. These should not have been swallowed up in doing that which the world would do largely, but the world will not do the work which God has committed to His people. He requires us to be wide awake in preparing the way for Christ's second coming. This work is included in the commission Christ gave to His disciples. He bids us, “Lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.”—Letter 3, 1900, pp. 1-5. (To Elder and Mrs. G. A. Irwin, January 1, 1900.) 4MR 429.1