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LOMA LINDA: HEALING MINISTRY OF
JESUS OR ADVENTISM?
Loma Linda University (LLU) is Adventism’s flagship health sciences training center. It has five schools: allied health professions, behavioral health, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and religion.
The mission of LLU is to seek “to further the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ ‘to make man whole’”. The foundation of this healing ministry is their particular “health message” that involves vegetarianism, abstinence from tea, coffee, and alcohol, and a healthy lifestyle including exercise and relaxation techniques and an emphasis on rest and the seventh-day Sabbath.
For example, as of this writing, LLU’s Drayson Center has a Facebook page with a timeline photo posted February 20, 2015, showing three women in the “balasana” pose, or resting position (see photo above). This quote by James E. Faust is imprinted over the picture:
“Keeping the Sabbath day holy is much more than just physical rest. It involves spiritual renewal and worship.”
Interestingly, Faust was a Mormon apostle and general authority of the Mormon church prior to his death in 1995.
Loma Linda’s emphasis on ascetic diet and lifestyle practices are explicitly taught to students and patients as means to treat or prevent disease and to increase life span. At the same time, for those who are immersed in Adventism, these practices are also understood to be means of deepening one’s spiritual experience and perception.
Teaching these practices is one thing; identifying them as part of “the healing ministry of Jesus” is another. It was Jesus who “declared all foods clean” (Mk. 7:19) and who ate fish in His resurrection body (Lk. 24:41-43).
Moreover, it was Jesus who received the fury of the Jewish leadership because He broke the Sabbath and called God His own Father (Jn. 5:18). In fact, Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that true worship was not about sacred places (or times—created things are not holy), but “the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers” (Jn. 4:21-24).
Jesus’ healing ministry was His declaration that He was the Messiah as He fulfilled the prophecies that He would make the dumb speak, the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead live. He taught that the work of God was “that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (Jn. 6:29).
Loma Linda’s “healing ministry” is not Jesus’ ministry; it is Adventism’s health message. —Colleen Tinker
Copyright 2015 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Camp Verde, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised May 20, 2015. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
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VOLUME 16, ISSUE 1