Speaking on the authority of all the leadership of the Church, not just the president of the Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, while a member of the Quorum of the Twelve once explained:
“The president, after all, is just one of the fifteen prophets, seers, and revelators, so when the president is not functioning, we simply carry on with the remaining apostles.” As he said, “there is abundant ‘backup’,” and when the Saints sing “We thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet,” they are expressing their joy in being led by not just one man but by a council of fifteen. (Gordon B. Hinckley to Seminary and institute teachers, Aug. 22, 1986 from the diary of that date in Leonard J. Arrington Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University Library, Logan, as cited in Leonard J. Arrington, Adventures of a Church Historian [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998], 144)
