BREAKING NEWS: September 2018 Ensign Will Include Articles About Presidents Oaks and Eyring

Hello again, everyone! The HTML edition of the September 2018 Ensign is available, and I am pleased to be able to report that articles about Presidents Oaks and Eyring will be included in that Ensign. Elder David A. Bednar has written the article for President Oaks, and Elder Holland has written one for President Eyring, his apostolic seatmate.

Having noted that, it is reasonably certain that articles about Elders Gong and Soares will be featured in the October 2018 Ensign, as the November edition will contain the proceedings of the October 2018 General Conference. Stay tuned for more on all of this as more is known.

In other news, it appears that the Church website is in the preliminary stages of updating the list of general authorities to reflect the changes that became effective on the 1st of this month. I say that because when I looked at the page for the Presidency of the Seventy, the seven members that served together from April-August of this year were listed out of order. So perhaps the Church will have the membership of that Presidency updated by the end of this week or early next week.

I continue to monitor all Church news and temple developments and will do my level best to bring word of those to you as I learn of them. That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. 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, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.

Latest Apostolic Statistics: Part Two--Updated Ages & Other Important Information

Hello again, everyone! Having set the stage in the first part of this apostolic age update (posted just a few moments ago), we now move on to talk specifics regarding the long-form and decimal ages of our current apostles, which will also include updated information on the average ages of the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the 15 apostles as a group, current and future nonagenarians, and any other pertinent information. So let’s get right into all of that.  Again, all data is current as of today.

We start with the First Presidency. As noted near the end of my previous post, President Nelson is now less than one month away from his 94th birthday, which puts his long form age at 93 years, 11 months, and 3 days, or 93.92 decimal years. President Oaks, who, as noted in a post published, is marking his 86th birthday today, is exactly 86 years old, and his decimal age is, of course, exactly 86.00 years. And President Eyring is now 85 years, 2 months, and 12 days old, with a decimal age of 85.20 years.

The three now have a combined 265.12 years of life experience, which puts their average age at 88.37 years as of today. President Oaks remains closest to that average, with his age now being 2.37 years below that average. Obviously, Presidents Nelson and Eyring are still respectively above and below the average.

We move on now to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. First, President Ballard, who, as some of you may be aware, will be celebrating his 90th birthday in less than two months, has a long-form age of 89 years, 10 months, and 4 days old, with a decimal age of 89.84 years. Elder Holland is now 77 years, 8 months, and 9 days old, which puts his decimal age at 77.69 years.

Elder Uchtdorf, at just under a month older than Elder Holland, is now 77 years, 9 months, and 6 days old, with a decimal age of 77.76 years. Elder Bednar’s long-form age is 66 years, 1 months, and 28 days, which makes his decimal age 66.16 years.  Elder Cook, whose birthday is now less than one month away, is 77 years, 11 months, and 4 days old, which is 77.93 years. Elder Christofferson has a long-form age of 73 years, 6 months, and 19 days, with a decimal age of 73.55 years.

Elder Andersen, whose birthday was just 3 days ago, is now 67 years and 3 days old, which puts his decimal age at 67.01 years. Elder Rasband now has a long-form age of 67 years, 6 months, and 6 days, with a decimal age of 67.51 years. Elder Gary E. Stevenson, whose birthday was three days before that of Elder Andersen, is currently 63 years and 6 days old, or 63.02 in decimal years.

We now come to the final three apostles. Elder Renlund is now 65 years, 8 months, and 30 days old, with a decimal age of 65.75 years. Elder Gong is now 64 years, 7 months, and 20 days old, which puts him at 64.64 decimal years.  Elder Soares, who will observe his birthday 6 days before President Ballard does, is now 59 years, 10 months, and 10 days old, making his decimal age 59.86 years.

The current members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have a combined 850.72 years, which averages out to 70.89 years. As I noted previously, the ages of Elders Christofferson and Rasband put them above and below that average respectively, with Elder Christofferson being 2.66 years older and Elder Rasband being 3.38 years younger.

Based on the information I provided earlier, this means that our 15 apostles have a combined 1115.84 years of life experience, which averages out to 74.39 years. Elders Holland and Christofferson stand closest to that average, with the former being 3.3 years older, and the latter being only 0.84 years younger.

We now move on to the nonagenarians. President Nelson remains the 7th oldest apostle in Church history, and now has just under 11 months before he will move up on that list. President Ballard will join that list in 1 month and 26 days. Elder Soares now has 30 years, 1 month, and 20 days until he will observe his 90th birthday, and the other 13 apostles will join that list at various points between the two, which I will detail more fully closer to the time.

I continue to track all of this information, and will do my level best to pass updates on to you regularly, with my hope being to post such updates every 6-8 weeks for the foreseeable future. That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. 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, I wish each one of you all the best, and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.

Latest Apostolic Statistics: Part One--Updated Data for President Oaks, President Nelson, and Longest-Serving Apostolic Groups

Hello again, everyone! While I have no desire to distract or take away the focus from the discussion on future temple prospects, or from the post I put up earlier today in honor of President Oaks’ 86^th birthday today, another 6 weeks have come and gone since I last posted updated information on the latest apostolic statistics (on Sunday July 1, 2018). Since this 1.5 months have seen an impressive number of changes in the data related to that information, it seems appropriate to do so again.

As always, before we begin the discussion of that updated data, I wanted to recognize that there may be many of you who are not interested in the information I will be providing. So I will not in any way be offended or bothered if any of you prefer to bypass this information (which will, as always, be covered over the course of two posts).

As usual, all data is current as of today (Sunday July 1, 2018). This update will again feature the data in the same order as previous updates. We will start with some data about the Presidents of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then turn our attention to the Presidents of the Church. After discussing those things, the first post will end, and the second (to be published shortly after the first) will then highlight the latest data about all 15 of our apostles, including information on those who have had a birthday recently and those whose birthdays are getting closer.

So let’s begin with some information on President Oaks’ current tenure length as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which will include exploring how soon he will move up on this list. The length of his service has currently spanned 6 months and 29 days. As noted in previous updates, he will be marking 2 additional tenure milestones before the end of this year, and will be marking 5 others in 2019.

Just over a month from now, on Sunday September 16, he will become the 26^th longest-serving Quorum President, as by that time he will have served longer than President David O. McKay. After another month, on October 22, he will become the 25^th longest-serving Quorum President, having served longer in that capacity than President Gordon B. Hinckley. Then in 2019, he will mark 5 milestones, one in April, two others in July (which will be observed two days apart), and the remaining two in November, and December. I will mention the specifics of those milestones closer to that time.

Moving on now to 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 6 months and 29 days as well. He is now 93 years, 11 months, and 3 days old.

He will observe the first tenure length milestone of his presidency in just under two months from now, on Thursday October 11 (when he will have served longer than President Howard W. Hunter). He will observe both another tenure-related and his first age-related milestone two days apart in July of 2019, with subsequent milestones more spread out in the years following that. And again, I will be detailing those more specifically closer to the time when they will be reached.

As I have also noted before, by all accounts, President Nelson remains healthy, vigorous, and fully involved in the day-to-day work of moving the Church forward. And as far as I know, neither of his counselors (who are both 7-8 years younger than he is) are suffering from any major health issues, which means that these Brethren will likely be serving together for at least the next several years, and I could easily see them at least making the list of the longest-serving First Presidencies in the Church, which will, as previous noted, occur on Sunday April 1, 2024.

And by the end of that same year, not only will the current First Presidency reach a couple of other milestones, but President Nelson will by then have become the first centenarian apostle and Church president. I know that, as recently as last year, I had offered my opinion that, if President Nelson became president of the Church, he would likely not serve for very long, but given the fact that he is considerably more healthy now than President Monson may have been for the last 5-7 years of his life (if not the entire decade of his presidency).

And as a former heart surgeon, it has been very rightly pointed out that President Nelson would know how to take care of himself. With that in mind, I would not be surprised if President Nelson is still around in 6-8 years, or even lives longer than that.

As for the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, except for President Ballard (who will be 90 on October 8, which is 3 months and 1 week from today, and who appears to be in fairly good health as well, though he may not be as healthy as President Nelson), all other apostles are younger than 80.  

With that in mind, the current members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who have served together since March 31 of this year, will most likely easily make the list of the longest-serving apostles on that same day in 2021. By the end of that same year, they will have moved up 3 spots on the list. I will give more specific data in this regard closer to that time.

By the end of 2021, the current group of apostles in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will have made and moved up on the list of other apostolic groups to become the 12th longest-serving such group in Church history, and other milestones will be reached in the years following.

All of those milestones will depend on how long Presidents Nelson and Ballard live and serve, and on how much they (or anyone else) are affected by health issues. I continue to track the health and ministry of these Brethren and will keep you posted.

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. 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 should be the second one on this subject and will be 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.