Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 14 (1899)

Lt 107, 1899

Managers of the Colorado Sanitarium

“Sunnyside,” Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

August 1, 1899

Previously unpublished.

To Those Who are Managers of the Sanitarium in Colorado

Dear Brethren:

I have seen your call for twenty thousand dollars to erect a building in Colorado for consumptives. But why do you make me your authority? I have had light upon these things, but without obtaining that light direct from me, you make a call for twenty thousand dollars. This is the way many are doing in various localities. Can you not stop and consider that you already have a building which in its erection laid an immense debt upon the conference? Have you thought where that money is coming from? Will you study the lesson that Christ gave His disciples, that in building a tower, it is advisable first to sit down and count the cost, lest when they begin building they find they have not means to finish, and hence are a derision to their neighbors? Brethren, just wait and consider. 14LtMs, Lt 107, 1899, par. 1

If this matter were presented to the world—who are wasting the Lord’s money, if they were called upon to help to create such an institution, the money would not be drawn from Seventh-day Adventists which is so much needed to open new fields where the standard of truth has not yet been uplifted. This erecting of so many sanitariums, thus laying upon the conference debts of thousands of dollars, is not approved by God. The institution which has been established in Colorado is sapping the funds so much needed in the work of foreign missions, to prepare the way for the message to be given and a people prepared to be saved for the Lord Jesus Christ. I will write no more now, for this must go to the office in time for the nine o’clock mail, and it is now past seven o’clock. I will write more at another time. 14LtMs, Lt 107, 1899, par. 2