Tag Archives: apostles

Jan 18

Nephi’s Commentary on Church Organization

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Anyone who doubts the centrality of Jesus Christ to Mormonism (if we ignore the name of the church – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) needs only to read the first chapter of the Book of Mormon. In 1 Nephi 1:9 we read: “And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.”

It took just a few verses to reference the Savior. The context is Lehi, a prophet contemporary with Jeremiah, had a vision where he saw God sitting on His throne, surrounded by many angels. Then he saw “One descending out of the midst of heaven” who was followed by “twelve others” (1 Ne. 1:10). These twelve had similarly bright radiances. So here we are with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and His twelve Apostles. Who were these Apostles? The twelve He called while on earth.

Now we continue to see the organization of God’s kingdom. “And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read.” (1 Nephi 1:11). The first in the verse might refer to the Savior but that does not make as much sense as it referring to the first of the Apostles; in other words, the chief apostle. Who is this? Peter.

Here we have the Father sitting on His throne, His Son descending to earth, and Peter (and the rest of the apostles) doing some of the specific work. That is the order of God’s kingdom, His authority and His priesthood. Heavenly Father sends His Son to act in His stead in some situations (actually, in most circumstances of which we have record). Jesus then delegates some of the work to His apostles, namely to Peter (and James and John). This is what we read in the first part of the Book of Mormon. It’s quite a rich commentary on the nature of God’s work, including how He accomplishes some of the work – through Priesthood delegation.

So there we have not only Christ taking an early and central role in the Book of Mormon, we have reference to the Father as well as Christ’s Twelve Apostles; there are other Apostles, including 15 alive at present – the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plus the 12 Apostles – but the original Apostles had and have (although I can probably safely say that Judas Iscariot is not currently acting in the role of Apostle) a special calling. They have been involved in directing and teaching the work of the Lord since the beginning of the earth and since Adam’s time upon the earth.

It did not take long in the Book of Mormon to reveal the centrality of Christ and the centrality of the organization of the Church. This is one of the reasons that I really enjoy the writings of Nephi. He teaches so much in such a compact space. The 1st chapter of 1 Nephi is rich with doctrine.

Aug 13

The Twelve and Seventy: An Interview With Pres. Packer

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I’ve written about the LDS Church’s quorums of seventy before: Organization of LDS Church, Part 2; Chart of LDS General Authorities; How Many Children do the Seventy Have?
I’ve been fascinated by the leadership and organization of the Church for many years. I enjoy watching the Church grow and seeing how the structure of the general church leadership changes to meet the needs of a growing church. What is interesting is how the changes made always fit within the pattern Christ established when on the earth as well as the pattern revealed to Joseph Smith. In other words, the pattern of church leadership established in ancient and modern scripture is sufficient for meeting the needs of any size church. I was thus pleased to see that the Church posted an interview between Elder Ronald Rasband (Senior President of the Seventy) and Pres. Boyd K. Packer.

At one point in the interview Pres. Packer commented about the foresight of Joseph Smith (the foresight was not his own but rather was from God). “President Packer said it is marvelous that Joseph Smith could have anticipated an organization that would expand to meet the needs of the Church worldwide. ‘The revelations came when he was a very young man,’ President Packer said. ‘How he knew what he knew, I was going to say it was incredible. It is not, because he did not have to know much. All he had to do is follow the patterns of revelation.’”

Here’s the video of the interview with Pres. Packer. It’s a nice video that shows the hand of the Lord as He directs the work of His church.

Oct 28

The Necessity of Prophets and Apostles

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CNN has an article about “family values in the Bible” written by Michael Coogan, a professor of religious studies at Stonehill College. I obviously do not agree with all the writer is stating but he makes a strong argument for the necessity of modern prophets without intending to.

For example, he writes:

“In current debates about family values, most of which have to do with sex, opponents of abortion and advocates of a woman’s right to choose both cite the Bible in support of their conflicting views, even though the Bible in fact says nothing specifically about the issue. And with regard to same-sex marriage, although the few biblical writers who mention same-sex relationships, especially between men, were unequivocally opposed to them, many contemporary believers would argue that, as with slavery and the status of women, it is time to recognize that the values of the biblical writers are no longer necessarily our own.”

So who gets to decide what is okay to accept and okay to reject from the Bible? A committee of scholars? Are we too advanced for prophets in our modern society? I know that’s not how things worked in the Bible. If I recall correctly, there seemed to be some prophets who spoke God’s words and commands – men like Moses, Abraham, Elijah, Peter, and Paul.

The author goes on to slyly argue against calling homosexual behavior sinful by making false appeals to other portions of the Mosaic Law that we do not follow today:

“Opponents of same-sex marriage cite Leviticus, which says that when a man sleeps with a man as with a woman it is an abomination. They’re right: It does say that. But it later calls for the death penalty for such activity, which only the most rabid opponents would insist on. The Bible also calls eating pork and a woman wearing a man’s clothes abominations, yet many would no longer enforce such prohibitions.”

That’s written as if the matter is settled. That’s a little bit like arguing that it is okay to murder because we (used proverbially as meaning the House of Israel in Biblical times) also used to perform blood sacrifices and we don’t do that any more. The author is making doctrinal decisions based on worldly acceptance. Besides, he conveniently ignores that New Testament writers also preached against homosexual behaviors. I know there are revisionist theologians who reinterpret and seek to re-write the scriptures to fit their own beliefs but they are like historians re-writing American history books to state that the Confederacy won the Civil War. Those who were there might have an issue with that position. Again, wouldn’t it be great if we had someone who could authoritatively speak God’s will just like in Biblical times?

The wonderful thing is that we do! Since 1820 we have had a prophet of the Lord on the earth just like in olden days. Today the Lord’s prophet is Thomas S. Monson. Further, we also have apostles who are called of God. You can read and watch some of what prophets and apostles are doing here. Prophets speak God’s word, which renders articles like the one I linked to for the most part moot.

Oct 18

Chart of LDS General Authorities

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put together a website with photos and links to biographies of the current General Authorities of the Church. One thing that is interesting is the small size of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. It’s been smaller than the First Quorum for as long as I can remember but the size difference is striking. One reason for the difference – I believe – is the localizing nature of the Church. What I mean by that is that with the formation of additional quorums of (area) Seventies – there are 8 in total – there is not as strong a need for such a centralized church. All authority goes back to the General Authorities but with the growth of the Church, there is greater need for stronger, more local leadership. Many of those who serve in the First Quorum of the Seventy are called to serve in various parts of the world to direct the church there, but their primary calling is to provide general (global) leadership over the Church; others are called to provide more local and specific leadership.

In any case, that website is a great source of information about the leaders of the Church.

Apr 07

How Many Children Do the Apostles Have? A Statistical Exercise

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After General Conference was over my mother (who was visiting to help out with our new baby) remarked about how most of the Apostles had only a few kids. Being a scientist and a bit compulsive about my statistics I put together a little spreadsheet with the number of children each apostle has from which I calculated the mean, median, and mode number of children. My mother was correct in that more apostles have 3 children than any other number; however, the mean (4.93) and median (4.0) are higher.

Here are the numbers (Apostles are sorted according to seniority):

Apostle       # of children
Monson 3
Packer 10
Perry 3
Nelson 10
Oaks 6
Ballard 7
Scott 7
Hales 2
Holland 3
Eyring 6
Uchtdorf 2
Bednar 3
Cook 3
Christofferson 5
Andersen 4

Anyone surprised by the numbers? I was that the mode was 3 but my guess of the average was 5, which is what the mean turned out to be. We cannot really throw out Elders Packer and Nelson as outliers because the sample size is small, plus it would defeat the purpose of the analysis to remove them from the analysis just because they create a slight positive skew to the data (skewness = 0.85, kurtosis = -0.30). In any case, I think it is interesting that 9 of the 15 apostles have 5 or fewer children (most of those 9 have 2 or 3 children). The rest have 6, 7, or 10. There is a moderate correlation between number of children and age (r=0.49, p=0.06; should you feel a non-parametric correlation is more appropriate, Spearman’s rho = 0.40, p = 0.14).

When I looked at the above chart, it looked like there were two clusters of apostlesXchildren based on seniority. I thus created two groups within the Apostles based on seniority; the 7 most senior (through Elder Scott) were one group and the 8 left were the other group (beginning with Elder Hales). This group split was as close to a median split as possible. A t-test revealed that there was a significant difference in the number of children between groups (mean for group 1 = 6.57, mean for group 2 = 3.5, t = 2.68, p = 0.02, Cohen’s d = 1.35 – a large effect). There also is a significant difference in age between the two groups (which is not surprising; group 1 mean = 83.57, group 2 mean = 68.38, t = 4.99, p = 0.001).

Should my split of the groups be criticized based on the fact that Elder Hales only has 2 children and so placing him in group 2 might be undue manipulation of the data, here are the values with him in group 1 (group 1 mean number of children = 6.00, group 2 = 3.71, t = 1.79, p = 0.097; this is no longer significant but the sample size is also small {although, it could be viewed as large because the entire population of living apostles is 15 and I ‘sampled’ the entire population}. In any case, the effect size of this difference is still large – Cohen’s d = 0.95). I think the split should be between Elder Scott and Elder Hales because Elder Hales is the first of the apostles called while Pres. Hinckley was the prophet (technically, Elder Hales was called to fill the vacancy in the Twelve when Pres. Hunter died; Pres. Hinckley was called to replace Pres. Hunter); in other words, Elder Scott was the last of the apostles called in the 1980s and Elder Hales was the first called in the 1990s (there was about a 6 year gap in between when they were called). Either way I split the groups, the difference in number of children is large between the more senior Apostles and the newer Apostles. There are the outliers in the groups (Pres. Monson and Elder Perry for group 1 and Elder Eyring for group 2) but overall, the groups cluster together well (see the “Within Cluster Variation” chart).

If seniority roughly equals age (remember the significant difference between the ages of the two groups), does age explain the difference in number of children? In part it does. Age explains 24% of the variance in number of children (R = 0.49, F = 4.166, p = 0.06), which is a moderate amount but it is obvious that age alone cannot account for the difference in number of children. There are other testable (e.g., number of children in their nuclear family, age at marriage, income, etc.) and untestable (e.g., personal choice and how many children the Lord let them know they could or should have) factors that might explain the difference. Frankly, it does not matter in the end. Can we really explain why people have the number of children that they have? Sometimes we can if there are fertility issues but the number of children a couple has boils down largely to personal choice. That is why I am not going to try to explain why we see these differences in the number of children between the more senior Apostles and the newer Apostles.

I hope you found this an interesting analysis – I certainly did! I think it would be interesting to expand it to include the 1st and maybe 2nd quorums of the Seventy as well but that is an analysis for a later time.

Aug 08

The Organization of the LDS Church – Part 1

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There is no other church on earth like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its organization and growth are inspired. Much of the organization of the church is built upon the following principle: “No man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron” (Heb. 5:4). The LDS Church is largely run by a lay ministry. People do not vie for positions; most do not seek office. When a call is received, service begins. The LDS church is organized in such a manner that all have the opportunity in even a small way to play a role in the church. The church is run and directed by and through the priesthood of God. In this essay, I’ll provide an overview of how the LDS Church is organized.

I’ll start from the “top” and move down. Actually this is starting at the bottom – at the foundation – and moving up, but we more commonly think of it as top-down. The Savior Jesus Christ is the head of the LDS Church. It is His church and is a restoration of the church He established in ancient days. The Savior chooses one man to act as His prophet – to preside over and to lead the church on earth. The current prophet is Thomas S. Monson, who is the most senior apostle and is ordained as a prophet, seer, and revelator. He is the only one authorized to speak definitively for the whole church and to establish church doctrine. He can delegate this authority in specific circumstances but generally does not. The prophet is the presiding priesthood holder on the earth. He holds all of the keys of the kingdom, meaning that he has the authority and responsibility to direct the church as inspired. The prophet has two counselors (although there could be more) who as a whole constitute the First Presidency of the LDS Church. The First Presidency together also hold all the keys of administration of the church. They constitute the highest governing body of the church and serve in a small way as a type for the Godhead – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (in other words, there are three people in the First Presidency in part to mirror the three personages in the Godhead).

The members of the First Presidency are all prophets, seers, and revelators in addition to being ordained as apostles. While they are currently called from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, their roles are separate from the Quorum of the Twelve while they are in the First Presidency. Upon the death of the prophet, the First Presidency is automatically dissolved and the counselors return to their place in the Quorum of the Twelve.

The Quorum of the Twelve consists of twelve men who are ordained as apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ and who are sustained as prophets, seers, and revelators. They are all special witnesses of the Lord Jesus with a special call to bear witness of Him unto all the world. They also serve as the main, under the direction of the First Presidency, administrative body of the church. One man is called as president of the Quorum (with another called as acting president should the president of the Twelve be called as a counselor in the First Presidency). The Twelve, along with the First Presidency, fulfill different assignments throughout the world, including dedicating new temples, meeting with church members, meeting with world, religious, and civic leaders, meeting with the media, and so forth. Each also serve on various committees pertaining to different aspects of church administrations, such as missionary work or education. The Twelve each individually hold all the keys of the priesthood but are not individually or collectively authorized to use those keys except as following the death of the prophet; in that instance, they can only use their keys collectively. The members of the Quorum of the Twelve are “ranked” according to seniority based on how long they’ve been a member of the quorum. The most senior apostle, following the death of the prophet, is shortly sustained as the new prophet and president of the church. There is no jostling for position or asking of questions about who will be called. The new prophet then calls two counselors. Any voids left in the Quorum of the Twelve are then subsequently filled with the callings and sustainings of new apostles.

May 17

Experiment Upon the Word, Part 4

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Faith experiments and science experiments are similar in some ways. One of the similarities is that both seek knowledge; rather, through both, the experimenter seeks knowledge. Because knowledge is so important, learning is a major part of both. In the Doctrine and Covenants we are commanded to seek wisdom and knowledge: “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C; 88:118). This verse relates perfectly to the faith experiment because it tells us that because “all have not faith” we need to seek wisdom and learning. Wisdom and learning help nourish the seed of faith, helping it grow.

Education is a vital part of life. Education is not just vital, life-long education is vital. We started learning as spirits living with our Heavenly Father. He taught us and had others teach us. We all progressed to various points, some learning more and some less than others. Then we came to earth, receiving bodies that allow us to continue to grow and progress. We also are able to learn spiritual and temporal things. Life-long education need not be formal, although receiving as much formal education as possible is a great goal. We can continue to learn and study on our own by seeking wisdom and knowledge out of the best books. We can and should study the gospel. We can and should study as many good topics as interest us.

Formal education is important because it helps teach you different ways of thinking. Learning in general exposes you to new ideas and new experiences, which help broaden your understanding of the world. Gaining a formal education also allows you to provide better for your self and your family. It also can lead to more free time with which you can do more church service. I’ve always thought it interesting how educated in general the General Authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are. Most have higher education degrees and many have advanced degrees. Within the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, most have advanced degrees.

  • Pres. Monson has a bachelor’s in business from the University of Utah
  • Pres. Eyring has a doctorate in business administration from Harvard
  • Pres. Uchtdorf has a degree in business administration as well as being a highly respected military and commercial pilot
  • Pres. Packer has an Ed.D. from BYU
  • Elder Perry has a B.S. in business from Utah State University
  • Elder Nelson has an M.D. from the University of Utah and a PhD from the University of Minnesota – he is a world-renowned heart surgeon
  • Elder Oaks has a J.D. from the University of Chicago
  • Elder Ballard attended college but I’m not sure if he graduated – he was a successful businessman, however
  • Elder Scott has a bachelor’s degree but he also received the “equivalent to a doctorate in nuclear engineering at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, but due to the classified nature of the work, a formal university degree could not be awarded” (Source)
  • Elder Hales has an MBA from Harvard
  • Elder Holland has a PhD in American Studies from Yale
  • Elder Bednar has a PhD in organizational behavior from Purdue
  • Elder Cook has a JD from Stanford
  • Elder Christofferson has a JD from Duke
  • Elder Andersen has an MBA from Harvard

That’s quite a list of education accomplishments (and I didn’t even touch their other accomplishments). 11 of the 15 apostles (Quorum of Twelve plus the First Presidency) have advanced/professional degrees or the equivalent thereof. However, the greatest accomplishments these men have experienced are at home and in their church service. Every one of them gave up their careers in order to answer the call to full-time church. They do set a wonderful example of education and the life-long pursuit of learning. Contrast the current apostles’ education with that of Joseph Smith. He had little formal education but he continued to study and learn his whole life. He learned new languages; he studied the sciences; but most importantly, he studied the scriptures and the gospel; he was taught directly by angels as well as the Savior. He was one of the most intelligent and understanding men of all time.