Nina Pham, in caring for Liberian national Thomas Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in America, became the second. The 26-year-old nurse walked out of a Maryland hospital today having joined the fellowship of those who received life from the blood, i.e., the blood of Samaritan’s Purse doctor Kent Brantly. Freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, also received life from Brantly’s blood: “[Brantly’s] generous blood donation played a pivotal role in my recovery.” Fellow missionary and Samaritan’s Purse doctor Richard Sacra infected in Liberia also received life from Brantly’s blood.
During the 1800s doctors discovered the life giving power of the transfused blood of those who had survived bacterial and viral infections. However, the efficacy of the blood goes back further, to the People of the Book “...the life of the flesh is in the blood… for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11).
Last fall, Kent Brantly moved with his wife and young children to work at a hospital in Monrovia, ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa). Last March when he and a few colleagues learned of the outbreak, they were led to prepare for a contingency to help contain the outbreak. Although there was resistance, it was granted:
“The only available space… a yellow cinderblock tin-roofed chapel in the hospital's courtyard, where the staff gathered each morning for devotions. Now they rolled in six beds and separated them with plastic tarps. They cleaned the floors and walls. They placed a sign out front that read, ‘Isolation unit. Authorized personnel only.’ And then they waited” [On an evening early in June the call came.]
“[later in July] Brantly, covered head to toe in protective gear, identifiable only by his blue eyes peering through goggles, spoke into the camera for a video being put together by Samaritan's Purse” [begged] "Please come help us." (Lena H. Sun, Brady Dennis, Lenny Bernstein and Joel Achenbach, “How the world let Ebola spread,” The Washington Post, 10, 7, 2014).
Then as other doctors and nurses were becoming sick, some dying, Brantly continued battle against the invisible foe, that they might know the blood of Him that could make them whole, that is, until he became one with them.
He later recalled: “I held the hands of countless individuals as this terrible disease took their lives away from them. I witnessed the horror firsthand, and I can still remember every face and name. “When I started feeling ill on that Wednesday morning…. When the result was positive, I remember a deep sense of peace that was beyond all understanding.”
“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Hebrews 13:20). “… made peace through the blood of his cross….” (Colossians 1:20).
“... if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1John_1:7).
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