AMEN 2012: Testimony

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2012 Plenary Sessions

Ted N.C. Wilson

God’s Special Plan - Medical Missionary Work

Thank you, Mark, and what a privilege it is to be among medical missionaries here at the eighth annual Amen Conference.

What a privilege to be part of God's great Advent movement.

Recently, I had the privilege of visiting the country of Israel for the first time and walking where Jesus walked.

Thank you for that beautiful rendition this evening.

I want to tell you brothers and sisters you don't have to go to Israel to walk where Jesus walked.

You just have to go out onto the streets and into the cities and into the villages and the towns where people are hurting and that's where Jesus walks.

You can walk, you are walking where Jesus walks.

You know it's a privilege by God's grace to be alive in the final days of Earth's history and the culmination of the Advent movement.

You know, what a time to bring your testimony, as is the theme for this annual conference, your testimony, looking at how Christ can work through each of you in these last days.

And as I looked at the program that was organized for the weekend, I know that God is going to bless you in an enormous way with the testimonies that people are going to share this weekend.

Testimony is to reveal in your own life the bearing of witness to God's power, working through you and in you to help accomplish the great task that he has in store for his people.

You know in this country we are just about at the end of a very interesting political season with many proposals and pronouncements about endless topics including health care.

And although Seventh-day Adventists worldwide as a church do not take sides in political and national political activities.

We do have strong convictions on what God's plans are for his creatures, which include health care and complete health.

And as we all know, God has the best health care plan available.

The ultimate plan to restore us physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.

He calls for us to share it, to tell the world through loving kindness and interaction, pointing people to the 1 who can bring about abundant life.

Now, at Seventh-day Adventists, we believe in the whole person concept, in ministering to every part of the individual, to those around us in a very comprehensive way.

In fact that beautiful verse of 3rd John verse 2, Beloved I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers.

And long before the current promotion of whole person health, God, the creator of the human race and everything good on this earth, was declaring that he wanted us to be healthy, to be revived, to be reformed through the Holy Spirit's power.

And he wants us to understand that we are a complex creature, each of us, made in his image, by his hand, and through his breath on the literal sixth day of a recent creation week.

Our magnificent creator wants us to be in the best of health in every way and to prosper through our relationship with Christ in our service to others and for him.

Following Jesus' beautiful example as we read in Matthew chapter 9 verses 35 to 38, And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered like sheep, having no shepherd.

Then he said to his disciples, The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labors into his harvest.

You see, Christ's ministry is to be our ministry as health professionals, pastors, church workers, community and social workers and church members.

Jesus went into the cities and the villages where the people are.

And I want to appeal to each of you as health professionals in this wonderful organization of Amen.

And let me just on behalf of the World Church thank you for organizing this organization called Amen.

The Adventist Medical Evangelism network.

May it be a blessing not only here but around the world.

I want to urge you to join the World Church in the great work of reaching people in the cities.

Follow Christ's example and reach out to those in need where the masses live.

We now live in a world, as you know, that is made up of more than 50% of the world's population living in the urban areas of the world.

So join God's people in this great mission to the cities.

There is no change in the messages that God has sent in the past.

The work in the cities is the essential work for this time.

When the cities are worked as God would have them, the result will be the setting and operation of a mighty movement such as we have not yet witnessed.

I want to urge you to earnestly study, pray, humble yourself and seek God's direction as a people pleading with him for the outpouring of the latter rain of the Holy Spirit so that we can see this mighty movement take place.

The world is wearing out And I believe with all my heart, as I do believe you do as well, that Jesus is coming soon.

Let's follow Christ's example and go into the cities to reach the people where they are.

Now this ministry of Jesus is to be the burden of every Seventh-day Adventist.

In following Christ's work for the people of the cities where possible, we're to work with this in and out concept that is presented in the spirit of prophecy.

It will involve every church member, every evangelistic resource, every possible outreach and witnessing activity.

You see, in every city, Seventh-day Adventists should minister to people, not only from their local churches, but also from such centers of influence like health centers, clinics, vegetarian restaurants, reading rooms, counseling centers, community service centers.

We ought to have health lectures, literature evangelism, small group outreach, door-to-door mission work, innovative media evangelism, social work that follows Christ's methods, personal and small group Bible studies, public evangelism, comprehensive health ministry, and a myriad of other things that the Lord is going to help you and others discover as we move into the very last days of Earth's history.

This work is going to be requiring a massive amount of lay membership involvement as well as established denominational entities that are doing their work in the cities and in the large centers of the world.

We need pastors, health professionals, church members working together as indicated by the spirit of prophecy in what is termed a blended ministry.

In manuscript 117 written in 1901, It says this, every minister of the gospel should be prepared to do practical medical missionary work.

The medical missionary work is to be as closely united with the gospel ministry as the arm is united to the body.

The reluctance shown to the promulgations of the principles of health reform is caused by an unwillingness to deny self.

In our large cities, the medical missionary work must go hand in hand with the gospel ministry.

It will open doors for the entrance of truth.

You see how powerful and important your work is in the end of time?

Praise God for the way that people are developing various outreach ministries.

The beautiful ministry that was just shared about win and how you can win wellness and a powerful way in which God can use this kind of an outreach.

You see in this vital work of soul winning in the large cities, God is calling us to reinvigorate the use of medical missionary work or as we are placing a new term before people, comprehensive health ministry.

Something that involves an entire approach to wholeness and well-being that everyone can participate in.

This is a balanced comprehensive health ministry that must have the united efforts of denominational organizations, self-employed health professionals such as many of you, and supporting ministries.

Now the out part of the city work involves outpost centers or small institutes in the countryside just outside the cities, where city workers can live or at least visit, be refreshed from their work in the cities, where simple health lifestyle centers can care for guests who want to learn a new approach to life.

I was reading in the promotional material about Dr.

Tim Howe and the outreach that he has in the state of Maine.

We all know of what Weimar is doing and many other institutes.

Uchi Pines and many others represented here.

And that's what we need outside of each 1 of these large cities around the world.

We need a place where young people can be trained for city evangelism.

We need Holy Spirit inspired strategic planning by administrators and pastors and health professionals for every city around the world that will produce the kind of beehive of comprehensive health ministry that was described by Ellen White taking place in San Francisco about 1906.

In fact, Don McIntosh just mentioned to me this evening, before the meeting began, that they are attempting to do the same type of beehive activity in San Francisco that was done now a hundred years ago.

This is the type of thing that we need in a place like New York City.

I was just speaking with an old friend, John Lupens, who is here this evening.

He wrote a book, New York, a Symbol, because Ellen White indicates that New York was to be a symbol as to how the rest of the world was to be worked.

And many years ago, he and I, when we were pastoring in the Greater New York Conference, John wrote a book, we collaborated a bit on this, and he has a great burden for it.

New York, a symbol as to how the rest of the world should be worked.

In fact, next year, we're going to be holding about 350 to 400 public evangelistic meetings in New York, in the metropolitan area, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York.

Many individuals from other parts of the world are going to come and participate with us so that they then can go back from New York to their large cities in the various divisions around the world to do the kind of comprehensive urban evangelistic work that we are seeing developed in New York.

And New York will then truly, by God's grace and through the Holy Spirit's power, be a symbol as to how the rest of the world should be worked.

Pray for the people that are going to be helping us in that tremendous evangelistic outreach.

My wife and I will be holding 1 of those meetings in the very church where I began my ministry, West 11th Street in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

And let me tell you, if ever there was a place that needed comprehensive health ministry, it's Greenwich Village.

Now all of this is going to be preceded and followed up by community outreach and a comprehensive approach to reaching New York and the other cities of the world.

I ask for you to earnestly pray that the Holy Spirit will be poured out without measure upon his people, God's people in New York.

I want to especially urge young people here tonight, and those who might be listening at some future time.

Young people, young professionals, God has placed a burden upon you to see that his counsel in the Bible and the spirit of prophecy is fulfilled through his power in these last days.

I want to call on young people to take this burden in a very powerful way.

He's calling on all of us to be part of this blended ministry to show compassion on those who are weary and broken and scattered, those who need a relationship with Jesus Christ.

You see, comprehensive health ministry is meeting people's needs in a practical way that shows the love of Jesus, whether it's sharing a loaf of whole wheat bread with your neighbor, whether it is sharing Christ in your personal practice or whether it is sharing Christ in 1 of our very technologically advanced medical centers.

Medical missionary work is God's plan for reaching the hearts of people.

Ellen White's letter of 110 in 1902, medical missionary work has been presented as the entering wedge of present truth.

It is by this work that hearts are reached and those once prejudiced are softened and subdued.

This is the work that is to be done today.

Medical missionary work is the pioneer work of the gospel.

In the ministry of the Word and in medical missionary work, the gospel is to be preached and practiced.

Dale Leamon

Jesus Our Health, Part 1

We've been told to follow Christ's methods, haven't we?

And that's an enigma because we say, okay, but I'm not Jesus.

You know, I'm not trying to prove that I have the divine life within myself, although I should have the divine life within myself.

After all, he started divine and added the human.

I start human and add the divine through the Holy Spirit.

But It can seem like a big question mark just follows that.

And I'm quite sure I don't have all the answers.

But I would just like to review with you 1 story this morning from the Gospel of John, from which we can gain some lessons about Jesus' method.

This is of course the man healed at the pool of Bethesda.

Starting with the first verse, After this there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

This will now be his second trip during his ministry to Jerusalem.

You may remember in the first trip he cast a lot of people out of the temple, had an interesting visit with Nicodemus, met a woman at the well on his way back up towards Samaria.

Jesus had already had rather negative encounters with the leaders in Jerusalem by this time and they were quite determined already that he couldn't be the true Messiah and they were out to prove that.

Now he's back in Jerusalem but apparently somewhat incognito and he's there on the Sabbath day.

It says in verse 2, now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having 5 porches.

This is actually not a very good transliteration, it says it could be Bethsatha.

Anyway, this pool was probably considerably underground, even in those days.

I don't mean that it was literally in a cave, but it would be down below street level, because the water was gravity-fed in those days, wasn't it?

And to get water into Jerusalem, you couldn't get it into a pool without it being considerably below street level.

You probably had to go down a number of steps, but surrounding it was a colonnade.

And in those days, there were a great multitude of sick people there.

Blind people, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.

All right, we want to ask ourselves how Jesus worked.

Well, number 1, he went where sick people were.

Why would you go to where sick people are?

Does Jesus care who he puts in his kingdom?

He's just going to the highways and hedges.

We sometimes think, oh, that person would make a great potential for the kingdom, and we look at somebody who's already a conservative Christian and living a good lifestyle and seems to know their Bible quite well and knows how to pray and, ah, what a great Adventist they would make.

In many cases they're not even slightly interested in being Adventist, they're quite happy where they are, thank you, and they make a lousy evangelistic candidate.

So where do you look for evangelistic candidates?

Hurting people more often have an open mind and an open heart.

1 of the reasons why we absolutely must not allow ourselves to be stuck in a situation where speaking of our faith to those who are ill is forbidden.

Of all the people who most desperately need a hopeful word of faith, it's the ill.

And many times their minds are open to such words.

It was on the Sabbath, we get so many lessons here about Jesus' operation.

Sabbath, by the way, is a good day for evangelism.

We Adventists tend to kick up our heels, pick up our heels, not kick them up.

And rest, After all, it's a day of rest, right?

And we regard that as our privilege and we love the Sabbath because it's a time to just get past all the, although if you're a physician that may not be the case at all.

But anyway, Jesus thought the Sabbath was a great day to find people and of course that is true.

So they had this tradition, you know, that an angel came down from at certain times and the pool would be stirred up and the water would be, you know, moving in motion and then whoever would step in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had.

Now this was obviously an idea that had gained quite a bit of credibility and the only way we can imagine that it gained any credibility was that apparently people actually were healed sometimes.

And whether you want to think that was primarily the placebo effect or whether you want to say that the Lord healed them or Satan, I don't know.

We're not told, we're not given any commentary, but apparently some people were healed when they got in the water after it had been stirred.

A certain man, verse 5 says, was there who had an infirmity for 38 years.

Thirty-eight years is a long time to be sick, but I know people who have been sick longer than that, as do you.

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, he said to him, do you want to be made well?

The sick man answered him, sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.

But while I'm coming another steps down before me." And Jesus said to him, rise, take up your bed and walk.

And immediately the man was made well and he took up his bed and he walked.

That day was the Sabbath and we won't go into the Sabbath controversy portion of the story but I want you to see Jesus' next meeting with the man.

It says in verse 13, the 1 who was healed did not know who it was who had healed him, for Jesus had withdrawn a multitude being in that place.

Verse 14, afterward Jesus found him in the temple.

I like the way that says that, don't you?

Jesus found him and said to him, See you have been made well.

Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.

Would all of you agree that if you're found at all, it was Jesus who found you?

Now let's see if we can learn some vital things from this story.

First of all, starting with the last point that we just read, Jesus said, sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you.

What we want to do here is first of all notice that Jesus really knew a lot about this man.

I don't know whether he was seeing the history of everybody all the time, I hardly think so.

After all, Jesus lived in a normal human body, and he obviously did become tired, and so we know that he had to limit himself to what the brain can handle.

Now the human brain is amazing and can handle immensely more than most of us use it for, and Jesus undoubtedly used his a great deal more than we use ours, but I don't think that he had a constant readout of everybody's life as he was looking around in a casual way.

I suspect that he asked the father to open this man's file.

And then I suspect that he was instantly given the details of this man's life.

Now, by the way, I think that's very important because I believe that point number 1 in Jesus' method, well maybe it's point 1A.

I mean point 1 would be to actually meet the person, right?

Seek out the sick, look for opportunities to meet the person and meet the person.

But 1A would be Know everything you can about that person.

Jesus' method involves really knowing people.

And you may say, yes, but I can't just ask the Father to give me a file on that person's life.

I'm not saying it will work just as it did with Jesus, that your mind will suddenly have the man's history, but I will say this because of experience.

If You want to know the person, and I hope you do, because until you know the person, the good you can do for that person is very limited.

Secondly, until you know the person, the influence you can have on that person is very limited.

Jeff McAuliffe

Contemporary Tent Making

Last year I was able to do a little presentation.

Last year we, you know, I think they take the dentists sometime and put them on the second floor.

And we had a little presentation on something called Mission to the Many, which is a program that we're initiating in Pennsylvania Conference.

I'll tell you a little bit more about that as we go along.

Basically, what my life has evolved into as a practitioner is tent making.

I found that dentistry is an excellent way to get to do other things and God really has blessed the more I challenge him on that notion the more he makes it evident that I'm headed in the right direction.

So this year I was able to cut back to about 25 hours a week in my practice and believe it or not I still can support my 3 children at Andrews.

And 1 child at home, I'll tell you about him in a little bit.

I always have to tell stories about Jaden, for those of you who are familiar with me, my youngest son Jaden, while the other 3 are in college, he is in fourth grade.

He came on later in life, and he has Down syndrome, and he has autism, and he's ADHD.

And he's got all those special things in him that make life incredibly joyful for us as parents.

I say that and I really mean it, because Jaden has taught me more than I could possibly ever have been taught from a book.

Last year, I told some stories about him, and I'll tell 1 in a little bit here about him as well.

1 of the things that we know about city ministries is it's not the first time it's come up in the word of God.

It's not the first time it's come up to God's people.

In fact, there was a prophet who was asked to go to a city he didn't want to go to, and most people don't want to go to the cities.

The prophet was Jonah, And Jonah decided he wanted to go in the opposite direction because he couldn't possibly believe that God meant what he said when he was talking about saving the people of Nineveh.

Well, I'm going to tell you that today God means exactly what he's saying in that he wants to save the people in the cities of the world.

And he's called his people to renew their energies.

This is not the first time he's called us to do this.

A hundred years ago or more, Ellen White began to give a series of invitations and ideas for us to go back and reach the cities where the people are.

It's not because God loves cities, it's because he loves the people who are in the cities, right?

And so we had the call once and sort of like Jonah, we didn't go in the right direction.

For a hundred years we've been sort of in the belly of the whale with regards to this issue in particular.

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