With your over 50 years of service as a General Authority, would you comment on how you have observed the relationship between the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Seventy develop over these 50 years? That's a long time. The memory of man goeth not back that far. But when I first came to this building, there were Seven Presidents of the Seventy. And such names as S. Dilworth Young and Levi Edgar Young, Antoine R. Ivins, and venerable men that knew the history of the Church, because they had lived it. And the Seventies Quorum were not used much. There were a total of 26 General Authorities. And, for the most part, the Seventies would go out to stake conferences. They had no administrative duties at all. And that was very comfortable. And then something happened. The Church started to grow. And it's never stopped growing. And, in time, the question of how we would get out to reorganize stakes and how we would get out to manage things around the world. And the answer, of course, is always in the revelations. The history of the Seventies really goes back to the Old Testament. At the time of Christ, there's much said about the Seventies. They were sent out; then they came back rejoicing and said, even the devils are subject to us. And that was the beginning of what was to be. We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive Church, and it included Seventies. This is an amazing time in which we live, where prophets, seers, and revelators again are on the earth. The incredible thing is that Joseph Smith was 24 when the Book of Mormon was published. And the revelations that came when he was a very young man. And how he knew what he knew. I was going to say it's incredible. It isn't. Because he didn't have to know much. All he had to do was follow the patterns of revelation. When we've tried to figure out what to do with the Church, how to manage this as it grew in numbers, and then it grew in distance. That it was obvious that the Twelve couldn't do what the Twelve did then, by way of visiting the stakes. There was a time, I can remember, when we could say that every stake president during that year had shaken hands with a member of the Twelve. And as the Church grew and grew in distant parts of the world, the question how we'd manage it, how we'd teach it, how we'd administer it? And the answer, of course, is in the revelations. The answer is the Seventies. That the Twelve, as revelations directed, should call upon the Seventy instead of any others. As the Seventy, we teach, we invite people, we encourage people to follow prophets and apostles. I have no agenda on my own. What the prophet and apostles teach, that's what I teach. The duties of the Seven Presidents changed then, because they were to approve the brethren who were called as presidents to the local seventies quorums. I remember one of the brethren was going to Vava'u in northern Tongan islands. Took him four days to get there. Or four days going and four days coming, and a couple days conference didn't leave much time for anything else. So it became time to call upon the Seventy, instead of any others. And if we didn't have enough of them, we'd invent what we needed. Our job is, certainly, to act in their names, in their behaviors. We don't do anything by ourself. We do everything that we have heard of them, of the First Presidency and of the Twelve. President Kimball called three men in addition to the seven. That made 10. And with that the First Quorum of the Seventy was in existence. And that could be enlarged to the number of 70. And that took care of it for a while. But President Kimball had the vision. And with the First Quorum of the Seventy organized, then step by step, the Second Quorum of the Seventies was organized. And the question, will they all be General Authorities? That posed some problems that were solved.

It was determined that all the General Authorities didn't need to live at headquarters. Back in the days of John Taylor, he and his counselors had a question about what to do with the Seventies. And so they prayed about it and pondered about it, and they wrote out a declaration which would be in the language of revelation. I've always thought that was very interesting that they thought and acted and prayed first. Then President Taylor received a revelation that says that what they had written was the will of the Lord. And then the Lord told them, at that time, that anything else they needed, in reference to the Church, and how it'd operate, and the priesthood, and how it would function, would be given them from time to time. That's the way it's been.