35 Years Later -- Memories of the revelation on the priesthood

Saturday was the 35th anniversary of the announcement of extension of priesthood blessings to all worthy male members of the church, that is the lifting of the priesthood ban. This item from LDS Living highlights some of the implications and is worth a read.

It often happens that we remember where we were when certain big things happen in our lives. I remember where I was when I heard this news. I was a missionary serving in Worms, Germany. Our branch president lived in Mannheim and we had just knocked on his door. His 20-something daughter answered the door, saw us and excitedly said, “The Blacks can have the priesthood!” I stood in the hallway outside their apartment, stunned.

As it happened, the branch president had gone to a leadership meeting with the stake leaders where he heard the news.

Years later as I read accounts of the process that President Kimball followed in receiving and then sharing that revelation, I wept at the care and love he showed. I was aware that President McKay had sought similar revelation years earlier and did not receive it; still he also did his best to exercise care and love within the bounds that he felt surrounded him.

In October 2011, after the announcement of new temples in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo prompted this blog post from me, which I reprint here because of its relationship to the lifting of the priesthood ban.

New African Temples and Me

I know that several new temples were announced in conference, and as interesting as good fishing in Wyoming sounds to me (btw, interesting is that word your mother taught you to use when you couldn’t think of a nice one), it was the two new African temples that caught my attention.

I have never been to Africa, but my parents lived in Lagos, Nigeria while I was on my mission in the late 1970’s. During those years President Kimball announced the revelation on the extension of the priesthood to all worthy men of the church.

I have in my missionary journal a letter from my mother in which she writes:

Yesterday, Sunday, August 20, 1978 marked a day of history.

On Friday, Brother Merrill Bateman [then a BYU professor] and Edwin Q. Cannon, first counselor in the International Mission presidency arrived in Lagos. They visited us, Brother Miller, a Brother Miller-Aganemi who became a member of the church while doing graduate work in Utah. He is a native Nigerian and is, of course, black. Yesterday [we] held a REAL meeting. [My folks had been meeting just the two of them each week, with Brother Miller joining them a time or two a month.] Sacrament was observed, testimonies and one calling and setting-apart. And this is the “first.” Your Dad was called to be Nigerian Group Leader, to locate those Nigerian men who were baptized during their educational periods in the U.S. and have since returned to this country. These men will now have the opportunity to realize the priesthood.

I would never have imagined that my convert parents would be on the cutting edge of the history of the church. To be sure, they were on the edge. Two senior missionary couples later came to Nigeria and Ghana and did the heavy lifting regarding the initial growth of the church there. They visited with my folks from time to time, but the real work was far from Lagos. But decades later temples came to Ghana and to Nigeria.

I’ve been interested in the development of the church in Africa since my parents were there. An additional temple in South Africa is a great thing. And a temple in the Democratic Republic of Congo is awesome to me. More blessings closer to more people. The Johannesburg South Africa Temple is 350 miles from Durban, and over 2,000 miles from Kinshasa.

I look forward to more African temples in the future.

BTW, you can read my latest post at Real Intent, "Becoming Father," here.

   

What I wish I had said in my GAS lesson yesterday

I taught priesthood yesterday. That’s not such a big deal, except that I completely forgot I was teaching. I also spoke in sacrament meeting, and had concentrated on my talk this past week. On Friday, I wondered if I was teaching or not, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t. Well, Sunday just before class, the group secretary handed out new lesson schedules, and there was my name next to this week’s lesson.

The good news: I had gotten my wires crossed and carefuly read the lesson a couple of weeks earlier, forgetting that it was “teaching for our times” lesson, so I had some ideas. And on Friday, I read through the lesson again, just in case.

I said a silent prayer as our group leader conducted a bit of business, and I quickly looked over my highlighted passages in my Kindle Fire (I didn’t have my paper book, which I prefer on days I teach). The lesson was #5 about the blessings of the restored priesthood, a subject near and dear to my heart. Looking at the questions at the end of the lesson, I found where I wanted to begin and where I wanted to end, so with a little faith and some bravado, I stood to teach.

We started with D&C 84:21, which makes clear that the blessing of the priesthood is in priesthood ordinances. We spoke a bit about those ordinances required for exaltation (baptism, confirmation, priesthood ordination, temple endowment, temple sealing). And we read several passages from the manual about President Smith’s love of the priesthood, the blessings of ordinances, and his sensitivity not to offend others, but to be clear that the proper authority to perform priesthood ordinances rests in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We turned to blessings of the priesthood, and read D&C 84:33-38, what has often been referred to as The Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood. We pointed out specific blessings to faithful priesthood holders (sanctification, renewing of their bodies, membership among the seed of Abraham and the elect of God – see verses 33-34).

In the next few verses come the Great Blessing, namely All That The Father Hath (v. 38). I asked the group who can receive that particular blessing. A visitor said (without my calling on him) “men only.” I ignored his comment and walked through the logic of verses 36-38:

For he that receiveth my servants receiveth me; And he that receiveth me receiveth my Father; And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.

Who receives the Lord’s servants? Anyone who receives priesthood ordinances.

What is the path to exaltation? The saving ordinances of the gospel.

Who receives the Great Blessing from verse 38? Anyone who receives all of the saving ordinances.

Our visitor then said, “Well, I see where you’re going with this, but….”

I don’t know what his real concern was. I sensed a resistance in him (my impression was driven by his first “men only” comment, I suppose) to think that these verses applied to anyone outside the priesthood club.

I didn’t have time to pursue it. I wish I had the time. It would have been interesting to unpack his concern and examine it more closely, and to see if we could reason together to understand it. But we were at the end of our class time.

What I really wish I had done (and had I been better prepared, maybe I would have) is followed my discussion with this quotation from President Smith from near the end of the lesson:

The authority of our Heavenly Father is upon the earth for the blessing of mankind, not to make those who receive that authority arrogant, but to make them humble; not to make those who have received special privileges feel that they are greater than others, but to make us humble in our souls, prayerful in our hearts, and considerate of all men in all that we do, and thus exemplify by upright lives that which our Heavenly Father desires us to teach.

By citing that quotation, I don’t mean to suggest that our visitor was arrogant. I don’t think he was. But This quotation, taken with the rest of President Smith’s words from the lesson, make clear that President Smith saw the blessing of the restored priesthood in the service that the priesthood requires, not in the mere holding of it.

Can we have the priesthood without the church?

In my post on Monday, I suggested that the church is what allows us to have the ordinances of salvation. Commenter Michael suggested with a finer point that the priesthood allows those ordinances, not the church organization.

For me the two – the priesthood and the church -- are inextricably linked. Here’s why:

It’s true the priesthood came first, with the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood in May 1829 (see D&C 13) and the Melchizedek Priesthood following in the same year (confirmed in D&C 27:12).

Section 84 reaffirms that the priesthood is the means by which ordinances are performed and have validity:

And this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God. Therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest. And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh; For without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live (D&C 84:19-22).

I understand “this” in the final line of those verses to refer to the power of godliness, which is derived from the authority of the priesthood used in performing the ordinances of the priesthood.

Those verses alone would suggest that Michael may be right: the priesthood is all that is required, not the church itself.

But D&C 20 makes clear that the priesthood is a part of the church:

No person is to be ordained to any office in this church, where there is a regularly organized branch of the same, without the vote of that church (v. 65, emphasis mine).

And so is the ordinance of baptism:

And again, by way of commandment to the church concerning the manner of baptism—All those who humble themselves before God, and desire to be baptized, and come forth with broken hearts and contrite spirits, and witness before the church that they have truly repented of all their sins, and are willing to take upon them the name of Jesus Christ, having a determination to serve him to the end, and truly manifest by their works that they have received of the Spirit of Christ unto the remission of their sins, shall be received by baptism into his church (v. 37, emphasis mine).

And so is the sacrament:

It is expedient that the church meet together often to partake of bread and wine in the remembrance of the Lord Jesus (v. 75, emphasis mine).

The Lord not only revealed these organizational matters, but also the name of the church:

For thus shall my church be called in the last days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (D&C 115:4, emphasis mine).

Of course this pattern is not new. We read similarly in the Book of Mormon about the establishment of the church and its ordinances in the time of Alma and the naming of the church as well.

Elder Oaks reaffirmed the relationship between the priesthood and the church in his talk in the October 2010 conference:

During His earthly ministry, Jesus Christ conferred the authority of the priesthood that bears His name and He established a church that also bears His name. In this last dispensation, His priesthood authority was restored and His Church was reestablished through heavenly ministrations to the Prophet Joseph Smith. This restored priesthood and this reestablished Church are at the heart of the priesthood line (“Two Lines of Communication,” emphasis mine).

I accept that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encompasses the restored priesthood of God, restored and revealed through the prophet Joseph Smith and that that priesthood authority and power are present in the church today. I have personally benefitted from that priesthood power, both in the ordinances of the gospel and the organization of the church and the blessings each has brought into my life.

On motherhood, fatherhood and priesthood

I have generally given up trying to explain why God does things. There was a time in my life when it was important for me to have that answer (and to share it), but I guess I’ve settled into a different place in my development. Now I can observe what God does and not worry about why. It is what it is, I tell myself, and that’s ok.

Not everyone is where I am, and that’s ok, too. For some, a quest of the “why” is vitally important. Others want to know, but are willing to wait and see if the “why” reveals itself. And other just don’t worry about it anymore. I think I’m somewhere between the second and third.

Some folks worry about why women don’t hold the priesthood. And others, hoping perhaps to assuage the need to know why, have offered the idea that men can hold the priesthood but women can have children, as if those two are equal endowments meant to offset one another.

This much I know: men hold the priesthood and women can have babies. And in the LDS church, women don’t hold the priesthood, and men (regardless of religious affiliation) can’t have babies.

This much I don’t know: the opportunity to hold the priesthood offsets the opportunity to have babies (or vice versa).

The Family: A Proclamation to the World says:

“By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”

Even if one accepts that premise (and I do, by the way), it does not support the idea that motherhood and priesthood are corollaries.

The corollary to motherhood is fatherhood. Our former stake president taught this principle regularly as he reminded us that when we were at home with our children, especially if we were watching the kids so mom could be away, we were not babysitting: we were being fathers. Indeed, the proclamation says nothing about priesthood, only motherhood and fatherhood.

Why don’t women hold the priesthood? I don’t know. Certainly they may receive all the blessings of the priesthood the same way any man can: by receiving the ordinances of the priesthood. Thankfully years of teaching by the church is giving women a greater voice in the councils of the church. (The recent training on CHI II has emphasized this point, but Elder Ballard has been speaking about it for years.) And we know that in certain settings, women play an active role in ordinance work. They certainly minister among the members of the church and in their families. Women teach and pray and have access to the same personal revelation and inspiration as anyone.

I am grateful to my eternal companion for her contribution to my life. Our family is pretty traditional. My wife is a SAHM and I work longer hours than I wish I did (so does she by the way!). But, bless her heart, my wife reminds me regularly of the contributions I make as a dad. Am I’m grateful (and tell her so) for her contributions as a mom. In those roles, I think we are as complementary as we are complimentary.

Gifts of the Spirit - the Gospel Principles Discussion in my HP Group

I did it again in our last high priest group meeting. I made a comment that drew odd looks from my fellow group members.

We were reading in the Gospel Principles manual, Chapter 22 in which some of the gifts of the spirit are enumerated and discussed. I had taught this lesson earlier this year in the Gospel Essentials class and had appreciated the simple discussion of the gifts in that forum. But I was just a little bothered in our high priest group that we were rarely stepping beyond the words on the page as we read.

Finally when we read, "Every person can have a testimony through the whisperings of the Holy Spirit," under the heading The Gift of Knowing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, I decided to speak.

I've written here repeatedly about my understanding that we don't all have each gift of the spirit, and I believe that in my own experience I have sometimes felt one gift when I needed and then another at a different time.

I suggested that while it's true we may all have some testimony of the Savior, those testimonies may not look the same. The answer one person gets to the promise in Moroni 10:4 may come differently than it does for someone else. Some will more easily say they know; others will believe.

I assumed I'd get broad agreement, particularly since D&C 46:11-12 says, "For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God. To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby,” and the lesson manual quoted those verses on the next page.

I was surprised, however, that some suggested that I was wrong. One brother suggested that this particular gift was a requirement for all. Others suggested that all could get the same answer equally. I suppose that in theory God could choose to do that if He wants to, but my experience is that it does not happen that way. And it's ok that it doesn't.

The Gospel Principles manual continues: "To develop our gifts, we must find out which gifts we have…. We should seek after the best gifts." I agree that there is value in understanding what gifts we have, and petitioning the Lord for those we need. And for recognizing them when they come, even if only temporarily in response to a particular need.

Priesthood Keys

I attended a district conference during a business trip recently. One of the branch presidents from the district spoke in the priesthood session about priesthood keys, and his talk moved me to do a little more study to confirm some of the things he said, and to reinforce my own understanding. Yesterday in the Gospel Principles class I teach, we talked about keys, too, so this all dovetailed nicely.

Church leaders have spoken on keys of the priesthood from time to time. Generally keys of the priesthood are required in directing the work of the priesthood. We believe that when John the Baptist came to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey that not only did he give them priesthood power, but also priesthood keys. And others came to restore other keys.

Shortly before his death, Joseph Smith conferred those keys on the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which allowed for the orderly direction of the Lord's work after Joseph was gone. Wilford Woodruff reported: “On that occasion the Prophet Joseph rose up and said to us: ‘Brethren, I have desired to live to see this temple built. I shall never live to see it, but you will. I have sealed upon your heads all the keys of the kingdom of God. I have sealed upon you every key, power, principle that the God of heaven has revealed to me. Now, no matter where I may go or what I may do, the kingdom rests upon you’ ” (quoted by Eyring in "Faith and Keys" in October 2004 General Conference).

Today, priesthood keys are held by those who lead in the priesthood: The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, stake presidents, bishops, and elders, teachers and deacons quorum presidents, as well as mission presidents and temple presidents. Their counselors do not hold keys (see Priesthood Keys in "Priesthood" at Gospel Topics at lds.org).

So is the matter of keys simply an arcane item of church government? I don't think so. It is through keys that the authority to perform ordinances is given. For instance, a bishop authorizes a faithful priest or holder of the Melchizedek priesthood to baptize in his ward. A deacon's quorum president makes assignments for the passing of the sacrament. A stake president authorizes the ordination of a new elder, and grants keys to a new bishop to serve in his stake. Without the proper keys, the proper exercise of the priesthood is impossible. And it is through the exercise of the priesthood in the ordinances of the gospel that we see the power of God in our lives (see D&C 84:19-22).

Elder Eyring gives other reasons for the importance of keys. He says:

"…All of us who serve others in the true Church want to help those we love gain a lasting testimony that the keys of the priesthood are held by the Lord’s servants in His Church. I speak today to encourage all who labor to instill and strengthen that testimony.

"It will help to recognize some things. First, God is persistent and generous in offering the blessings of priesthood power to His children. Second, His children must choose for themselves to qualify for and receive those blessings. And third, Satan, the enemy of righteousness, has from the beginning tried to undermine the faith necessary to receive the blessings made possible by priesthood power" (Faith and Keys).

I was touched by the third one. Elder Eyring goes on at some length to teach the need not to see our keys-bearing priesthood leaders as who they were before they held keys, but rather to recognize that they are more than who they were because of the keys they hold.

My present bishop is a very good friend of mine. We have served together in a variety of ways over the years, and our sons (now 13) have practically grown up together. I know him to be a good man, and as a friend I would do anything for him. But it is important for me to see him as more than the good man who is my friend. He is also my bishop. He carries that mantel (and he carries it well because the Lord loves him and is blessing him in his service). I cannot fully express the blessing it was to me when the Spirit confirmed for me that he was called of God to serve as he does. One day he'll be released, and maybe I'll be able to call him by his first name again.* But for now, I pray for him and I honor him as my bishop because he holds priesthood keys.

Elder Eyring continues:

"We must…know for ourselves that the Lord restored His Church and the priesthood keys through the Prophet Joseph Smith. And we must have an assurance through the Holy Ghost, refreshed often, that those keys have been passed without interruption to the living prophet and that the Lord blesses and directs His people through the line of priesthood keys which reaches down through presidents of stakes and of districts and through bishops and branch presidents to us, wherever we are and no matter how far from the prophet and the apostles....

"Satan will always work on the Saints of God to undermine their faith in priesthood keys. One way he does it is to point out the humanity of those who hold them. He can in that way weaken our testimony and so cut us loose from the line of keys by which the Lord ties us to Him and can take us and our families home to Him and to our Heavenly Father….

"To keep ourselves grounded in the Lord’s Church, we can and must train our eyes to recognize the power of the Lord in the service of those He has called. We must be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. And we need to pray for the Holy Ghost to help us know that men who lead us hold this power. For me, such prayers are most often answered when I am fully engaged in the Lord’s service myself" ("Faith and Keys").

My own experience is similar. I will see the keys of the priesthood active in priesthood leaders when I'm engaged in the Lord's service.

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*Don't get hung up on this point. I call my good friend Bishop because he's my bishop. Others still call their good friends by their first name privately, but use official church titles in public.