How are Adventist church leaders like Jesus? According to Weymouth Spence, president of Washington Adventist University (WAU), they have been given authority over all people so that they might give eternal life to those whom God has given into their care. This is the interpretation President Spence gives to the “High Priestly” prayer of Jesus in John 17:1-26.

In the August 2015 edition of The Gateway, WAU’s section of Columbia Union Conference’s monthly magazine, The Visitor, Spence takes care to congratulate Ted N. C. Wilson on his re-election as the General Conference president, and to offer up the wish that “the Lord will grant our leaders the knowledge, wisdom and understanding to lead our church in the 21st century.” It’s an ambivalent gesture, especially in the turbulent wake of Wilson’s re-election, the controversial revision of several of the Fundamental Beliefs, and the rejection of women’s ordination.

But it’s the unequivocal identification of…