Continuing revelation through living prophets

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.

This affirmation is fundamental to Latter-day Saint identity and marks a clear difference from traditions that hold revelation to have closed with the apostles and the biblical canon. It underlies the movement's conviction that the true church is led directly by God rather than only by scripture and tradition, and it accounts for developments in Latter-day Saint teaching and practice over time. Together with the acceptance of additional scripture, it expresses the restorationist claim that the heavens are open and God continues to direct his people through chosen prophets. How far continuing revelation can carry a church is itself contested among the Restoration traditions that share the doctrine.

The Community of Christ used the same principle of an open canon to ordain women to its priesthood beginning in 1984 and, in the 2010s, to extend full participation and marriage to LGBT members, decisions announced as revelation to its prophet-president and ratified by its World Conference. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holding the identical doctrine of a living prophet who may receive new revelation, has not moved in either direction, ordaining only men to its priesthood and maintaining its traditional teaching on marriage, illustrating how two churches with the same theological mechanism for change can reach opposite conclusions from it.