Bern, Switzerland. [CD-EUDNews]. May 16, 2020 will be the next Health Emphasis Day of the Inter-European Region of Seventh-day Adventists (EUD). “I would like to invite us to look back, for a moment, to the beginning of the Christian church” said Valérie Dufour, EUD Health Ministry Director.
She suggests to have a look at the book Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity, where the author Gary Ferngren underlines that before the advent of Christianity there was no concept of responsibility of public officials to prevent disease or to treat those who suffered from it. On the contrary - and in spite of persecutions - “early Christianity was characterized by a strong emphasis on philanthropy that urged both individual and corporate care of those in need” affirm G. Ferngren.
“Christianity rooted its attitude to philanthropy in theology. Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan furnished the pattern for the Christians’ care of the sick: every stranger in need was a neighbor who bore the image of God and to whom the love of God ought to be demonstrated” affirm G. Ferngren.
Thus, in the first three centuries, wherever a Church was founded it became a focal point for the care of the sick. And during the pestilences and epidemics of those centuries, the only care of the sick was provided by Christian churches.
Eric Robertson Dodds, an Irish historian, suggested that “it was the Christian’s success in creating a community that care both for its own and for others that was a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause, of the spread of Christianity”.
“Creating a community that care is also our calling today as a Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the 21th century” affirm V. Dufour, especially in this time of Covid-19 pandemic, where the need for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual healing in Europe has so tremendously increased.
This calling is to each one of us: the calling to be “A Healing Agent”.
Valérie Dufour prepared, in collaboration with Union Health Ministries leaders, medical professionals, and Hope TVs, various audio-visuals materials for the occasion.
Hope TV Bulgaria - live
Hope TV Czech -live
Hope TV Italy – live
Hope TV FSRT – live
Hope TV Spain – but not live
