Bradley Campbell on the LDS Presiding Patriarch

In this episode, we welcome back Bradley Campbell of God Loves Mormons about his video regarding the origin, history and then elimination of the office of Presiding Patriarch of the LDS Church. Bradley takes us through some of the essential issues, historically – and lands on some of the ironies, theologically, when it comes to LDS interpretation and apologetic use of Ephesians 4.11 in promoting and defending the Mormon Restoration. First filled by Joseph Smith’s father: Joseph Smith, Sr. - this office was seen as not only (at least) presiding over the patriarchal priesthood, but as a position from which the Smith bloodline would guard the Church. If this office of Presiding Patriarch was an essential office of the LDS restoration, why did President Kimball eliminate it in 1979?  

 Video: “What Mormons don’t know about the ‘Highest Office’ in the LDS Church” (also here)  

God Loves Mormons 

Mormonism Research Ministry 

Christian Research Center 

D&C 20; 107; 124 

Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of Presiding Patriarch by Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith 

Priesthood and Church Government by Elder John A. Widtsoe 

The Words of Joseph Smith, compiled and edited by Andrew Ehat and Lyndon Cook 

• At one place, Smith distinguishes between Melchizedek and the “Aaronic or Levitical” priesthoods (p. 38-39). Yet, at other places, Smith distinguishes between “Aaron, Abraham, and Melchizedek” - Levitical, Abraham’s “patriarchal power”, and the “three grand orders of priesthood” as “the King of Shalom”, “patriarchal authority”, and Levitical (pp. 244-246). 

History of the Church 2.379-80, 3.381 (below), 5.510, 7.234 

• Joseph Smith taught that: “An Evangelist is a Patriarch, even the oldest man of the blood of Joseph or of the seed of Abraham. Wherever the Church of Christ is established in the earth, there should be a Patriarch for the benefit of the posterity of the Saints, as it was with Jacob in giving his patriarchal blessing unto his sons.” 
• Even LDS Apostle Franklin D. Richards commented on this passage that: “As the singular number is here used, exclusively, doubtless the Prophet Joseph, in the above passage, speaks of the Patriarch of the whole Church.” (A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, 1882; reprinted in 1925)