Anyway - the next big one is women and the Priesthood. The wave is coming. Again, mostly hype based on lack of doctrinal/historical understanding. When I was a ZL on the mission, I taught several modules where the Sister missionaries were asking what to do when they would encounter someone who was possessed (a common occurrence in Brazil) and there was no Priesthood readily available (again, a common occurrence in Brazil). I told them to command it to depart in the name of Jesus Christ (as instructed in the endowment) and that they should use the verbage "using the Priesthood to which I am co-author" or some such language. Several who I remained in contact with reported positive results using that method. So, there you have it.
Previous to my mission, I was a voracious reader as the spirit of the Lord rested upon me to prepare for the pinnacle of life experience at that point. I read much of this - and had no problem with it. So many years in the Correlation Committee and we have washed the meaty stuff right out of the shepherd's pie and now it is just mushy mashed potatoes with no real protein in the doctrine. I happen to agree with the snuffed Snuffer on that one. The hard-charging doctrines have all but disappeared from our manuals. Then we have the painful job of restoring "what had been lost" when the facts could not be conveniently brushed under the carpet.
Just as happened with JS and polygamy, such will occur with women and the practice of the Priesthood. Personally? I cannot wait to lay my hands on a child's head with my wife and exercise our Priesthood jointly - much as was done in the beginning. To me, the most delicious of thoughts along this line, is the joint raising by my wife and I of our son that departed this earth 12 years ago. How I cannot wait for that moment. Not some stranger or vague acquaintance, but my wife and I, side by side dressed in our temple robes. It is foreign to me to have to call a stranger over to bless and anoint my child. If it came to a stewardship outside our home (such as the child of a woman who had no priesthood in the home), it would seem more natural to call a HT companion for that job. I look forward to the return of practices that kind of seemed to get out of hand back in the St George Temple days, of women baptizing women in the temple fonts during purification rituals (that do not happen any more). There is much that happened historically - that was discontinued that I feel ought not have. Much of it occurred after the 1890 Manifesto. Much disappeared. I am not sure if it was an effort to please Babylon - or what - but it disappeared. Of all the modern prophets, I trust those from 1900-1960 the least. Precisely because in their zeal to mainstream and stamp out a practice that was given from God, much else was trampled. This is just my opinion. This is just my opinion - but we started to see doctrinal exposes that welcomed Darwinism into the doctrinal set and so much else that was wrong then - and is wrong now. All so we could fit in at the time. I am glad that I did not have to vote in the Manifesto at the time - because that would have been a hard pill to swallow for me.
People I fell in step with were President Kimball and the restoration of the Priesthood to all worthy males (as it appears it was in the days of Joseph Smith) and President Benson with his clarion call against commies and socialists.
Anyway - enough rambling. I just thought I would record that. I have always thought it. It is nice to get it down on paper.....
Here are those quotes I found today:
Taken from a website discussing Women and priesthood:
"All priesthood is Melchizedek; but there are different portions or degrees of it. The priesthood bestowed in the temple is the same priesthood given by the laying on of hands, but it is a fullness of that authority and embraces all other authorities, appendages, and offices."
- Prophet Joseph Smith, The Words of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center, 1980, page 59
Women receive the priesthood in the temple
From the temple endowment
Why do women in the temple wear the Robes of the Priesthood? I think the answer is clear. Endowed women have the priesthood! Not only do they wear the priesthood emblems in the temple, but they also wear the priesthood garments outside of the temple.
The temple sealing ceremony also makes reference to the priesthood when it seals upon both the man and the woman "the blessings of kingdoms, thrones, principalities, powers, dominions and exaltations, with all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob..". This power is the priesthood, as reference to all the blessings of Abraham indicates.
"It is a precept of the Church that women of the Church share the authority of the priesthood with their husbands, actual or prospective; and therefore women, whether taking the endowment for themselves or for the dead, are not ordained to specific rank in the priesthood. Nevertheless, there is no grade, rank, or phase of the temple endowment to which women are not eligible on an equality with man."
- James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1912), p. 94.
"If a woman is requested to lay hands on the sick with her husband or with any other officer holding the Melchizedek Priesthood, she may do so with perfect propriety. It is no uncommon thing for a man and wife unitedly to administer to their children, and the husband being mouth, he may properly say out of courtesy, 'By authority of the holy priesthood in us vested.'"
- Prophet Joseph F. Smith, Improvement Era 10 (February 1907), page 308.
Wilford Woodruff's namesake son, just ordained a priest, was about to begin his duties. The future Church president summoned his family on 3 February 1854. "His father and mother [Phoebe Carter Woodruff] laid hands upon him and blessed him and dedicated him unto the Lord" (Wilford Woodruff Jr. Journal , 4:244) On 8 September 1875, George Goddard recorded a similar incident about his sixteen-year-old son, Brigham H. On his birthday, "his Mother and Myself, put our hands upon his head and pronounced a parents blessing upon him."
John Taylor on "The Order and Duties of the Priesthood" reaffirmed that women "hold the Priesthood, only in connection with their husbands, they being one with their husbands"
- Apostle John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, 21:368
Women have joined men in giving priesthood blessings to men:
In 1873, Apostle George A. Smith, then a member of the first presidency, travelled with a party of Mormons, including Lorenzo Snow, his sister Eliza, Feramorz Little and others, to the Holy Land. At a stopover in Bologna, Italy, he felt ill. "I became fatigued and dizzy," he wrote in his diary. "I got into a carriage and returned to the hotel. On arriving at the hotel I found myself so unwell that I requested Bros. Snow and Little and Sister Eliza to lay hands on me."
- George A. Smith, Diary, 9 January 1873, holograph, CA.
Women also used to give priesthood blessings to women, using consecrated oil:
In 1849 Eliza Jane Merrick, an English convert, reported healing her sister: "I anointed her chest with the oil you consecrated, and also gave her some inwardly .... She continued very ill all the evening: her breath very short, and the fever very high. I again anointed her chest in the name of the Lord, and asked his blessing; he was graciously pleased to hear me, and in the course of twenty-four hours, she was as well as if nothing had been the matter."
- Jane Merrick Journal and Letters 1849, page 205
If women do not receive the priesthood in the temple, why then were black women banned from the temple until until 1978 when blacks were allowed to receive the priesthood? Until 1978 Black men were not allowed to receive their endowments because they could not receive the priesthood. Interesting to note that this ban also included black women. It wasn't until after blacks could receive the priesthood were female blacks allowed to enter the temple, receive their endowments and be sealed to white or black men. Again, this is because church leaders recognized that women receive the priesthood in the temple.
The important thing to understand here is that endowed women have the priesthood power, but have no office in the priesthood in which to exercize it.
In the past, endowed women could administer priesthood healing blessings to the sick. They also placed their hands on the heads of sick children along with their husbands during priesthood blessings. But these practices have been discontinued.
Women don't think they have it. But doctrinally speaking, endowed women have the priesthood.
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