by Winea J. Simpson, M.D., Loma Linda University
A MEDICINE that heals the body may only prolong the life of someone who is mentally disturbed and sick at heart. The crying need of the world is for a medicine that can make men whole.
I was a medical student when I first noticed this remarkable statement: “Nothing else can have such healing power” (referring to God’s Word). This is the complete reference:
“The same power that Christ exercised when He walked visibly among men is in His word. It was by His word that Jesus healed disease and cast out demons; by His word He stilled the sea and raised the dead; and the people bore witness that His word was with power. He spoke the word of God…
“So with all the promises of God’s word. In them He is speaking to us individually, speaking as directly as if we could listen to His voice. It is in these promises that Christ communicates to us His grace and power. They are leaves from that tree which is ‘for the healing of the nations.’ Received, assimilated, they are to be the strength of the character, the inspiration and sustenance of the life. Nothing else can have such healing power. Nothing besides can impart the courage and faith which give vital energy to the whole being.” ELLEN G. WHITE, The Ministry of Healing, p. 122.
King David knew about this three-dimensional healing power, for he wrote in one of his psalms: “He sends His word, and heals them and delivers them from their destructions” (Psalm 107:20, marginal rendering).
During medical training I studied much about physical therapy, diet therapy, drug therapy, psychotherapy, and all other therapies then known to medical science. The promises of God’s Word have therapeutic value far beyond all other kinds of therapy. “Nothing else can have such healing power.”
Because the scope of Scripture therapy far exceeds medicine, every physician should carry in his medicine bag this powerful healing agent.
How to put the promises of God’s Word into a capsule readily available to patients was the problem I faced. It was then that I was guided in the development of a phonograph record entitled TLC (TLC stands tor “tender, loving care,” a common direction of physicians). This record is unique in that it contains the words of God in a musical setting designed for therapeutic use. Side 1, “Rest for the Night,” a tranquilizer and sleep inducer. Side 2, “Strength for the Day,” is a stimulant to inspire faith and courage to meet the problems of the new day. This record uses seven different translations of Bible promises in an effort to express God’s loveliness.
It has been a joy to experiment with this TLC prescription and to bear witness to the healing power of God’s Word. When medical science fails, the case is not hopeless. The promises of God in the hand of faith have tremendous healing power. I will tell you what my eyes have seen and my ears have heard of the healing power in God’s Word. These stories illustrate the three-dimensional benefits—physical, mental, and moral—of Scripture therapy.
The first story is about a nurse, Mrs. Moore (not her real name), who worked with me for twelve years in child-health conferences. She developed cancer of the breast and had a mastectomy. A few years later the cancer was back, and she was heavily X-rayed. She moved to Arizona with her husband, who was a lieutenant-colonel in the Army. They had been there a year when I heard that my nurse friend was dying of cancer. An exploratory operation indicated cancer all through her body.
Thoughts become serious when a dear friend is faced with death. Had I done all I could to strengthen Mrs. Moore’s faith in God: Was she prepared to die? Would God extend her life that she might become better acquainted with Him? Such thoughts led to earnest prayer. The assurance came that God would extend her life and she needed to know it.
I hurriedly wrote Mrs. Moore and suggested a good vegetarian diet and that she give up cigarettes. With the letter I sent the TLC record and recommended that it be played every night, morning, and afternoon. She was encouraged to pray that God would prolong her life.
A few weeks later a letter came from a nurse who was a personal friend of the patient saying, “When the record and letter reached Mrs. Moore her physician didn’t give her more than a week to live. He had taken two thousand cubic centimeters (about two quarts) of fluid off her chest that month. She was unable to retain food and was going downhill rapidly. The letter and record came as a ray of hope. Her husband purchased a small portable record player and put it by her bed. She played the TLC record almost continuously.”
Mrs. Moore followed all instructions, and the results were remarkable. In a week she had so improved that the physician, upon examination, said it would not be necessary to tap for fluid. Also her liver had gone down in size. Upon completion of his examination the doctor said, “Mrs. Moore, what has happened? Your condition has tremendously improved. I can’t explain this, can you?”
She replied, “Yes, it is my faith in God. Listen.” She played Side 1 of the record, and that nonreligious doctor listened with tears in his eyes. As the record finished playing he said, “All I can say is to keep it up.”
Later I received a long letter from Mrs. Moore. She wrote that she was out of bed and working around the house. She said that on Sunday morning her husband was responsible for getting greeters for the church, but that particular Sunday the couple failed him at the last minute, and she said, “I’ll go with you to greet the people.”
“Honey, do you feel able to do that?” he asked.
“Surely” was her response. She continued. “I went to church and shook hands with hundreds of people who had never dreamed they would see me alive again and in church, and I was none the worse for it.” She wrote that she was getting stronger each day, and because the Lord had performed a miracle in her life, her great concern was to use her strength to reveal His glory and learn during the remaining days of her life what He wanted her to know and to do.
I sent her several books, which she read and underlined with red pencil as she discovered gems of truth and comfort. When she and her husband moved back to California I had a number of good visits with them. For three years the Lord extended her life. The last time I saw Mrs. Moore she said to me, “The Lord has become precious to me. He has done so much for me that now I do not fear the future—life or death. I am sure He will see me through whatever is best, and I shall not fear.”
Another patient, a little Mexican woman, came to my baby clinic with her small son and said cheerfully, “Dr. Simpson, I have leukemia.” I was horrified.
She said, “I know what leukemia means. I was told that if I had good medical care I might live months, and again, I might die soon. If God wants to take me, that is all right. At first, I was worried about my five little children but reminded myself that God gave them to me. He loves them even more than I do, and I know He will take care of them. I am not worried, so don’t you feel bad.”
When I finished examining her little boy I said, “Bring Jose back in about three months.”
She replied, “If I am still here I surely will, but if I am not, remember, Dr. Simpson, you and I are going to meet in heaven.”
By that time my nurse and I were in tears. I followed the mother out into the hall and said, “Oh, Mrs. Hernandez, you have been an inspiration to me today. I think your faith is wonderful. Maybe God does not want to take you now because you have these little children who need you. Perhaps He will see fit to heal you. Are you on a special diet, Mrs. Hernandez?”
“No, I am not,” she said.
Questioning her about her diet, I found that she lived on beans, tortillas, doughnuts (when she could afford them), and coffee. She did not even know the taste of many fruits and vegetables. The family was poor and could not afford to buy nuts, fruits, and vegetable juices, which Mrs. Hernandez needed. The welfare department came to her help and bought food for an adequate diet, and a juicer so that she could have raw carrot juice every day. Also, they provided a housekeeper to take care of the home and children until the mother’s expected death.
After baby clinic for that day was over, the condition of this Mexican mother was on my mind. The public health nurse told me more about the family. Mrs. Hernandez’ husband loved her dearly, and he was angry with God because he thought God was going to take her. When he would get to feeling discouraged and angry he would go on a drinking binge, which added to the family’s problem.
Instead of going home after clinic, I decided to visit the Hernandez home. I found Mr. Hernandez out in the yard. I introduced myself and said, “Mr. Hernandez, I have come to pray for your wife that God might heal her. I cannot go in and pray that God might do this unless we all cooperate. Will you promise me that you will not drink at all if we ask God to do this for you and for your wife?”
“You mean she might get well?” he asked.
“She might,” I said. “All things are possible with God, but we need your cooperation.”
“Oh, you have it. I will not drink at all if God will heal my wife,” he replied.
I went into their home and gathered the little children around their mother, and we knelt on the kitchen floor and prayed that the Divine Physician would take over their mother’s case and bring healing. After the prayer, Mrs. Hernandez was given some Bible promises to claim and some inspirational books to study.
The next time I went to baby clinic my secretary asked, “Dr. Simpson, have you heard about Mrs. Hernandez?”
I said, “No, why?”
“She is so much better that the doctors cannot understand it. They have examined her and found the blood picture to be improved. It is no longer necessary to give her blood transfusions, she is doing so well.”
“That’s wonderful. I must hear it from her own lips,” I said.
On visiting Mrs. Hernandez, I learned how the Lord had blessed her. She did not need a housekeeper any longer. Furthermore, a relative had died and left a little boy, whom she took to rear with her own children, so now she had six little ones to care for.
A medical student living in my home at the time said, “You know as well as I do that this disease leukemia sometimes has remissions and patients get better. If this woman lives five years it will indicate a cure.”
The five years passed, and Mrs. Hernandez was pronounced cured. A physician from New York who was especially interested in blood pathology came to make a study of the bone-marrow slides. The early slides unquestionably showed leukemia, but the recent slides revealed no sign of the disease.
Mrs. Hernandez was asked at Christmas time to tell her story of healing as an inspiration to other patients at the hospital clinic.
Her husband has never touched liquor since her healing. Money that he might have spent for liquor he used for painting the home and building an additional bedroom, thus making the place more comfortable for his large family.
God accomplishes healing for mental patients also. I was at the Yucaipa baby clinic when a young mother of three children came in. At one time during her teens, she had been in a mental institution. She said to me, “I’m losing my mind. I’m getting back the old symptoms that put me in the hospital before. I can’t afford to be hospitalized now, because I have three little children depending on me. What can I do?”
I asked her to tell me about her symptoms.
“I get terrible feelings of anxiety that sweep over me like a flood,” she said. “I shake all over with fear, but I don’t know what I’m afraid of. It is just the way I felt when I lost my mind before.”
Looking at her directly I said, “I know what will cure you.”
She said, “You do?”
“Yes, I do. You see, fear is not from God. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness He overcame the devil by saying, ‘It is written.’ You can gain the victory over fear by claiming the promises written in the Bible. For the Word of God is quick and powerful. Nothing else can have such healing power.”
On a prescription pad with directions for use I wrote: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
A week later this young mother called on the telephone to report. She said, “The first day or two I said that verse many times, and every time I claimed it I felt relief. My spells of anxiety became less frequent, and, thank God, for the past three days I have had not one single spell of anxiety.”
This mother was provided with inspirational reading material that helped her to develop a faith to live by. It has been three years now, and she never had to go to a mental institution.
One day a call came from overseas. A physician at Skodsborg Sanitarium, in Denmark, wrote, “Send the TLC record immediately by airmail. My daughter has just given birth to a child, and she has developed a postpartum psychosis. Nothing we have done has helped her. I want to try Scripture therapy.”
The record was sent, and a few weeks later a joyous letter was received from the doctor, which said, “Praise the Lord, my daughter has cleared up. The Word of God surely is quick and powerful. We give Him all the glory for this remarkable recovery.”
My faith and courage were growing, and I wanted to try the TLC record at a California mental hospital. Permission was granted for the record to be played every Friday night for a month for a ward of acutely disturbed men. The first night the patients’ were sedated before I got there. The physician in charge of the ward thought the men would not listen and might be unmanageable unless they were sedated. With sedation, they were well behaved during the playing of the record.
When it was finished, one of the men stepped up and said, “Where can I get that record? I must have it. I want to send it to my wife.”
Another said, “How much is the record? I would like to buy it.”
Another response was, “Oh, that record makes me feel good. Can’t we hear it more often?”
The technician who operated the record player said, “Come on, let’s get out of here. Don’t pay any attention to them. They’re all crazy.”
In the middle of the week, the head nurse of that hospital called and said, “I wasn’t here the night you played the record for the men, but they won’t give me any peace. They keep talking about it, and they want to hear it again. One patient insists on buying it. The only thing to do is let him have it. Please send the record to me, and I’ll charge it to his account and see that he gets it.”
Before going back to play the record the next week I requested that the men hear the record without sedation. The request was granted, and there was no apparent difference in the behavior of the patients without sedation. The man who had wanted the record for his wife told me in confidence, “My wife threatened to divorce me, and it seemed as if the bottom had dropped out of my life. That is why I am here. I sent her the TLC record, and she wrote back saying, ‘She loved it.’ She played it every morning and night. She was so touched by the fact that I did that for her she wants to give our marriage another trial.”
That man began to clear up mentally, and in a short time, he went home.
Not only does God send forth His Word and heal physically and mentally, but He also heals morally.
A certain county jail needed God’s TLC message, but it was difficult to get it into the jail. It so happened that the health department needed to have some sewing done. The nurses needed about fifty bags made for carrying supplies. Permission was granted for the women prisoners to make the bags, and they did a good job.
Later I went to the jail to thank the girls for their help and to make a gift of a number of books to the prison library. The matron remonstrated, “Every book that comes into the jail has to be read carefully, and nothing can be accepted unless it has the approval of the officials.”
I agreed and said, “Please take these books, and if there are any of them not approved I will pick them up later.” When I went back and asked about the books the matron said, “Well, I went through them, and we are going to keep all of them. They are wonderful.”
Permission was granted to write a note on the flyleaf of each book, which said, “If you have enjoyed this book and would like more literature, please write to Audio Rx: Box 46, Loma Linda, California 92354.”
Several months passed, and I received a letter from a woman who wrote, “Dear Audio Rx: I have read the book ‘Your Bible and You,’ by Arthur S. Maxwell, with great interest. I would like to purchase this book, and a friend of mine wants one. Please send to my box number.”
I wondered why the woman did not give her home address so that the books could be delivered in person. I wrote asking for her home address and received this reply: “I regret to tell you that I am in the county jail. My friend is here too, but we would greatly appreciate a visit from you.”
I took the two books, my little portable record player, and the TLC record and started for the jail. I asked the matron whether I might give the books to the girls inasmuch as they had asked for them and the books were on the approved list. I also asked permission to play the TLC record for the two girls who had requested the books. The matron surprised me by saying, “I don’t see why only the two girls should get everything. Why don’t you talk to all the girls and play the record for all the prisoners?”
There were about thirty women prisoners in cells facing a corridor. I began talking to them about the way God looked at them, in love, regardless of the past, the trials and troubles they might have had, and their present unfavorable condition. What I wanted them to know was that God loved them, and what I proposed to do was let the Bible express His love for them.
The record began playing: “Be still, and know that I am love. Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me. Your frame was not hidden from Me when you were being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. My eyes saw your unformed bones, and in My book all your members were written, day by day; even the date when they should be fashioned for you when as yet there was none of them. How precious are My thoughts of you. Even the very hairs of your head are counted. Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name. You are Mine. With an everlasting love have I loved you: therefore with loving kindness will I draw you to Me. I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and will remember your sins no more.”
I heard sobs, and one of the girls brushed tears from her eyes and turned her face to the wall. Then the silence was profound, nothing short of reverence. When side 1 of the record finished, the girls said, “Oh, play side 2.”
The matron said, “No, girls, it is dinner time. You have to have your dinner”
Girls: “No, we don’t want our dinner. We want to hear side 2.”
Matron: “No, your dinner will get cold.”
I said, “Listen, girls, I’m going to make you a gift of the record and lend you the record player. After dinner, when your matron has time, she can play it for you, and you may keep it to listen to whenever someone has the time to play it for you.”
I left the jail with the feeling that this had been an opportunity to be a partner with God.
A few weeks later I went back to jail, and the matron realized I was coming for my record player. I said, “Have all the girls had a chance to hear the record?”
“Yes, but you aren’t going to take the player now, are you? Hearing that record has been a sort of ritual with the girls. They never go to bed’ without hearing it.”
Of course, I left the record player for them.
As I was leaving, one of the prisoners called me and said, “Doctor, I want to talk to you a minute. My husband is in another jail, and I’m here. Our children are palmed off onto foster homes. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten into trouble. Every time I have come here I’ve longed for my freedom, but this time I want it for a different reason. I have read your books. I have listened to TLC record night after night. Now I feel that I can go home and make a different life for my family.”
How true it is that “He sends His word, and heals them and delivers them from their destruction.”
______________________________________________
Winea J. Simpson, M.D., D.N.B., M.A.
is an assistant professor of preventive medicine and public health at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California, and director of maternal and child health for the San Bernardino County Health Department, a position she has held for twenty-three years.
Dr. Simpson was born in Sheridan, Illinois, but she spent her childhood and youth in Glendale, California. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Pacific Union College, Angwin, California, and taught English at Mountain View Academy, Mountain View, California.
After completing the dietitian’s course at Loma Linda University she earned an M.S. degree from Redlands University and taught in the College of Dietetics at Loma Linda University until she enrolled in the College of Medicine and received her doctorate of medicine, in 1943.
For many years Dr. Simpson taught a growth-and-development course for the University of California extension.
Her medical interests are research, teaching, and public health. Perhaps she is best known for her research on the relationship of cigarette smoking to the incidence of premature birth (published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and mentioned in the Surgeon General’s report Smoking and Health.)
In the American Temperance Society film on the heart-and-blood-vessel effects of smoking entitled Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Dr. Simpson emphasizes some of the dangers of smoking during pregnancy.
With a grant from the California State Health Department, she developed the “Do as I Do” equipment for screening the vision of preschool children who do not know the alphabet.
The Simpson ranch in the foothills of Loma Linda has been a home for sixteen promising students. Dr. Simpson’s own adopted daughter, Mrs. Marguerite Lavon Ramsey, is a registered nurse.
Dr. Simpson finds enjoyment in developing medical evangelistic tools and inspirational programs. She believes in the healing power of God’s Word, and publishes under the Audio Rx copyright, for example, TLC, a phonograph record that brings rest for the night (side 1) and strength for the day (side 2.)
Her latest production is the book Precious Promises Prescriptions, It is in a kit that contains several hundred Biblical promises, classified for moods and health problems. It is designed for physicians, chaplains, and other people interested in improving their health through Scripture therapy.
Dr. Simpson brings people much happiness.