Continuing Revelation

Latter-day Saints affirm continuing revelation through living prophets, that God still speaks, guiding the church through a president regarded as a prophet, seer, and revelator, in unbroken succession from Joseph Smith. Revelation is held to come both to the church's leaders for the whole body and to individuals for their own lives, so that the canon is open and the divine will is made known afresh for present circumstances. The living prophet's counsel is received as authoritative, and past revelations can be added to or clarified.

The clearest modern instance church members point to is the 1978 revelation on priesthood, announced by President Spencer W. Kimball, which extended priesthood ordination and temple access to worthy male members of all races, ending a policy, in place since the presidency of Brigham Young in the 1850s, that had barred men of Black African descent. The change was received and presented as new revelation rather than a mere policy reversal, and it stands as the most cited twentieth-century example of the doctrine in action; the church has since (2013) issued an essay acknowledging that past explanations for the restriction offered by earlier leaders are now disavowed as theories without scriptural foundation, without settling every question about how that history is to be understood.