Consequently, I will not in any way be offended or
bothered if any of you skip over this post and the next one. This first post,
as has been the case for previous updates, will address President Dallin H.
Oaks’ tenure as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then shift to
explore where Church President Russell M. Nelson currently stands in terms of
his age and tenure length among his prophetic predecessors. That will be
followed by some observations about the tenure lengths of our current First
Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and all currently-living ordained
apostles as a group.
The more specific data about upcoming apostolic
birthdays, the long-form and decimal ages of our 15 current apostles, and
details about current and future apostolic nonagenarians will then follow in a
second post, which will be published a few minutes after this one is. My last
such update was posted on March 10. According to the six-week schedule I had
established, this update was originally due to be posted last Sunday (April
21). But as I previously mentioned, at that time, I was still in recovery from
the minor procedure I had had done 3 days prior to that.
As a result, I had to defer that update until now. And in
looking towards the future, I determined that, since future updates would be
affected by the delay of this one, it would be best to push back all future
updates to be done every seven weeks rather than every six. As a consequence,
my next update will be shared on this blog on Sunday June 16. As always, all data
in this update is current as of today (Sunday April 28). There is a lot to get
to, so let’s jump right in.
President Oaks has now served as President of the Quorum
of the Twelve Apostles for a period of 1 year, 3 months, and 14 days. Roughly
2.5 weeks ago (on April 9, 2019), the length of President Oaks’ tenure matched
that of Franklin D. Richards, and President Oaks thus moved up above him to become
the 24th longest-serving President of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles. As I noted previously, his next two milestones will be observed on
July 7 and 9 of this year.
I will be providing more specifics on those with my
fourth overall update this year (which, as a result of the delay in posting
this update, I am now planning on posting on June 16 of this year). As
mentioned previously, the length of President Oaks’ service will depend not
only on his health and life length, but, of course, the health and life length
of President Nelson will factor into that as well. Insofar as I have been able to ascertain, none
of our 15 current apostles is experiencing any kind of age- or health-related
limitations. While the lifespan and length of apostolic tenure for all of these
men is in the Lord’s hands, I am reasonably certain it will be several years
before the next apostolic death.
And speaking of President Nelson, since he was ordained
and set apart as Church President on the same day he set apart President Oaks
as Quorum President, his tenure has spanned 1 year, 3 months, and 14 days as
well. He is also now 94 years, 7 months, and 19 days old. He will observe his only
2019 tenure-length and age-length milestones two days apart on July 3 and 5
respectively with subsequent milestones more spread out in the years following
that. And again, I will be detailing those more specifically during my next update
on this information, which is now planned for Sunday June 16.
In the meantime, as also noted previously, I have been
keeping lists of the longest-continuously serving First Presidencies, Quorums
of the Twelve Apostles, and apostolic groups as a whole. Those lists include 13
of each of those groups that have served together for the longest continuous periods
of time. The current First Presidency will only be joining the list of other
First Presidencies on Saturday April 20, 2024, so I will be outlining their
future milestones on that list closer to the time. As for the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the
current members will mark 3 years together on March 31, 2021, at which point
they will join the list of the longest-serving Quorums of the Twelve Apostles
in Church history. I will likewise be providing updates on those future
milestones closer to that time.
Interestingly enough, less than two months prior to that,
the 15 apostles will make the list of the longest-serving such group (the exact
date is February 8, 2021). With that said, I want to conclude this portion of
the update. That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always,
welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time, as long as such comments are
in accordance with the established guidelines.
Thank you for the privilege of your time. If you enjoyed
what you read here and would like to stay informed of newly-added content,
please feel free to subscribe. Until my next post (which will be the second
half of this update that published here within the next few minutes), I wish
each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in
everything you do.
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