144,000 -- Fulness of the Priesthood

Joseph Smith

            “At this time Joseph Smith was not willing to discuss the temple ordinances of conferral of the fulness of the priesthood, of marriage for time and eternity, or of sealing children to parents; nevertheless, he indicated that the conferral of the fulness of the priesthood was a ‘sealing…on top of the head’, of which the phrase ‘sealed in their foreheads’ was symbolic. Furthermore, Joseph Smith here taught that it was through the ordinance of conferral of the fulness of the priesthood that men could be qualified to be a part of the special missionary force of the last days which would number 144,000 high priests (D&C 77:8-11, 14). When Cornelius P. Lott and his wife received these ordinances on 4 February 1844, the Prophet indicated that ‘the selection of the persons to form that number had already commenced.’ He had already conferred these blessings on at least 17 men” (History of the Church, 6:196 and Wilford Woodruff Diary, under date given) (The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph, compiled and edited by Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, 297).