With all the recent discussion around the Strengthening Church Members Committee, it got my mind racing around the possibility of the Council of Fifty (also known as Kingdom of God) still being in existence today. Is it possible?

The Council ordained Joseph Smith to be King, Priest and Ruler of the world in April 1844, two months before he was killed. The Council continued into the Utah Territory era, a sort of world government in exile and theocratic framework for the fledgling State of Deseret.

Oddly enough, a couple of the Council's last acts were to establish Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI, an ironic tie to the church's reentrance into retail commerce with the newly opened City Creek Center). After an apparent hiatus, the Council was used during the administration of John Taylor in an advisory role on the issue of polygamy. The Council's last recorded meeting was in 1884.

What do you think...does it still exist? Are there power brokers behind the visible leaders? I've not dabbled in conspiracy theories since I left TSCC, but just couldn't resist this one.

Of course, I should have known that MormonThink has some great information pulled together on this topic:

Overview
http://mormonthink.com/glossary/council-of-fifty.htm


Quotes from Leaders (some pretty crazy ones)
http://www.mormonthink.com/QUOTES/council.htm

Including.....

“Joseph Smith had himself anointed King and Priest… in a revelation dated 1886 given to President John Taylor, mention is made of Joseph Smith being crowned a king in Nauvoo. Not only was he ordained a king but the leading members of the Church were assigned governmental responsibilities. Brigham Young was to be president, John Taylor vice president, members of the Church were assigned to represent different states in the house and senate of the United States, and a full cabinet was appointed.” - “Causes of Mormon Non-Mormon Conflict in Hancock County, Illinois, 1839-1846,” Ph.D. dissertation, BYU, 1967, pp. 63-65

“We are called the State Legislature [of Utah], but when the time comes, we shall be called the Kingdom of God. Our government is going to pieces, and it will be like water that is spilt upon the ground that cannot be gathered. For the time will come when we will give laws to the nations of the earth. Joseph Smith organized this government before, in Nauvoo, and he said if we did our duty, we shall prevail over all our enemies. We should get all things ready, and when the time comes, we should let the water on to the wheel and start the machine in motion.” - Dale Morgan, Mormon scholar, “The State of Deseret,” Utah Historical Quarterly, v. 8, 1940, pp. 139-140

just before he went into hiding from the Feds. He did just about all he could to destroy Moism before he died.

I suppose anything is possible, but as far as I can tell, the council of ytfif died a long time ago.

Phantom Shadow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> the council of ytfif died a long time

I heard that Pres. Rulon T. Jeffs kept it going, albeit under
a different name, and with somewhat less than fifty members.

I can only imagine what their meetings must have been like,
as they pondered who to ordain as their secret ambassadors
to Mexico and Canada, etc.

UD

who knows?

Those of us who have been privvy to even a few whispers of the infighting and politics of the COB and CAB know that there's zero chance of anything truly conspiratorial emerging; there's an epidemic of "group think," but there are always some Mormons who are too damn honest--with lousy boundaries--and the truth always leaks out...

Look at the Olympics Scandal... Or the "messy" excommunications...

The church in Brigham Young's time was what, a ten-thousanth the size it is now, and BY ruled with an iron fist in a time of widespread superstition among people who did believe in millenial end times, but those people only make up a portion of the faithful these days.

Oh, I'm sure there are those who amass their own little fiefdoms and political loyalties, and they exploit matters for their own gain (and I'm told there's a lot of tolerance for "financial shenanigans") as well as engaging in personal vendettas, but that's all.

Old wisdom I first heard here: "Never attribute to malice that which can successfully be explained by incompetence."