This was a system of government which might be called theodemocratic, in the sense that the voice of the people as well as the word and will of the Lord would form the basis for decisions made and laws instituted. Theocratic governments trace their origin to the earliest ages. “Adam, our father, the first man,” Elder Bruce R. McConkie has written, “is the presiding high priest over the earth for all ages. The government the Lord gave him was patriarchal, and from the expulsion from Eden to the cleansing of the earth by water in the day of Noah, the righteous portion of mankind were blessed and governed by a patriarchal theocracy.”