This celebration has a great deal of meaning for people in Utah and the surrounding area. However representatives of the church in Japan expressed concern that this celebration lacked significance for Japanese Mormons. After some deliberation permission was subsequently granted by the board of General Authorities to replace this commemoration with one marking the day on which the first Mormon missionaries arrived in Japan. Mormons hold that innovations or modifications in doctrine must come from divine revelation. The church maintains that God reveals himself to His apostles today just as he did in the upper room encountered in Acts 12.
Sometime revelation comes in the context of intense pressure.
Until recently the Mormon church refused to allow blacks into the priesthood. Throughout the sixties and seventies this policy created numerous problems for the church. Outsiders accused Mormon officials of bigotry and labeled the policy on priesthood racist. Cries of bigotry promptly ceased and the church experienced a new wave of growth in predominantly black areas. One past revelation which is creating problems for the church as it expands into some areas concerns polygamy.