Life of Church Threatened

This lack of church organization up to the 1860’s brought with it perplexing problems grave enough to endanger the very life of this newly forming religious body. The record of those earliest years discloses that in the absence of organization it was difficult to protect against the forces of disintegration. Human nature being what it is, it was easy for men with strongly divergent views of how church life should be conducted, to seek to carry out their variant views. The result was friction that threatened to split apart different companies. Furthermore, in the absence of any well-defined statement of belief, or of agreed-upon credentials for Adventist ministers, how could the different companies hope to protect themselves against erratic and often pious-appearing frauds who might seek to prey upon them? One cannot read the record up to the 1860’s without wondering how this Sabbathkeeping segment of Adventists ever escaped the sorry fate that came upon most of the fragments of the Millerite movement, the fate of disintegration, dissolution, oblivion.WBEGW 36.2

In the midst of all this we see James and Ellen White traveling about from company to company. They found that nearly everyone feared organization as they feared Babylon itself. The mystery is, how did Mrs. White herself escape being swallowed up by this discord and sometimes inevitable confusion, if she were but an unstable individual, who simply reflected the viewpoint of those around her?WBEGW 37.1

The record in the Review and Herald bears eloquent testimony to the fact that the most distinguishing thing about Mrs. White in those difficult days was that she differed with most of those round about her on the key question of church order and organization. Indeed, her anguish of spirit, of which she often spoke, grew partly out of the fact that she was in conflict with the current thinking. She took issue with it right and left as she stood before one company and then another and rebuked those whose views, and sometimes even their conduct, were alien to good church order. We hear her speaking forth in 1853 these key words—words that were to be followed by many like them: “The Lord has shown that gospel order has been too much feared and neglected. Formality should be shunned; but, in so doing, order should not be neglected.” These are the opening lines of a message she published in a little pamphlet, now a part of Early Writings. The message begins on page 97 of that book.WBEGW 37.2

In 1860 we adopted the name Seventh-day Adventists. In 1861 sufficient support was secured for the idea of organization to organize churches and then to create our first conference, the Michigan Conference. In 1863 there was created the General Conference organization, which now coordinates all Seventh-day Adventist activities round the world.WBEGW 38.1