July 30 - What Is The Authority Of The General Conference?-7

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Heb. 13:17, NIV.

And what is their proper authority?

Yesterday we heard Ellen White complain about the management style of the General Conference when it actually represented only the authority of the president. Five years later she commented that "the sacred character of the cause of God is no longer realized at the center of the work. The voice from Battle Creek, which has been regarded as authority in counseling how the work should be done, is no longer the voice of God"(Lt 4, 1896). Careful analysis of such statements indicates that they refer to accusations related to when the General Conference did not act as a representative body, when its decision-making authority was centralized in a person or a few people, or when the General Conference had not been following sound principles.

Such a conclusion lines up with Ellen White's statements across time. In fact, she specifically spoke to the point in a manuscript read before the delegates of the 1909 General Conference session, in which she responded to the schismatic activities of A. T. Jones, who was working to destroy the authority of the General Conference in a drive to revert back to congregational forms of church government.

"At times," she told the delegates, "when a small group of men entrusted with the general management of the work have, in the name of the General Conference, sought to carry out unwise plans and to restrict God's work, I have said that I could no longer regard the voice of the General Conference, represented by these few men, as the voice of God. But this is not saying that the decisions of a General Conference composed of an assembly of duly appointed, representative men from all parts of the field should not be respected. God has ordained that the representatives of His church from all parts of the earth, when assembled in a General Conference, shall have authority. The error that some are in danger of committing is in giving to the mind and judgement of one man, or of a small group of men, the full measure of authority and influence that God has vested in His church in the judgment and voice of the General Conference assembled to plan for the prosperity and advancement of His work"(9T 260, 261).

In the counsel of many there is wisdom. And, we should add, the balance of counsel of those from several perspectives and geographical regions also leads to well-considered decisions. The decisions of a world church have inbuilt protections that are not available to individuals and congregations.