The Priesthood Line

The Church of the Firstborn does not rest its claim on ordinary institutional succession through the Quorum of the Twelve. It traces a Patriarchal line: the higher Priesthood and Kirtland Temple keys restored through Joseph Smith, carried through Benjamin F. Johnson and Alma Dayer LeBaron, then through Ross Wesley LeBaron to Fred C. Collier.

Fred’s own explanation of this history is his 1992 Manti address, later published as The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization. The title page describes the address as including “a Brief History of Succession in the Priesthood.”1

The line in brief: Joseph Smith → Benjamin F. Johnson → Alma Dayer LeBaron → Ross Wesley LeBaron → Fred C. Collier.

What This Line Means

The Church of the Firstborn’s Priesthood line is a Patriarchal transmission tied to the keys manifested in the Kirtland Temple, the Nauvoo Holy Order, the Kingdom of God, and the birthright promises in the House of Joseph. It is not merely a retelling of ordinary institutional succession controversies.

That is why the line is inseparable from several other doctrines on this site: the Two Gospels, the Holy Order, the Law of Adoption, the Council of Fifty, and the Office of the One Anointed and Appointed.

Joseph Smith: Kirtland Keys and Birthright Succession

Joseph Smith received the Aaronic Priesthood, the apostolic authority connected with Peter, James, and John, and then the Kirtland Temple keys committed by Moses, Elias, and Elijah on April 3, 1836.2 In the Church of the Firstborn’s teaching, those Kirtland keys belong to the Gospel of the Father and the Church of the Firstborn, not merely to the outward administration of the Gentile Church.

This is also why the succession question cannot be flattened into the familiar LDS story of Brigham Young and the Twelve. The cited succession witnesses show that Joseph’s own birthright expectations centered on his sons, while President Young presided over the Church after the martyrdom without claiming that Joseph had set him apart to succeed him in the full birthright office.3

Benjamin F. Johnson: Joseph’s Adopted Son

Benjamin F. Johnson stands at the Nauvoo end of the line. Fred explains there that Johnson was an adopted son of the Prophet Joseph Smith and a surviving bearer of the Kingdom commission associated with Joseph’s last work.4 Fred’s account treats Johnson’s connection to Joseph not as a loose friendship, but as a covenantal and Priesthood relationship grounded in the Nauvoo order.

Johnson’s role matters because the line is Patriarchal. Adoption, birthright, Family Order, and Kingdom authority are not side issues; they are essential to the succession claim. If the Church of Jesus Christ prepares a people, the Church of the Firstborn organizes them into the Father’s Family Order.

Alma Dayer LeBaron: The Birthright Blessing

The Manti account explains Benjamin F. Johnson’s 1895 blessing of his grandson Alma Dayer LeBaron as the key transition from Johnson to the LeBaron family. It presents both the family memory and the recorded blessing as evidence of a birthright Priesthood claim, not as a simple modern corporate succession certificate.

The family report says Johnson gave Dayer “a special charge to preside over his family,” and that Johnson remarked afterward, “I didn’t mean to give you that blessing.” The recorded blessing itself begins by saying that the Lord would speak through Johnson “pertaining to thy lineage and birth.”5 Those words are read in light of the Patriarchal promises and the hidden life-and-Priesthood language of D&C 86.

Ross Wesley LeBaron: The Patriarchal Commission

Before his death, Dayer gave the charge forward to his son Ross Wesley LeBaron, sometime called Wesley. Fred’s 1992 Manti account states that Dayer ordained Ross to the keys he held and told him to go ahead with the Patriarchal work in his stead.6

The 1955 organization minutes cited there are unusually direct. They identify “Ross W. LeBaron” as having received from his father “all the keys rites and authority of the Patriarchal Order of Priesthood” and as holding the Patriarchal keys of the dispensation that Joseph Smith held, handed down through Benjamin F. Johnson and Alma Dayer LeBaron.7

The LeBaron history is not presented as clean or romantic. The rival claims and family conflict are told plainly. For the Church of the Firstborn line, Ross is the transmitting figure: the man from whom Fred received his Priesthood commission in 1970.

Fred C. Collier: August 10, 1970

Fred C. Collier’s statement is direct. Speaking of Ross, he says: “I met Wesley about three years after he came to understand the High Priesthood after the Holy Order of God, and shortly after, on August 10th, 1970, I was expressly ordained to all the keys that were restored in the Kirtland Temple by Moses, Elias and Elijah.”8

That date is the fixed point for the modern line: August 10, 1970. From that point, the work became the labor of his life. His publications, revelations, and formal organization of the Church of the Firstborn on April 3, 1992, flow from that received commission.9

What This Line Is Not

It is not merely a claim to run the LDS Church. It is not the Woolley-Musser line of authority. It is not a theory that apostolic office by itself is the highest order of Priesthood. It is a Patriarchal claim: Father to son, birthright to heir, adoption into Joseph’s house, and Kirtland Temple keys belonging to the Church of the Firstborn.

That is why the question is finally spiritual as well as historical. Documents matter; they guard the claim from fantasy. But documents are not the whole question. The Saints in Joseph’s day knew Joseph by the Spirit of God, and the same kind of witness is required in discerning the Church of the Firstborn.

Further Study

Notes

  1. Fred C. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization (1993), 1. The speech was given April 16, 1992, at Manti, Utah. ↩
  2. D&C 110:11–16; Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 180–181. ↩
  3. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 77–80. Patriarch Collier cites Brigham Young, Lorenzo Snow, and other succession witnesses in this section; the point here is the limited one that the Church of the Firstborn line should not be collapsed into ordinary apostolic succession. ↩
  4. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 103–105, 169. ↩
  5. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 103–107. Fred quotes Conway M. LeBaron’s family report and the recorded opening of Johnson’s blessing upon Dayer. ↩
  6. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 169–171, 181. ↩
  7. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 172–173. ↩
  8. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 181. ↩
  9. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn & Its Formal Organization, 181–184, 213–214. ↩