Spalding and Magan Collection

God Above All

Sanitarium, Cal.,

Jan. 2, 1904.

Dr. J. H. Kellogg,
Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Mich.

My dear Brother,

I have received your letter, and also a copy of a circular letter recently sent out by you. Thank you. I have ever had an intense desire to see you standing firm in God, working under the direction of the great head Physician. SpM 344.1

My brother, I ask you to remember that Christ is our Leader. The beings that he has purchased with his blood are to study the life that he lived in this world, in order to learn what path they are to follow. His voice is heard, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” “So shall he be my disciple.” He who supposes, like Nebuchadnezzar, that he can lift up or cast down, will find that he is reckoning without God. SpM 344.2

I ask you to consider him, who though the Majesty of heaven, the King of Glory, took humanity upon him, and came to this world to show what those who serve him may become. God has given you precious knowledge regarding the treatment of the sick. But you have not appreciated this knowledge as a gift of God. SpM 344.3

I am thankful that you see something of what has been lost by your consenting to take the heavy burden of business matters, and by your effort to control the general work. Again and again your devisings have hindered the advancement of the work of God. Time has been lost during which victories might have been gained if you had stood out of the way. Your vision has been narrow. SpM 344.4

I am glad that you see the evil influence of division. Had you put yourself where you should have been, there would long ago been a united company, and medical missionary work, in connection with the gospel ministry, would have had a far-reaching influence for good. This I know: for the truth has been presented to me too clearly for me to turn away from it. SpM 344.5

You have manifested altogether too much kingship in your work as physician. For the last twenty years warnings in regard to this have been presented to me. I have been instructed that had you acted your part in giving recognition to men who were deserving of recognition, we should today have had men doing as good a work as yourself in some things; physicians qualified to fill important positions of trust. But there is a dearth of workers at a time when we so much need men who show all-around efficiency, because they acknowledge God and Christ as supreme. SpM 344.6

Christ is your example. If you fall short of following the example that he came to our world to give, God could not safely admit you into the heavenly courts. SpM 345.1

Infinite possibilities are placed within the reach of every human being who in humility and contrition returns to his allegiance to God, as a little child acknowledging the authority of his law, and obeying its precepts. The Father and the Son have provided for man great things, broad and high and deep and inexpressible. This they have done that man, becoming one with Christ in God, might trade on his talents to advance the kingdom of heaven in this world. But man, choosing the kingship, will, in pursuance of his object, reveal what self will do by its devising, setting aside the only One to whom belongs the kingship, who is the alpha and omega of all things, besides whom there is none else. SpM 345.2

God, the living, personal God, the author and ruler of nature, is above all science. He is acquainted with science that is inexplainable to the greatest minds in our world. In his sight the nations before him are as a drop in the bucket. He taketh up the isles as a very little thing. Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, or the beasts thereof for a burnt offering. SpM 345.3

How few have any knowledge of God! How few understand the greatest and majesty of our God! Human language can not define Him. His ways are past finding out. SpM 345.4

God sees that the world is in need of cleansing. In the very near future, this cleansing will come. It will at first be done in a limited degree, and then with greater and still greater power, till men will see that God means to bring them to repentance..... (There is then quoted Isaiah 24:1; 26:4.) SpM 345.5

Ellen G. White.