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Ariel Roger Merrill (born May 2, 1945) was the general president of the Sunday School organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 2004 to 2009. He was the nineteenth man to serve in that position.
Sunday School is an official auxiliary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All members of the church and any interested nonmembers, age 12 and older, are encouraged to participate in Sunday School.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian, Christian restorationist church that is considered by its members to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah in the United States, and has established congregations and built temples worldwide. According to the church, it has over 16 million members and 67,000 full-time volunteer missionaries. In 2012, the National Council of Churches ranked the church as the fourth-largest Christian denomination in the United States, with over 6.5 million members reported by the church, as of January 2018. It is the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement founded by Joseph Smith during the period of religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Ariel Carden Merrill and Edith Horsley, Merrill grew up in Carmel, California and served as a missionary for the LDS Church in the Texas Mission in the 1960s. Merrill married Rebecca Rippy in the Salt Lake Temple on June 7, 1967, and they are parents of seven children.
Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous municipality of the U.S. state of Utah. With an estimated population of 190,884 in 2014, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a population of 1,153,340. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area. This region is a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along an approximately 120-mile (190 km) segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,423,912 as of 2014. It is one of only two major urban areas in the Great Basin.
Utah is a state in the western United States. It became the 45th state admitted to the U.S. on January 4, 1896. Utah is the 13th-largest by area, 31st-most-populous, and 10th-least-densely populated of the 50 United States. Utah has a population of more than 3 million according to the Census estimate for July 1, 2016. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which contains approximately 2.5 million people; and Washington County in Southern Utah, with over 160,000 residents. Utah is bordered by Colorado to the east, Wyoming to the northeast, Idaho to the north, Arizona to the south, and Nevada to the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast.
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast.
On April 3, 2004, LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley called Merrill as general president of the church's Sunday School organization. [1] It was the first time since Russell M. Nelson was called to hold the same position in 1971 that a person who was not a general authority of the church became the Sunday School general president. Merrill asked Daniel K Judd and William D. Oswald to be his counselors in the Sunday School presidency. In April 2009 Merrill was released and succeeded by Russell T. Osguthorpe.
In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the President of the Church is the highest office of the church. It was the office held by Joseph Smith, the church's founder. The President of the LDS Church is the church's leader and the head of the First Presidency, the church's highest governing body. Latter-day Saints consider the president of the church to be a "prophet, seer, and revelator" and refer to him as "the Prophet," a title that was originally given to Smith. When the name of the president is used by adherents, it is usually prefaced by the title "President". Russell M. Nelson has been the president since January 14, 2018.
Gordon Bitner Hinckley was an American religious leader and author who served as the 15th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from March 12, 1995, until his death. Considered a prophet, seer, and revelator by church members, Hinckley was the oldest person to preside over the church in its history.
Russell Marion Nelson Sr. is an American religious leader and former surgeon who is the 17th and current president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nelson was a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for nearly 34 years, and was the quorum president from 2015 to 2018. As church president, Nelson is accepted by the church as a prophet, seer, and revelator.
Merrill previously served in the LDS Church as a bishop, high councilor, stake president and area seventy. In 2012, he became the president of the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple. [2]
Seventy is a priesthood office in the Melchizedek priesthood of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Traditionally, a member of the Church holding this priesthood office is a "traveling minister" and an "especial witness" of Jesus Christ, charged with the mission of preaching the gospel to the entire world under the direction of the Twelve Apostles. The Church teaches that the office of seventy was anciently conferred upon the seventy disciples mentioned in the Gospel of Luke 10:1-2. Multiple individuals holding the office of seventy are referred to collectively as seventies.
Temple president is a priesthood leadership position in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A temple president's primary responsibility is to supervise the affairs of an LDS temple in both an administrative and spiritual capacity.
The Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple is a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints located in South Jordan, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. South Jordan was the first city in the world to have two temples. The temple was the fourth in the Salt Lake Valley and the 13th in the state of Utah.
