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ETB was senile and bedridden the last few years of his life...
From Steve Benson:
Other Mormon leaders made the decisions and signed his name to documents...

"By 1993, my grandfather was on his last mental and physical legs, being in full decline on both counts.

He exhibited only brief moments of awareness of his surroundings and was unable to carry on meaningful conversations, including with members of his own family.

I personally witnessed his condition deteroriate to this state over the course of several years.

By 1993, he had had a suffered from series of significant health setbacks, including blood clots on the brain, a stroke and a heart attack, all of which had been downplayed to one degree or another by the Church.

My grandfather eventually died in May 1994, barely a year after the conference to which you refer.

By September 1993, even Apostles Oaks and Maxwell were personally (but only privately) confirming the reality of ETB's increasingly debilitated state.

In a visit that month with my wife, Mary Ann, and I in Maxwell's Church Administration Building office, Oaks admitted that my grandfather's health was declining steadily (a fact that we both, as well as our children, already knew from personal visits with him in the confines of his apartment overlooking Temple Square).

Oaks said the Quorum of the Twelve rotated in pairs each week to visit my grandfather at the apartment, with the purpose of only to check in on how he was doing, not to engage in adminstrative action or to discuss major issues, since my grandfather was incapable of doing any such thing.

Maxwell said that when Church members asked him how the prophet was doing, he would reply only that "he is not in pain."

Either Maxwell or Oaks (I would have to go back and check my notes from the visit) also told us that major administrative decisions were not being made, given the inability of my grandfather to be involved in the process.

I asked Oaks why he didn't come out and set the record straight on my grandfather's health, especially since the Church Public Relations Department, headed by Don LeFevre at the time, was issuing press releases significantly misrepresenting my grandfather's actual mental and physical condition.

Oaks responded by waving dismissively in the direction of the the Church Office Building (which we could see through the windows of Maxwell's office) and saying, "I don't know what goes on over there in the high rise."

I then asked Maxwell why he didn't speak up on the actual state of my grandfather's health.

Maxwell replied by saying he already had several responsibilities and "didn't need any more."

Oaks then urged me to deal with the issue of my grandfather's health through "back channels," rather than in the public square (a sure-fire remedy for deep-sixing the whole thing).

I chose not to follow that advice.

A few weeks later, during 1993 October Conference, I encountered Don LeFevre of the Church PR Department and asked him why he was releasing statements about the health of my grandfather that were clearly not true.

LeFevre told me, "All my statements have been approved by my superiors."

I responded, "Don, that doesn't make them true."

LeFevre simply replied, "Steve, this is a difficult job."

It is a matter of public record (thanks to the reporting of the Salt Lake Tribune) that--in direct contravention of established protocol for the transfer of power in the event that the Church president should die OR become incapacitated--Hinckely and Monson had the power of attorney over LDS corporate affairs shifted to them in the Church's incorporation documents a few years before my grandfather's death (see Talmadge's treatment of Church governance procedures in Articles of Faith).

Instead of having the First Presidency dissolved and an acting president installed to administer the affairs of the Church in a situation when the sitting president was unable to perform his duties, Hinckely and Monson had legal authority to run the Mormon empire transferred directly to them by the highly unusual method of employing my grandfather's autopen signature machine on Church incorporation documents (see an account of this episode in Quinn's Extensions of Power).

It's rotten, folks--to the core."

From ETB's grandson, Steve Benson

"By 1993, my grandfather was on his last mental and physical legs, being in full decline on both counts.

He exhibited only brief moments of awareness of his surroundings and was unable to carry on meaningful conversations, including with members of his own family.

Benson or Hinckley??

"I Don't Know..."

In case you don't recognize the title of this post, it is part of President Hinckley's answer to a reporter's question that appeared in the August 4 1997 issue of Time magazine. The reporter referenced the King Follett discourse. The answer supplied and the manner in which it was delivered caused the reporter to draw some false conclusions about a very important doctrine.

In that discourse, the prophet Joseph Smith said, "If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man." (See also D&C 130:22)

The article referred to Lorenzo Snow's couplet, "As man is now, God once was; as God now is, man may become." The reporter said, "God the Father was once a man as we are. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing." President Hinckley was then asked, "Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?"

The bothersome reply

"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it."

The reporter wrote, "On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain." That's an unfortunate conclusion. Of course I wasn't at the interview and neither were you but I'll bet the reporter mistook careful thoughtfulness for uncertainty. This doctrine is indeed deep territory and not something that is taught outside the LDS Church.

An earlier and similar interview

The San Francisco Chronicle, published an interview with President Hinckley in April of 1997. The reporter asked, "There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don't Mormon's believe that God was once a man?" President Hinckley responded, "I wouldn't say that. There is a little couplet coined, 'As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.'"

He then said, "Now that's more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don't know very much about." The reporter pounced on this. "So you're saying that the church is still struggling to understand this? " President Hinckley responded, "Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal progression. Very strongly."

President Hinckley's response

President Hinckley said in October 1997 General Conference: "I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances misquoted and misunderstood. I think that's to be expected. None of you need worry because you read something that was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine.

"I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear. I hope you will never look to the public press as the authority on the doctrines of the Church." And there lies the whole point of my post today. Some members did indeed become a little concerned by the exchanges they read in the press reports of those interviews.

Does the Church still teach this?

I know this is old news but it still bothers some people when they discover the anti-Mormon attacks floating around on the Internet. President Hinckley was right. We really don't know much about how our Heavenly Father became a God. The idea that he passed through a mortal probationary state like you and me is certainly not documented in any scripture of which I know.

However, it is still taught. In the Gospel Principles manual in the chapter on exaltation we read, "Joseph Smith taught: "It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God. . . . He was once a man like us; . . . God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 345-46)."

Summary and conclusion

I don't know why this should bother anyone. The doctrine is true. Joseph Smith knew a whole lot more about this than I do. President Hinckley also knew a whole lot more about this doctrine than he was willing to share with reporters who did not have the background to understand it. It must have been difficult for President Hinckley to hold back and not teach it in those interviews.

It didn't bother me when I read the interviews back in 1997 and it doesn't bother me today. However, I know it does bother some people. We each have trials of our faith. I have never depended on an intellectual understanding of the gospel in order to accept it and live it. There are some things that just can't be fully comprehended without the temple, prayer and faith.

There are some things that just can't be fully comprehended without the temple, prayer and faith.