Does God control who is Church President by ending life (using the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153death card”)? Or does he control who is President by controlling the order in which Apostles are called? Of course, both can be true (or neither depending on your theological persuasion), but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s examine these questions systematically.<\/p>\n
When a man is called to the apostleship, call him a natural successor<\/em> if he is younger in age than all other living apostles with more seniority in the Quorum. The idea is that if all men lived to the same age, then only natural successors would ever become Presidents. Continuing the logic, if only natural successors became Presidents, then we could say that God has controlled the Presidentship by the order in which he called apostles and not by ending life. On the other hand, if most Presidents are not natural successors, then we could say that God has used the death card to control the Presidentship.<\/p>\n What do we observe? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll spare you all the birth, calling, and death date information for all men called to the apostleship and instead list only Church Presidents, if natural successor (*), and approximate death age.<\/p>\n Joseph Smith, 39 What does this all mean? Perhaps you can think of other interpretations. Of course, your personal theory will not likely be falsified by these data, so your belief should not be undermined no matter what it is. Moreover, the assumption that all men live to the same age is flawed. If, due to his knowledge of people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s genetics, etc., God knows the exact age at which each person will die, then someone I label not to be a natural successor might actually be a natural successor from God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes. This possibility undermines the interpretation of results, but, hey, this is meant to be a fun blog post, not a rigorous scientific study.<\/p>\n And what about the future? If the trend of having natural successors continues, then our future Presidents will be, in order, Elders Monson, Oaks, Hales (briefly), Holland, and Bednar. What are the Vegas odds on this prediction?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Does God control who is Church President by ending life (using the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153death card”)? Or does he control who is President by controlling the order in which Apostles are called? Of course, both can be true (or neither depending on your theological persuasion), but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s examine these questions systematically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1,54],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-3329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-history","category-corn","category-mormon-life","tag-church-organization-and-structure"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6540,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3329\/revisions\/6540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBrigham Young, 76
\nJohn Taylor, 79
\nWilford Woodruff, 91
\nLorenzo Snow, 87
\n*Joseph F. Smith, 80
\n*Heber J. Grant, 89
\nGeorge Albert Smith, 81
\n*David O. McKay, 97
\n*Joseph Fielding Smith, 96
\n*Harold B. Lee, 74
\nSpencer W. Kimball, 90
\nEzra Taft Benson, 95
\n*Howard W. Hunter, 88
\n*Gordon B. Hinckley<\/p>\n
\n1. The face-value interpretation would be that God tended to use the death card in the first half of the Church\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history but used natural succession in the second half.
\n2. One big exception to this trend is Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s early death (he was the youngest President to die since Joseph Smith!). This is consistent with the idea that Kimball was needed for the 1978 revelation.
\n3. One could also say that God is fairly hands off, and the trend of more recent natural successors is due to decreasing randomness in death ages due to medical advances.<\/p>\n