Yes, it does mean more than thanking individuals, whether they perform or not. As our doctrine states, foreordination is constituted by an appointment from God to fulfill specific missions in mortality, and by our pre-mortal agreement to fulfill them.
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On your question about the NT church, the Apostles (who with the chief corner stone (Jesus Christ) constitute the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:19-20)) were called (foreordained) and chosen to perpetuate the Priesthood, for that is inherent in the Apostleship (D&C 27:12-13). All the Apostles remained loyal to Christ.
At the same time, the Apostles are to be "upheld by the confidence, faith, and prayer of the church," (D&C 107:22) meaning that the members of the church share in an indirectalbeit realway the responsibility placed upon the Apostles. So
back a few posts when we were talking about the members of the NT church being partly to blame for the apostasy... that is the case as well. Not the faithful ones, of course, but those who abandoned the church, in which they ceased to uphold the Apostles with their confidence, faith, and prayers.
So while I was prone to place the greater portion of the blame upon those who killed the Apostles or otherwise prevented them from performing their duties in the Church, it is not appropriate to excuse from any culpability those who abandoned the Church, who were identified earlier in that post as certainly being partly complicit in the Church's collapse. In either case, however, the Apostles remained true.