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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Gospel Medical Missionary Company Evangelism

Dave Fiedler

Kellogg vs. the Ministry - A Century of Collateral Damage

Well, thank you, brothers and sisters, for giving me this opportunity.

That's gonna be in my way, but I promise I will look at it.

We actually have more than can reasonably be covered this morning, so I will just warn you in advance that we'll go very quickly through the opening slides because the most important stuff is coming at the end.

And I do want to get there instead of dropping off at that.

Let's bow our heads for a quick word of prayer.

I pray that you would hold your hand over the unusual circumstance we have with the PA just now, and everything else that would affect this presentation.

And we pray that you would give us the time to cover that which is most important as you gave Joshua the time to finish the battle.

We ask your blessing now in Jesus' name, amen.

This would be better if I can see this so I know where I'm at.

There we go, I'll just go like that and life will be good.

I was a teacher in classrooms for 20 years, and it was only after that that I ran into this statement.

As religious teachers, we are under obligation to God to teach the students how to engage in medical missionary work.

Now, cutting to the chase, an obligation is something that you must do or you get in trouble, right?

I never knew that Language comes and goes the word of the Lord lasts forever, but everything else is in transition We're going to be talking about medical missionary work But This is not a term that Adventists always use.

As a matter of fact, the first time that I have record of that showing up in the Review and Herald, from the pen of Ellen White at least, is not until 1893, and we don't find it in the testimonies until 1901.

Anybody speak Spanish or any of the other romance languages Okay, boy.

No all those other variations thereof, okay Benny well or good and we derive from that a few different forms of the word there.

We'll be talking about the benevolent work, the last item on that list.

Adventists, before they spoke of medical missionary work, they had what they called the benevolent work, okay?

This was a term used by some of the Adventists from the late 1860s on to describe efforts to help people, especially the poor, disadvantaged, or sick, and to do that in practical, tangible ways.

A synonym for this was known as the Christian help work.

It's not flashy, but it gets the idea across.

You're gonna go out there and help somebody.

This was largely in reaction to the failure of the church to provide for Hannah Moore, and if I had time, I would tell you the story of Hannah Moore.

I will not, however, because I don't have that time.

Suffice it to say that she was our first foreign missionary, brought 20 years of experience to us when we had no foreign missionaries whatsoever.

And rather than receive her gratefully at Battle Creek, we refused to, or we failed to receive her.

She went to Northern Michigan and died in 6 months of tuberculosis.

Now, White speaks about that, and we will move on.

By 1887, There were 37 Adventist city missions in operation, but in 1888 only 22 were reported.

That doesn't mean that, what's the difference there, 15?

It doesn't mean that 15 of them folded within 12 months time.

Very small kind of, 1 might argue almost insignificant operations that was apparently insignificant enough that 1 year they'd report it and 1 year they wouldn't.

So this was the state of Adventist benevolent work.

For both good and bad, Seventh-day Adventist benevolent work and later medical missionary work would never be the same.

Kellogg was, and I have a story to illustrate each of these points, all of which I will be skipping.

Kellogg was the most colorful individual in Adventist history, just as far as an individual goes.

It was 1 of the worst things he ever did.

Not because this was not a fine young lady.

She was a gracious, intelligent, educated, accomplished Sabbath-keeping girl.

She simply was never a Seventh-day Adventist.

It was her former major professor at Alfred University, the Seventh-day Baptist University in upstate New York, who led Dr.

Kellogg was controlling, And last but certainly not least, Dr.

I know that on the basis of inspired counsel.

Kellogg was a converted man and we all knew it.

We could see the converting power of God working in his heart and life.

Well, the meeting at Minneapolis, of course, is a reference to the 1888 General Conference session.

Jones, Wagner, righteousness by faith, you know, something about all that with any luck at all.

This was the meeting at which Kellogg was converted.

We've made it so intangible that sometimes we've argued the theory of it so much that sometimes we've forgotten the practicality of it.

Let me give you some practical signs of righteousness by faith.

While the believer is justified because of the merit of Christ, he is not free to work on righteousness, we all know that.

Faith works by love and purifies the soul, it's a familiar phrase, okay.

Faith buds and blossoms and bears a harvest of precious fruit...

The Door was Open - But We Didn’t Go Through

Well, thank you for sharing your Sabbath afternoon with me.

I'm going to guess that most of you were probably here this morning.

So we'll get you up to speed in a moment.

And unfortunately, I subtitled it as well.

The door was open, but we didn't go through.

Because as religious teachers, we are under obligation to God to teach the students how to engage in medical missionary work.

Now, not everybody is a teacher in a classroom or something of that nature.

But nonetheless, everybody is exerting some educational influence, let's put it that way.

Kellogg was converted in 1888 and he soon began working along benevolent lines.

This was an essential work that the churches had left undone.

And for those of you who, anybody who wasn't here this morning, these are basically paraphrasing spirit prophecy comments that we had on the screen this morning, okay?

Some ministers rejected health reform, criticized the kind of work Kellogg was doing, and made war upon him in order to build themselves up.

Kellogg began to fight back, belittling the ministry and seeking to make his work into a monument to himself.

The disunity between the gospel ministers and the medical missionary workers placed on our churches the worst evil that can be placed there.

In 1902 both the Battle Creek Sanitarium and the Review and Herald Publishing House were providentially destroyed as the Lord tried to get the leaders of these institutions to do the work represented in the 58th chapter of Isaiah.

Kellogg was eventually disfellowshipped And the denomination quickly moved away from the benevolent work.

And again, I want to emphasize that, That's such an easy thing to understand.

I don't know, somebody, hopefully not everyone, but you know every now and then you end up in a situation where you have somebody you're working with either above you or below you who has it out to get you, so to speak, and it's just not that pleasant, you know?

And the denominational leadership at the General Conference had plenty of reason to be tired of Dr.

Kellogg by the time he was finally disfellowshipped in 1907.

It is a very easy and natural thing to do to associate the work 1 does with the person.

And so, you know, I don't find it hard to see how that could have been done.

Well, anyhow, during that time period, out in California something new was going on.

Ellen White was calling for the establishment of sanitariums.

Particularly, she specified, in Southern California.

Now, there's an interesting little tidbit here that we'll come back to much later.

Why did she say, I mean, hey, what's wrong with Arizona or East Texas?

But she kept calling for sanitariums in California.

Remember any particular compelling reason for California?

The weather was, to grow the population there would be a lot of people here.

California at the time was famous as a healthy place.

I mean, you had LA, yes, but there was certainly countryside.

It was the tourism that she specified in particular.

She said, we establish these places where the tourists go.

And somebody comes from Minnesota, down here, that's Snowbird or something, you know, I'm getting out of the winter.

And they go to Southern California for their health.

Now, a lot of the time, you know, much of the time, health institutions in those days were not focused on acute care.

They were focused on more of what we'd call lifestyle medicine type of thing.

And so people would go to institutions for their health's sake.

And she said, we want to catch the tourists.

And then they take the gospel back home when they go.

She was, she didn't, well, she said that several times.

It wasn't the only horse she was beating, so to speak.

But she did say that quite a number of times.

It was for the tourist season, tourist traffic.

There was a second issue that came prominently to the front after Sister White came back from Australia.

You may remember from 1891 to 1900, she was in Australia.

And soon after she returned to the United States, she began raising an issue that she had spoken of some before her departure, not much during the Australian years.

But when she came back, she started talking about cities.

There were more cities in the States than there were in Australia.

Australia was still a fairly young and somewhat sparsely established country over there.

And she started saying these things like this, we must do more than we have done to reach the people of our cities.

Okay, so we're going to take a look at this, focus on cities for just a little bit here.

She said, there is to be a working of our cities as they never have been worked.

That which should have been done 20, yes, more than 20 years ago, is now to be done speedily.

Henceforth, medical missionary work is to be carried forward with an earnestness with which it has never yet been carried.

This work is the door through which the truth is to find entrance to the large cities.

What is the approach, the angle to reach the cities?

She says that in quite a number of places, okay?

1910, in every city there should be a city mission that would be a training school for workers.

Many of our brethren must stand condemned in the sight of God because they have not done the very work that God would have them do.

You know, I am convinced that God is merciful.

But he's also a God of justice and I let him sort out the 2 sometimes.

But it's clear she was calling for work in the cities.

Picking Up the Pieces - Learn the Lessons

Okay, right about now, the 1 question that you don't need to write down, but you're probably thinking, is does this guy ever say anything encouraging?

This is where you finally get a little good news, okay?

But I guess I like to pretend that reality is the best place to start to build on, you know?

And so I've tried to portray the reality as I see it of what has influenced our current status.

Now we're going to go through some other things here, but let's have a word of prayer to begin this.

Father, we do thank you for your blessing.

We thank you for the counsel you've given, the abundant counsel.

It's a struggle to get through it, to figure out all the details, Father.

And so we thank you as well that you have promised that we don't have to know everything, but just get started and that you'll explain it as we go.

We pray now that you'll be with us as we spend this time in this last meeting.

Picking up the pieces, learn the lessons, get it right.

We're going to skip over all the review because that review is all that we just covered.

So, and we're going to skip over that too because you already know that with any luck at all.

And we're going to start here, looking at some of the specifics of this plan that Ellen White mentioned of how to work the cities.

Not mentioned, promulgated, wrote about time after time.

I'm going to start with vegetarian restaurants, something that I'm currently involved in.

The first, The first, the basis, let's put it that way, for the whole possibility of vegetarian restaurants as an evangelistic enterprise came up June 28, 1877.

What actually happened was a colorful character of American history, a guy by the name of P.T.

Barnum brought his circus to Battle Creek.

It was a one-day gig And the good citizens of Battle Creek were scared.

Not because the circus people were going to do something bad, but because this was the only excitement that had come into Calhoun County for months.

And everybody from around was going to come to the circus.

And a good share of them were going to get drunk.

And bad things were going to happen afterwards.

And so The idea was discussed around and eventually the good sisters of the Battle Creek Church, they put up 2 tents, probably the brethren put the tents up, you know.

They put up 2 tents and they served hygienic food.

They had a big display of canned fruit, you know, bottles, jars, canned jars of fruit.

That was kind of a novel thing still at that point.

And sure enough, the people came from all around Calhoun County.

They came and they said the best food in town was at the Advent tent.

And they didn't have any problems with drunkards.

And the people of the town were thankful.

And Ellen White said, wow, we did that with 1 day.

Well, she talked about it some during the 1880s.

I don't really know when the first 1 was started.

She didn't talk about it a whole lot during the 1890s when she was in Australia.

September 21, 1900, she landed in San Francisco Bay, coming back from Australia.

And very quickly after that, you find her discussing vegetarian restaurants in far more negative terms.

September 23, 1905, she spoke to a whole group of vegetarian restaurant workers there in San Francisco.

The Vegetarian restaurants had been taking young people away from more specifically evangelistic lines of work, she said.

Why is there such a dearth of laborers in these important lines of work?

Our young people choose to labor in some place where they can live without any particular exercise of their mind spiritually.

The restaurants offer a free field for such individuals.

Anybody here involved with the summer canvassing program?

I know the history of where the Magabook programs came from.

The guy who did more to start than any other was my next-door neighbor for 2 years.

When somebody comes up with a viable method for doing something good for the Lord, and then those who care nothing for the method, but maybe see that, oh, look at that, you can earn some money to go to college.

Well, okay, That's what was happening with our restaurants.

Time to start earning your own money, John.

He's culturally expected to do something for the church.

But he really doesn't have any appetite for church work.

But there's a restaurant in San Francisco that's serving 500 meals a day.

And you just got 1 more bad influence in your restaurant.

1 more total, what do I want to say here, total ineffective non-soul winner.

Ellen White had some strong words on that point.

Vegetarian restaurants hadn't been looking after the workers.

The managers of our restaurants are to work for the salvation of the employees.

They, the managers, are to devote their best powers to instructing their employees in spiritual lines, explaining the Scriptures to them and praying with them and for them.

They are to guard the religious interests of the helpers as carefully as parents are to guard the religious interests of their children.

They were saying, oh, John, you want to work in the restaurant?

So you can expect to get this much money.

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Series

Gospel Medical Missionary Company Evangelism

The Door was Open - But We Didn’t Go Through

Transcript

Parent Series

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Parts

Kellogg vs. the Ministry - A Century of Collateral Damage

37m

The Door was Open - But We Didn’t Go Through

1h 36m

Picking Up the Pieces - Learn the Lessons

55m

Sound Doctrine