In his testimony, he mentioned that one of his grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) recently received his patriarchal blessing. All of his sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchilden have been from the tribe of Ephrium. Well, this last one is from the tribe of Judah. I assume he is not adopted because this elder brother bearing his testimony did not say anything about adoption. But the comment he made on this fact is interesting. He said that they looked up what the responsibilities of the tribe of Judah are and they found that the main responsibility is leadership in the 2nd coming.
I've been searching all over lds.org today trying to find a definitive answer, but I haven't found anything thus far. The only really helpful article I found is from the March 1971 Ensign by Ellis T. Rasmussen. In this article he mentions (at least that's how I read it) that Judah's task is to be faithful to one God and to be an example to the rest of the World. One quote from the article says,
To some extent Judah’s descendants have remained as witnesses of the power of faith and fidelity to the one God, and of the moral and ethical values and the validity of his laws for man if man will live them.
So I read that to mean that indeed, Judah has always been and will always be a leader.
If I find any other information on the topic, I'll be sure to add it to this post.
