And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. (Roman 8:28, KJV)
One day, while working at the Pusan Sanitarium and Hospital in South Korea in the 1960s, the Pusan chief of police came to my office. He said he had received an anonymous letter stating that our cashier was embezzling money from the hospital and that the institution was a den of communism. He had found evidence that the first part of the letter was true and had already arrested the cashier.
Then he added that I must press charges against the cashier in order for them to keep him in jail. When I said that we did not want that type of publicity, he became angry. The next step, he added, was a full-scale investigation of the hospital.
I visited a representative of the United States embassy. After explaining the problem, he asked what type of hospital the sanitarium was. I replied that it was a Seventh-day Adventist mission hospital. He responded. “I know what you do and that you are not a center of communism. You see, I went to Lodi Academy [a Seventh-day Adventist high school in Lodi, California] !” After he contacted the national police headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, the local police left us alone.
A few days later, the assistant to the Pusan chief of police came to my office and informed me that his boss, the chief, was very ill. The chief had been ordered by the military government to host the Taiwan ambassador the next day, but he couldn’t in his present state of health. Several local doctors treated him but he became more ill.
The assistant asked if I would please come and cure the chief- in one day. “Oh,” I said, “I have never cured anybody. I know that God could cure him if He wanted, but I cannot cure him. I only treat people; God does the curing.” A nurse and I went to the chief’s home. He was very ill with severe sinusitis. I also told him that God could cure him, not I. We had prayer and I gave him antibiotics.
About a week later, the chief’s assistant came back with a gift. He said his boss became well overnight and was able to perform his assignment the next day. After this incident we have never had any further trouble with the Pusan police.
– Louis R. Erich, LLUSM class of 1955