Today’s surrender to God’s will is tomorrow’s path for success. This is particularly true in ministry that is to produce revival and a system of selfless service. “When the cities are worked as God would have them, the result will be the setting in operation of a mighty movement such as we have not yet witnessed.”[1] Such was the case for arguably the most influential physicians in all of organized Adventist church history. And no, I am not talking about Dr. Kellogg.
In February 1886, Daniel Kress was deeply convicted to quit tobacco by one of the evangelists that C.T. Spurgeon had sent to Michigan[2]—and the evangelist hadn’t even spoken on nicotine. Daniel prayed through the withdrawal and never touched tobacco again. After this, he and his wife, Lauretta, promptly joined the First Baptist Church. With single-minded sacrifice, Daniel gave up his trade as a brushmaker to become a licensed minister of the First Baptist Church that same year. This surrender allowed the Kresses to begin to experience sanctification. As Paul said, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[3] True surrender and preparation for ministry never uncouples physical, spiritual, and mental wholeness.
Soon after their conversion, however, God called the Kresses to even deeper surrender: Lauretta began fearfully studying with a Seventh-day Adventist, Ms. Emma Ferry.[4] She was fearful because Daniel said he would leave her if she ever became an Adventist. The timing of her conversion was faith-building: they had a toddler and she was pregnant with their second child. Regardless of the consequences, however, Lauretta began keeping the Sabbath. After nearly leaving Lauretta completely when he found out she had disregarded his wishes, Daniel was pacified with the agreement that Lauretta would not read any Seventh-Day Adventist literature or go to their meetings.[5] Her conscience was held captive to the Word of God, however, and she continued to keep the Sabbath at home for an entire year. Unbeknownst to her, an evangelist, Elmer Harris, had asked Daniel to help him answer a believer’s question regarding the Sabbath. On Friday, August 27, 1887, Daniel told Lauretta he was going to keep the Sabbath with her. His surrender to God was complete and steadfast. He refused to follow the Baptists’ suggestion of finishing his contract with their current Baptist church in silence about his new beliefs. The Baptist church, in turn, refused to pay him for any of his contract—even the portion he had completed.
Surrender to selfless service is the personal sanctifying work to prepare for the final proclamation of the Third Angel’s Message. Penniless, but full of faith, the Kresses quickly started ministering in the Seventh-day Adventist Church with the same enthusiasm they had in the Baptist Church. They worked across Michigan with an experienced minister who took them under his wing and were among those who heard the 1888 message of righteousness by faith from Jones and Waggoner—which is the Third Angel’s Message in verity.[6] There was widespread revival and reformation among Seventh-day Adventists at this time, and the Kresses were among those who accepted the message and were baptized into the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.[7] It was during this time of total surrender and personal revival that Daniel and Lauretta Kress had a growing conviction to attend medical school. While simply helping people with any need in a Christlike manner is medical missionary work,[8] God had called them to a leadership role in this sacred and special line of God’s work. This next leap of faith took them to medical school in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
We understand that surrender leads to selfless service on a personal level. But do we understand the power of selfless service on a corporate level—a body of believers harmoniously working together? The Kresses exemplified this during their time in medical school when they not only housed fellow medical students but also formed the students into three Christian Help Bands to do good among the less fortunate of the community. The teams also held Bible studies among all classes of people. From the synergy of these efforts, a vibrant church plant formed. The revival that gripped the Kresses’ souls and manifested itself in selfless service spread to the Christian Help Bands and to the new church. Little did the Kresses realize, as they graduated from medical school in 1894,[9] how far that system of selfless service would spread.
Fast forward to the peak of their medical evangelism career. As the medical directors for the Australasian Union, they expanded the work from one small sanitarium to four vibrant sanitarium centers along with a multitude of treatment rooms in various cities. The Kresses and other leaders catalyzed groups of workers in every area to systematically do selfless service for all classes. Food factory workers did cooking demonstrations and taught health principles in order to connect with people and win their confidence.[10] Canvassers sold books and did hydrotherapy treatments as the need arose.[11] Evangelists and physicians educated and ministered to the crowds as well as individuals.[12] This harmonious action extended even to the Union’s large institutions such as conferences, publishing houses, schools, and sanitariums, which is a feat only accomplished by true revival. The prophet had said, “If the Lord has ever spoken by me, He speaks when I say that the workers engaged in educational lines, in ministerial lines, and in medical missionary lines must stand as a unit, all laboring under the supervision of God, one helping the other, each blessing each.”[13] When surrender and selfless service are flowing through an entire church that is meeting physical, mental, and spiritual needs with its organizations, God’s blessings can flow. This display of the character of God in the members of the Church is the result of revival; moreover, this practical demonstration of the love of God gains access to hearts no matter what century you live in.
During this successful juncture in the Australasian Union, the Kresses received a call to lead a deeper and broader initiative in selfless service. In the wake of Dr. Kellogg’s and the ministers’ attempts at control, centralization, and apostasy, Ellen White had called the General Conference to move out of Battle Creek and reorganize the Church. Washington D.C. was chosen for the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s new headquarters. This new chapter for the Seventh-day Adventist Church would not be complete without a demonstration of the full Gospel—which brings physical, mental, and spiritual wholeness.[14] Thus, Ellen White advised the General Conference to call the Kresses to lead the Church’s attempt to “do it right” in the United States.
Just like almost every other early Adventist effort, the Takoma Park Sanitarium work started with small groups ministering to people’s needs in the city itself and then developed into “treatment rooms.”[15] As pastors and canvassers led integrated developments in their lines of work, who better than the experienced Kress physicians to lead the medical work to the next level? However, the Kress physicians had to surrender what God had done through them in Australia in order to follow God’s call for selfless service in the United States—they must start their ministry from scratch again. Yet just as soon as the Kress physicians had established the principles of selfless service in the Takoma Park Sanitarium and the surrounding cities, Ellen White called them to start blended evangelism[16] with Elder Starr in the New England Conference while still maintaining leadership in Washington D.C.[17] Practically figuring out how to be in two places at once seemed impossible, but the faith of the Kress physicians had been strengthened by years of surrendering to the Lord’s will in both small and large things. As it turned out, the absence of the Kress physicians to do blended evangelism in new fields was exactly what the work in Takoma Park needed so that it could grow. Their absence allowed other leaders to develop at Takoma Park, while at the same time allowed them to spread their influence and the gospel to new areas. This ensured that the churches did not become dependent upon pastors or physicians to do soul winning. Otherwise, opportunities for surrender, service, and revival would have been taken away from the churches. Instead, this arrangement gave the churches in both New England and Washington D.C. the best chance for widespread revival.
In the late 1800s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church began to experience true revival. The more the Church embraced selfless service at every level, the more true revival, reformation, and evangelism were seen. Now, the Church remains largely in the Laodicean state, and it is high time for us to awaken out of our slumber. At the juncture of surrender and selfless service is medical missionary work, which will catalyze a movement greater than we have seen.[18] “I cannot too strongly urge all our church members, all who are true missionaries, all who believe the third angel’s message . . . to consider . . . [t]he work of beneficence . . . [as it] is the work that God requires His people to do at this time. . . . Combine medical missionary work with the proclamation of the third angel’s message. . . . See if the breath of life will not then come into your churches. A new element needs to be brought into the work. God’s people must realize their great need and peril and take up the work that lies nearest to them.”[19] Will we put God’s Word to the test both personally and corporately? “Can not our conference presidents open the way for the students in our schools to engage in this line of labor?”[20] Will we revive this system today that is promised to bring “the breath of life into the churches”?[21]
[1] Ellen G. White, Letters and Manuscripts, vol. 24 (Washington, D. C.:, 1909), Lt 47, par. 11.
[2] Daniel and Lauretta Kress, Under the Guiding Hand: Life Experiences of the Doctors Kress (Jaspar, OR: Adventist Pioneer Library, 2018, republication of the combined contend of the first [1932] and second [1941] editions published by College Press, Washington, D.C.), 53.
[3] 1 Thes. 5:23
[4] Joan A. Francis, “Kress, Daniel Hartman (1862–1956),” Encyclopedia of Seventh-Day Adventists, accessed August 8, 2024, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=D9MU#fn6.
[5] Kress, Under the Guiding Hand, 56.
[6] Ellen G. White, Review and Herald (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, April 1, 1890), par. 8.
[7] Kress, Under the Guiding Hand, 63-64.
[8] Ellen G. White, Manuscript Releases, vol.13 (Silver Spring, MD: Ellen G. White Estate, 1990), no. 1029, 211.
[9] Francis, “Kress, Daniel Hartman (1862–1956).”
[10] Morse, G. W. “Sanitarium Health Food Company’s Training School,” Union Conference Record, vol. 2, no. 1, January 15, 1899, 8.
[11] David Fiedler, D’sozo, 1st ed. (Coldwater, MI: Remnant Publications, 2012), 107-114.
[12] See Starr, G. B. “The Newcastle Camp and Tent Meetings,” Union Conference Record, vol. 2, no. 1, January 15, 1899, 5.
[13] Ellen G. White, Letters and Manuscripts, vol. 19 (Ellen G. White Estate, 1904), Lt 291, par. 3.
[14] Ellen G. White, Review and Herald (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, March 4, 1902), par. 13.
[15] “Treatment rooms” are what E.G. White uses to refer to small centers in cities in association with the local church which provide basic health and wellness education. Modern-day examples are sometimes called “Better Living Centers.”
[16] Evangelism that meets physical, mental, and spiritual needs.
[17] Ellen G. White, The Kress Collection (Payson, AZ: Leaves-Of-Autumn Books, 1985), 164.
[18] White, Letters and Manuscripts, vol. 24, Lt 47, par. 11.
[19] Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6 (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1900), 265, 267.
[20] See Ellen G. White, Testimonies and Experiences Connected With The Loma Linda Sanitarium and College of Medical Evangelists (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1905), 15-16.
[21] White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, 267.