classylady

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

For those of you who feel they may not belong here on these forums, please, please, be aware that you may be a tool in the Lord’s hand in helping those who come here with their questions. You are wonderful! I know you have helped people to come closer to Christ. Some may not be on the same spiritual rung of the ladder as you. There are those who are struggling. I appreciate every one of you who are so stalwart in defending the gospel. Thank you! Thank you!!! You are needed! You are appreciated!

Fun fact:  President Oaks and Elder Uchtdorf live, literally, across the street from each other in North Salt Lake.

I did want to see what it felt like to be President Oaks and have your words over sensationalized. I think this happens to him more than probably any church leader, and I wish that it didn't. Even when he has a very progressive and inclusive message, like this one, he is taken completely out of context and hammered by the critics. I knew my words would not be popular with this group. I even called it out in the second paragraph. It wasn't worded for you. It was the thing I debated back and forth all day. I did not want to upset the faithful members of the Church, but I still wanted to reach those who are much further away. In the end, I landed with it's better to be raw and vulnerable and take the criticism in order to be real, in a hope that it would reach those who are struggling.

Despite the leadership constantly telling us that they are not perfect, that they do make mistakes, that they do not always speak for God, somehow the membership continues to insist that they are perfect. That their opinions are God's opinion. That when they speak, they say everything that God would have them say. We continually rob them of their humanity.  When the leaders tell me that they're human, I believe them. And so am I. When I open myself up, I will do so honestly. Despite statists showing that a larger percentage of the membership does not align on everything from the leadership, it's terrifying to hear someone admit that they don't always agree. Terrifying to some, and relatable to others. It's can be scary to realize that not even the Apostles agree with each other all the time. 

No, I do not have to be a fan of everything President Oaks says in order to sustain him. I can agree with things he says, and there have been sometimes I have a hard time with how he says it. That's on me to seek my own personal revelation. I don't like to see people hurting because they want to belong in the Church, but they feel that they are not welcome. Maybe that doesn't bother everyone, but it's a difficult thing for me. I struggle seeing the heartache people experience because their loved ones do not share their faith and beliefs, and how that can divide a family. And here Pres Oaks was fighting to heal that divide and most will never realize what his real message was. 

It's a semantic argument (and perhaps a petty one), but I've always considered it as the difference between power and authority.  Sure, when I received the Melchizedek Priesthood, I was given priesthood power, but my ordination to the office of Elder sets limits on my ability to use that power (authority). It seems that the Line of Authority is aptly named in this way of looking at it, as it tracks that the limits of our authority are properly bestowed.
It isn't a perfect perspective, but it's the best I've got.

My father was ordained a seventy by Spencer W. Kimball around 1956. I’m not sure who ordained my father to an elder, but I assume his father. I would like to get both lines of priesthood authority from the church offices.  I’ll ask for both and we shall see what happens.
My husband was ordained an elder by his father, and two months after my father-in-law died, my husband was ordained to the office of high priest. So that changes his line of authority if I understand it correctly. I know my husband would have loved to have had his father ordain him to high priest, but it didn’t happen that way. (My father-in-law was a high priest at the time of his death, so he could have ordained my husband if he would have been living.) 

Precisely.  It used to be that to ordain an elder, you just laid your hands on his head and said “I ordain you an elder in the Church . . .”; and the Melchizedek Priesthood conferal was implied but not spoken.  Joseph F. Smith began advocating a two-step process in the late 1800s based on his reading of the D&C.  IIRC John Taylor actually weighed in and said the process was unnecessary; then JFS pushed it during his presidency.  Heber J. Grant retreated to an “either way is fine” position, but Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie stuck with their father’s/grandfather-in-law’s way of doing things and eventually their preference found its way into the Church’s manuals.  This becomes an issue if you deal with fundamentalist Mormons enough—they’re fond of saying that we lost the priesthood because as a matter of procedure we’ve been conferring it wrong since Heber J. Grant’s day (Grant is a sort of boogeyman to them, and as usual the fundies only tell you half the story).
Anyways, sorry for the diversion into useless trivia.  The notion I was floating—and I’m not really sure what I think about this, but I’m sort of toying with it—is, maybe we sometimes are a little quick to lump priesthood offices into the same umbrella (Melchizedek/Aaronic) without giving full attention to their distinctions.  Maybe it somehow *does* matter whether—say—a confirmation is performed by an elder versus a seventy versus a high priest?  Or maybe the import is simply because one can not confer a “higher” priesthood office than one has oneself received?
My brother and I were ordained elders by our dad; and when my brother was called into a bishopric and ordained a high priest, he was disappointed that our dad (still an elder) would no longer be in his line of authority.*  But I suspect that in the eternities the priesthood authority we continue to wield will be primarily patriarchal in nature and will come through the lines of our sealings to our parents; and that the “lines of authority” preserved in the Church’s records are primarily maintained as a matter of ecclesiastical form in the here-and-now.
 
*I’m still an elder and thus don’t have to worry about this—one of the benefits of being a perennial slacker.

Correct me if I'm wrong @Just_A_Guy but I believe he means Joseph F. Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Bruce R. McConkie.

That is what I would do. I would email them and explain the situation. Right now, there may not be a close family match, but more and more people are getting their DNA done and, who knows, a close family match might just show up on Ancestry in the future.
Best of luck to you, Bini. I’m hoping you can get some good results and that it won’t take years and years.
BTW, I did my DNA with Ancestry. I have a lot of close matches, sister and 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, etc. it’s fascinating. I’m thinking that this may be a fairly new idea in the Philippines and not many people have started to request their DNA from there yet. Plus, the cost could be a deterrent. I wanted to do mine years earlier but could never justify the cost. My kit was also a gift. 

Just a couple of quick thoughts
Capital punishment, including by way of stoning, was NOT the exclusive domain of the Mosaic law. Many ancient cultures, including some that predate Moses by several centuries, instituted the practice for a variety of infractions. (see HERE and HERE). I mention this because it seems evident that, with few exceptions (perhaps those that Joseph F. Smith had in mind) that God's punishments seems to reflect that of the prevailing cultures, if not of somewhat less strident nature or applicable in fewer types of infractions. For example, prior to Moses the Babylonians instituted the death penalty for 25 different crimes (see HERE), whereas the Mosaic law covered half as many. (see HERE)  In Athens during the Seventh Century  B.C.  all crimes were punishable by death. (see HERE) In fact, by the time of Christ, stoning among the Jews had grown increasingly out of favor (see HERE), and even so, with Jesus' response to the accused adulterer, it showed a greater leniency  than that prevailing culture. Even today, there are cultures (predominately Islamic) that put people to death for a broad range of crimes, whereas the death penalty among predominately Christian nations is restricted to severe cases of murder, if that. The point being, that even if God had not instituted limited stoning under the Mosaic Law , people's probationary periods were being significantly cut short by death penalties in other cultures, which, if one assumes a just and merciful God, would mean the God has a way to compensate for that. Life expectancy post Moses was considerably lower than it is today.  During the Roman Empire, life expectancy was around 25 years (see HERE), where as nowadays it is about 67.5 years (see HERE) This means that the probationary state back then was less than half of what it is today, irrespective of death penalties and the like. Here again, if one assumes a just God, then one may reasonably assume that God will account for the disparity. Finally, while life is a probationary state and the time for men to prepare to meet God, it isn't exclusively so. I believe there may be some space in the hereafter for people to be tested and to repent and prepare to meet God. And, perhaps it is that time where those who have received the death penalty for forgivable sins, or those with abbreviated mortal probation, will have the probationary scales of justice and mercy balanced. What I am suggesting is that even though it may seem that Mosaic death penalties conflict with life as a probationary state, God will assure that it all works mercifully and justly in the end.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-

That is what I would do. I would email them and explain the situation. Right now, there may not be a close family match, but more and more people are getting their DNA done and, who knows, a close family match might just show up on Ancestry in the future.
Best of luck to you, Bini. I’m hoping you can get some good results and that it won’t take years and years.
BTW, I did my DNA with Ancestry. I have a lot of close matches, sister and 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, etc. it’s fascinating. I’m thinking that this may be a fairly new idea in the Philippines and not many people have started to request their DNA from there yet. Plus, the cost could be a deterrent. I wanted to do mine years earlier but could never justify the cost. My kit was also a gift. 

Just finished my nightly reading from The Lord of the Rings to my twelve-year-old. We started The Hobbit early last month, and today we read Chapter 8 of The Fellowship. It's the chapter where the hobbits are taken by the barrow wight and saved by Tom Bombadil.
When I first read these books back around 1980, I remember skimming over the Tom Bombadil stuff. Kind of boring, or so I thought. When I read them again much later, to my older sons when they were still young (maybe 15 or so years ago), I enjoyed Tom a lot more. But on this reading, I remember so little that it's almost like I haven't read these before at all. And I'm enjoying Tom Bombadil a great deal more than ever before.
Here's the thing: My twelve-year-old loved it. He got really excited when Tom came to cast out the barrow-wight, literally jumping up and down, smiling and laughing in excitement. When I finished, he said, "That's my favorite chapter!" High praise indeed.
In the Vort household, Tom Bombadil is officially Awesome.

As has been mentioned I believe the line of authority is from the most recent ordination, but you can always request both. The worst they can say is no.
As a tangent I remember an area in my mission where one of the members on the roster was listed as a Seventy. Elders were told first he was not a General Authority (even then most of us youngin's had no idea there were individual Seventies Quorums way back in the day) and second that he had gone inactive before they discontinued the individual Seventies Quorums and so had never been switched to being a High Priest. He didn't like missionaries, wanted no contact, but refused to have his name removed. 
Anyways tangent done and good luck with your search @classylady!

FWIW:  the modern practice, of course, is to 1) confer the priesthood and 2) ordain to a particular priesthood office, but as I understand it this procedure came largely due to the influence of JFS I/JFS II/BRM.  The prevailing ordination practice through most of the 19th century did not include 1).
I’m not sure what significance that has in this context, but it seemed noteworthy.  

We have been taught that the current Priesthood line of authority is that of the office to which one is currently ordained.
I have never quite understood this; certainly when you officiate as a high priest, that authority comes through your high priest line; but the Priesthood was conferred on you when you were ordained an elder, so any general duties you perform under the auspices of the Priesthood you hold that are not specific to the office of high priest (or patriarch, or seventy, or apostle) seem like they should be authorized through your reception of the Priesthood rather than your ordination to a specific office therein. If anyone has any insight into this, I'd be interested to understand it better.

I’ve been writing my father’s history for my family and I want to include his priesthood line of authority. He was a Seventy when he passed away. Would I request the line of authority from his Seventy ordination or would I request the line of authority from his Elder ordination? Or should I request both?
I was pleased to see that we can request the priesthood line of authority for our deceased family (also you can request your own) by an email sent into church headquarters. Just go to LDS.org for instructions on how to request it. 
My father died when I was six years old so I have very few memories of him. He didn’t keep a journal, and we only have a few letters that he wrote my mother. So, there is very little information on him. Unfortunately, we never had his siblings write any of their memories of him. They are now all deceased, so is my mother. I’m getting my older siblings to write down their memories.  This has been an emotional experience for me. I’ve gained a greater appreciation for him and I’m hoping my children and grandchildren will get to know him through this history.

At first glance I preferred Pres. Eyring’s signature. I like the flowery looks of it. But, as I looked at Pres. Nelson’s signature the cleanness of it appealed to me. The only letter that jars at me is his R. It looks a little sloppy. I’ll chalk that up to his age.  As I’m getting older my signature isn’t as nice as it used to be.

I’ve been writing my father’s history for my family and I want to include his priesthood line of authority. He was a Seventy when he passed away. Would I request the line of authority from his Seventy ordination or would I request the line of authority from his Elder ordination? Or should I request both?
I was pleased to see that we can request the priesthood line of authority for our deceased family (also you can request your own) by an email sent into church headquarters. Just go to LDS.org for instructions on how to request it. 
My father died when I was six years old so I have very few memories of him. He didn’t keep a journal, and we only have a few letters that he wrote my mother. So, there is very little information on him. Unfortunately, we never had his siblings write any of their memories of him. They are now all deceased, so is my mother. I’m getting my older siblings to write down their memories.  This has been an emotional experience for me. I’ve gained a greater appreciation for him and I’m hoping my children and grandchildren will get to know him through this history.

Things I've heard about the weekends super sports fest thing:
1- Gladys Knight did good.  
2- Nobody knelt during the anthem, evidence that it finally dawned on enough bosses that if ten guys come with a dollar, and you tick five of them off, that means you only get five dollars.  And five is less than ten.
Other than that, I'm happy all you sportsting people got together and engaged in cultural sportsting activities such as food consume, yelling at glow screen, and yelling at glow screen next day at work.

 

Here ya go: