Now after all this, it was not long before the whole
spirit and principle of General Conference Organization and affairs began
to be reversed again. This spirit of reaction became so rife and so rank
that some before the General Conference of 1903 at Oakland, Calif., two
men, or three men, or four men, or a few men I should say, being together
in Battle Creek or somewhere else, and without any kind of authority, but
directly against the plain words of the Constitution, took it absolutely
upon themselves to elect you president, and Brother Prescott
vice-president of the General Conference. And then that there never was in
this universe a clearer piece of usurpation of position, power, and
authority. You two were then, of right, just as much president and
vice-president of Timbuktu as you were of the Seventh-day Adventist
General Conference.
But this spirit did not stop there. The thing done was
directly against the Constitution. This was too plain to be escaped. And
it was just as plain that with that Constitution still perpetuated in the
coming General Conference, this usurpation of position, power and
authority could not be perpetuated. What could be done to preserve the
usurpation?-Oh, that was just as easy as the other. A new Constitution was
framed to fit and to uphold the usurpation. This Constitution was carried
to the General Conference of 1903 at Oakland Calif., and in every
unconstitutional way, because in every truly constitutional government the
constitution comes in some way from the people, not from the monarch. Thus
the people make and establish a Constitution. The monarch grants a
Constitution. When the people make a Constitution the people govern. When
a monarch grants a Constitution, he seeks to please the people with a toy
and keeps the government himself. This difference is the sole difficulty
in Russia to-day; and the difference is simply the difference between
monarch and government of the people; and between oppression and freedom.
The people want to make a Constitution. The Czar wants to grant them a
Constitution, and have them endorse anew his autocracy and bureaucracy by
adopting the Constitution that he grants.
And this is just the difference between the General
Conference and its Constitution of 1901 and the General Conference and its
Constitution of 1903. In 1901 the monarchy was swept aside completely, and
the Conference itself as such and as a whole made a new Constitution. In
the General Conference of 1903 the usurpers of monarchial position and
authority came with the Constitution that fitted and maintained their
usurpation, and succeeded in getting it adopted. And how? -- None of the
people had asked for a new Constitution. The General Conference delegation
had asked for it. Not even the Committee on Constitution asked for it. In
behalf of the usurpation it was brought before that Committee and
advocated there, because, in very words, "The Church must have a visible
head." It was not even then nor was it ever, favored by that Committee. It
was put through the Committee, and reported to the Conference, only by
permanently dividing the Committee,--a minority, of the Committee,
opposing it all the time, and--a thing almost unheard of in Seventh-day
Adventist's Conferences, a minority report against it. And when at last it
was adopted by the final vote, it was by a slim majority of just five. And
it was only by the carelessness of some of the delegates that it got
through even that way; for there were just then downstairs in the Oakland
Church enough delegates who were opposed to it, to have defeated it if
they had been present.
They told this themselves afterwards. But they did not
know that the vote was being taken, and by their not being in their
places, the usurpation was sanctioned; the reactionary spirit that had
been so long working for absolute control had got it; the principles and
intent of the General Conference of 1901 was reversed; and a Czardom was
enthroned which has since gone steadily onward in the same way and has
with perfect consistency built up a thorough bureaucratic government, by
which it reaches and meddles with, and manipulates, the affairs of all,
not only of union and local conferences, but of local churches, and of
individual persons. So that some of the oldest men in active service
to-day, and who by their lives' experience are best qualified to know,
have freely said that in the whole history of the denomination there has
never been such a one-man power, such a centralized despotism, so much of
Papacy, as there has been since the Oakland Conference (of 1903). And as a
part of this bureaucracy there is, a Religious Liberty Bureau--a
contradiction in terms.
Now when I was opposed to this thing before and in the
General Conference of 1897, and before and in the General Conference of
1899, and before and in the General Conference of 1901, and before and in
the General Conference of 1903, why should you be perplexed that I have
not fallen in with it and helped to make it a success since 1903? Why
should I in 1903, abandon all the principles and teachings by which I was
right in opposing it, until and including 1903, when I was in the right
all these years in opposing it, and in doing all that I could to keep it
from succeeding, why and upon what principles should I have swung in and
favored it just because at last in a most arbitrary, unconstitutional and
usurping way it did at last succeed?
Again in the General Conference of 1901 you yourself
said that in the principles of organization that I preached I had "light
for the people." Those principles were the ones that prevailed in that
Conference; and at your own suggestion these principles as preached in my
first sermon, were published for the help of the denomination in the work
of reorganization. But the principles and the form of organization of 1903
were directly the opposite of those that in 1901 you said were "light for
the people." If my second sermon in the General Conference of 1901 had
been printed along with the first, the people would have been able to see
more plainly how entirely the course of things in 1903 was the reverse of
that in 1901. And anyone can see it now by reading General Conference
Bulletin of 1901, pp. 37-42, and 101-105.
Now brother, were those principles light in 1901? If
so, then what did you do when you exposed the opposite of them in 1902,
1903? Or were those principles light in 1901, and darkness in 1903? Or
were those principles really darkness in 1901 when you said that they were
light. Or are they still light to-day as they were in 1901? And if in the
General Conference of 1901 you were not able to distinguish between light
and darkness, what surety has anybody that you were any more able to do in
1902-1903? Or is it possible that in 19021903 you were not, and now are
not, able to see that the principles and the course of action of 1902-1903
are not the same as those of the General Conference of 1901? In other
words, is it possible that you can think that certain principles with
their course of action, and the reverse of them are one and the same? I
know that the principles that in 1901 you said were "light for the people"
were then really light, and they are now light and forever more will be
light. They are only plain principles of the Word of God. I hold these
principles to-day exactly as I did in 1901 and long before, and shall hold
them forever. For this cause I was opposed to the usurpation and
unconstitutional action of 1902-1903 that were the opposite of these
principles; and shall always be opposed to them.
In view of all these facts again I ask, Why should you
think that I should abandon all, just because you and others did? I think
that it was enough for me to keep still these three years. It is true that
I have had no disposition to do anything but to keep still about it. For
when the General Conference of 1903 made their choice that way, I have no
obligation to their having what they have chosen. I have no disposition to
oppose it in any other way than by preaching the gospel. Indeed the
strongest possible opposition can be made to it is the plain, simple
preaching of the plain gospel. There is this about it, however, that now
the plain simple preaching of the plain gospel will be considered disloyal
to the General Conference, disloyal to the organization, etc.
Nevertheless, I am going to continue to preach the plain gospel, and that
gospel is in the Word of God. For when the General Conference and the
organized work put themselves in such a position that the plain preaching
of the gospel as in the Word of God is disloyalty to the General
Conference and the "organized work," then the thing to do is to preach the
gospel, as it is in the Word of God. (Some History, Some Experience and
Some Facts, A.T. Jones, pp. 15-19.)