Excerpt: Changing Ordinances, Losing Priesthood?

Drew Briney's 'Changing Ordinances, Losing Priesthood.'

By Drew Briney

This is an excerpt of Changing Ordinances, Losing Priesthood? We want to thank the author for allowing the release of a small portion of the new book.

As I’ve researched and considered the many doctrinal changes Mormonism has undergone, one overshadows all others and looms above as the most important priesthood teaching that every believer should be intimately aware of — regardless of what they ultimately conclude from the evidence. That is, Joseph Smith taught that if you change ordinances, you change the priesthood and added the all too tidy opposing principle that if you change the priesthood, you will likewise change ordinances. 

Although Joseph appears  to have introduced this teaching in Nauvoo to prepare the saints to receive a new priesthood, I quickly grasped the pragmatic ramifications to our modern age when applying this principle. That is, since Joseph Smith restored the fullness of priesthood in 1843 and since that included all power that could be given to man on earth, any change in priesthood could only mean one thing: loss of priesthood. And while it broke my heart to read about changes to God’s ordinances, multiple books  conclusively document the dozens, if not hundreds of changes the modern LDS church has made to the ordinances as revealed by Joseph Smith and the early brethren. 

That may sound overly-dramatic because there are apologetic arguments that allow for the opportunity to categorize any or all of those “changes” as insignificant or non-substantive or otherwise dismissible. I could simply adopt any number of those arguments and blithely plow forward, pretending like Joseph never warned us about anything … or, maybe conclude that he was just wrong … even though he taught this and similar principles on multiple occasions over several years and quoted the apostle Paul as his source. At some point, though, those arguments render both Paul’s and Joseph’s teaching on the matter essentially meaningless and generally speaking, a faithful exegesis of a prophet’s teachings doesn’t include assuming that they were wasting their words on meaningless tripe — especially when Joseph, the prophet of the restoration — reiterated this teaching on multiple occasions for over four years. 

Further, as a historian, I find it entirely unlikely that any of the early leading brethren would have been remotely convinced by modern apologetic approaches. 

The inescapable conclusion — that at least some  priesthood has been lost to the LDS church — was both tragic and life-changing. Further, if Joseph Smith was right when he said that we have to live the same laws as the ancients to achieve exaltation, it was immediately evident that the fullness of priesthood was somewhere outside of the LDS church; or there was some secret underground LDS club where general authorities discreetly lived principles of the fullness of the gospel that would get them excommunicated if they were outed;  or we now live in an era when obtaining the fullness of the priesthood is  no longer possible.

In short, accepting Joseph’s teaching that changing the ordinances changes the priesthood is a monumental teaching with both temporal and eternal ramifications. Typically, I’m very slow to adopt doctrines without heavily researching it to ensure that I thoroughly understand every facet of it. However, in this instance, a few very clear statements from Joseph Smith were plenty to logically  convince me that I had to choose either to believe Joseph Smith or “the modern prophet.”  As years passed, I never found anything to dissuade me from believing that Joseph Smith, the very well-spring of constant revelation, was inspired in this teaching. 

Further, I was unaware when I first accepted these teachings that there was a small mountain of material beyond the handful of quotes commonly offered as proof of Joseph’s teaching that ordinances cannot be changed without changing (or removing) priesthood. That small mountain specifically includes teachings that the endowment shouldn’t be changed and that the garment shouldn’t be altered, either. To be fair, at some level of a Venn diagram, those are the same teaching and are barely distinguishable. However, they demonstrate perpetuity of thought (those teachings are all post-Joseph) and continual effort to reinforce the importance of this principle in early Mormonism. Indeed, Wilford Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith both addressed these issues very passionately.

I also began to learn another irony: while Joseph taught that changes to ordinances bring about (or identify) changes in priesthood to prepare the saints to receive a new priesthood, he nearly simultaneously taught that the fullness of the priesthood would never be taken away from the saints. That, of course, limits the number of logical possibilities mentioned earlier. Either these teachings are meaningless as apologists argue because any change can be excused away for some reason or another or there is somewhere outside  of the mainstream LDS church where the fullness of the priesthood resides.

Further, I slowly recognized other nuances to this principle of the gospel. For instance, some of the early brethren taught that, because God and eternal principles/truths don’t change, the gospel has always been the same throughout all eternity. They taught this while simultaneously acknowledging that God gives imperfect, “carnal” laws to His children through His priesthood from time to time. Further, God views these lower laws as curses for unbelief.  I address these in greater detail in the book Changing Ordinances, Losing Priesthood? but for now, consider a few of the ramifications of these teachings in connection with the teaching that changing ordinances changes priesthood.

Keep in mind that these are tougher questions, the kind that you have to read slowly and multiple times to fully grasp if you haven’t contemplated them before. For instance, how can we logically reconcile an unchanging gospel with changing laws that are designed to lead us to exaltation? And what does this mean in terms of our belief in various principles? If, for instance, God gives us gradations of laws designed to bring us to a higher level of discipleship (think: the Old Testament was a schoolmaster to prepare people for Christ),  that suggests interim or lower laws are not completely “true” while simultaneously helpful to guide us from one level of discipleship to another. What we may have accepted as an eternal truth may simply be a schoolmaster version of a higher law. We’ve seen this in reverse in this dispensation: tithing was offered to the saints after they rejected consecration.   

That brings up more questions. Do we or do we not believe  in consecration (particularly, as outlined in D&C 42)? Do we or do we not believe the many statements of the early brethren claiming that plural marriage is essential to exaltation? Do we or do we not believe tithing is paid on surplus, not income? And how does any of that work if the priesthood revealing those changing laws is itself unchangeable?

If we start thinking more carefully, we have to ask deeper questions: how can we unblushingly teach that ordinances cannot and do not change while simultaneously claiming that the covenants behind temple ordinances are based and founded upon ancient laws that we no longer accept because … they were changed? In other words, by connecting the laws of the gospel (as found in scripture) with temple covenants, we’re connecting “carnal” Old Testament laws that evolved and changed  over time with an unchanging ordinance — or, at least the covenants connected with the ordinance. This genre of questions snowballed. I have a degree in philosophy  so I cannot help but to pontificate and ponder these things and while the answers to these questions are not overly difficult to uncover with a little prayerful pondering, they do open the mind to broader understandings that I was not expecting.

Let’s look at a quick recap to consider the rather convoluted connections I’ve been referring to:

1. Changes in priesthood lead to changes in ordinances and visa-versa.

2. After the fullness of the priesthood was restored, changes in priesthood can only mean loss of priesthood power and/or authority.

3. Gospel principles and laws don’t change but God gives us interim commandments and carnal laws to prepare us for higher laws.

4. Tacitly, we covenant to obey some of those lower laws in an unchangeable ordinance. 

5. Joseph promised the fullness of the priesthood would never be taken from the earth.

While this initially appears quite messy, it really isn’t and surprisingly, it highlights both God’s grace, wisdom, and patience. It also offers a more holistic perspective of the gospel that seems largely overlooked by modern scholarship. So, how do we reconcile these outwardly competing principles?

Renewed studies  into sections 42 and 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants offered me a more comprehensive understanding that God offers us laws and ordinances in accordance with our willingness and ability to obey those laws and ordinances. Sure, D&C 88:32  and Alma 12:9-12 succinctly outline these principles, but I hadn’t fully connected those principles with another, broader understanding: the scriptures record humanity’s flailing efforts to live God’s laws, which He changes and clarifies  from time to time to allow us the opportunity to grow at our own pace, receiving and rejecting various principles as they are presented to us. Ironically, a non-canonical source really sealed my understanding of this broader concept.

In short, scriptures record occasional revelatory clarifications declaring higher laws from lower laws and those clarifications hint at how to overcome all things, namely, all falsehood. Further, our dispensation is promised to retain all of the priesthood restored by the Lord so that we can live every law necessary to find exaltation — if we can decipher the labyrinth of teachings found throughout the scriptures and modern discourses.

Because prophesies promising the priesthood will remain on the earth until the second coming were pretty compelling as a whole, I started pondering more carefully Joseph’s many warnings that priesthood will be taken away from God’s people if we change ordinances and contemplating how those two, seemingly contrary teachings, have played out in our dispensation.

Changing Ordinances, Losing Priesthood? pursues these issues in greater detail and is now available on Amazon.

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