The Centennial Park group's claims of authority are based around the accounts of
John Wickersham Woolley,
Lorin Calvin Woolley and others of a meeting in September 1886 between
LDS Church President John Taylor, the Woolleys, and others. Prior to the meeting, Taylor is said to have met with Jesus Christ and the deceased church founder
Joseph Smith and to have received
a revelation commanding that
plural marriage should not cease, but be kept alive by a group separate from the LDS Church. The following day, the Woolleys, and others, were said to have been set apart to keep "the principle" alive. Members of the Centennial Park group see their history as going back to Joseph Smith and to the beliefs he espoused and practices he established. Until the 1950s, Mormon fundamentalists were largely one group.
Priesthood Council split In the early 1980s, significant disagreement arose regarding the question of the
presiding authority of the FLDS Church. This disagreement was over what is called the "one man doctrine". The "one man doctrine" refers to section 132:7 of the
Doctrine and Covenants, a part of the
open scriptural
canon of several denominations of the
Latter Day Saint movement, which states that "there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred". After two council members, Carl Holm and Richard Jessop, died, Leroy Johnson, as senior member of the Priesthood Council, was responsible for recommending new replacements. However Johnson, believing in the "one man doctrine", made no recommendations for new Priesthood Council members. Six days later, he declared, "I want to tell you, the first thing that is going to take place is the cleaning up of the Priesthood Council. I want to tell these men on the stand, B Brother J. Marion Hammon, and Brother Alma Adelbert Timpson, that from now on, I am throwing you off my back, and I am not going to carry you any more." ==Doctrines and practices==