The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

General and State Conference Constitutions

May 21, a constitution was adopted by the General Conference, and on the same day a State constitution was recommended to the State conferences. It was adopted in a session of the Michigan Conference. These constitutions provided a numerical basis for delegate representation in the State conferences and in the General Conference. The State constitution, there recommended, is about the same as that used now by our seventy-two local conferences throughout the world. GSAM 354.1

At the time of the General Conference, in the spring of 1864, a recommendation was first made to the State conference that an Auditing Committee of laymen who had not been in the employ of the conference during the year, be selected to act with the executive committee in auditing and settling accounts with ministers. Thus step by step, as necessity required, order was established in the work and cause of God. GSAM 354.2

Thus we have briefly traced the steps that led to the formal organization of the work. This was done when the denomination was very small compared with what it is at the present time. GSAM 354.3

When the General Conference was fully organized, in 1863, the whole number of delegates was not so large as we now have annually in some of the small local conferences. GSAM 354.4