Evils Resulting from Centralization and Colonization
125
connection with the General Conference reorganization.—SDAEN
1514.
] no kingly power....
The kingly power formerly exhibited in the General Conference at
Battle Creek is not to be perpetuated. The publishing institutions is not
to be a kingdom of itself. It is essential that the principles that govern
in General Conference affairs shall be maintained in the managements
of the publishing work and the sanitarium work....
The Lord has declared that there should be publishing plants in
various places. Supreme power should not be vested in a few large
institutions. At the last General Conference [1901] the light was given,
Divide the General Conference into union conferences. Let there be
fewer responsibilities centered in one place. Let the work of printing
our publications be divided.
The principles that apply to the publishing work apply also to the
sanitarium work.—
Manuscript 13, 1903
.
Many Printing Plants Needed—I have words to speak to you [
to
the General Conference president and to the manager of the Review
and Herald.
] You must be guarded in your plans, for you are in danger
of centralizing. If you should follow your natural dispositions, there
would be a tendency to so arrange the publishing work that the majority
of our books would bear the imprint of Washington. The danger of
such a course compels me to speak.
It is not the Lord’s plan to centralize largely in any one place. The
time has passed when there should be any binding about of the work
and confining it to a few places. There are small printing plants to be
established and recognized in the South and in other places not yet
designated.
[147]
The work of publication is to be developed in new lines and carried
as it has never yet been carried.—
Letter 328, 1907
.
Confederacy in Review Offices—The question has been asked,
“What does Sister White mean by saying and writing that there was in
the office [of the Review and Herald Publishing Association] a con-
federacy that was an offense to God?” If those to whom this testimony
was given had been under the enlightenment of the Spirit of God, they
would have understood this.
There was a confederacy in regard to the matter of wages. Certain
ones agreed together not to yield their decision on that point, and they
did not until the reproof came over and over and pressed closer and