Hello again, everyone! In this late-night hour as (here in Utah), we are around 8.5 hours away from the scheduled time for President Nelson's address and the press conference that will follow, I wanted to note something: When all of that was announced by the Church on the 13th, in the posts I did covering that announcement, a comment queried how likely it is that President Nelson's address is to announce the interregnum will continue for a while.
While that is not entirely out of the question, Tad Walch, a writer for the Deseret News that has particularly covered the news of the Church for that paper at least as long as I have been visiting the Church News website, said in this article that while the opportunity President Nelson is taking to address the Church before the press conference is indeed a first, since a press conference has been scheduled afterwards, it is definitively certain that the First Presidency has been reorganized.
In addition to deferring to Walch's expertise on this (as I said, he has covered such topics for a long time), I did the math, and it has been rough 128.75 years since the Church was last in an extended period of interregnum (as April 6, 1889 was the last day 4th Church President Wilford Woodruff led the Church as President of the Quorum of the Twelve; as his death was approaching around 9 years and 4 or 5 months later, he gave instructions to Lorenzo Snow, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, regarding the need to not wait to reorganize the First Presidency following his passing, a procedure that has been followed since that time).
Additionally, I took the math even further, and since the death of David O. McKay on January 18, 1970, no new Church president has chosen counselors outside of the membership of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. So with a 128.75 year precedent of considerably shorter interregnums (with the current one, which, if as anticipated lasted from the death of President Monson on January 2 to the ordination of President Nelson, which likely occurred on Sunday January 14, being the longest such period since the practice of shorter interregnums was instituted), and with the fact that it has not been since mid-January 1970 that we have seen a counselor to a new Church president called from outside the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I don't see President Nelson breaking with either precedent.
That said, whatever the course of events might be that we learn about within the next 9-12 hours, you can count on my bringing coverage of it all as it occurs. That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
The First Presidency Has Been Reorganized
I have had a lifelong love for Church history, which has extended to ongoing reports of the ministry of our apostles and prophets, General Conference, and all temple developments. This blog enables me to share that love with all who read my thoughts on these developments, which are sometimes reported multiple times per day as needed.
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