We thank thee, O God, for thy prophets!

The LDS Church concluded its October General Conference today. It's difficult to absorb so much counsel in one listening, but these conferences, which are broadcast live in Utah and other areas with large Mormon populations, always confirm my faith that God still speaks to mankind. Gordon B. Hinckley and the other apostles of the church truly are revelators. It's difficult to convey the feelings that I have hearing their testimonies and teachings. All I can say is that the spirit of God speaks through our emotional apparatus and gives individuals knowledge that can't be conveyed any other way. In our age of science, we forget that the scientific means of establishing truth is quite a recent standard, and that there are many truths that cannot be measured or perceived with instruments. As scientists explain away the feelings we have and spiritual experiences as mere biochemical processes, nobody can really believe that without losing some of his humanity. I have never understood how one can explain love as merely a genetic imperative.

Read President Hinckley's statement from this morning's session about his late wife and his following comments about womanhood and you'll know what I mean. I believe that he is a prophet because of what I feel when I hear him speak and read his admonitions. He is a Christlike man, as all of his predecessors have been. He's close to 95 years old and he has spent 67 years serving in the church and learning from spiritual giants, but it is his own humility and desire to serve that makes him a great man.

The church announced two new apostles to fill the vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve today, one of whom is a German, Dieter F. Uchtdorf. The other is David A. Bednar. These men have the same role in the church as the original apostles, to travel throughout the world establishing and overseeing the spread of the church which is growing at an amazing pace. Uchtdorf is 63 years old and Bednar is 52. This is the one calling in the church from which one never retires or is released, except by death (or excommunication, which occurred several times during the era of severe persecution). Apostles serve for life. The president is always the most senior apostle and therefore the one with the most experience in the office. There are, in fact, 15 apostles, three in the First Presidency and 12 in the Quorum of the Twelve. The President or Prophet of the church holds all of the presiding authority or "keys" for the church. He has two counselors who with him comprise the First Presidency. When he dies, the First Presidency is dissolved and the counselors rejoin the Quorum of Apostles who as a group hold the keys but exercise them only when there is no President. The Apostles then ordain the most senior among them to the Presidency and he selects and calls his counselors. All of the Apostles are special witnesses of Christ and are considered prophets, seers and revelators by the church.

The fact that God's church should be led by continuing revelations from him should be self-evident, since the church established by Jesus Christ himself was so led, but it has been so inculcated in most Christians that revelation ceased with those earlier Apostles, it often strikes them as heresy.