When the LDS Church reversed its policy of denying priesthood to black male members, the announcement left many of the church's apologists holding the bag. One example is that of Bruce R. McConkie, an apostle of the Mormon Church and universally regarded by me and other BYU student as the source of what indeed his book, Mormon Doctrine, purported to be.
Bruce R McConkie took the most authoritative information and reasoned from it. Then, when blacks were grated the LDS priesthood, he had to say:
“Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and light line upon line and precept upon precept (2 Ne. 28:30; Isa. 28:9-10; D&C 98:11-12; 128:21). We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter anymore.
“It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year (1978). It is a new day and a new arrangement, and the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light into the world on this subject.”
—Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie
Part II—The Mission of the Holy Ghost
Chapter 9—Revelation on the Priesthood 1989
(Also spoken at a CES conference at BYU in August 1978)
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today (Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
