This article was first published in the ChurchBeat newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Wednesday night.
A brief burst of awareness for an ailing prophet opened a window to heaven four decades ago that is directly shaping today’s leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
President Spencer W. Kimball’s failing health prevented him from calling new apostles for 16 months across 1983 and 1984.
The death of Elder LeGrand Richards in January 1983 created one vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Mark E. Petersen’s death in January 1984 created a second.
But President Kimball was frail and his memory was too spotty to call new apostles, according to the book “Insights from a Prophet’s Life: Russell M. Nelson,” by Sheri Dew.
For more than a year, Latter-day Saints looked forward with excitement about potential callings, but President Kimball’s mental acuity only grew less dependable over time, Dew wrote.
The prophet’s heart surgeon, Dr. Russell M. Nelson, listened with understanding when a nurse named Jan Curtis told him about her excitement for new apostles to be announced at the April 1984 general conference.
“I was his doctor, and I knew it wasn’t feasible,” he told Dew, “that President Kimball was not well or coherent enough to do it. I explained to her that calling an apostle is the prerogative of the president of the church and that President Kimball was simply in no condition to do that.”
President Gordon B. Hinckley, the only healthy member of the First Presidency, hoped for what seemed like a miracle. He left standing instructions with President Kimball’s caregivers. If the prophet’s mind ever cleared, call me immediately, he said. Regardless of the hour.
Months passed. President Hinckley visited. President Kimball remained unable to discuss spiritually sensitive topics like calls to the Twelve, Dew wrote.
Then on April 4, three days before conference began, a call woke President Hinckley at home at 2:30 a.m.
“President Kimball was alert and wanted to talk to him,” Dew wrote. “President Hinckley rushed downtown to President Kimball’s suite in the Hotel Utah, where the issue of vacancies in the Twelve was raised.”
President Kimball had a simple message.
“Call Nelson and Oaks to the Quorum of the Twelve, in that order,” he said.
That ordering became crucial to the presidency of the church in 2018 and again this week.
Two days after the middle-of-the-night flash of inspiration, on Friday morning before the Saturday start of conference, President Hinckley asked Dr. Nelson to visit him.
“Is your life in order?” he asked.
The answer was yes.
“Good, because tomorrow we’re presenting your name to be sustained as one of the Twelve Apostles,” President Hinckley said.
It was harder to find Dallin H. Oaks, a Utah Supreme Court justice and the chairman of the board of PBS.
President Hinckley finally reached him by phone that night in a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, where he was presiding over a moot court.
“I cannot imagine how he found me there,” Justice Oaks wrote in his journal, according to the book “In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks,” by Richard E. Turley Jr.
They tried to talk over the mariachi band playing loudly inside the restaurant but decided to speak again when Justice Oaks returned to his hotel room.
Calls from church leaders were the norm for the former BYU president, and he went on with dinner unconcerned about the subject of the call, even on the eve of general conference.
When Justice Oaks called back, President Hinckley asked about his worthiness and said he “was called to be a member of the Council of the Twelve.”
“Oh,” Justice Oaks gasped.
“It seemed unreal,” he wrote in his journal.
President Hinckley told him how his life would change.
“My life is in the hands of the Lord,“ President Oaks said, “and my career is in the hands of his servants.”
The two men President Kimball called during that spring night in 1984 sat side-by-side in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for 34 years, until President Nelson became the senior apostle — due to President Kimball’s direction — and the church’s president in 2018.
They then sat side-by-side in the First Presidency — with President Oaks as first counselor — for seven-and-a-half years until Sept. 27, when President Nelson died.
President Oaks then became the senior apostle and, this week, the church’s 18th president.
All because a caring counselor — President Hinckley, who became the church’s 14th president — was prepared for a call from a prophet who received a sliver of light in the middle of the night.
My recent stories
- Who is President Dallin H. Oaks? A man shaped by loss, defined by resilience and warmth (Oct. 14)
- President Dallin H. Oaks announced as 18th church president (Oct. 14)
- Inside the meeting where a new prophet is chosen (Oct. 11)
- Church says meetinghouse security is a top priority in letter asking local leaders to review safety (Oct. 10)
- Grand Blanc stake president responds to shooting: ‘Let us cling to our faith in the Savior’ (Oct. 10)
About the church
- Watch video: President Dallin H. Oaks announced as the 18th president and prophet of the church.
- Elder Gary E. Stevenson dedicated the Elko Nevada Temple on Sunday. Read his dedicatory prayer.
- Elder Tad R. Callister, an emeritus General Authority Seventy, died at age 79.
- The Utah Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal about the construction of the Heber Valley Utah Temple.
- My friend and colleague, Camille Smith, wrote a tender, thoughtful essay about leading her young children back to church with faith in Jesus Christ after the Grand Blanc attack.
- America owes a debt to President Nelson, two scholars who are not Latter-day Saints wrote on RealClearReligion.org.
What I’m reading
- Columnist David French, who spoke last year at BYU, wrote an essay on the Latter-day Saint effort to raise money for the family of the man who attacked the Grand Blanc Ward in Michigan on Sept. 28.
- Some Christian women are ready to speak out, emboldened by a female conservative influencer.
- Security experts on how to keep faith communities safe: “We want to be loving, yet discerning."
- Washington State will not force priests to break confession seal.
- Here is how the Associated Press covered the announcement of President Oaks as the new church president. And the New York Times.
- The University of Chicago Law School also issued a news release about President Oaks.
Behind the scenes
