Chapter 44—Leadership
Brother A, your experience in reference to leadership two years
ago was for your own benefit and was highly essential to you. You
had very marked, decided views in regard to individual independence
and right to private judgment. These views you carry to extremes. You
reason that you must have light and evidence for yourself in reference
to your duty.
I have been shown that no man’s judgment should be surrendered to
the judgment of any one man. But when the judgment of the General
Conference, which is the highest authority that God has upon the
earth, is exercised, private independence and private judgment must
not be maintained, but be surrendered. Your error was in persistently
maintaining your private judgment of your duty against the voice of the
highest authority the Lord has upon the earth. After you had taken your
own time, and after the work had been much hindered by your delay,
you came to Battle Creek in answer to the repeated and urgent calls
of the General Conference. You firmly maintained that you had done
right in following your own convictions of duty. You considered it a
virtue in you to persistently maintain your position of independence.
You did not seem to have a true sense of the power that God has given
to His church in the voice of the General Conference. You thought
that in responding to the call made to you by the General Conference
you were submitting to the judgment and mind of one man. You
accordingly manifested an independence, a set, willful spirit, which
was all wrong.
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God gave you a precious experience at that time which was of value
to you, and which has greatly increased your success as a minister of
Christ. Your proud, unyielding will was subdued. You had a genuine
conversion. This led to reflection and to your position upon leadership.
Your principles in regard to leadership are right, but you do not make
the right application of them. If you should let the power in the church,
the voice and judgment of the General Conference, stand in the place
you have given my husband, there could then be no fault found with
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