By the turn of the 20th-century, Seventh-day Adventists had established 27 sanitariums and treatment rooms in the United States and abroad. These healthcare institutions catered to the chronically ill, weary people distraught from overwork and others who suffered from an unhealthful lifestyle. Physicians and nurses who were skilled in the proper use of hydrotherapy as a remedial agent, cared for these patients. These institutions also delivered babies and performed surgery, but most people admitted were called “rest/cure patients.” Those early institutions provided delicious, healthful meals, a daily program of supervised calisthenics, gardening opportunities, and health lectures.
By 1902, Ellen G. White, a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, had developed a burden for establishing a strong medical work in Southern California. At the time, the denomination was in the midst of turmoil over the impending loss of its world-famous, "mother" healthcare institution in Battle Creek, Michigan. Undaunted, however, Ellen White promoted the establishment of three more medical institutions in Southern California.
Pastor John Burden became heavily involved in the founding of the Loma Linda Sanitarium. What specifically motivated Pastor Burden? In 1902, from her home at Elmshaven, in the Napa Valley, Mrs. White had predicted that properties would “be offered to us at much less than their original cost.” On these sites there would be buildings already erected, and, above all, they would be in localities especially suited to sanitarium work. Mrs. White assured church leaders that unusual bargains might be found. “For months the Lord has given me instruction that He is preparing the way for our people to obtain possession, at little cost, of properties on which there are buildings that can be utilized in our work.”
Could such a bold statement possibly come true?
Two years later, a National City facility, near San Diego, represented an investment of $25,000. Owners offered it for sale for $12,000. Church members eventually purchased it for only $4,000. “Much less than [its] original cost." Also in 1904, owners of the $50,000 Glendale Hotel (now the Glendale Adventist Medical Center) offered it to Seventh-day Adventists for $26,000. Later that year church members purchased it for only $12,000. Again, “much less than [its] original cost." The purchase of these two institutions, however, financially strapped local church members as well as the Southern California Conference.
Not long before these purchases, the denomination’s General Conference had established a no-debt policy. Furthermore, its conviction that further indebtedness must stop influenced union and local conference leaders to comply. With the Southern California Conference so heavily debt-laden, its new president, George W. Reaser, had been strictly directed to reduce conference obligations.
The denomination’s recently established no-debt policy, notwithstanding, Ellen White outlined her own perspective on debt. “The idea that a sanitarium should not be established unless it could be started free from debt, has put the brakes upon the wheels of progress. For the past 20 years I have been borrowing money and paying interest on it, to establish schools and sanitariums and to build meeting houses.”
Although it seemed financially impossible, even irresponsible, Ellen White kept urging that the church should acquire a third institution in Southern California. All three should become sanitariums that would be centers of medical and spiritual healing. Yet, why did she urge the securing of a third property under these stringent conditions? Because the sanitariums in Paradise Valley and Glendale did not match the property Mrs. White had seen in a dream-like experience as a place where Seventh-day Adventists were to operate a medical institution.
Three years before, Ellen White described a Southern California property she had seen during a night vision. On October 10, 1901, she wrote in her journal that she seemed to be living there, and described patients sitting in wheelchairs, outdoors, under shade trees that seemed to form tent-like canopies. The two Sanitariums already purchased, while fulfilling the statement that unoccupied but appropriate properties would be offered at much less than their original cost, still did not match this vivid image. That place must still be located!
Although Mrs. White did not yet know it, Loma Linda matched her 1901 vision: an institution with great pepper trees forming a massive, tent-like canopy. In 1901, however, Loma Linda was occupied and not for sale, and did not, therefore, match her 1902 statement. On the contrary, the newly formed Loma Linda Association, a well-qualified and financially capable group of 80 physicians and 40 businessmen, was well into the process of building a major healthcare facility. On September 29, 1900, the Association had filed its Articles of Incorporation, announcing its intention to operate a sanitarium and hospital. On October 6, the group purchased Mound City, a failed boomtown in the San Bernardino Valley. It included a 64-four-room luxury hotel.
On October 19, just nine days after Ellen White’s journal entry about a tent-like canopy of trees, the Association advertised in the Citrograph, a Redlands weekly. Embedded in that advertisement was a photo of Loma Linda and one of its two tent-like canopies of trees. In the same issue the Redlands Journalist Scipio Craig wrote an editorial in which he described the new institution in Loma Linda as “the best equipped sanitarium in the United States.”
By November, the organization had completed the creation of its well-equipped healthcare institution, and had named the place Loma Linda, meaning “Hill Beautiful” (in Spanish). On November 23, Craig wrote, “Loma Linda, that most delightful sanitarium, is gaining in the estimation of the people all the time.” Not even close to being put on the market, the Loma Linda property certainly did not, at that time, fit Ellen White’s 1902 statement regarding “unoccupied properties” that could be purchased “at much less than their original cost.”
To be continued…