The Vital Center Of Error
On close analysis any system of error will be found to rest upon some central idea. Find and expose this basic fallacy and the system falls apart. This is certainly true of the big error in the "Herald of Truth" cooperative.
Four times I wrote to Brother John Reese asking these two questions:
1. Are the Highland elders doing their work in their official capacity (as elders of Highland church) in their oversight of the Herald of Truth cooperative?
2. Are the Highland elders doing this work as voluntary individual, acting as Directors of the cooperative, and not as elders of Highland church?
In four letters I pressed for a clear-cut answer. Four times the only answer I got was that Herald of Truth "is a part of the work of the elders of Highland Church". But I did NOT learn whether they consider themselves as acting as ELDERS or as DIRECTORS in their oversight of the cooperative. We have heard much in recent months about the elders over some orphan home "not acting as elders, but as directors". Now let us explore the same matter with reference to Herald of Truth.
It is my confirmed judgment that in every debate on the subject those defending the arrangement should be pressed, and pressed hard, for an answer to the question: "In what capacity are the Highland elders working? As individuals, or as elders performing the work God has assigned to them as elders?" If these questions were pressed and pressed again, we would be seeing some very confused "defenders" of the project! No escape could he found from the dilemma facing such a brother.
If he answers that Highland's elders are acting "as individuals," then we have a Missionary Society that even a child ought to recognize. No evasion could save the defender from the certain conclusion that Herald of Truth is performing every essential work of the Missionary Societies as they operated in the 1890's and early 1900's.
If his answer should be that Highland's elders are acting in their official capacity as elders, then we have the Episcopal form of church government — one eldership taking the oversight of a work that is nationwide, and "overseeing" in part at least the work of a thousand or more congregations. If they can operate in this fashion as their official work, then there are no bounds to the extent of the territory, nor the number of church-en over which they can exercise the "oversight".
Try this on your "Herald of Truth" friends in private studies of this problem, and press for a definite answer. It will be interesting to see what happens.