Predicting Future Church Presidents

Jeffrey R. Holland, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died early in the morning on Saturday 27 December 2025. Those who follow my occasional thoughts on general conference may recognize that he was among my favorite Church leaders. I’m sad to see him go. But some things, some sufferings, are worse than death.

Before he died, President Holland was in line to become the next president of the Church. Succession is highly predictable. When a president dies, the most senior living apostle, based on date of ordination, becomes the next president. He was the senior member.

Since President Holland died, the most senior living apostle is now Henry B. Eyring, who also serves as the first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church. Assuming he lives longer than the current president, Dallin H. Oaks, President Eyring would become the next president.

Who would be after that? And how long would they serve? These questions are usually answered with vibes and rumors. But we can do better.

In this article, I present two forecasts for future presidents of the Church. The first forecast, based strictly on actuarial tables from the Social Security Administration of the U.S. Government, is skeptical about the possibility of accelerating technological evolution. The second forecast is optimistic about the possibility of accelerating technological evolution, facilitating mortality escape velocity by 2065. Not included are what I would characterize as pessimistic and conservative forecasts, the former implying practical annihilation of human civilization, and the latter implying something between the skeptical and optimistic forecasts.

Briefly, achieving mortality escape velocity wouldn’t mean that people stop dying immediately or completely. And it wouldn’t entail an eventual superlative immortality. It would just mean that progressive technological interventions begin to make it more likely than not that most people will live long enough to benefit from emerging technologies that facilitate indefinite life extension and, as needed, life restoration. And it would only entail an eventual practical immortality, when it becomes harder to stay dead than alive, at least for those who desire to stay alive.

For each forecast, I performed Monte Carlo simulations with 200,000 trials. In each trial, I simulated death times for all fourteen apostles based on their ages and the mortality assumptions of the forecast. I then determined presidency succession by identifying who outlived whom, with the most senior surviving apostle becoming president upon the death of the previous president. From these simulations, I calculated the probability that each apostle becomes president, along with median start years, durations, and end years of service, conditional on becoming president.

Skeptical Forecast

Below are the results for the first forecast, the skeptical forecast based only on the actuarial tables. The first three columns show order of seniority, name, and age in 2025. The fourth column, P(P), shows the fraction of simulations where the apostle becomes president. The subsequent columns show median start year, median duration, and median end year of service, conditional on becoming president.

Optimistic Forecast

Below are the results of the second forecast, the optimistic forecast based on achievement of mortality escape velocity sometime between 2025 and 2065. The columns are the same as those for the first forecast. But their content differs in cases when the apostle is likely (but of course not guaranteed) to achieve mortality escape velocity while serving as president. In those cases, the column value is replaced with an infinity symbol, which I intend to represent practical immortality – not actual infinity.

The table shows infinity symbols for multiple apostles. That doesn’t mean that they would all become president, let alone practically immortal. So long as seniority succession persists, only one president could achieve practical immortality. Like the previous table, this table shows results that are conditional on the apostle becoming president in the first place.

Final Seniority Succession

Here’s another view of the second forecast, including only apostles who achieve practical immortality based on varying rates of technological acceleration between 2025 and 2065. I remove the “Period” and “Stop” columns because those would all be the same – infinity symbols representing practical immortality. And I add a “Shape” column that indicates relative technological acceleration, with smaller numbers indicating acceleration sooner than larger numbers – the value is the exponent that shapes the acceleration curve.

I’ve included in the table the approximate beginning and ending of the range of shapes within which a given apostle would be likely to become a practically immortal president. Some apostles don’t appear in the table because the probability that they become a practically immortal president is too low across all forecast shapes.

Reflections

On moral grounds, I reject a pessimistic forecast of technological change. We must survive the changes that are coming. For similar reasons, I also reject a skeptical forecast. We must continue to apply available technologies to improve our world, our relations, and our bodies – not merely to survive, but to thrive. These are practical and moral imperatives.

On the other hand, there are considerable moral hazards with the optimistic forecast of technological change. It’s actually only optimistic if we manage to navigate it without destroying ourselves or worse – perhaps becoming enslaved to artificial superintelligence, for example. These hazards would also apply to conservative forecasts to some extent. It’s not enough to imagine optimistic outcomes. We must work, intelligently and cooperatively and strenuously, toward optimistic outcomes, which requires maintaining our agency throughout the process.

So, given my technological and moral views, while acknowledging real risks, I expect the future of Church governance to look something like the optimistic scenario presented above. In my mind, there’s a real and significant possibility that Elder Bednar, in particular, may become practically immortal while serving as president of the Church. But others might, if technological evolution is slower or faster.

I also think there’s a real and significant possibility, particularly if mortality escape velocity becomes obvious, that Church leaders will choose to modify or altogether discontinue succession by seniority. Emeritus status is already assigned to general authorities of the Church below the apostleship tier. And I don’t know of any doctrinal reason why that couldn’t also be applied to apostles and Church presidents.

Finally, here are, in my opinion, the most salient takeaways from the forecasts:

1. From a statistical perspective, the possibility of President Eyring serving as the next Church president is basically a coin toss, whether or not mortality escape velocity is coming.

2. If mortality escape velocity is coming, the Church will eventually discontinue presidential succession by seniority, if for no other reason than because one president will become senior indefinitely.

3. Again from a statistical perspective, the most plausible president to imagine becoming practically immortal is Elder Bednar, situated at the sweet spot of seniority and survivability along hypothetical technology curves.