Scott Woodward: In the unlikely event that the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve all died simultaneously, how would that affect succession? In this hypothetical worst-case scenario, would the keys of the kingdom be lost, or would members of the Seventy be able to carry on the leadership of the Church? And if an Apostle came down with a debilitating health problem, is there any precedent for making him an Emeritus Apostle? And speaking of apostles, is there a set procedure in calling them, or does the method vary from church president to president? Also, sometimes in the church people speak of a special requirement for a man to become an apostle. The phrase “sure” or “special witness of Christ” comes up a lot. What’s true? Must a man have personally seen Jesus Christ in order to be fully considered an apostle? Today on Church History Matters, Casey and I are joined by a special guest, Dr. Daniel C. Peterson, to help us answer these and other great questions related to succession. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today, Casey and I and Dr. Peterson dive into our eighth episode in this series dealing with succession in the presidency. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hello, Casey. How are you?

Casey Griffiths: I’m doing good. How are you?

Scott Woodward: Great. We are officially at the end of the middle of this series.

Casey Griffiths: Phase one.

Scott Woodward: Phase one, yeah. We’re wrapping up today our leg on the succession process in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is one of the several branches of the Restoration, and we will soon, starting next week, dive into the other branches of the Restoration as well, but today is a climax.

Casey Griffiths: Today is. We’re kind of ending the Latter-day Saint part, and then in the following weeks we’re going to highlight different branches of the Restoration family and talk a little bit about the different -ites. We’re Brighamites. We’re going to meet with Strangites and Josephites and Bickertonites, oh my.

Scott Woodward: Oh my.

Casey Griffiths: But today we’re especially privileged. We have a guest with us, Dr. Daniel Peterson. Say hi.

Daniel Peterson: Hello. Hi.

Scott Woodward: Hello.

Casey Griffiths: And you’re, you’re such a senior statesman, you know? You outrank us. Should we call you Daniel, Dr. Peterson, just doctor . . . ?

Daniel Peterson: Oh, I really like Herr Professor Doktor.

Casey Griffiths: Herr Professor Doktor.

Scott Woodward: Herr Professor, OK.

Daniel Peterson: No, you can call me Dan—I don’t care.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, okay.

Scott Woodward: So excited to have you on the show. We’ve got listeners who have submitted some really interesting questions today, which we’re going to get to a little bit later, but first maybe we should do a little bio on Daniel Peterson.

Casey Griffiths: Yes. Herr Doktor Daniel was gracious enough to provide us with a bio, and so here we go: As a native of Southern California, Daniel C. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and Philosophy from Brigham Young University, and after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles, that’s UCLA. Dr. Peterson, a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, is also the author of several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Mormon topics. He’s written a biography entitled Muhammad, Prophet of God, and has lectured extensively worldwide. He’s served, among other things, as chairman of the board, associate executive director, and co-director of research for what is now known as BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Dr. Peterson also used to write a regular column for the Salt Lake City Deseret News entitled Defending the Faith, and with Dr. William Hamlin also contributed to a bi-weekly column on world religions. He also blogs daily at—Daniel, give us the name of this website so that I don’t . . .

Daniel Peterson: It’s Sic et Non, is what it’s called. “Yes and No” in Latin.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Daniel Peterson: Sic et Non.

Casey Griffiths: And I’ll point out here that you regularly post your blogs on Facebook, too. That’s where I usually see them and read them, and you’re always talking about something interesting in your blogs. It’s kind of a nice little running commentary on current events in the church. Daniel also writes for Meridian Magazine, and most of all we want to point out Daniel’s work with the Interpreter Foundation. So in July 2012, he and a group of colleagues launched the Interpreter Foundation, which, among other things, publishes an online periodical called Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, and I’m just going to personally say that a lot of the material for this show comes from the Interpreter because it’s all available online, and it’s top-notch research. You can easily access it. So, for instance, when we talked about the Joseph Smith Translation, downloaded Kent Jackson’s article that was on the Interpreter, and we used it quite a bit. So, Daniel, thank you for all you’ve done. Boy, I feel like this is a wide-ranging thing, and we could have brought you on to talk about Arabic languages or early Christian texts, but we brought you on to talk about succession.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So we’re glad you’ll join us.

Daniel Peterson: Oh, happy to be here, yeah. And this is a really important topic, so glad to be here.

Scott Woodward: And you also have an exciting movie launch coming out next month called Six Days in August—

Daniel Peterson: Yeah. Right.

Scott Woodward: —which really just homes in on the succession crisis of 1844 following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. So, very curious: Tell us why, of all the church history moments at the Interpreter Foundation you could put your resources into to depict on the big screen, why this one? Why is it important to you to tell this story?

Daniel Peterson: We started off by doing a film which I hope some out there have seen, called Witnesses, which was about basically about the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: And then we followed that up with a docudrama that we called Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and—because I see the witnesses as being enormously important and very difficult to get around if you’re a critic.

Scott Woodward: Agreed.

Daniel Peterson: You can simply brush them aside, but that’s not a very honest way of dealing with them. They represent a challenge to critics, skeptics, and so on.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: I’ll be totally frank about the way we arrived at this focusing on the succession crisis of 1844: We had initially talked about doing something for a broader audience beyond the Latter-day Saint community, and that was to do something, we thought, on the conversion of C. S. Lewis.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Daniel Peterson: Talked about that even while we were still making the Witnesses film, and then a film came out, what, in 2021, 2022—I can’t remember.

Casey Griffiths: The Most Reluctant Convert.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah, and I went to see it on opening night when it opened in California. I happened to be down there. My wife and I managed to squeeze into a sold-out audience, and I kept thinking, okay, they brought up this subject. Now at this point, I would quote such and such, and then they did. At this point, I would raise this issue, and then they did. And so just check, check, check, check all the way through, I thought, they’ve just made the movie that I wanted to make. So that does not need to be made again. And so we thought, well, okay, we thought we had some good success with Witnesses, very much enjoy working together, and so we thought, well, what do we want to do? This is sort of like the Perpetual Education Fund or the Perpetual Emigration Fund: What do we want to do with the money that comes in from Witnesses? This was never a for-profit thing: We always told people, “You’re not investing, you’re donating,” and . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: You know, somehow we left out the clause in the contract where I got anything out of the movie.

Casey Griffiths: . . . financially. Financially, you don’t get anything out of the movie. You’re a nonprofit.

Daniel Peterson: That’s right. And so we were saying, well, what we want to do is put it into another film. What should that film be? And they mentioned, how about the succession crisis? I mean, it’s a really dramatic story. You know, at first I thought, well, yeah, that would be okay. It’s not as fundamentally important in my view as the witnesses, but yeah. We began working on it, and I have changed my mind on that. I have now seen an awful lot of evidence that people are throwing Brigham Young under the bus. Almost anything you don’t like about the church, blame it on Brigham. Joseph didn’t do it: It’s Brigham’s fault, he engineered an apostolic coup, and that sort of thing. Leadership should have gone elsewhere, he wasn’t worthy, he’s not a good man—this sort of thing gets really on my nerves, and then you may know that it’s even culminated in a recent accusation that Joseph and Hyrum Smith were actually murdered at the order of Brigham Young.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: By, no less, John Taylor and Willard Richards.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: Now, to me, this is not only objectionable: It’s obscene.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: If there’s anybody on the planet who would never ever have lifted up his hand against the prophet, it was Brigham Young.

Scott Woodward: Why do you suppose people spread that kind of stuff? Because, you’re right, it’s not going away. It seems to be getting louder.

Daniel Peterson: No, and you know, with some that I’ve talked with, I’ve tried to argue, look: You don’t get to have Russell M. Nelson without Brigham Young. The law of apostolic succession is how we got from Joseph to where we are now, and some of them really like President Nelson, but they don’t like Brigham Young based on what little they know or don’t know about him.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Daniel Peterson: But with some of them, I began to think, no, for them, at least a few of them, it’s not a bug—it’s a feature, because they don’t like things about the current church, either. I’ve heard some say, “Well, President Nelson’s a fallen prophet: He got the jab during COVID” and things like that, so clearly the apostles are totally illegitimate. It’s all Joseph.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: And so on, and this sort of thing bothers me, so I wanted to retell the story of the succession and of the young Brigham Young. He wasn’t always 77 years old and looking dour.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: And so I think that point needs to be made, and I think people need to understand. So the logic to it now becomes clear to me in retrospect. I love the line from the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard where he says history can only be understood backwards, or a life can only be understood backwards. Unfortunately, it has to be lived forwards, but looking back at it, I think we can see that the Twelve, a. were prepared for the role they were going to assume, and that this was the right choice. And so I want to emphasize that in telling this story: that the Twelve were prepared, I think, for the role they were to play. You know, it’s not just a work of propaganda. I mean, it’s a dramatic story. We tell the story, and I hope we tell it well, but there is a method behind the madness, and that will become clearer in the documentary that we hope to follow it up with.

Casey Griffiths: I want to add that you’ve done a fantastic job addressing things like the conspiracy that John Taylor and Willard Richards murdered Joseph Smith. I remember on your blog you said, that’s like saying that Mary Todd Lincoln assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Like, it’s that absurd.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But, boy, with the internet today, anybody can have a platform and they don’t have to back up what they’re saying.

Daniel Peterson: There’s no filter, so, you know, there are things about that all over the place online, and it’s affecting some active, committed members of the church, and so I think it’s time. I now see the importance of this project as much more crucial than I had realized. If anything, that may be—you know, maybe we were responding to promptings or inspiration. I think maybe it wasn’t just sheer stupidity and dumb luck that we decided to emphasize this because the need for it has become much clearer to me since we’d begun working on it than it was when we began.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And wasn’t it C. S. Lewis who said that the reason we need good arguments for the faith is simply because so many bad arguments exist?

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So we’re excited for the good argument of your film, and we look forward to it.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, well, last couple of weeks, as we’ve dug into the story of succession, there’s some amazing things that happened: miraculous things—

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —that led to Brigham Young and the Twelve leading the church. And I want to add, we haven’t seen the movie.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: We wouldn’t turn down an invite, you know, for the premiere or anything, Daniel, but—

Scott Woodward: We would not turn down an invite.

Daniel Peterson: I think you will get one.

Casey Griffiths: But I will say I saw Witnesses, and I loved Witnesses. You did such a good job.

Daniel Peterson: Oh, good.

Casey Griffiths: And the team that you work with did such a good job producing a movie that was not only dramatically compelling but historically accurate, too, that really kind of captured the experiences of the witness in a really compelling way. So if you haven’t seen Witnesses, check it out, and Six Days in August—what’s the day that it’s being released, Daniel?

Daniel Peterson: It’ll be released into theaters on the 10th of October. That’s the Thursday following general conference, and we’ll probably have a—well, we will have a premiere on the night before, Wednesday the 9th, but that will be by invitation. We’re actually having a hard time deciding who can come because there’s limited space, but it’s for the—it’s for the crew, the cast, the principal donors, and so on and so forth—

Casey Griffiths: Sure.

Daniel Peterson: —to reward them for the money and so on, the time that they gave, because we don’t have anything else to give them, but we’ll give them this film.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Wow. Tremendous.

Casey Griffiths: Wonderful.

Scott Woodward: We look forward to it. So October 10th.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Mark your calendars. It’ll be released in theaters, what, Utah, Idaho?

Daniel Peterson: Certainly Utah, Idaho, and Arizona, I think, and then we’re looking—we actually want people to go to the website, which they can find by looking up “Six Days in August film,” that’ll take them to the website, and there’s a place there that says, “Demand it for your area” or something like that, and we take that really seriously. If people just fill out this brief little form—it’ll take, a minute at most, I would think, to fill it out—if they send that in, we’ll take that really seriously. That gives us, you know, weapons to go with to the various theaters and say, “There is interest in your area. Well, why don’t you run this film?” So I hope people will do that. We’d like to get out beyond the Wasatch Front, you know, Mormon Corridor sort of area, especially in areas where there are large populations of Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward: Well, excellent. Excellent. We’ll put a link to that as well in our show notes.

Daniel Peterson: Thank you.

Casey Griffiths: Well, Daniel, are you ready to answer a couple questions about succession?

Daniel Peterson: Well, I’m ready to obfuscate if I need to. Having been an academic for many years, there were many times when I was asked questions where I thought, “You know, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but man, am I glib.”

Casey Griffiths: One of my student evaluations said, “I’m not sure Brother Griffiths always knows how a sentence is going to end when he starts saying it,” and that’s it: You start talking, and eventually the right words will come out. That’s sometimes how it works, so . . .

Daniel Peterson: Yep.

Scott Woodward: That’s the hope.

Casey Griffiths: Here is a question: It’s Tim from Colorado, so, Tim, thanks for your submission. He writes, “In the U. S. government there’s a long line of succession if something were to happen to both the president and the vice president of the United States, including the house speaker, secretary of state, et cetera. What about the church? I’ve always wondered if, heaven forbid, something were to happen to all fifteen members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, is there a line of succession beyond those fifteen men? For example, would the senior president of the Seventy become the next president of the church, or would we be in a sad situation like the ancient church, where apostolic authority is lost and would require heavenly messengers to restore it? I occasionally hear rumors that the fifteen ordained apostles are rarely all together in public and would never travel on the same airplane together to ensure if something terrible happened there would always be at least one apostle left on the earth. Is there any basis to those rumors?” So that was several questions.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Which one do you want to tackle? What would happen if we lost all fifteen? What’s the succession process? Or are there rumors that they stay apart deliberately?

Scott Woodward: Designated survivor.

Daniel Peterson: Well, this is kind of uncharted territory. Yeah, I mean, think of designated survivor, where a member of the cabinet is left home. I remember Terrel Bell, who was Secretary of Education, I think, in the Reagan administration, was given a call by the Secret Service or somebody, and they said, well, we’ve got good news and bad news for you, and he said, well, what’s the bad news? Well, you can’t attend the State of the Union Address this evening. Well, my word. What’s the good news? Well, if the Capitol blows up, you’re president of the United States. I’m not sure if that’d be good news or not.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: But anyway, I know in the past, at least, when we used to have overflow areas, they often had a member of the Twelve sit in the assembly hall or some other place, wherever the overflow was, to preside over the meeting there, and I wondered if that was necessary for presiding: do you have to have an apostle there to be listening in to conference or to make it a session of general conference? But now they seem all to be present in the assembly hall, or, excuse me, in the conference center.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: So they don’t clearly make it a point of never being in the same place at the same time, and so that is an interesting prospect, but apparently they don’t take it quite that—well, I don’t want to say they don’t take it seriously, but they don’t take that step to avoid a catastrophe.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: Do you have anything else to say about that?

Scott Woodward: I remember when President Nelson took all fifteen to Rome, right? And they had all fifteen there at the temple in Rome and did the picture, and he thought that would be a pretty pivotal moment in our history, and—

Daniel Peterson: And it is unique: They’re seldom all together, but they have been in modern times—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: —all together in one place. As to the question of, you know, what would happen if they were all eliminated at once, I have been told that the Seventy have the authority to then reorganize and reestablish church leadership, but I haven’t been privy to the ordination of a member of the Seventy to know whether he’s given keys in quite the same sense that the Twelve are.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Daniel Peterson: I don’t know. Do you know anything about that particularly?

Casey Griffiths: Well, that’s why this is such a good question: because section 107 says the Seventy are equal in authority—

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —the same way it says the Twelve are equal in authority to the First Presidency, but the added wrinkle is after section 107 is given in 1835 there’s that episode in Nauvoo where the Twelve are given the keys.

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And since then, it’s been commonly taught that all members of the First Presidency and Twelve have the keys. So if there was a bomb at General Conference and Elder Kearon survived, like, he struggles out of the wreckage, he’d still have the keys, but if none of them did, I don’t know if the Seventy would have the keys necessary.

Daniel Peterson: One of the unique things about the Apostleship is it includes, now, all the keys.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: But I don’t know that that pertains to the Seventy.

Scott Woodward: Right. And when section 107 was written in 1835, that was not the case. The Twelve were not given all the keys of the kingdom upon their ordination. That doesn’t happen until Nauvoo, and so—but I think you’re touching on the right thing. I think keys is the issue, right? If all the keyholders are eliminated at once, I think that would necessitate angelic restoration, wouldn’t it?

Daniel Peterson: I think it might well.

Scott Woodward: This has happened before, by the way, that all the apostles who held keys were killed. Like, that has happened, right? And that did necessitate a restoration.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So we do have some precedent, I suppose, for that.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. So I assume, and, of course, we thoroughly believe in the possibility of angelic restoration of authority. So that’s the way I presume it would happen.

Scott Woodward: And maybe that’s what Jesus meant in Matthew 16 when he said the gates of hell or the gates of Hades will not prevail against this, right after talking about the keys of the kingdom with Peter, is that even death itself cannot fully prevent the kingdom of God from rolling forth because angels can just come back and restore them, so it’s a pretty awesome failsafe.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah, I would think—for example, the statements that I’ve heard in the past, and I can’t remember where I’ve heard or read them, that the Seventy would then be able to step forward. Yes, I would think they would be able to step forward as the leaders of the Church. They would be the ones through—to whom the keys would have to come, but they wouldn’t necessarily hold the keys at that point, any more than the, you know, people in the pre-1835 or 1835 church held the keys. I would say, yeah, the Seventy would assume leadership of the church, but they would still be wanting something that would have to be restored. That would be my tentative suggestion here.

Casey Griffiths: So they don’t have a designated survivor, because as long as Peter, James, and John are out there, we’re—

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —we’re good to go. They can bring the keys back.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Interesting. Okay. Great question. Great question. Who was that? That was Tim. Thank you, Tim, for—

Casey Griffiths: Tim from Colorado, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And Jake from Roanoke, Virginia also had a very similar question, so we just want to say thank you, Jake, for the same question. So those are our thoughts. Next question. This is from Ryan from Holladay, Utah. He said, “When apostles are called on the same day, seniority seems to be based on age,” like President Nelson’s ahead of President Oaks, President Kimball’s ahead of President Benson, etc. “When Elders Rasband, Stevenson, and Renlund were called on the same day, however, and I’m assuming set apart on the same day,” he says, “Elder Stevenson’s seniority was placed ahead of Elder Renlund, although Elder Renlund is two years older than Elder Stevenson. This could have implications on who becomes president of the Twelve or even president of the church. So do we have any precedent for this practice of age being the tiebreaker in church history?”

Daniel Peterson: Well, I would say in the obvious sense, yes. President Nelson became president of the church; President Oaks did not. President Kimball became president of the church; President Benson did not at that time. It has made a difference in church history. You know, interestingly, when Elder Stevenson was set apart or ordained to the apostleship ahead of Elder Renlund, I don’t know what kind of a decision that represented.

Scott Woodward: Right?

Casey Griffiths: I can give a little background here: At the time, I was teaching Teachings of the Living Prophets, and we do a unit on succession, and I did a deep dive into this, but what happened was, is Boyd K. Packer and L. Tom Perry both passed away shortly after April General Conference, and then Richard G. Scott passed away just a couple days before the October General Conference, and the explanation I was given, I can’t remember by who, was that President Monson had received the revelation that Elder Rasband and Elder Stevenson should be called but didn’t receive the revelation that Elder Renlund would be called until after Richard G. Scott passed, which, like I said, was right before General Conference. And so I don’t know if this constitutes a new rule, but the explanation that I heard at the time was that it was the time the revelation was given calling them as an apostle that determines seniority.

Daniel Peterson: Ah.

Casey Griffiths: Or at least in this case, that’s what they decided to do. Now, again, is that an official rule that enters into the whole succession process or what they did that day? I’m not sure. But it seems like it’s the only instance I know of where they weren’t ordained based on their age when more than one was called simultaneously.

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Scott Woodward: And your source seems pretty good. You said you heard it from somewhere that you can’t remember, and so I think that’s—I think that’s pretty good.

Daniel Peterson: That’s how I gain most of what I know.

Casey Griffiths: It felt pretty official at the time. I can’t remember where, though, so, sorry.

Scott Woodward: It actually has a good logic to it, though, I like it.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah, it does. It makes sense.

Scott Woodward: But that truly could have implications on who becomes president of the church if Elder Stevenson and Elder Renlund both survive to—

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —be the two senior apostles.

Daniel Peterson: And it’s certainly possible. I mean, junior members of the Quorum of the Twelve have a way of moving up fairly rapidly, and in the case of that situation where we had three die in fairly quick succession, my word . . .

Scott Woodward: Right. Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: What we had predicted about who might succeed to the presidency of the church was suddenly heavily revised—

Scott Woodward: Exactly.

Daniel Peterson: —and someone who’s pretty far down the list is suddenly in position to succeed President Nelson.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Great question. Great question, Ryan. We’re just spitballing here, but you heard it first here on Church History Matters from Casey that he has it on a good authority. He can’t remember where, but it’s pretty good.

Casey Griffiths: I remember feeling really good about that explanation. Now you’re making me insecure, but I will say we have had an instance since then—Elder Gong and Elder Soares were called at the same time—

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and they seem to have gone by age in that particular instance, but I’m trying to think of another example where, you know, two were called at the same time. Not since Brigham Young, when it was kind of a little bit more topsy turvy—

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —about how seniority was determined. And it does seem like now, when they’re called, they make a big deal out of seniority. Like, they sit according to seniority, and I’ve never seen Elder Renlund sit anywhere other than behind Elder Rasband and Elder Stevenson in authority. I feel pretty good about it, but maybe, you know, I’m not fully ready to take that to the bank and cash it.

Scott Woodward: I thought it was a good answer.

Casey Griffiths: Let’s try another one here.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: This is from Micah in Bentonville, Arkansas: “Growing up in northern Utah, I would sometimes hear adults talk about what was required for a person to be an apostle or prophet. The phrase ‘sure witness’ would come up a lot. Some people would assert that a man is not yet fully an apostle until they have personally seen Jesus Christ. I have never found this requirement for apostleship or prophetship specifically spelled out. My question is, are there any requirements for a person to become an apostle or an apostle to become prophet other than basic worthiness and the now-established system of seniority?”

Scott Woodward: Good question, Micah.

Casey Griffiths: Good question.

Daniel Peterson: Well, I can take an initial stab at it. I don’t know that it’s required for a person to have seen the Savior to be an apostle, though there are plenty of stories of apostles who have, but I’ve also heard at least one member of the Twelve, now long since passed away, who said that he had not, but that he had heard his voice. Now, what that means exactly, I don’t know, but the idea of a sure witness, I think, is bedrock. Exactly how that witness is delivered might be different from person to person.

Scott Woodward: Right. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I do recall a story from Harold B. Lee of how he answered this question. Apparently it was a pair of missionaries. Harold B. Lee was talking to them, and a minister had come up to them. Apparently this minister cited Acts chapter one, where they were talking about the replacement for Judas in the Twelve. They were talking about the requirements, and verses 21 and 22, they said, “Wherefore of these men which [is] companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism of John, unto the same day he was taken up from us, must be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.” And apparently the minister had said to them, so how can you guys claim you have apostles? It says right here an apostle has to be somebody that was with them during the entire ministry and that was a witness of the resurrection. And Harold B. Lee responded by saying, well, what about someone like Paul or Barnabas? You know, they’re referred to as apostles, and they weren’t there during the entire ministry. I think that the second part, that they’re a witness of the resurrection, is more important. And then Harold B. Lee said something like, and how do you know there aren’t actual witnesses of the resurrection?

Scott Woodward: Yeah. While you were talking, Casey, I pulled up the actual talk that story comes from to see exactly how he said it.

Casey Griffiths: Do you have that story?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Does that match up with the quote?

Scott Woodward: Yeah. This is from a talk called “Born of the Spirit,” which was an address to seminary and institute faculty at BYU way back in 1962. Here’s the exact quote from him: he said, “I said to these young men,” these missionaries, “‘Go back and ask your minister friend two questions: first, how did the apostle Paul gain what was necessary to be called an apostle? He didn’t know the Lord, had no personal acquaintance, he hadn’t accompanied the apostles, he hadn’t been a witness of the ministry nor the resurrection of the Lord, so how did he gain his witness sufficient to be an apostle? Now the second question you ask him is this: How does he know that all who are today Apostles have not likewise received that witness?’” And then he says, “I bear witness to you that those who hold the apostolic calling may and do know of the reality of the mission of the Lord.” So that’s where he puts it. They know of the reality of the mission of the Lord. And I’d add to that, Elder Bednar recently in a religious educator journal—I guess it’s not recently anymore: it was back in 2011, but—he was commenting on the phrase from section 107 verse 23, that talks about the Twelve being called as “special witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world.” Notice it doesn’t say, “special witnesses of Christ,” it says, “special witnesses of the name of Christ,” and there seems to be an important distinction there, and Elder Bednar commented on what he understands that to mean. He said this: “The role of an apostle today is the same as it was anciently.” In fact, he actually cites Acts 1 verse 22 right there. “Our commission is to go into all the world and proclaim Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. An apostle is a missionary and a special witness of the name of Christ. The name of Christ refers to the totality of the Savior’s mission, death, and resurrection, His authority, His doctrine, and His unique qualifications as the Son of God to be our Redeemer and our Savior. As special witnesses of the name of Christ, we bear testimony of the reality, divinity, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his infinite and eternal atonement, and his gospel.” So that’s a great elaboration on what that phrase might mean of “special witness of the name of Christ” is about the whole mission of Jesus—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —rather than saying they’ve had some personal experience with him in bodily form. Although some of them have claimed that that has happened.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah, the last part of this question from Micah in Arkansas is, “Are there any requirements for a person to become an apostle or an apostle to become the prophet other than basic worthiness and the now-established system of seniority?” and I would say, yeah, definitely beyond that. They’re not just—they don’t just meet the minimum requirements of worthiness and then outlive the others. That idea of the sure witness is crucial. They need to know, in whatever sense that may come to mean. They need to know, not just think, think it’s likely, believe, you know, wholeheartedly or something: They need to know that Jesus is the Christ and be able to bear that kind of—what I call an apostolic testimony.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. In fact, this goes all the way back to the original Quorum of the Twelve that were called in our day back in 1835. There’s something sometimes called the Apostolic Charge that Oliver Cowdery gave to the original Twelve, and let me actually quote a little bit from it. Just imagine sitting in those seats and having Oliver Cowdery tell you this: he said, ”It is necessary that you receive a testimony from heaven to yourselves so that you can bear testimony that you have seen the face of God. Never cease striving until you have seen God face to face.” And then he says, “You have our best wishes, you have our most fervent prayers, that you may be able to bear this testimony that you have seen the face of God. Therefore, call upon him in faith and mighty prayer ’til you prevail, for it is your duty and your privilege to bear such a testimony for yourselves.”

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And there are other quotes like that. Elder McConkie mentioned once, he said, “It’s also true of those of us who have the witness of the Spirit that are apostles. We are expected,” he uses the word “expected,” “like their counterparts of old, to see and hear and touch and converse with the heavenly person, as did those of old.” And then one more from Joseph F. Smith: he said, “Your brethren who are called to the apostleship and to minister in the midst of the house of Israel are supposed to be ear- and eye-witnesses of the divine mission of Jesus Christ.” So I would summarize it like this: I’d say that the apostolic charge is that you are expected to eventually get that witness. You’re expected to become an ear- and an eye-witness of Christ’s mission. However, we know from church history that not all apostles have met that expectation, even in this series. Casey, we’ve been talking about some of the apostles who fell away.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I don’t think, and this is just me speaking, I don’t think John F. Boynton actually saw the Lord. I don’t think so.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I was thinking the same thing. There were some members of the original quorum that didn’t turn out that great. Like, William Smith was the one that came to mind for me.

Scott Woodward: William Smith, yeah.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It sounds like from the language of the charge that it’s aspirational, that they’re—

Daniel Peterson: Yes.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —asking them to seek this. They’re not saying, you’ve already done this. They’re saying—

Scott Woodward: Correct.

Casey Griffiths: —this is something you should strive for.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I would say it’s not required, but I agree with you, Daniel, that it’s more than just being basically worthy—

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —and following the course of seniority: that there’s a little bit more than that.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah. In Micah’s question, he says, “Some people would assert that a man is not yet fully an apostle until they’ve personally seen Jesus Christ.” Well, I would say a man is fully an apostle the moment he’s ordained.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: And he has all the apostolic authority and so on.

Scott Woodward: Agreed.

Daniel Peterson: I remember running into Elder Bednar a few days after he’d been announced in conference, it was the Tuesday following conference, and some of them what I was standing with knew his wife and was talking to her, and it left me standing there with Elder Bednar. You know, I didn’t know what to say. “Well, congratulations,” or, you know, what do you say to a newly ordained apostle?

Scott Woodward: Right.

Daniel Peterson: And I said, well, how—you know, how are you doing? And he said, I feel like a deer caught in the headlights. So, I’m sure that it takes a while to work into this calling and, you know, many have expressed the feeling at the very beginning, of, what am I doing here? You know, they may have already gained a kind of witness, but are they fully—do they feel themselves fully apostolic yet? Maybe not.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Daniel Peterson: It’s a process for everybody.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. One of my favorite talks is when Hugh B. Brown talks about his call to be an apostle.

Daniel Peterson: Uh-huh.

Casey Griffiths: And he said he picked up the phone and said, “Hello,” and if he’d known what they were going to ask, he would have reversed that salutation, but then he talked about, you know, the rest of the night was really difficult, that he was wrestling with his insecurities. He even said, like, the devil was in the room—

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —because it was such a—it would be a huge burden, a huge responsibility. But who the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: Wonderful question.

Scott Woodward: Related to that question, we have John from Hillspring, Alberta, Canada, who asked this question: he says, “How is an apostle called? Is each instance different? Does each prophet do it differently? In the New Testament, to replace Judas, it says the apostles drew lots, and it fell on Matthias, or something like that. In my mind, the process would be similar for how a stake president is called. I wonder if Apostles submit names to the First Presidency who they think might be a candidate and a name becomes obvious and the prophet calls him. In your last episode, it sounded like the prophet, who was not in great health at the time,” this is President Kimball, “made the decision on his own in a moment of clarity to call President Nelson and President Oaks, and what an inspired decision it was.” Good question, John. Anyone want to weigh in on that question? Is it different based on the president of the church? Do we have precedents of apostles being called in different ways? What do you want to say about that?

Daniel Peterson: I don’t know if it differs from, you know, president to president in terms of style, but I’m sure it comes in different ways. You may be able to fill in the details here: I remember the story of Heber J. Grant going up to a meeting of the Twelve where he wanted to announce his choice for the vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve left by himself advancing into the presidency, and he had the name of one of the sons of Brigham Young written on a slip of paper in his pocket, who he said would have been absolutely worthy, a wonderful man, everything else, but when the time came to announce him, he found himself saying another name, and it was the name of someone that he barely knew, and he said, you know, from that moment on, I knew that the Lord would guide me in decisions like this, because this was not the person that he had chosen. I think it was Matthias Cowley—I can’t remember who the person chosen instead was, but he said, I didn’t really even know him, and that name—I start to speak, and that name comes off my tongue. Surprised me very much. I’m not sure that is how it happens in every case. In the case of Heber J. Grant being called, he ran into George Teasdale, I think, at the door of the tabernacle, going to conference. Elder Teasdale was talking to him and started to say something like, “You and I are going to be,” and then Elder Grant, Brother Grant moved on, didn’t hear it, but his mind completed it with, “called to the Quorum of the Twelve,” so he listened for the whole time in general conference expecting the announcement, and there was none, and so he rebuked himself: you arrogant, arrogant person, thinking you were going to be called to the apostleship. As he was leaving, he was called over to John Taylor’s office, and there, when he got there, was George Teasdale, and President Taylor opened up the desk drawer and pulled out a written text of a revelation, which included, among other things, “Let my servants George Teasdale and Heber J. Grant be called to fill the vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve.” That was a written revelation. I don’t know why even it hasn’t been canonized, but—because I’ve read the whole thing.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: It’s worthy of canonization in my opinion, but it hasn’t been, for whatever reason. That was a written revelation as opposed to Heber J. Grant’s just having the name come off his tongue without expecting it.

Casey Griffiths: And that revelation, by the way, if anybody’s interested, is published. It’s in Gospel Kingdom, which—it’s a collection of John Taylor’s teachings. You can find the revelation in the back. I’m going to cite two instances here to say that there’s not a set process.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I just finished reading Stephen Taysom’s great biography of Joseph F. Smith: It’s called Like a Fiery Meteor, and it’s very, very good. But in that, he talks about how Joseph F. Smith, this is the son of Hyrum Smith, future president of the church, was just in Brigham Young’s office when Brigham Young suddenly got the prompting to ordain him an apostle. And so—

Scott Woodward: Just on the spot.

Casey Griffiths: Just, revelation, let’s do this, and that’s Brigham Young. You know, if there’s exceptions, a lot of times it is Brigham Young, because process wasn’t very well established.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But a couple years ago, I think it was in the Deseret News, D. Todd Christofferson described Thomas S. Monson’s process, and he said, “President Monson actually met with each of us and asked us to give him five names.” So every apostle gave President Monson five names, and then President Monson prayed and sought revelation, but there was a counsel part of the process along with a revelatory part of the process, so I would say, just using those examples, it probably varies from prophet to prophet, but that counsel and revelation are two important parts of how it works.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Here’s just a few other quick thoughts off the top of my head: so scripturally, Matthias is chosen by the Twelve drawing lots.

Casey Griffiths: Mm. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: The original Twelve Apostles in our day in 1835 were actually chosen by the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Section 118 has four apostles, just called, bam, by direct revelation, no counseling together with apostles.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But on the other hand, like you said with President Monson, sometimes the church president does solicit input and suggestions from the Twelve. And other times, like the President Kimball story we told last episode, he just came to clarity and mentioned President Nelson, President Oaks, and then that was it.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: It looks like, it sounds like, there is no set process.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, revelation, prayer, sometimes consultation plays a key part.

Casey Griffiths: Amen. All right, let’s try another one: This is Julie from California. So, “If a member of the Twelve, one not really in line for immediate succession, let’s say Elder Rasband or someone right in the middle, suffered a truly debilitating illness, but one that might take a long time to be fatal, like Alzheimer’s, is there an established precedent for making an Emeritus Apostle, or might they shuffle them along in the line of succession anyway?” Ooh, that’s a good question.

Scott Woodward: Good question, Julie.

Daniel Peterson: Well, there is certainly no established precedent. It hasn’t happened.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Daniel Peterson: Might it happen? I mean, I’m not in a position to rule it out.

Casey Griffiths: Boy, the closest I can think of is there’s been a lot of people, and I’m looking at, like, Ed Kimball in his book and things like that, that talked about Marion G. Romney.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: President Romney was getting up in the line of succession, but that from the early 1980s onward, it was really difficult for him to function in the calling, and . . .

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But he passed away before he became president of the church, and then the other two examples are Joseph Fielding Smith and Russell M. Nelson, who were both 93 when they were made president of the church, but they both were able to function. President Nelson has, you know, gone, I think, well beyond what anybody expected.

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so I can’t think of a precedent for that, and I don’t want to speculate and say they would do that because it’s never happened, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: I had an experience kind of unique to me. Someone challenged me on the idea that at the end of his life, President McKay was not in very good shape. Well, I was on my mission after that, but he was still a living memory, and so I was disturbed. You know, this person said, well, what if the president of the church is non-functional? In what sense is he still the prophet? And so I actually, being a nervy missionary, I wrote a letter, and I don’t know why I chose him, to Mark E. Petersen. I think maybe he’d given a conference talk about the prophet, position of prophet or something. I got back a really nice letter from him saying that, yeah, that President McKay had had problems, but he said, when we went to counsel with him on issues that we had to take to the president of the church, he said, it was amazing how clear he was sometimes. And then, as it happened, that question was still on my mind. When my mission president was closing down and about to go home, it was toward the end of my mission, too. And so they had a housekeeper come over and help them in the mission home, and she had been the private housekeeper to President McKay, and so—she was French Swiss. That’s why they had her come over when we were in Switzerland. She was coming home to help out, but I asked her, so what was it like with President McKay in his last months? And she said, well, he was not very clear a lot of the time, but once or twice his counselors would come over, and they’d go in and talk with him, and they would say, amazingly, he would come to and offer an opinion on something, and then he was pretty much unclear again, but they marveled at his ability to focus at certain points. I don’t know, you know, this is hearsay and so on, but, you know, but there have been cases in the history of the church, we have very, very elderly general authorities where some of them have not been doing well. I can imagine if one succeeded to the presidency when he was totally incapacitated, there might be a change, but I don’t know.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: It’s not for me to say.

Scott Woodward: The Community of Christ has adopted that model of apostles becoming emeritus apostles.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But not something we’ve ever seen in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Daniel Peterson: But, of course, they’ve never used the seniority system for determining a president, either.

Casey Griffiths: No, they haven’t. And actually the president of their church can retire. Like, last year, Stephen Veazey announced his retirement as president of the church, and at their next world conference his successor has already been named: Stassi Cramm.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So . . .

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We diverge on that point currently, so . . .

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Let me ask a hard question. This question comes from Chance. Chance asked this: he said, “Why do you think the Lord did not make it more clear how succession should work in the church?” That’s a good question. He said, “What were the lessons to the church under the Quorum of the Twelve to try to figure this out after the Prophet Joseph passed away? It seems that there could have been less falling away if it had been more clear initially.” So this goes all the way back to that 1844 succession crisis.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Casey and I, we talked through Mike Quinn’s article about the eight possible succession paths that seem to have been at least viable in some way or another based on the teachings or the actions or the revelations of Joseph Smith, so, yeah: Why not clarify it earlier? Why not just specify? What are your thoughts?

Daniel Peterson: You know, if—we’ve been talking about what might the presidency and the Twelve do in the case of an apostle with Alzheimer’s or something like that, well, if questions about what the apostles and the First Presidency would do are above my pay grade, it’s really above my pay grade to explain why the Lord did or did not reveal X, Y, or Z.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: It is true, I think, there would have been less falling away if there had been—if it had been more clear. On the other hand, I don’t think that succession was the only issue.

Scott Woodward: What do you mean?

Daniel Peterson: Well, I don’t think that the precise identity of the person succeeding was the only issue. There were questions about the direction of the church. Should they complete the temple? Should they go west? Should they stop the doctrine of the gathering? And to a large degree, those who rejected the leadership of the Twelve did not want to go on with the building of the temple, didn’t want to emigrate out beyond the Rockies. Ron Esplin’s article on—what is it? In the early 1980s, I think, on the succession as a succession of continuity, makes the point that many of those who were rejecting the leadership of the Twelve were really rejecting the last few years of Joseph.

Scott Woodward: Mm-hmm.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: And so that was an issue that had to be worked out, not just whether it should be Brigham or Sidney or something like that. That was secondary.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Another point Ron Walker makes in his article, which I think your movie’s based on, “Six Days in August,” was that the conflict between Sidney Rigdon and Brigham Young and the Twelve wasn’t just over who should lead the church: It was over what kind of church it was going to be.

Daniel Peterson: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: The marriage system, the temple ordinances, all the stuff that you’ve mentioned. Sydney, according to almost all sources, wanted to locate the gathering place in the Allegheny Mountains over in Pennsylvania—

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —which seems counter to the direction Joseph and others were going, according to multiple sources. And so it wasn’t just who: It was what we were going to be.

Daniel Peterson: Right. Sidney had actually said things like, well, the Lord really hasn’t been directing this church for some time now. He was out of harmony with Joseph on a lot of issues.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I think that’s clear.

Daniel Peterson: So I think that’s important. Members of the church had to decide, do we want to continue with the teachings and practices of Joseph Smith, or do we not?

Scott Woodward: So do you think if there had been more clarity on the succession process, the value of that wrestle would not have been brought to the fore, or?

Daniel Peterson: Maybe not. I wonder if those people who rejected Brigham and stayed in the Midwest would have stayed in the Midwest anyway.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I mean, this is all Monday morning quarterbacking, right?

Scott Woodward: Speculation. Good, clean fun.

Casey Griffiths: Some of the people that rejected Brigham Young founded Community of Christ, and in Community of Christ, it’s not uncommon to hear them say, we just reject everything from the Nauvoo period. Like, we just think Joseph wasn’t a prophet after a certain point.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah, that’s right. So I think that’s the fundamental issue even more than precise identity of the successor.

Scott Woodward: So I’m just still chewing on this, Chance, because I’ve had your same question. Why do you think the Lord didn’t make it more clear how succession would work? So are we saying there was value in the ambiguity, maybe? As we speculate on this, was there value in the ambiguity of that?

Daniel Peterson: Maybe. I mean, I can’t know what the Lord was thinking.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: His thoughts are not my thoughts, to coin a phrase.

Scott Woodward: I like that.

Daniel Peterson: His ways are not my ways. You know, maybe the sifting was necessary. I don’t know. It’s true that we lost a lot of valuable people at that point.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: Which is sad. But how would the church have been different if they had gone west? It might’ve been very different even there. You know, I’ve sometimes thought, how would it have been different if Laman and Lemuel had not made it to the New World? I mean, would that have been so bad? I understand the loving father Lehi really wants his sons to come, but they were a disaster from the moment they arrived. So would it have been so much worse? Might’ve been better, but the Lord has his own purposes.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I mean, like I said, it’s an unanswerable question.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: You start down this road, and next thing you’re going to be saying, why didn’t the Lord preserve Joseph Smith instead of allowing him to be killed in Carthage Jail?

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: But our study of succession over these last few weeks has shown me that there was a lot to be learned about the role of the First Presidency, about the importance of the Twelve, about the importance of unity in church leadership that I don’t think we would have picked up on otherwise—

Daniel Peterson: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —unless we had this process. And the general thing I’ve learned from the history of the church is that everything is messier than you sometimes think it’s going to be.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But there’s beauty in the mess, that if you pull back a little bit, you see a pattern.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: In what seems sometimes chaotic.

Daniel Peterson: And so when the fifteen apostles come together on something, that’s really, really important because often the process to getting there has not been as neat as you might have hoped.

Scott Woodward: Right. Yeah, that’s a golden thread throughout the history of the church for me, is just to see that there’s not always been unity, and when there hasn’t been unity, that seems to be the times of where most of the issues that people struggle with still today about church history came about.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: In those moments where they are united, that seems to be when the revelation flows easiest. It is possible that the lack of unity, even in the Joseph Smith era, especially in the Nauvoo time period, amongst even the First Presidency, to say nothing of a few members of the Twelve, could have hampered some of this process of clarity.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That’s another speculative avenue we could explore.

Daniel Peterson: Well, and, you know, the Lord, I think, when in calling apostles does not tend to choose weak individuals without positions and stances, so that they do often come to unity is pretty amazing. These are experienced, seasoned people with lots of experience. They’re bright. The unity that emerges to me is remarkable.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Agreed.

Casey Griffiths: Well, okay. Those were some good questions.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So, Daniel, one last question, and this is something we ask just about every guest we bring on the podcast: You’ve studied the ins and outs of church history and theology. We’ve already said you’re kind of a jack-of-all-trades that does a lot of different things. What makes you a believer in the truth claims of the Restoration?

Daniel Peterson: Ah, you know, that’s a really good question. There’s a lot that goes into the mix that makes a testimony. Certainly, and I’m not going to talk about them much here, spiritual experiences are one thing. There have been times in my life where it’s just come to me with revelatory clarity that this is true, and I can still remember some of those moments very, very clearly as they came to me. But then in terms of study, I just see over and over again, good people, flawed people, but good people trying to do the Lord’s will. I mean, I read Joseph Smith’s personal writings, and what comes across to me is sincerity, a really genuine attempt to live the commandments of the Lord. There is no room there for the conscious deceiver, certainly no room for the crazy man who’s just hallucinating. That’s one of the reasons why we did Witnesses, was to show that it doesn’t rely entirely on simply Joseph Smith. You’ve got all these other people.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: Eleven other official witnesses and several unofficial witnesses who see, hear things, hear the voice of God, handle the plates. That takes it out of the realm of subjectivity, and I don’t know how to explain them away. I really don’t. You’ve got these witnesses who are sane, reputable in every other regard except for believing the claims of Joseph Smith and claiming to have seen an angel and heard the voice of God or hefted the plates. It’s difficult to get around that. And then just studying the history of the church, I see us moving and growing in ways that accord with prophecy, and even in my day-to-day life in the church, it feels to me like what it must’ve been like to live in early church communities in the first century of Christianity, with all the flaws and so on among the believers, but the community and so on. Just everything about the church screams out to me, yeah, this is it. But then those experiences that are undeniable for me, the things that I’ve seen, experienced, I might say revelations that have come to me—I don’t claim grand revelations, but some, yes, where it’s very hard for me to explain those away. So I feel the spirit in the church. I sense it in reading the history, even when it is messy. The messiness to me doesn’t distract from that divine reality in it. You know, it’s the idea of the incarnation of God in a human body. It is divine, even in the flesh, with all of the flesh’s weaknesses and so on and so forth. Church is true. But that’s one way of putting it, anyway, for me.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Daniel Peterson: I could go on about this for hours.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Well, please do. Keep up the good work that you’re doing. We look forward to more of what you produce and write. Can’t wait for your next film after the Six Days in August. We’ll see what else you come up with, but . . .

Daniel Peterson: We’ll see what it’ll be. This time we’ve not jinxed ourselves by talking about the next subject while we’re still getting this one out, but . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Peterson: Yeah, we intend to go on until something stops us.

Scott Woodward: So grateful for you. Thanks for taking some time to be on our show today and to—

Daniel Peterson: Well, thank you for having me.

Scott Woodward: —share your thoughts, and thanks for all your good work and all the good that you’re doing.

Daniel Peterson: Thank you for yours. I hope a lot of people are getting a great deal out of these podcasts. They’re very informative and faith-promoting and faith-filled, so that’s great.

Scott Woodward: Well, thank you.

Casey Griffiths: Well done. And remind us, when does Six Days in August premiere? When’s it coming out?

Daniel Peterson: It will premiere—it’ll go into the theaters on the 10th of October, so the Thursday following General Conference.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: All right. Well, something to look forward to. And thank you, Herr Professor Peterson, for being with us.

Daniel Peterson: Thank you.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode we pivot in our exploration of succession in the presidency to consider three separate groups of Latter-day Saints who did not follow Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles west, but instead, over time, formed their own churches and became fully separate, distinct, and independent branches of the Restoration. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward, and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.