The purpose of our health institutions is not first and foremost to be that of hospitals. The health institutions connected with the closing work of the gospel in the earth stand for the great principles of the gospel in all its fullness. Christ is the one to be revealed in all the institutions connected with the closing work, but none of them can do it so fully as the health institution where the sick and suffering come for relief and deliverance from both physical and spiritual ailment. Many of these need, like the paralytic of old, the forgiveness of sin the first thing, and they need to learn how to “go, and sin no more.” MM 27.4
If a sanitarium connected with this closing message fails to lift up Christ and the principles of the gospel as developed in the third angel's message, it fails in its most important feature, and contradicts the very object of its existence.—The Review and Herald, October 29, 1914. MM 28.1