Testimonies to the Church Regarding our Youth Going to Battle Creek to Obtain An Education

Our Means Not to be Tied Up in Bonds

A proposition has been made that our people purchase Sanitarium bonds, but light has been given me that means is not to be thus drawn from our people. Last night place after place that is still unworked was presented before me. These places are all ripe for the harvest. They are calling for workers, and the means of our people is not to be tied up so that it can not be used in this work.... SpTB06 12.1

Regarding investment in bonds, I am instructed to say further that if no voice were raised against this arrangement, if our people should tie up their money in such investment, when it became necessary to call for means for aggressive missionary work, it would be found that there was a greater dearth of means among us than there is now. Plans may be started that at the beginning seem very promising, but often the foresight would be much more pleasant than the aftersight, were these plans carried out. I have been commissioned to instruct our people to be economical, and always ready to give of their means to the Lord's work. If you have a thousand dollars to spare, God wants it; it belongs to him. If you have twenty dollars to spare, God wants it. His vineyard is waiting to be worked. SpTB06 12.2

The light that God has given me is that there are proper ways that the Conference shall devise to help the Sanitarium in Battle Creek. I wish that a portion of the work of this institution had been taken elsewhere. But the Sanitarium has been erected in Battle Creek, and it must be helped. God will institute ways and means by which it can be helped. But he does not wish his people to invest their money in bonds. SpTB06 12.3

There is a great field to be worked. God wants us to labor intelligently. We are not to grasp every advantage that we can for the part of the field in which we are laboring. We are to do for those working in hard, needy fields just what we would like our brethren to do for us were we placed in similar circumstances. There are small sanitariums to be established in various places. Medical missionary work is the helping hand of God. This work must be done. It is needed in new fields and in fields where work was started years ago. Since this work is the helping hand of God and the entering wedge of the gospel, we want you to understand that you are to have a part in it. It is not to be divorced from the gospel. Every soul before me this morning should be filled with the true medical missionary spirit. SpTB06 13.1