People are recognizing the truth that we are discussing on this podcast and it is thrilling to see it grow to see it grow in this way. I was trying to decide what to do for this special anniversary. And I decided to go ahead and try to encapsulate this podcast into one episode that people could share with their friends to try to help them understand in a concise way what they’ve, what we’ve all been learning. I realized it had to be two episodes. So this is part one and I’ll have a second anniversary episode coming out at some point in the near future.
Please consider supporting this podcast:
Links:
Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults: A Face to Face Event with Elder Cook
Trust in the Lord, by President Dallin H. Oaks
Original D&C Section 101
Times and Seasons, April 1, 1844, To the Elders Abroad (p 490)
Letter to the Relief Society, March 31, 1842
Times and Seasons, April 1, 1842, Try the Spirits
Brigham Young 9/21/1856 “A Privilege Given to all the Married Women in Utah”
Brigham Young 9/21/1856 on blood atonement
Brigham Young 2/8/1857 on blood atonement
Brigham Young 3/16/1856 on blood atonement
Heber C. Kimball 2/1/1857 on receiving “thousands” of wives
Zina D. Huntington 1869 interview, pp 229-230
Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual incorrectly quoting Jacob 2:30
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible
Brigham Young on “trading up” without a divorce
Joseph Smith July 16, 1843 sermon
Franklin D. Richards’ record
William Clayton’s record
Levi Richards’ record
Hyrum Smith April 8, 1844 sermon
June 8, 1844 City Council
Bruce R. McConkie 8/1978 “All are Alike Unto God”
Paul Reeve, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (I highly recommend this!)
Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to this special two year anniversary/ birthday/ Valentine’s day episode of 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I cannot believe that it has been two years since I started this podcast. It has been an amazing and thrilling ride at my one year anniversary. I was amazed and thrilled to be at 1000 subscribers. I honestly didn’t know if that would ever happen. And now at two years guys, we are at 15,000 subscribers. I cannot believe it! a long form podcast on Mormon Polygamy, 15,000 subscribers and that’s only on youtube. That’s not any of the other streaming platforms. This is incredible. And what makes me so what is so gratifying about it is that it shows that this is not just a crazy bunch of people off in the corner who can’t manage their cognitive dissonance. This isn’t just some fad that’s going to blip up and then go away. No, these ideas are resonating with people. People are recognizing the truth that we are discussing on this podcast and it is thrilling to see it grow to see it grow in this way. I was trying to decide what to do for this special anniversary. And I decided to go ahead and try to encapsulate this podcast into one episode that people could share with their friends to try to help them understand in a concise way what we’ve all been learning. I realized it had to be two episodes. So this is part one and I’ll have a second anniversary episode coming out at some point in the near future. But for now, for those who would like to keep this podcast growing, please consider donating because it helps me a lot to be able to spread the word. And for anyone who is here for the first time, welcome. This is a great episode to start with. I hope you will take the time to watch it and consider the ideas that are being taught because I think they are important and at the very least it will help you have a better understanding for what your friends or family members or whoever it is that sent it to you is learning. So, thank you so much for being here as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. For those who are new. I will explain that for the first year of my podcast, I was focused almost exclusively on the question of whether or not polygamy was of God using the scriptures as the main source to try to answer that question. It wasn’t until my one year anniversary that I made an episode saying that through all of my study, I had come to firmly believe that polygamy actually did not originate with Joseph Smith. So I’m going to go ahead and do what I did in the first episode and lose the tiara so we can really get into it. So the first question that I think is worth asking is why does this matter? People do somewhat frequently say to me, polygamy is in the past, we haven’t practiced it for what 130 years? Why don’t you just leave it alone? Let it stay buried. Don’t dig up those skeletons, just leave it alone and one day we’ll understand. So I want to respond to that because it’s a good and a fair question. But I think it has a lot of ignorance behind it because first polygamy is not behind us. It is still a core part of our theology that shows up in many ways. We really are fooling ourselves if we think we can just stick our heads in the sand and pretend it has gone away or that it will go away. Honestly, as a church, we’ve kind of been trying to do that for the past 120 years and it hasn’t worked out very well. Our association with polygamy has done and continues to do more to hurt the church than just about anything else. And it’s also not behind us because it’s still in our scriptures, even if we generally try to ignore or minimize section 132. I know it’s certainly not something that we have focused on very much in any of my gospel doctrine or relief society lessons or even in my seminary growing up. But it is still there still considered canonized and ready to seriously shake up and any unsuspecting member who happens to read it all the way through as we actually should be doing with our scriptures. It is still being widely testified of as a true principle. In fact, I would say that this has probably increased as it’s become a bigger issue for the church to try to deal with. I hear frequently of people who the who the seminary teacher, their children’s seminary teacher testified powerfully of the truthfulness of polygamy. It happens in church lessons all the time. My son in his, teachers in the MTC testified of the eternal truthfulness of polygamy, not to mention everywhere on social media and all of the discussions and all of the comments that so not all of the comments. Thank goodness. Several of the comments on my channels. People are very angry that I would dare say anything against polygamy, which they know to be a true principle. It’s very interesting. Many Mormons are seriously committed to the idea of a polygamous future and it still shows up in many of our beliefs, expectations, practices and policies, even for those who aren’t necessarily committed to it. It is well understood by a large percentage of church members that although polygamy is not being practiced, now, it will be very present in the next life in heaven and in Zion, which happens to be why men can easily be sealed to multiple women without complication. While the reverse is absolutely not the case. In fact, a very visible demonstration of this somewhat troubling practice is that church leaders whose wives die always marry, only women who have never been married, they never even date widows or divorcees, but only women who have never been married so that they can be sealed and be eternal polygamists. As some of our current church leaders are so polygamy because of this polygamy affects young widows in tragic ways, really making them practically untouchable, but all by the by all but the most humble and faith filled men in the church because the understanding is that if a man marries a widow who has been sealed to another husband, well, it’s not just the understanding. The fact is he can’t be sealed to her. So any Children they have together are not his Children. They are the, they are sealed to the first husband and they are not sealed together as a couple. That’s a harsh doctrine for people to have to navigate. It really causes a lot of problems for a lot of women and the men who are willing to marry them for young widows to be put in the situation of having to choose whether or not to spiritually divorce. Their deceased husband is just a terrible reality for them to have to face. It shows up, polygamy, shows up in ways that we don’t even realize like this. This amazed me when I learned it. But our universal practice of saying brothers and sisters putting the men first when the entire rest of the world says ladies and gentlemen and intentionally puts the women first. You may think I’m just nitpicking or being overly critical or looking for problems. Sure, you can say that until you read the talk in the journal of discourses where that policy and that practice was intentionally set for the explicit reason that man comes first, man is superior. So man should be first. That was why in early Utah, visitors would talk about how if there was a bridge or a door, men would constantly cut off. Women, men would always walk ahead and women were expected to trail behind and wait their turn. It’s why my mother, when she first went through the temple and other women of her generation, she was actually told to walk behind, not beside her husband in the temple. For this very reason, it is not behind us. It is why until recently, men made covenants directly to God. While women only made covenants to to their husbands in the temple, there are so many more things and even without the policies of the church, just in our own hearts and in our own minds, it continues to cause a lot of problems. It continues to weaken marriages in myriad ways. I have heard this story but I know it’s not everybody but it’s far too common that men’s hearts are turned away from their wives. I’ve heard men say this in a repentant way and I’ve heard men say this in a profound way about how happy they are that they’ll have future wives, wives in the future that won’t have the same weakness as their current wife has. And they like it. It, it makes men instead of appreciating the one wife they have, imagine all the other wives that they will one day have. That’s not a good thing in marriage. I’ve also heard of so many painful experiences of women having their heart turned away from their husband knowing that someday their perfect union would be devastated by more women coming into it. Many women have talked about how they have kept part of their heart, back, part of themselves, back away from their husband just to protect themselves from this. Many women are haunted by this. And then there are also some women believe it or not. I’ve encountered this multiple times as well. Women who commit their own sort of imaginary adultery kind of like men do when they think about their future wife. There are women who put up with their husband for this life, knowing that at some point they will qualify to be the wife of some much greater man, Joseph Smith, or maybe even Jesus Christ. Right. I’ve heard these things often. It turns the spouse’s hearts away from their spouse instead of toward which is exactly what we should have happened. There are many, many stories of both men and especially women being haunted by the idea of polygamy. Women, If they, if their husband dies, they they worry that he might marry someone on the other side. If they die first, they worry that he might marry someone here. It happens a lot. And in addition to this, it causes massive confusion, putting prophets words in disagreement with one another, leading the church to try to hide past teachings and leaving us with a doctrinal mess that has to be either avoided. Let’s just not talk about it or explained away in very unconvincing ways. Even our leaders are apostles and prophets can’t answer questions about it. But at best, rely on apologists, which usually means female historians. Like in this clip,
[11:28] Youth MC: as you can imagine, we received quite a few questions regarding polygamy. Um for example, a young adult from Utah asked, I’ve struggled for years to come to peace about polygamy in the early church. Why was it necessary for Joseph Smith and many other leaders to practice it? And Morgan from Florida added. What do I tell my family when they ask about polygamy in the early days of the church? They aren’t generally satisfied with the, well, we don’t practice it anymore.
[11:55] Elder Cook: Answer. Is it fair to ask you to answer this one, Kate?
[12:00] Michelle: That’s a big question. And then they have to go on to admit that they have no inspiration or answers on the topic
[12:10] Elder Cook: in the councils of the church, uh in the senior councils of the church. Uh There’s a feeling that Brigay as it was practiced uh served its purpose and we should honor those saints, but that purpose has been accomplished and that, that it isn’t necessary. Now, there are unanswered questions. And we don’t always receive revelation on everything. President Ballard and I were laughing about this the other day and saying, uh when the millennium comes, there’s 1000 years and we’re gonna need 1000 years to uh get the answers to all of the issues that surround everything.
[12:46] Michelle: Sometimes we even hear them gently mock the heartache that women experience and tell us just not to worry our pretty little heads about it, but just know that God will make it all. Ok.
[12:57] President Oakes: A letter I received some time ago introduces the subject of my talk. The writer was contemplating a temple marriage to a man whose eternal companion had died. She would be a second wife. She asked this question, would she be able to have her own house in the next life or would she have to live with her husband and his first wife? I just told her to trust the Lord.
[13:38] Michelle: President Oakes goes on in this talk to say trust in the Lord is still the best principle we can use when our efforts to learn or our attempts to find comfort, encounter obstacles in matters not yet revealed or not adopted as the official doctrine of the church. That same principle applies to unanswered questions about feelings in the next life or desired readjustments because of events or transgressions in mortality. There is so much we do not know that our only sure reliance is to trust in the Lord and his love for his Children. That’s the end of the quote. There are many people for whom this idea that trusting in the Lord means ignoring things that feel very, very wrong does not work. I have a friend who gave me a brilliant example. She said, imagine that you are told that in the next life, there will be torture. You will be tortured in the celestial kingdom, but don’t worry about it. It’s ok because God can make it all right and you won’t mind being tortured in the next life. You’ve spent this whole life learning how wrong torture and understanding how incredibly awful it would be. But you’re supposed to believe it. Hey, in, in heaven, there’s torture, but that’s ok because you’re gonna be ok with it. God wouldn’t do something to you that would make you unhappy, that I think was a really, really good analogy. So polygamy puts us in a position where, where we are supposed to expect the heavens to be silent, we should expect that there are and will be no answers about something this central to our doctrine, our doctrine of eternal marriage and our entire understanding of our eternal destiny, of both men as both men and women. And perhaps most concerning, of all our belief in polygamy leads us to ignore the scriptures. It causes us to set aside our discernment and believe that we cannot receive and should not expect to receive answers from God. It encourages us to intentionally choose spiritual blindness. The scriptures repeatedly teach that we should seek truth and that God will make all things known to us. Third Nephi 27 verses 28 and 29 verily I say unto you whatsoever things ye shall ask the father in my name shall be given unto you. Therefore ask and you shall receive knock and it shall be opened unto you for he that ask it, receive it and unto him that knock, it shall be opened. This is repeated so many times in scriptures, especially our scriptures. I don’t even know how many times it’s included in the doctrine and covenants. Why can’t we believe it? We are promised that by the power of the Holy Ghost, you may know the truth of all things. I don’t think God wants us to settle down in a state of spiritual blindness. Assuming that our only job is to be that blind, but to just trust God. But somehow when it comes to polygamy, we are told that the heavens are closed and that’s exactly what we need to do. We are told that trusting God means not seeking, not asking and not receiving answers like it or not. Although we may currently not practice polygamy in this life. It’s dismal shadows are everywhere and its influence goes on and on. It is still very much with us. I didn’t even mention um explicitly that it is one of the main things that leads people out of the church. That is a serious problem that we need to take very seriously and deal with. And while many members of the church may not personally personally be bothered by polygamy as I wasn’t, please at least have the compassion to recognize that many faithful members are not only bothered by it but haunted by it in extremely painful ways. And as I already said, all of the people who leave the church over this issue, it is absolutely not something we should simply try to ignore. So now let’s get into it now that we’ve established why it’s worth getting into. Let’s get into the fundamental question we need to ask and answer and that this entire episode is dedicated to: is polygamy of God?
[00:17:59] Our current teaching and understanding is in the church is that God sometimes commands polygamy for unknown reasons. Is this true? These are critically important questions for us to answer. And thankfully, the answers really are all there in the scriptures. So we’ll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start when God who is eternal and unchanging, established his very first covenant with the very first man and woman, Adam and Eve Genesis 127. So God created man in his own image in the image of God created He him, male and female created he them and God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Moses gives us more information. Chapter five verse two. And Adam knew his wife and she bear unto him, sons and daughters and they began to multiply and replenish the earth. And from that time forth, the sons and daughters of Adam began to divide two and two in the land and to till the land and to tend flocks. And they also beget sons and daughters that lays it out so well. That should be the end of the discussion, right? God created Adam and Eve one and one told them to multiply and replenish, they had Children, they divided one and one, I guess two and two right in the land as couple as monogamous couples to fulfill the the first commandment God gave, to multiply and replenish the earth. But we can go on from there. Let’s look at Noah Genesis chapter seven verse five. And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him verse seven. And Noah went in and his sons and his wife, his one wife and his sons wives, his sons with their one wife, each with him into the ark because of waters of the flood. God commanded Noah and his one wife and his three sons and their one wife each to repopulate the earth just as God had commanded Adam and Eve and for good measure, God also had all of the animals on the ark come two by two as well. Verse nine, there went in two and two unto Noah in into the ark. The male and the female as God had commanded, Noah. Ah sorry, it’s so found and so powerful and so plain. God has given us so many tools to be able to understand this central truth that is central to the nature of us as Children of God and central to the identity of God. Clearly, God seems to think that monogamy is not only a perfectly adequate way but the very best way, the only covenant way to raise up seed to multiply and replenish the earth. We can follow up the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah and his wife with the monogamist, Lehi and Sariah, the monogamous couple Lehi and Sariah and their sons with their one wife. Each being repeatedly commanded to raise up seed or to raise up a right righteous branch unto the Lord. First Nephi 71. God commanded Lehi that his son should take daughters to that they might raise up seed unto the Lord in the land of promise. That is a really important scripture. I hope you’re marking it first Nephi 16 7. And it came to pass that I Nephi took one of the daughters of Ishmael to wife and also my brethren took of the daughters of Ishmael to wife and also Zoram took the eldest daughter of Ishmael to wife. We are given the numbers in other verses and it works out perfectly one wife for each husband. In contrast to God’s perfect established pattern of marriage between one man and one woman. Each and every time God ever commanded a covenant people to multiply and replenish or raise up seed. The first time polygamy appears, it comes from a very different source. Lamech was a descendant of Cane who was the second to fill the role of master Mayhan. He like Kane was a murderer who covenanted with Satan. It should already be abundantly clear. Very easy to see what source polygamy comes from Genesis 4:19 and Lamech took unto him two wives. The name of the one was Ada and the name of the other Zilla and Lamech said unto his wives, Ada and Zilla hear my voice. Ye wives of Lamech. Ah, they glorify themselves, hearken unto my speech for I have slain a man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt. If kin be avenged. Sevenfold, truly lame 70 sevenfold. The book of Moses adds to this as well. This is chapter five verse 49 for Lamech having entered into a covenant with Satan after the manner of Cain, wherein he became Master Mayhan, master of that great secret, which was administered unto Cain by Satan wherefore the Lord cursed Lamech and his house and all of them that had covenanted with Satan for they kept not the commandments of God and it displeased God and he ministered not unto them. And their works were abominations keyword. Remember that word? So this was the first polygamist. Can we please acknowledge that should tell us something? Right. Again, the discussion should be done. But let’s keep going. We can jump ahead to Abraham and Isaac, Abraham and Jacob. I said that wrong. Isaac was actually never a polygamist nor was Moses.
[00:23:39] Those are some of the very basic factual errors in section 132. If anyone wants to claim Moses was a polygamist. I’ve done episodes on each of these topics. So if you want to please go watch some of those other episodes where we dig into these topics in much greater depth. But for now, let’s just acknowledge that at least four separate times. Section 132 claims that God commanded Abraham to be a polygamist to take additional wives. It says that in verse 29 verse 34 verse 35 and verse 65. But each of these claims like so many other things in 132 is completely false. The biblical record makes it abundantly clear that God never once commanded polygamy, he never commanded Abraham to be a polygamist or anybody else. Genesis 16:2 tells us what we need to know. And Sarai said unto Abram behold, now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. I pray thee go in unto my maid. It may be that I may be that I may obtain Children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai who did Abram hearken to please note also that this was done before their names were changed, right? Those additional blessings came after this point when Abram was no longer living any sort of polygamy, if we even want to call it that it was Sarai who asked Abram to use her slave girl Hagar as a surrogate to provide a child for her, for Sarai because of her in infertility. That was the only reason for it. There was no doctrine or principle. And if they had had access to better technology, they would have used that instead, Abram at the behest of his wife did what he had to do to conceive Ishmael and that was the end, Abram never impregnated Hagar again. Right. And as soon as they had their own baby, Hagar was sent away with Ishmael, it was never anything like a higher or holier law. In fact, in many ways, it’s not even really fair to call Abram or Abraham, a polygamist. Hagar was never treated as a wife. She was a slave girl who was only used for her, her womb for a very short time. It could not be more clear that God never commanded it. And in addition to that, it led to horrible outcomes, not only child abandonment, but also wars that continue to this day. It is worth noting that no wife, other than Sarai was included in the covenant, not Hagar who was a surrogate or Kura who Abraham married after Sarah had died and no child. But Isaac received the blessings of the covenant. Ishmael was not included in the, in the inheritance or covenant of his father or any of the Children of Keturah and Abraham is continually described as having only one son. God could not be more clear that it is only possible to have one covenant wife, 2 nephii 8, which is also Isaiah 51 verse two says, look unto Abraham, your father and unto Sarah, she that bear you for I called him alone and blessed him. It is ignorant and dishonest to refer to Abraham as a polygamist. In order to justify the LDS practice of polygamy, they have nothing in common 132 also claims that God commanded Jacob and Isaac to be polygamists in verse 37. Again, the authors of 132 seem to be ignorant of the fact that Isaac was never a polygamist and just like Abraham Jacob was also never commanded to take multiple wives, very much to the contrary, he was deceived by a despicably dishonest, greedy idol worshiping father-in-law, his unfortunate, his unfortunate polygamy led to all kinds of problems including heartbroken wives, extreme family contention, escalating into attempted fratricide. Not to mention some very out of control Children who engaged in some horrible things, genocide, prostitution, power struggles, whatever you call sleeping with your father’s concubine. And more so polygamy was never commanded by God. So despite what section 132 repeatedly claims we can look to the biblical record to see that polygamy was, in fact never commanded by God. It was a cultural practice and one that was known to create huge problems. The Jewish word for sister wife is “tsarah”, which literally means one who vexes adversary rival. The definition also includes adversity, affliction, anguish, distress, tribulation, trouble. The Hebrews understood what polygamy did to women. How do we ignore this? Does this sound like an institution that is commanded of God as a higher and holier order of marriage? Or can we acknowledge that it is exactly what it sounds like a satanic corruption of God’s perfect establishment of marriage? There is no more justification to claim that polygamy, that one unfortunate cultural practice needed to be restored and to claim that it is an eternal doctrine of the gospel. There’s no more justification to claim that than there would be to claim that about slavery or about genocide or about prostitution or about rape. And many of the other things that happened with those Old Testament tribes, we could go on and on. Some people do like to argue a lot that God must condone polygamy because Jesus came through Jacob’s line. So, you know, God wouldn’t have Jesus come through polygamy if it wasn’t something that he approved,
[00:29:46] that got approved of. Well, they either don’t know or they simply ignore the fact that in Jacob’s family, there is also all of these other problems, slavery, genocide, rape, prostitution. And so much more. One quick example is Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar where she disguised herself as a prostitute. And he thinking she was just any old prostitute visited her. And in the process conceived the ancestor of king David. And thus, according to this genealogy, the ancestor of Christ as people like to claim. So if you wanna claim that, because Jesus came through a line that incorporated polygamy, you also need to claim that God needs to restore prostitution as a part of the Gospel, the eternal Gospel as the highest and holiest ordinance in it. Do you see how ridiculous this is? So now let’s move on from the Bible to the book of Mormon, which is not only the most correct book of any book on Earth and the keystone of our religion that would get a man nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than by any other book. But also the most anti polygamy book of book of scripture in the entire canon where polygamy is repeatedly and universally soundly condemned as an abomination and forbidden for all of God’s covenant people because of the pain it causes women and Children. For those wondering about the loophole. Jacob 2:30 just hold on. We’ll get to that very soon. You can easily look at every instance of polygamy in the book of Mormon, the people of Nephi who Jacob addressed and more specifically King Noah and Mosiah 11 verse two, who did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart. And he had many wives and concubines and he did cause his people to commit sin and do that, which was abominable in the sight of God and also Riplakish in Ether 10 who also did not do that, which was right in the sight of God for he did have many wives and concubines. These are the examples of polygamists in the book of Mormon, two awful, lustful power, hungry, greedy, selfish, wicked kings who rejected God’s commandment in favor of their own and taught their people to follow their bad examples. Again, it should be abundantly clear. We can also look to the Book of Mormon to quickly dispel some of the myths that we use to try to explain away polygamy instead of just recognizing the obvious truth of why men like King Noah, Riplakish and the men of Jacob that Jacob was addressing why those kinds of men want to pursue polygamy. We try to come up with excuses to try to minimize it and explain it away. So let’s look at just a few of those for the excuse that polygamy was to care for the widows. We can look at how righteous King Limhi cared for the many widows in his kingdom after most of the men had been killed in their three failed attempts to free themselves from the Lamanites. He didn’t say to the widows and fatherless girls that they had to marry marry polygamous in order to be provided for which honestly amounts to little more than forced prostitution. Instead in Mosiah 21:17, he commanded that every man should impart to the support of the widows and the Children that they might not perish with hunger. Clearly, polygamy is not needed to follow Jesus’ injunction to care for the widows and the orphans. But beyond that, we can very easily Look back at the records to see who most of the polygamist wives were. They weren’t necessarily widows. Many of them were unprotected young girls. Please never believe that polygamy was instituted to care for widows or that it’s necessary to care for widows. It is just not true. And then let’s look at the excuse that polygamy was needed to raise up seed. In other words, to increase the population quickly, to build the kingdom. For that one, we can look to the people in the book of Mormon who established Zion. After Christ came, we learn in 4th Nephi chapter one that they had all things in common among them. And because they were a righteous people, they didn’t practice, implement the abomination of polygamy yet in verse 10, they did multiply exceedingly fast. So never just like with Adam and Eve, Noah, lehi and Sariah and their entire families. That is also the case in the book of Mormon, please never believe that polygamy is necessary to quickly increase the population as some people like to interpret, raise up seed. It is very well established that women in polygamy had fewer Children than their monogamous counterparts. We can just look at one example. I believe Brigham Young had 56 wives and 57 Children by our best count, not great numbers, right? Compared to the numbers of women of, of Children that monogamous women had at that time. And also can we just also acknowledge that if you want to increase the missionary force, if you want to increase the church, you need to do that through conversion, right? You need more adults, you need more families you don’t just need more babies who have to grow up. It’s gonna be 18 to 20 years before those babies can be missionaries and help to grow the kingdom.
[00:35:16] And we know polygamy devastated the missionary efforts of the church during that time. So please never believe that we needed polygamy to increase the kingdom. In so many ways, The book of Mormon is an extremely powerful second witness to God’s establishment and commandment of marriage between one man and one woman. And it serves to build on the Bible and to clarify just how abominable, polygamy truly is in the sight of God. In addition to the undeniable teachings in the book of Mormon, we can add all of the teachings and revelations that came through Joseph Smith recorded in the doctrine and covenants which are all universally strictly monogamous. None of Joseph Smith’s revelations make any room for polygamy. One of many examples, doctrine and covenants 42:22 thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart and shalt cleave unto her and none else. It is crucial to understand that while God universally commands complete fidelity and monogamous marriage, nowhere in scripture does God who is unchanging ever command or condone polygamy? I know I’ve said that I have to keep repeating it because it’s important to understand. So it is impossible to claim that polygamy is or ever could be any part of the gospel or any sort of higher law. So Now let’s go to the main question on everybody’s mind. There might be a couple of main questions. This is the first one. What about section 132 right? The one place in scripture where God does apparently command polygamy. You’ll understand in just a minute why I make the claim that it never happens. First. There are two things you need to know about Section 132. The first time it was ever heard was eight years after Joseph Smith was murdered at a special conference in Utah. In 1852 Brigham Young magically pulled it out of his desk where it, where he claimed it had been locked away safely. Here’s, here’s part of his speech. This revelation has been in my possession many years and who has known it. None but those who should know it. I keep a patent on my desk and there is not anything leak out that should not. So in 1852 the revelation first appeared and was read publicly and then printed in the newspaper, but it was not added to the Doctrine and covenants until 1880. In 1876 Orson Pratt, who was the scriptural apologist for polygamy, the one who came up with all of the bad scriptural arguments that are still being recycled today. He was assigned to create a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, which was published in England in 1879 and published in Utah in 1880 the first edition to ever include section 132 that means section 132 was not part of the LDS scripture until three years after Brigham Young’s death and 36 years after Joseph Smith’s death even more interesting before the new 1880 edition, the Doctrine and covenants included the original section 101. It was listed by Roman numeral C I which like every other scripture, Joseph Smith ever brought forth and everything he ever said or wrote on the topic adamantly denied and forbid polygamy ” inasmuch as this church has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy. We declare that we believe one man should have one wife and one woman but one husband except in case of death where, where either is at liberty to marry again.” This section was unanimously accepted as canonized scripture by every organization in the church and was included in both versions of the Doctrine and covenants that Joseph Smith oversaw the 1835 version and the 1844 version. It represents the authoritative canonized scripture that Joseph taught and published throughout his ministry until his death. People always looking for a way out. People try to write this off by claiming that it was written by Oliver Cowdrey, not Joseph Smith, as if they have a single shred of evidence for that. And as if it would matter anyway, we don’t know who wrote the lectures on faith but those were also included in the Doctrine and covenants. In fact, they were considered the doctrine part of the doctrine and covenants until they also were taken out along with section 101 in the 1880 edition. Also, the idea that Joseph would have allowed a section to be added to his book of scripture that he oversaw the creation of against his will is ludicrous, especially when you consider that he oversaw not only the 1835 version, but also the 1844 edition at which he also included section 101 in. So this section was part of our canonized scriptures throughout all of Brigham Young’s life until it was removed, three years after his death and section 132 was added. That means during almost the entire period of Mormon polygamy, the church was going directly against their own canonized scriptures only for 10 short years from 1880 to 1890 when polygamy was first officially disavowed, was the church in alignment with its doctrine, its scriptures and its practice. Ever since then, it’s been out of alignment again before that, it was out of alignment. And ever since then, since we no longer teach practice or even believe the the polygamous tenets of 132 we are again out of alignment with our scripture. It is very unfortunate that because Section 132 has been in our scriptures throughout our lifetimes,
[00:41:16] we seem to think it was always there and must always be there. I think it is much better for us to be informed about where it came from when it was added to scripture, what was removed when it was added so that we can understand that it isn’t and shouldn’t be cemented in as we may have thought it was before we understood these things about our own history. Sadly, when promoters of polygamy are confronted with these facts that nowhere in scripture does God ever command or condone polygamy that our original doctrine and covenants completely rejected polygamy just as the book of Mormon does. And that section 132 is terribly suspect as well as in conflict with all other scripture instead of humbly following the scriptures and letting go of false traditions as the book of Mormon repeatedly tells us to do, they instead start looking desperately to find any excuse they can to cling to the abominable false doctrine. Section 132 is further revelation. They claim it doesn’t matter that it completely contradicts all other scripture because it’s just teaching us more. Ah anything can be justified with this claim. Plus, it contradicts Joseph’s and Hyrum’s own words, April 1st 1844 3 months before their deaths, they publish this. If any man writes to you or preaches to you doctrines, contrary to the Bible, the book of Mormon or the Book of Doctrine and covenants set him down as an imposter, they had that published in the Times and Seasons. There was also the letter read to the newly formed Relief Society, March 31st 1842. We do not want anyone believing anything coming from us. Contrary to the old established morals and virtues and scriptural laws, regulating the habits, customs and conduct of society. It, it goes on and on. It’s like ridiculous that we ignore all of this. April 1st 1842 also in the Times and Seasons. This is from an article called Try the Spirits in it, Joseph taught many principles of discerning messages. And one key that he gave is that true revelation will not contradict a former revelation. Then without ever acknowledging the blatant falsehood and errors of section 132 the pro polygamists simply change their tactic. And then the best possible example of wresting the scriptures, you can imagine they start looking for any verses, they can take out of context to try to claim that God does at least allow or justify the abomination of polygamy. So we know that doctrine and covenants 132 says that it commands it. They kind of give up up on that argument and just start looking for ways to claim that allows it. We’ll look at two of the most common verses used in this way, k, first and in that day, seven women shall take hold of one man saying we will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel Only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach. Ok. First, I just want to point out that this has been in the Bible from the beginning. Right. It’s the book of Isaiah is as old as the Bible as far as I know, it’s been there for thousands and thousands of years and neither the Jews nor the Christians have ever interpreted it to claim that polygamy is a divine principle that will be, that will be restored in the last days. That is our very own, very bizarre interpretation. But like all scripture, this needs to be read in context and with awareness of Isaiah’s use of symbolism for the context. This verse culminates a pattern of extreme destruction for Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is fallen because of their tongues and their doings have been against the Lord to provoke the eyes of his glory. I’m reading some snippets, the Lord will smite with a scab, the crown of the head instead of sweet smell, there shall be stink and instead of a girdle, a rent and instead of well set hair, baldness and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth burning instead of beauty, thy men shall fall by the sword and thy mighty in the war and her gates shall lament and mourn and she shall be desolate and shall sit upon the ground. Then comes our verse. And in that day, seven women shall take hold of one man saying we will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel. Only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach. It should be clear that this is a curse, not a blessing. How strange that we use a symbol of a war torn and disease ridden cursed people to try to justify calling polygamy an eternal principle that will be lived in the celestial kingdom. How does that make any sense? And again, there’s too much to fully explain here. But to just be brief about this verse, this scripture can be far better understood when we recognize that a woman is the symbol of the church that the Bible uses in the Book of Revelation. It describes seven churches, meaning all the churches, the world, the churches of the world want to all want to take hold of one man Christ and claim his name, but they don’t want to have to depend on him for anything else. They don’t want his doctrine or his ordinances, just his name, bread and clothing are symbols of ordinances, sacrament and temple rope robes, right? They want to provide those things for themselves. They just want to quite literally take the name of the Lord in vain. That’s what this scripture is telling us. It parallels well with the many, many times, this concept is taught throughout scripture. For just a very few of the many examples we can look
[00:47:07] at Matthew 7:22- many will say to me in that day, Lord Lord, have we not prophesized in thy name? And have we not cast out devils and in thy name, done many wonderful works. And then will I profess unto them? I never knew you depart from me. Ye that work iniquity. Second nephi 28:11 expands on this concept. Well, yeah, they have all gone out of the way. All seven churches symbolized by the entire earth, seven continents, seven days seven creative period, seven churches, they have become corrupted because of pride and because of false teachers and false doctrine, their churches have become corrupted and their churches are lifted up because of pride. They are puffed up, they rob the poor because of their fine sanctuaries. They rob the poor because of their fine clothing and they persecute the meek and the poor in heart because of their pride. They are puffed up. people who have studied early Utah who understand tithing. See how very true these this is and how applicable it may be. I’ll share one more that I found just this week. I think this is interesting. First Nephi 21:26 which correlates with Isaiah 49:26 and I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh. They shall be drunken with their own blood as with sweet wine and all flesh shall know that I the Lord and the savior and the redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob, this one blew me away. When I realized what it is saying, God will allow people who reject his covenants to be fed on their own flesh and drink their own blood to literally cannibalize themselves. I have to believe that Jesus who was the master of scripture was referring directly to this verse when he taught in John 6:53 verily verily, I say unto you except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drink my blood hath eternal life. And I will raise him up at the last day for my flesh is meat. Indeed. And my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drink my blood dwelleth in me and I in him, he is teaching that if we rely on his doctrine and his ordinances, we will expand and progress in truth. And as a church, the body of Christ, we can grow and flourish while if we instead rely on our own doctrines and our own ordinances like the seven women, the seven churches wanting to eat their own bread and we their own, we will diminish actually consuming ourselves. I can’t help but relate this to Ezekiel 34 “woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves should not. The shepherds feed the flock. Ye eat the fat and ye clothe you with the wool. Ye kill that are fed but ye feed not the flock”, leaders who set aside the doctrine of Christ looking in instead instead to their own doctrines, fighting themselves off of the people is what this is talking about. Just like consuming your own body, your own church. In this reference, Jesus is teaching us the meaning of Isaiah, helping us see that we need to pay attention to the symbols of the doctrines and ordinances. There are many more examples of this throughout the scripture that we could possibly, that we could include. But it hopefully shows how ridiculous it is to take Isaiah for one out of context and to claim it’s, it literally supports polygamy any more than the Jews should have literally cannibalized Jesus taking bites out of his body and drinking his blood as he stood there teaching them. I love seeing that Jesus is helping us understand Isaiah. Now, for the next scripture, polygamists rely on 2nd Samuel 12 and I’ll read seven and eight “and Nathan said to David thou art the man thus saith the Lord God of Israel. I anointed thee king over Israel and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul. And I gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives into thy bosom and gave me the house of Israel and of Judah. And if it had been too little, I would moreover have given the such and such things”. People use this scripture to claim that God gave David his wives through the prophet Nathan. They take it literally in that way. So clearly, they say God must approve of polygamy. They base this on section 132 verse 39 David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me by the hand of Nathan, my servant and others of the prophet who had the keys of this power among many internal contradictions. Here, it says multiple people can hold the keys of this power while verse seven says, there is never but one on the earth at a time. Uh um on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred. It’s I’m not even going to go into half of the internal conflicts with section 132 just there everywhere. And I’ll mention that one. It is just another extremely shallow argument. The same verse also says, God gave David his kingship and his massive castle and all of his endless wealth. So clearly, by this polygamous logic, God must also want us to have a king who acquires all wealth and power. Isn’t that what all of the scriptures teach? I could have included many more. I’ll just go with this one verse in second nephi 10. And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the gentiles and there shall be no kings up upon this land for He that raises up a king against me shall perish for I the Lord, the king of heaven will be their king and I will be a light unto them forever that hear my words” just like um the the prophets told the Israelites not to have a king. This again is wresting the scriptures claiming that this shows God’s support
[00:52:58] for polygamy trying desperately to find a way around God’s clear commandments. Reading David’s story makes it extremely clear how he got his wife. There is no account of any wife ever being given to David by Nathan or any other prophet, any of them that we know anything about David very clearly obtained or took for himself. Here’s just one demonstration. First Samuel 25:43 David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel and they were also both of them, his wives. And it goes on the same way, Michael was the same way. And Abigail not to mention Abishag which is one of the saddest stories. And if we are talking about a harem, he may have been inherited as king and say no, Nathan gave him his harem from Saul. Do we really want to claim that God approves of kings having harems of hundreds of women as part of their property and measurement of riches as as they were viewed in these ancient cultures, especially considering Deuteronomy 17:17, which says neither shall he multiply wives to himself. Claiming this scripture means God approves and justifies polygamy means that God ignores his own commandments and worse that God actually sees polygamy with harems as an eternal principle and the highest and holiest order of marriage that God commands and requires for exaltation. At least that’s what the polygamous leaders taught. So what does this verse really mean? It is common and even biblical to say that everything we have comes from God or has been given to us by God. A great example is found in job verse 21 the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. This is really a clear example. This beautiful sentiment about trusting God in everything doesn’t mean that because job lost his home, his possessions, his family, his health, and his friends. God directly did these things and that we should therefore assume and claim that God doesn’t approve of homes, possessions, family relations, health, friends, et cetera. That is clearly ridiculous just as job is simply saying that all things come from God. That’s all Nathan is saying as well. He’s telling David, look how much God has given you and still you cannot be satisfied. This verse should never be interpreted as God condoning polygamy. It’s exactly the opposite. Nathan is saying to David. You have been given everything God has given you everything, all the money, all the power, all the women you could possibly imagine. Yet with all you have, you still could not be satisfied. It is a powerful lesson against polygamy because lust is a fire that grows when it is fed. David never learned to contain or overcome his lust. He could have any woman he wanted except a woman that was already married. But because polygamy never teaches a man to overcome lust, instead teaches him to continually feed that lust. David could not be satisfied with any limit. And this led to terrible consequences. It is actually a powerful cautionary tale against polygamy, which is, which is exactly how Jacob used it in his powerful anti polygamy sermon in Jacob chapters two and three verse 23. But the word word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes for behold. Thus saith the Lord. This people began to wax in iniquity. They understand not the scriptures for, they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms because of the things which were written concerning David and Solomon, his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me saith the Lord. It is so abundantly clear if you ever try to use the scriptures to the scriptures about David Solomon to justify polygamy, you are doing exactly what Jacob had to call the people out for doing so. Honestly, how does anyone claim that verse 30 of Jacob’s scathing sermon against pride and polygamy which always go together, by the way, actually supports occasional polygamy as if God’s commandments are not eternal and unchanging. As I said, they take it out of context and invert it. So let’s read the entire section. So it is clear in our minds, this is Jacob 2:24- 35. Behold, David and So Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me. Wherefore. Now, I want to pause on the word wherefore. Some of these words actually become important. Wherefore is divine, the, the definition of wherefore is for which reason it’s a cause and effect, effect relationship. It’s saying because of this wherefore this. So wherefore because they had many wives and concubines, which was um an abomination. Thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem by the power of mine arm. right here, God is explaining that the very reason He led Lehi and his posterity out of Jerusalem was because the people of Jerusalem were practicing the abomination of polygamy. If you doubt it, take time to read it and look at what it’s actually saying, that I might raise up unto me, raise up unto me, a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. So God led this people out of Jerusalem in order to raise up seed, in order to raise up unto himself a righteous branch. In other words, a covenant people who would not be polluted with these abominations, 26 again starts with where for meaning for this reason
[00:59:06] Because I wanted to raise up a righteous branch that wouldn’t be polluted with polygamy so that I can have a covenant people free of this abomination. I, the Lord will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old wherefore, again for this reason because I don’t want them to do like unto them of old my brethren. Hear me and hearken to the word of the Lord. Here comes the commandment, for there shall not any man among you have save it, be one wife and concubines. He shall have none. The law is being laid down. God is very clearly commanding his people who he has chosen to raise up seed to himself. For I the Lord delight in the chastity of women and whoredoms are an abomination before me. Thus saith the Lord of hosts. Wherefore be because of this. For this reason, this people shall keep my commandments, the Lord of hosts or cursed be the land for their sakes. Oh, we’re not getting into that in that in this episode. But please pay attention to that. The land is cursed when people follow these abominations compare that to what happened in the early church until they abandoned polygamy. For if I will say the Lord of hosts, raise up seed unto me, which God wants to do now through these people who he has brought out of Jerusalem for this purpose, I will command my people as he is very clearly doing here. Otherwise they shall hearken unto these things. Ok? We’re gonna get into the these things piece very soon. And now God tells us the reason for his commandment for behold, I, the Lord have seen the sorrow and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem. Yeah. And, and in all the lands of my people because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands. And I will not suffer saith the Lord of host that the cries of the fair daughters of this people which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem shall come up unto me against the men of my people. Saith the Lord of hosts for They shall not lead away captive, the daughters of my people because of their tenderness. Save I shall visit them with a sore curse even unto destruction. Remember Wilford Woodruff’s revelation that if he continued with polygamy, the church would be led to utter destruction for they shall not commit whoredom like unto them of old saith the Lord of Hosts. And now behold my brethren. Ye know that these commandments were given to our father, Lehi, Lehi had been commanded that every man should have save it, be one wife and concubines and none wherefore for this reason, ye have known them before and ye have come under unto great condemnation for ye have done these things which he ought not to have done. Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives and lost the confidence of your Children because of your bad examples before them and the sobbing of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the word of God which cometh down against you, many hearts died pierced with deep wounds. The message continues on into the next chapter where Jacob tells the people that started starting at verse five, the Lamanites are more righteous than you for, they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our father that they should have save it were one wife and concubines they should have none. And that there should be no whoredoms committed among them, whom is not a separate category here, having more than one wife and having concubines is being classified by the Lord as whoredoms behold their husbands, love their wives back talking about the Lamanites, their husbands love their wives and their wives, love their husbands and their husbands and their wives love their Children. In other words, they honor God’s law of marriage and they don’t seek to pollute it with abominations like polygamy. It’s so clear. I don’t think anyone would ever read through that and think, oh, look, this is what it’s teaching, except there’s a loophole that we have to have been intentionally done, taught to see it that way. So let’s look at how this slide of hand is, is done to make us all believe that verse 30 says the exact opposite of what it very clearly says. So here’s verse 34. If I will say, if the Lord of hosts raise up seed unto me, I will command my people. Otherwise they shall hearken unto these things. First, we change the wording and pretend it starts with but or however, or unless instead of four, so that instead of acknowledging that this verse is simply continuing the very clear sermon, which includes explanations of why polygamy is always forbidden of and condemned. We can instead claim that it, that it is in contradiction to what has been said. Yes, God always commands monogamy and condemns polygamy, but there could be this exception. However, unless right, we do this a lot. But here’s one example, this is from the doctrine and covenants um and church history, gospel doctrine teacher,
[01:04:09] teacher manual that we all either taught from or were taught from for many years. Here You can see they use the little ellipses and the brackets and say, but if I will, right. Very interesting. So let’s go on to the next, the next device we used to pretend God is saying the exact opposite of what he’s saying. We pretend that God is not attempting to raise up seed unto himself through these very people. We ignore all the times that God commanded these very people to raise up seed. We’ve already gone over several of them. First Nephi 7:1, the Lord commanded Leigh’s sons to go back and get Ishmael’s family “quote “that his sons could take daughters to wife.” Each one as the text makes very abundantly clear. Each one husband took one wife that they might raise up seed unto the Lord in the land of promise. The entire reason Lehi was led out of Jerusalem was so he and his family could raise up seed unto the Lord. And remember Jacob 2:25 wherefore thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem by the power of my arm that I might raise up unto me A righteous branch from the loins of Joseph. Again, I do not know how this could be more clear, but we are supposed to believe that in verse 30 raise up seed refers to some other people and some other time and he will give that other people a commandment, a different commandment. One that directly opposes and contradicts God’s universal and oft repeated commandment to all people throughout all time, including these people that Jacob is speaking to, to obey God’s perfect establishment of marriage between one man and one woman. And then finally, the final thing they do, they twist the meaning of “these things” which throughout the entire chapter clearly refers to the abominations. Jacob is condemning. Let’s look at a few examples of how “these things” is used in this chapter verse 14 and now my brethren, do ye suppose that God justifieth you in this thing behold, I say unto you nay, but he condemn you. And if ye persist in these things, his judgment must speedily come upon you. Verse 21. Do ye not suppose that such things are abominable unto Him? Who created all flesh, such things, these things there of the A nations verse 23 this people began to begin to wax in iniquity. They understand not the scriptures, but they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms Because of the things which were written concerning David and Solomon, his son, the things which were written are these things that they will start to do if the Lord doesn’t command them otherwise. And again, in verse 24 behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me saith the Lord. And then verse 34 we have to continue on. And now behold, my brethren, ye have done these things which he ought not to have done these things in verse 30 just like the rest of the chapter obviously refers to the things written concerning David and Solomon. The abominations they participated in namely polygamy. The things people will do if God does not explicitly command them to obey his establishment of marriage of covenant marriage between one man and one woman so that he can raise up a covenant, keeping people unto himself. I know I’m repeating this a lot. I just really want it to be clear in case anyone still wants to doubt this. I found amazingly, that section 132 itself confirms what these things means. It provides a second witness. So let’s look at it. Verse 39 of section 132 David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me by the hand of Nathan, my servant and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power. And in none of these things, taking many wives and concubines is what these things is referring to also in 132. And in none of these things, did he sin against me? Save in the case of Uriah and his wife, they twist the meaning but they keep these things. I think God gave us that as kind of a golden thread to help us find the truth. If we need it again in verse 64 and again, verily verily, I say unto you, if a man have a wife who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood as pertaining to these things, which means taking many wives and concubines, then shall she believe and administer unto him or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God for, I will destroy her for I will magnify my name upon those who receive and abide in my law. OK? There it is these things universally when referring to polygamy refers to the abomination of polygamy. That’s what it is. And the final thing that they do, I thought the last one was the final. But there’s one more, as we’ve already said, they take this verse completely out of context and ignore the rest of the chapter. They just read it on its own so that they don’t hear what comes next when God proceeds to explain the reasons polygamy is always condemned and forbidden as an abomination. Verse 31 For behold, I the Lord have seen the sorrow and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem. Yay and in all the lands of my people because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands, because of the polygamy of their husbands. And I will not suffer saith the Lord of hosts
[01:09:47] that the cries of the fair daughters of this people which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem shall come up unto me against the men of my people Saith the Lord of hosts. God does not like having heartbroken women among his people. That is not what God wants. God is very clearly saying that the reason any form of polygamy or plural marriage or spiritual wifery or adultery or whatever name you want to give it including ridiculously attaching the word celestial to it is always condemned and forbidden. It is because of what it does to the women. It causes suffering in every possible way, emotional, mental, physical, social, spiritual suffering So if we claim verse 30 undermines the entire rest of the sermon along with all other scriptures and teachings of God on this central commandment of marriage, we are saying that if God for some reason wants more babies to be born, even though it wasn’t necessary with Adam and Eve or Noah or Lehi and Sariah or any other time God wanted to establish a righteous branch and raise up seed to himself. We claim that if at some other time, God wants a lot of babies, then God no longer cares about women, their hearts can go ahead and break and they can go ahead and suffer because more babies are the priority. I hope we can all agree that that is both preposterous and offensive. I hope we can all agree that that is not the character of our infinitely loving and unchanging God. It is not consistent with how God feels about women, how God feels about his daughters. In fact, this is the very point that made me realize that 132 absolutely could not be of God before I even knew the history of it and how spurious its origin is. It was reading Jacob chapters two and three side by side with doctrine and covenants 132 that convinced me that these were absolutely not written by the same God. Throughout section 132 women are seen as nothing more than property. They have no thoughts, feelings, desires or even capacity for love, relationships or connections. At least none that are recognized or cared about. They are nothing more than objects, commodities to be given or taken away from men by God or men claiming to act on behalf of God as rewards or punishments to the men with absolutely no care or concern or even awareness of the individual women and of their needs, desires, pain, et cetera. I’ll look at just a couple of examples in verse 39. David’s wives and concubines were given unto him. And it goes on to explain that because he has fallen from his exaltation and received his portion. He shall not receive them out of this world for I gave them to another saith the Lord. So David’s wives and concubines were taken for him and bestow then another right more righteous man. 44 claims that Joseph is given the power to take a man’s wife and give her unto him that hath not committed adultery, but that has been faithful. And um this is a power that Warren Jeffs made famous when he commonly used it to take away women and give women willy nilly as he saw fit. But Warren Jeffs isn’t the only one that has done it. Brigham Young did it as well. In 48 God, so supposedly tells Joseph that whatsoever you give on earth and whomsoever you give anyone on earth by my word. And according to my law, it shall be visited with a blessing and not cursing. So there’s no condemnation. They can commit adultery with no negative consequences. 61 redefines adultery, a man cannot commit adultery with that that belong unto him and to no one else. 62. And if you have 10 virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery for, they belong to him and they are given unto him. Therefore, is he justified? But if any of those virgins after she is a spouse, shall be with another man. She has committed adultery and shall be destroyed for they are given unto him. It’s who the women belong to is the only that matters. So you’re good to sleep with as many women as you can, as long as you own them, all possess them all, as long as they are all, they all belong to you. Apparently, only women are capable of committing adultery. In which case, they must be destroyed. The only way a man can commit adultery is if he sleeps with a woman who already belongs to another man. But as we’ll see, even that has some wiggle room throughout this entire section of false scripture. No care whatsoever is given to women. As I said, they are just possessions to be taken and given, manipulated, tricked, ordered around and threatened if they have any voice or any objection. In fact, referring back again to verse 64. If the woman objects in any way, then she shall be destroyed Sayeth the Lord of God, the Lord your God for I will destroy her. Yet if the woman object to her husband desiring more virgins, she becomes the transgressor, it’s just as charming as it can possibly be. So again, please compare the way women are viewed and talked about and treated in these two documents of scripture. Please spend some time sincerely and genuinely thinking and praying about at least that one question. And then we can compare both perspectives on women to our, to the teachings of the early polygamous leaders to see which fits. There are dozens and dozens of sources to choose from to show what most women experienced in Mormon polygamy. It was not good and how the leaders talked about it. It’s hard to choose which source from all of these. But I’ll just quote a bit from one of Brigham Young’s sermons. Given September 21st 1856 “it is frequently happening that women say they are unhappy. Men will say my wife though a most excellent woman has
[01:15:55] not seen a happy day since I took a second wife. No, not a happy day for a year. One and another has not seen a happy day for five years. It is said that women are tied down and abused and that they, that they are misused and have not the liberty. They ought to have that many of them are wading through a perfect flood of tears because of the conduct of some men together with their own folly. Then he gives them an ultimatum which I’ll go on to read. Um My wives have got to do one of two things either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this and live their religion or they may leave for. I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I want to go somewhere and do something to get rid of the whiners. Now recollect that two weeks from tomorrow, I am going to set you at liberty the but the first wife will say it is hard for, I have lived with my husband 20 years or 30 have raised a family of Children for him and it is a great trial for me, for him to have more women. Then it is time you gave him up to the other women who will bear Children. If my wife had borne me, all the Children that she ever would bear. The celestial law would teach me to take women that would have Children, sisters. I am not joking. I do not throw out my proposition to banter your feelings to see whether you will leave your husbands all or any of you. But I do know that there is no cessation to the everlasting whining of many of the women in this territory, I am satisfied that this is the case. And if the women will turn from the commandments of God and continue to despise the order of heaven. I will pray that the curse of the Almighty may be close to their heels and that it may follow them all the day long.” Polygamy is prohibited because of how it breaks the hearts of women. For Brigham Young, the women’s broken hearts is an annoyance because of their everlasting whining. This is how Brigham Young responded to the suffering of women, including his own wives. He warned them to stop their everlasting whining and gave them the ultimatum if you don’t like it. There’s the door, in other words, shut up or ship out, but it was far worse than any ultimatum A bad spouse might give today when leaving might actually be an option. That was not the case for these women. And they are very aware that it, they would have been very aware that if they left, they would lose everything, they would not only become homeless and abandoned in frontier Utah, thousands of miles from any civilization. They would also become pariahs in this life and damned to hell in the life to come. And in my opinion, worst of all, they would almost certainly lose their Children. It is telling that none of these women, at least none that I know of. None of these unhappy wives left at this time. If, if someone has different information, I’d like to see it. And for anyone wanting to claim that Brigham said that he would let the wives take the Children and that he would provide for them. Please acknowledge that actions speak much louder than hollow empty words. Can anyone show me any of these wives who left their husband and was allowed to keep her Children and then was provided for? I will be eager to see what anybody finds. In the meantime, I can tell you story after story of incredibly brave women who did leave or in the case of my second great grandmother who were kicked out and were not only not provided for but had all of their Children taken from them. It is truly unthinkable. Ok? But there’s more the one woman who is addressed in particular by name in section 132 the beloved and choice daughter of God, the elect lady called to be the matriarch of this dispensation who sacrificed everything for this gospel, her own home and family that she her family and home of origin. Um multiple Children, multiple homes, all of her possessions, multiple times her peace and prosperity for her entire life, the security of herself and her Children along with her own good reputation and finally her own beloved husband. And so much more sacrifices Most of us cannot even begin to imagine she is not recognized, loved, honored or care about. She is harshly commanded. Tricked, manipulated and threatened. First. The trick verse 51 “a commandment I give unto my handmaid Emma your Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you that she stay herself and not partake and partake, not of that which I commanded you to offer her for. I did it, say the Lord to prove you all as I did Abraham that I may require an offering at your hand by covenant and sacrifice.” So according to 132 God is a false giver, an insincere faker. He we have no idea what this offer was that God gave and then took away people ridiculously claim that it was that Emma wanted to sleep with William Law because that’s what every married mother of 11 wants is to sleep around with other men. And that’s based only on Joseph Jackson’s ridiculous and completely debunked claim of Emma saying he was a sweet little man. It’s just so bad on so many levels.
[01:21:29] William Law himself said that it was completely false. But according to this, whatever this offer was, according to this false revelation, Joseph said she could have something but then changed his mind and blamed it on God. So is this who God is? Would you do this as a parent? What like tell your kids, hey guys, if you get your room clean, we’ll go get donuts. And then as they, as soon as they get their room clean, you say I was just testing you. You know, donuts aren’t good for you. No, you can’t have those. This is a terrible, terrible thing to have a God that you can’t trust and can’t rely on. It. Goes on from there 52 “and let mine handmaid Emma Smith receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph who are virtuous and pure before me and those who are not pure and have said they were pure shall be destroyed. Saith the Lord.” That’s got to be a comfort to end. Because if this awful narrative were true, of course, Emma’s only concern would be whether the girls and women, her husband was supposedly now bringing into her home and sleeping with usually behind her back. Her only concern would be if they were pure. But it’s OK, Emma because if they lied about being pure, God will destroy them. So there’s great comfort, right? Not to mention that according to the false narrative developed decades later and piecing it together, looking at the timeline of these women’s lives who claimed to be married to, to Joseph, according to their own claims, many of the women he married were already married to other men and often pregnant with those other men babies. So yeah, OK. What does that even mean? And then it goes on 54 “and I command my handmaid Emma Smith to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph and to none else.” So again, direct contradiction of all other scripture. Here, Emma is commanded to cleave unto her husband and to none else everywhere else. In scripture, the commandment to cleave is to the husband, Genesis 22:24. “Therefore, shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.” It’s repeated in Moses three and Abraham five. It’s also repeated by the Savior in Matthew 19:5 and mark 10:7 for this cause, shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh. And as I already read, it’s repeated several times in the doctrine and covenants, I’ll again read 40 section 42:22. Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart and shall cleave unto her and none else. But all of a sudden in section 132 it’s flipped on its head and no longer applies to the husband, but applies to the wife and only to the wife. So sure God has always commanded man to cleave only to his wife. But now man is allowed to cleave to as many women as possible. And it’s all good because now this commandment is given to the woman instead and only applies to her. Goes on. “But if she will not abide this commandment, she shall be destroyed. Saith the Lord for I am the Lord, I am the Lord thy God and I will destroy her if she abide not in my law.” So, wow, that’s taking it to an entirely new level. Every time God issued the command uh, to cleave to husbands, it never included direct threats of destruction cleave only to your wife or else I will destroy you. That’s never what it said. But now that it’s aimed at woman and one particular woman, a woman Brigham Young and many in his company didn’t really like. It becomes ominous and very threatening. So it’s hard to find free agency in there. Instead, it has become the ultimate example of unrighteous Dominion God directly threatening women with destruction. If they don’t do what their husbands tell them they need to do. But “if she will, if she will not abide in this commandment, then shall my servant Joseph do all things for her even as he hath said.” So what is this claiming that Joseph said he would do to her or for her? I used to think we had no idea. But after some study and thought it has become all too clear to understand this verse. We need to look at another of Brigham Young’s doctrines to give us insight. I’ll read one of many instances where he and his first presidency taught this new doctrine. This is September 21st 1856. “There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive forgiveness in this world or that which is to come. And if they had their eyes open to see their true condition. They would be perfectly willing to have their blood spilled upon the ground that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins that the smoking incense would atone for their sins.” Yeah. The doctrine of blood atonement, which taught explicitly that an unfaithful wife needed to have a javelin through her heart to atone for her sins. This quote I just read came 3.5 years after Section 132 magically appeared in 1852. But we have records showing Brigham Young had been teaching the ideas of blood atonement from as early, at least as early as 1845. The year after Joseph was killed. When you understand blood atonement, suddenly section 132’s threats of destruction against a disobedient or unfaithful wife begin to make perfect sense. And the wording that Joseph would do something for Emma follows perfectly with Brigham’s teaching that spilling a person’s blood was a great act of service to them.
[01:27:16] So this is February 8th, 1857. When a man or woman understands quote that by having his bloodshed, he will atone for that sin and be saved and exalted with the gods. Is there a man or woman in this house? But would say shed my blood that I may be saved and exalted with the gods. Will you love your brothers or sisters? Likewise, when they have committed a sin? That cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood. Will you love that man or woman well enough to shed their blood? Oh, yeah. So according to Brigham’s doctrine of blood atonement, which I think we can all now see how he built into section 132. Another false doctrine according to him, taking her life would be something Joseph would do for Emma. It is a service he would render unto her. This may be hard for some people to accept. But please read through the quotes, please read through the section and look at it and consider what it might be talking about. Here’s the one other quote I’ll read. “Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife and put a javelin through both of them. You would justified and they would atone for their sins and be received into the kingdom of God. I would at once do so in such a case and under such circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart and I would do it with clean hands.” Ok? We’re gonna move on. Well, the more you study this false revelation, the more diabolical it becomes. And that’s not all threaten. After threatening Emma with the blessing of destruction, it goes on to supposedly assure Joseph and thus all polygamous man that there’s no reason for concern over losing a wife, even one that you’ve lost through your own self administered destruction of her because she is utterly replaceable. It goes on “and I will bless him and multiply him and give unto him a hundredfold in this world of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and Children and crowns of eternal lives in the eternal worlds. Again, this ties directly to polygamous theology. Let me quote Hebrews C Kimball this time, this is February 1st 1857 “supposing that I have a wife or a dozen of them. And she should say you cannot be exhausted without me. And suppose all I suppose they all should say. So what of that? They won’t, they never will affect my salvation one particle.” So the women saying this are trying to have some means of having a voice, some way to influence their husband to any degree saying you need me. And he listened to what he says to that claim, “whose salvation will they affect their own. They have got to live their religion serve their God and do right as well as myself, suppose that I lose the whole of them before I go to the spirit world. But that I have been a good faithful man all the days of my life (in his own mind) and lived my religion and had favor with God and was kind to them. Do you think I will be destitute there? No, the Lord says there are more there than there are here. They have been increasing there, they increase there a great deal faster than we do here in the spirit world, there is an increase of males and females. There are millions of them. And if I am faithful all the time and continue right along with brother Brigham, we will go to brother Joseph and say here we are, brother Joseph, we are here ourselves. Are we not? And with none of the property we possessed in our probationary state, not even the rings on our fingers. He will say to us, come along my boys, we will give you a good suit of clothes. Where are your wives? They are back yonder. They would not follow us. Never mind. Says Joseph, there are thousands here, have all you want.” That’s Hebrew C Kimball’s teaching to the women that say, hey, I matter, you need me. “Perhaps some do not believe that, but I am just simple enough to believe it.” Every element of the polygamous parts of section 132 are in direct opposition to everything taught in the book of Mormon, particularly Jacob’s Jacob chapters two and three. They are also in direct contradiction to everything Joseph Smith said did and taught. They are in direct contradiction to everything we know of God. But they are in perfect keeping with polygamist ideology where women are constantly taught that their basic needs and desires are actually evil. They’re just temptations that the women need to push down and ignore woman’s God given need for fidelity is labeled jealousy and taught to be something she needs to overcome. You might as well tell someone their need for food is just gluttony and they need to overcome it. Similarly, women’s God given need to be in a loving relationship is ignored and minimized and women were actually counseled not to love their husband. This is Zina D Huntington in an interview she gave with a New York newspaper in 1869. She was actually trying to promote polygamy, trying to paint it well. But, um, she inadvertently revealed the sad reality for polygamist wives. She said “it is the duty of a first wife to regard her husband, not with a selfish devotion that would claim the whole of his society time and attention, but rather as owing attentions to other women also, which they have a right to expect. She finds before she has been many years, the head of a polygamous household that she must regard her husband with indifference and with no other feeling than that of reverence for love. We regard as a false sentiment, a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy.” That was the part that was applicable to the point I’m making. But I want to continue to read a little bit more because of the insight.
[01:33:02] It gives us to the experiences of these women and how they were blamed for the natural outcomes of a very bad system. She goes on to say,”I think that much of the unhappiness found in polygamous families is due to the women themselves. They expect too much attention from the husband and because they do not get it or see a little attention bestowed upon one of the other wives, they become sullen and morose and permit their ill temper to finally find vent. Then perhaps (because they’re so heartbroken) they think they must have fine dresses and fashionable hats from the dressmaker and milliner instead of making those articles themselves. And because the means of the husband will not permit it, they are ready to quarrel with him about it. When one wife has anything new and pretty, all the others, all other women, they must have something new and pretty too and petty jealousies are in this way, constantly arising which serve to make their lives miserable. Then it is in a measure also the fault of the husband for he should learn to control his household and rule it in order.” Guess who never made her own hat or her own dress or her own piano. Amelia Folsom Brigham Young’s last favorite wife. Women’s God given need for security in polygamy is labeled selfishness. Women’s God given need to be provided for along with her Children is thrown out often using Isaiah for one as a justification with husbands saying you’re lucky I gave you my name. Now figure out your own food clothes, shelter, et cetera. There are many polygamous men who charge their wives rent. And I do want to point out that Zina who wrote this was from the most privileged group, Brigham’s wives, most early polygamist women, other those than those married to the leaders who had access to the tithing funds. Most of them lived in grinding poverty including actual starvation. Women were left alone in all kinds of isolated conditions throughout the entire territory while their husbands went to different wives and different settlements or were even sent on foreign missions for up to seven years at a time. How would you like to be alone in frontier Utah or Nevada or Arizona or Mexico or Canada with no special programs that of help of or support no social safety net. More than a few mothers in early polygamy watch their Children suffer and die of poverty. bizarrely while polygamy and 132 minimize and shame women’s needs and desires, tey prioritize men’s lustful desires. Let’s just look at verse 61 and again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood. If any man espouse a virgin and desire to espouse another, what exactly does it mean for a married man to desire to espouse another virgin or otherwise, the savior taught very clearly in Matthew 5:28 that whosoever look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. And as we’ve already mentioned several times, thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart and shall cleave unto her and none else. And it goes on to say, and he that look upon a woman to lust after her shall deny the faith and shall not have the spirit. And if he repents not, he shall be cast out and yet doctrine and covenant says, if a man, um if a man espouse a virgin and desire to espouse another, can we please recognize and acknowledge the obvious fact that a married man desiring another woman is nothing but lust and committing adultery in his heart. Yet here again, although it directly contradicts all other scripture, it is imperfect, keeping with polygamous theology. Let me now quote Orson Pratt from the original August 1852 special conference where section 132 was first pulled out and first read where it made its first appearance. He, he says, whom adultery and fornication have cursed the nations of the earth for many generations and are increasing fearfully upon the community. But they must be entirely done away from those who call themselves the people of God. How is this to be prevented for? We have got a fallen nature to grapple with it is to be prevented in the way the Lord devised in ancient times, that is by giving to his faithful servant a plurality of wives. So how can God’s faithful servants possibly be expected to not to not give in to whoredoms and adultery and fornication. The solution isn’t for those men to be righteous men. The solution is for God to allow them to have multiple wives. Of course, according to the polygamists, women’s God given needs are tender hearts as Jacob called them. Our deepest desires need to be overridden, but men’s lusts need to be fulfilled. So enough said on that, ok, before we move off the subject of Jacob’s sermon, which I know we’ve gone far a field with that, but it’s all tied to Jacob’s sermon. I want to also point out the chiasm that some, some people also find very valuable to help them understand Jacob chapter two to quickly understand chiasm or Chiasmus. It’s a literary device. Um You can think of it almost as a form of poetry that’s very foreign to us but was used often in the Bible. We find it throughout scripture and interestingly, we find it in the book of Mormon. The basic idea is that something is said in a particular order and then said again, in reverse order, it is used to highlight the middle phrase, which is the most important point of a chiastic structure. It can be a little complicated to understand. So here is a somewhat simple and straightforward example
[01:38:59] or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me cast the mode out of thine eye and behold a beam is in thine own eye. Now, the important phrase thou hypocrite cast out first. Now we go backwards and reverse the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mode out of the eye of thy brother. So Jacob 2:23 through 35 contains a rather beautiful chiastic structure that can be pretty cool to discover. And it has been helpful for some people to finally see through the warped, ingrained interpretation and finally grasp what is being said. So me personally, this isn’t the way that I understand Jacob 2:30. It’s not, it’s not that the argument that I resonate with, but it is helpful to a lot of people. So I’m just going to include these three visuals here for anybody who wants to pause and look at them and read through them. I want to thank Ella and Carly and Paxton for sending these graphics. They were very helpful. They all have slightly different interpretations. So feel free to adjust them all to your own insights. But for anyone who this chiastic structure speaks to, I think seeing these three representations of it can be extremely helpful. And if anyone has any thoughts or questions, I am certain there will be many people in the comments who will be happy to answer questions or discuss this topic of the chiasm of Jacob 2. So whether you rely on the chiasm or just accurately interpreting the words, the message is plain God brought Lehi and his family out of Jerusalem to extricate them from the abominations of that society abominations, which led to its destructions, abomination, which the people were so devoted to that When Lehi was called to preach against them, they literally wanted to kill him. So that despite God did that so that despite the destruction and scattering of that people, God could raise up another covenant people who would not participate in the same abominations. And the book of Mormon clearly tells us what those abominations were, namely polygamy. It is heart breaking to see what started happening so soon with the knee fights. Thankfully, it seems they listened to God’s word through Jacob and abandoned the abominations they were starting to pursue. But what I find even more heartbreaking is seeing how quickly those same abominations came into this restored church and again, polluted the covenant people that God had established through Joseph Smith. But I guess we should not be surprised. Moroni 7:12 for the devil is an enemy unto God and fight against him continually and invite and entice to sin and to do that, which is evil continually. Satan is always up to the same awful tricks. I am really hoping that we can learn to be more wise now that we have thoroughly laid out several of the problems of section 132 and hopefully made it so that nobody who listens to this will ever fall for the claim, the Jacob 2:30 loophole claim. Again, I I think we should address a couple of other things that might be on people’s minds. I do recognize that for faithful members of the church. For many of us, it might seem crazy to question the validity of a section of the doctrine and covenants. I really hope the history we have gone over was helpful. I think it might also be useful to look a little more closely to some more of the problems of section 132. This I cannot be comprehensive with all of them. In this episode. My experience has been that relatively few people have actually read section 132 all the way through. As I said, it’s certainly not something we covered in our lessons. So I do recommend reading it through carefully and prayerfully asking the Lord which portions are from him and which portions come from a different source. But for now, let’s just look at a few, a few of the different verses. Let’s start with verse one. There are a lot of problems right off the bat with verse one, ” verily thus sayeth the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I the Lord justified my servants, Abraham Isaac and Jacob and also Moses David and Solomon, my servants as touching the principle and doctrine of having many wives and concubines”, first, as we’ve already pointed out, Isaac was never a polygamist, neither was Moses. Next, we should define concubine. We all know that is a wife of lesser status, but more more specifically according to the very stories this is based on it is a slave wife who the master has sexual access to, right? Hagar was Sarai’s slave. Um B ha and Zoa were the slaves of Rachel and Leah who they gave to Jacob. In order to compete for his love, they were all owned body and soul. So do any of us really want to claim that God approves and even commands as 132 says, concubinage, right? The doctrine of having many concubines. So take a minute and really ask the Lord if concubinage is truly approved of by God. One more quick thing. This opening verse claims that Joseph believed God justified, in other words, approved of these men having many wives and concubines.
[01:44:40] I should have said one more quick thing. This is we’re gonna go into this. The question of whether Joseph would wondered if God justified the the these men having many wives and concubines. We know from many of Joseph’s own words that that was never the case. He would have never wondered that there are many things we can look at to show this. But for now, let’s just look at the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible. I need to thank Rob Fotheringham for showing, for showing all of us these arguments. The polygamist claim is that it was working on the Bible translation that inspired Joseph’s questions about David and Solomon. But when you actually look at Joseph’s Bible translation, what we claim he was working on when he had this question, you can clearly see that that is simply laughable. It’s absolutely impossible. Joseph did not ever wonder why God justified their polygamy because he knew that God did not justify it. He had already translated the book of Mormon which clearly says that David and Solomon’s polygamy was an abomination to God. And he also, he also had already approved of the statement on marriage that was canonized in the doctrine and covenants plus, let’s just look at a few of the corrections, Joseph Smith made to the Bible first kings 3:14. And if thou wilt walk in my ways to my statues and my commandments as thy father, David did walk, then will I lengthen thy days. The Joseph, the Joseph Smith translation turned it to then I will lengthen thy days and thou shalt not walk in unrighteousness as did thy father David second Samuel 12:13. And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto the unto David, the Lord hath put away away thy sin. Thou shalt not die Joseph Smith translation. And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David the Lord hath not put away thy sin, that thou shalt not die first kings 11:4 for it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods and his heart was not perfect with the Lord. As was the heart of his father, David. Joseph Smith corrected that or changed it to say and it became as the heart of David his father. So Solomon’s heart going astray became as David’s heart. First kings, 11:6, Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord and went not fully after the Lord, as did David, his father, Joseph Smith changed it to and Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord as David his father and went not fully after the Lord, it goes on and on with many more such changes. I haven’t gone through the entire Joseph Smith translation to compare. But from what I have seen, I’ve looked at it quite a bit every time the Bible talks purely positively about polygamist King David as a righteous man, Joseph Smith made clarifications which which reveal his undeniable perspective that David’s polygamy was abominable. So the idea that Joseph could have thought David’s polygamy was justified by God while he was working on this biblical translation where he made all of these changes is provably false just by looking at the text. So that was just verse one of section 132. There are so many more problems we’ve already covered. Several of them. We’re going to skip over a little bit. Well, I was going to look a little more in depth about the claim that they had to marry virgins. And yet the stories we tell about Joseph Smith claimed that he married other men’s wives. He married very much non virgins women who were 5,6,7 months pregnant according to the stories we tell. But on the topic of marrying other men’s wives, I wanted to address one interesting innovation. Another interesting innovation that Brigham Young made on October 8th, 1861 he taught that there are only two ways a woman could be released from an eternal ceiling. First, if her husband didn’t magnify his priesthood as defined and decided case by case solely by Brigham Young alone, the wife’s feelings didn’t and experiences didn’t matter at all. Only Brigham’s opinion of the man. And um if he didn’t agree that the man wasn’t magnifying his priesthood, then the woman could not be freed from him in this life or in the next. Now, let me quote from the two sources we have for this, for this talk. “Also, there was another way which a woman could leave the man if the woman preferred another man higher in authority and he is willing to take her.” The second way. Here’s from the other source. “The second way a woman could leave. I have not revealed except to a few persons in this church and a few have received it from brother Joseph, as well as for my from myself.” Brigham’s always citing Joseph in his doctrinal innovations. “If a woman can find a man holding the keys of the priesthood with higher power and authority than her husband and he is disposed to take her, he can do so. Otherwise she has got to remain where she is” in either of these ways of separation, you can discover there is no need for a bill of divorcement. So this is what we refer to as the idea of trading up where
[01:49:51] a woman can only be freed from her eternal ceiling with a man. If another man with higher keys is willing to take her, I think we can all see that this is quite a convenient doctrine for the man holding all the keys. And we should also recognize that according to this doctrine, none of Brigham’s wives could ever leave him. Right. First, he would have to decide that he was not magnifying his priesthood in order for any wife to be released. And then second of all, he was the last stop. There was no trading up past Brigham, right? So that’s interesting that he’s the one that taught that we could go on and on with more problems. But instead, I want to address one, well, maybe two final points in this discussion about section 132. So we’re going to leave aside the problems for now. I think we’ve addressed them sufficiently and I want to look at the question, what about eternal marriage? Because some people claim that section 132 in its entirety is indispensable. Because if we get rid of that, we need to get rid of the idea of eternal marriage. I think some people do genuinely have this concern. But from my experience, most who argue this, do it to support polygamy like Brigham Young, they claim that eternal marriage and polygamy are basically one and the same or at the very least, you can’t have eternal marriage without also accepting polygamy. So they’re basically holding eternal marriage hostage saying if you want to believe in it, you also have to believe in polygamy. It is very true that Section 132 teaches about eternal marriage. But this is why I wanted to go into this. What is amazing is that if you really look into it, you will find that the teachings of eternal marriage actually provide additional evidence against polygamy and against the false polygamous parts of Section 132. So let’s go into this. I have to admit I was thrilled when I read the sources that show without question that Joseph did in fact receive a revelation on eternal marriage which both he and Hyrum taught publicly on multiple occasions. So let’s just go over a few of those on Sunday, July 16th, 1843 4 days after Joseph Smith received supposedly the revelation that we now have is Section 132. But I think maybe he did that day receive a true revelation on eternal marriage that later on was merged with the false revelations to create the fraudulent 132 that we now now have. That’s what this the evidence shows me happened. But the point I want to make is that on this day, on July 16th, Joseph spoke the entire day at the temple stand, the nauvoo temple was under construction at this time. So he, he spoke at the construction site while he said nothing that could in any way be interpreted as any kind of support for, for polygamy. In his sermon that afternoon, he did speak at some length about eternal marriage and we have multiple records of this talk. So this is from um Franklin D Richards. “All blessings that were ordained for man by the Council of Heaven were on conditions of obedience to the law thereof. You’ll recognize parts of this from section 132. No man can obtain an eternal blessing unless the contract or covenant be made in view of eternity. All contracts in view of this life only terminate with this life.” He talks about the case of the woman and seven husbands talked about in Luke 2029 et cetera. “Those who keep no eternal law in this life or make no eternal contract are single and alone in the eternal world and cites Luke 22:35 and are only made angels to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation, never becoming sons of God. Having never kept the law of God ie eternal law.” It’s amazing to recognize the, the parts in the sermon that do show up at section 132 that can help us know what is true. Here’s another record of it. This is what William Clayton actually recorded. He showed that a man must enter into an everlasting covenant with his wife in this world or we or he will have no claim on her in the next. He said that he could not reveal the fullness of these things until the temple is completed, which by the way, it never was completed. from Levi Richards. “He spoke of contracts and covenants made from life and with life, the necessity of the temple that the servants of God may be sealed in their foreheads.” Interesting to hear what he’s talking about with sealing, right? So we have on solid, we have a solid foundation to understand that Joseph Smith did, in fact teach the true revelation on eternal marriage. We’ll get into it a little bit more. The following spring, April 8th 1844 Hyrum gathered all the elders in order to unequivocally put down once and for all all of the claims of polygamy, I’ll go into that more in part two. But in that emphatically anti sermon that Brigham had erased out of church history. Hyrum also taught the principle of eternal marriage. “The idea of marrying for eternity is the seal of the covenant and is easily understood.
[01:55:05] And as to speaking of it, I could make all the world believe it for it is noble and grand.” It’s so interesting to see Hyrum’s true u statements and Joseph’s true statements show up in the twisted false claims that were written later about them. Anyone familiar with, um, William Clayton’s claims will recognize that similar phrase.” It is necessary eternal marriage in consequence of the broken covenant of the world. I read that what God joins together. Let no man put asunder. When I look at the seal of the covenant, it is during the natural lives, but it has an end there. But what is done by the Lord has an endless, no man is married in the mourn of the resurrection. But the marriage covenant must be joined by one who has authority in order to have effect in the mourning of the resurrection.” Do you hear? He’s very clearly teaching about eternal marriage.” I married me a wife. I am the only man that had any, has any right to her till we had five Children. The covenant is was made for our lives. She fell in the grave before God showed us his answer. God had showed me that the covenant is dead and had no more force. Neither could I have her in the resurrection. But we should be as the angels it troubled me. Brother Joseph said, you can be sealed to her upon the same principle as you can be baptized for the dead. There is a power to seal on earth and in heaven how the spirit of Elijah and Elias, a seal that shall never be broken and shall be in force in the mourn of the resurrection.” So, both Joseph and Hyrum are on record clearly teaching eternal marriage while both vehemently opposing condemning and forbidding polygamy. And just weeks before their death, when they were yet once again accused of practicing and teaching polygamy. Well, among many other things, the Nauvoo Expositor also accused them of teaching and practicing polygamy. They also gave testimony to the City Council about the true revelation on eternal marriage, which this testimony that they gave to the City Council matches perfectly with the sermons they gave. It’s a perfect fit. Um Joseph testified on inquiry on the passage and the resurrection. They neither marry nor are given in marriage. A question which Hyrum repeatedly explained, concerned things which transpired in former days and had no reference to the present time. He’s talking about Levarite marriage, “I received for answer men in this life must be married in view of eternity. That was the amount of the revelation otherwise they must remain as angels in heaven.” Joseph’s and Hyrum’s testimonies recorded contemporaneously not decades later match up perfectly with the also contemporaneously recorded records of each of their sermons these reports do not depend on decades later, motivated claims as do all of the claims of polygamy. They also don’t depend on magically appearing altered, fraudulent re revelations. As does polygamy. Joseph asked the Lord about jesus’ statement that in heaven, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. And an answer, he received a revelation that men and women should marry in view of eternity and that they could be united eternally rather than being separate and single in the next life. So that lets us know that eternal marriage is indeed a true doctrine received through revelation by Joseph Smith and taught publicly on multiple occasions, just as Joseph Smith said that he taught the strongest doctrines in public. It had and has absolutely nothing to do with polygamy. The revelation was written down and James Whitehead who was Joseph Smith’s scribe testified in the Temple Lot case that it was about three pages long. Incredibly William Law, the publisher of the Nauvoo Expositor of the newspaper, which accused Joseph and Hyrum of a myriad offenses of, of offenses. The least of which was polygamy and which played a key role in Joseph and Hyrums death. He also claimed that he claimed completely independent of James Whitehead that the supposed false revel, the supposed revelation, I would say the fraudulent revelation on polygamy that he saw was also three pages long and that it didn’t contain many of the things that section 132 contained it contained no elements of the true revelation. Joseph and Hyrum consistently described, the three affidavits. I’ll talk about this in another episode. But the three affidavits written in the Nauvoo Expositor describing the revelation they claim to see, had nothing to do with what Joseph and Hyrum both taught as the true revelation that making it very apparent that there were at least two separate documents that were somehow merged and added to, to create the 8 to 10 page section 132 as we have it. Now, this is critically important to understand once we know that 132 is an amalgamation of the true and false revelations. And since we have sources to help us understand which was what was in each separate part of it, the true and the false parts, we can begin to discern which parts are true and which parts are false. And what is even more exciting is that every part of section 132 that talks about eternal marriage is strictly and unavoidably monogamous, just like all the rest of doctrine and covenants and all of Joseph’s teachings,
[02:00:38] revelations and scripture verses 15,18, 19 and 26 which all teach about eternal marriage. Say if a man marry a wife and describe marriage between the two of them making zero allowance for any additional wives. There is simply no getting around this. You cannot take these strictly monogamous verses and pretend they will work in polygamy. They won’t for just an example. Let’s look at part of, of verse 19. “And again, verily, I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of Promise, then shall it be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life in time and through all eternity and shall be a full force when they are out of the world and they shall pass by the angels which are set there to their exaltation and glory in all things as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fullness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” clearly. The process described here involves only 2, one husband and one wife, a perfect couple, the two of them progress together as a couple. It simply could not work any other way. Section 132 itself actually strongly confirms the concept of monogamist only eternal marriage and substantiates the sources that make it very clear that Joseph did in fact receive a revelation on eternal marriage and that it had nothing at all to do with polygamy, but was strictly monogamous. Just like everything else Joseph Smith ever received, Taught said or did you may notice that I cut quite a bit out of that verse? So even knowing that section 132 contains at least portions of the true revelation, we still have to be careful as it will be shown in the next part of this series on Joseph’s supposed polygamy. The forgers were very adept at adding words and phrases here and there throughout true documents. So we can’t just go by verse, we can’t just go verse by verse, assuming each verse is entirely good or entirely bad. In some cases, we may need to go word by word or phrase by phrase with prayer and fasting, asking the Lord to help us discern truth and error. That’s what I did in the verse above, to the best of my ability. I hope this final piece knowing that rejecting polygamy does not at all mean rejecting eternal marriage, helps put some people’s minds at ease and helps us all be more eager to discern, to seek and discern truth from error. So the last question we’ll address in this long episode is how could God allow this to happen? That’s another question that I think weighs on people’s minds and hearts. How can we as members of the church who have been raised to believe that the prophet can never lead us astray, make sense of this. So the first thing to know is that the idea that the prophet can never lead us astray is actually not anywhere in scripture and was not taught by our earliest leaders. It grew directly out of polygamy. Wilford Woodruff said that for the very first time when he was in crisis mode, trying to keep the church together despite issuing the 1890 Manifesto disavowing polygamy. The previous leaders had said that that could never happen if it ever did. The church would be an apostasy. And here Wilford Woodruff was doing it. He was disavowing polygamy. And so in order to try to keep the church together, to try to keep the people believing him when he was contradicting his predecessors, he said that the pro that the Lord would never allow the leader of the church to lead the church astray. I understand why he needed to teach it. But we also need to understand that it simply isn’t true. We already have an extensive list of false doctrines that Brigham Young alone tauught that we have disavowed and rejected. They include blood atonement, divine racism, which led to the priesthood. The Adam God theory, the idea that Adam is God the father, what I call divine incest, the idea that God physically had sex with Mary to conceive Jesus completely undermining the virgin birth. Um Joseph didn’t teach any of these things, but Brigham Young as president of the church repeatedly taught each of these ideas over the pulpit at general conferences claiming to be speaking them in the name of the Lord. Yet one by one, the church has rejected every single one of them. So it really does not need to be difficult for us to add polygamy to that pile of already discarded Brigham Young doctrines. It’s just one more in a long pattern. Joseph F Smith’s statement in regard to Brigham’s repeated teaching of Adam God doctrine applies very well to this other false doctrine of polygamy. Joseph F Smith said “while I am not authorized to sit in judgment upon, upon President Young, I am at liberty to test the truth of his words or utterances by the revealed and accepted word of God. Anything uttered by man which is contrary to the divine law must fall while that only which is in harmony with it can remain or stand. “That’s from chapter 21 of Paul Reeves, great book, Let’s talk about race and priesthood, which I’ll quote from again in just a minute. We can also look to Bruce R Mcconkie rather famous 78 speech in regard to the reversal of the priesthood ban. I hope by now that we are all aware that Joseph Smith himself never taught divine racism. He ordained black men to the priesthood. This was another of Brigham Young’s doctrinal innovations. So please disregard the gaslighting and victim blaming in this quote.
[02:06:46] It still is useful to help us understand some of these concepts. There are, this is Bruce R McConkie “There are statements in our literature by the early brethren, which we have interpreted to mean that Negroes will not receive the priesthood in mortality. So it’s only that we’ve interpreted, interpreted them to that. I have said the same things and people write me letters and say you said such and such and how is it now that you, we do such and such and all I can say to that is that it is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believing in a living modern prophet. Forget everything. This is the part that’s good, forget everything that I have said or what President Brigham Young or President George Buchanan or whomsoever has said in days past, that is contrary to the present revelation, we spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world, we get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept, we have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light upon this particular subject and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don’t matter anymore. It doesn’t make a particle of difference that anybody ever said. Um what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978. It is a new day and a new arrangement and the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject as to any slivers of light or any particular particles of dust of the past, we forget about them.” I actually think that’s brilliant to be able to apply to this topic as well if we can completely forget and throw out one of the teachings that was taught by church leaders. We can do it with this one as well. Well, I shouldn’t say one of many, several of them. It is a fact that past leaders have taught false ideas, not just in our dispensation, but in every dispensation. Let me just give you a couple of so many examples that I could have chosen from. I’ll read from Jeremiah 11:9. “And the Lord said unto me, a conspiracy is found among the men of Judah and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, they are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words and they went after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant, which I made with their fathers.” That’s a perfect description of what happened in our church as well. Alma 31:9. “But they have fallen into great errors for they would not observe to keep the commandments of God yay and find they did pervert the ways of the Lord in very many instances.” Again, another perfect description, we can also look at Matthew 13:15 “for this people’s heart is waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes, they have closed lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their heart and should be converted and I should heal them.” Oh, I hope that we can let that no longer apply to us. We could go on and on. Why should we think that our time is any different than all of these other times? None of the people in these times that these verses are describing believed that they had gone astray, many of them actually killed or expelled the men that God sent to warn them of their errors. So we are no different. We’re just the same God that follows patterns, patterns continue, we continue to repeat the same patterns. So I will say that if learning that our leaders have indeed gotten some things deeply wrong, damages our faith, that should be a good indication to us. And a good wake up call to let us know that our faith has been founded on a sandy footing. And we need to do the challenging and literally unsettling work of letting the sand go and becoming reestablished on a much more firm found foundation. The rock of Jesus Christ, actually heeding the book of Mormon can help us do that. Let’s look at a few more scriptures. Second, Nephi 28 “and others will he pacify and lull them away into carnal security that they will say all is well. And Zion Yay Zion prosper all is well and thus the devil cheated their souls and leadeth them away carefully down to hell. Therefore, woe be unto him that is at ease in Zion. Woe be unto him that crieth all is well. Yeah, woe be unto Him, that harken unto the precepts of men and deny the power of God and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Yeah, wo be unto Him that saith we have received and we need no more and in fine woe unto all those who tremble and are angry because of the truth of God. For behold He that is built upon the rock, receives it with gladness and he that is built upon a sandy foundation. Tremble lest he shall fall woe be unto Him. That shall say we have received of the word of God and we need no more of the word of God for we have enough cursed is He that put his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm or shall hearken into the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.” This life was never meant to be about sitting blindly and passively in someone else’s boat, expecting them to row us to heaven.
[02:12:31] The purpose of this life has always been for each and every one of us to come to know the voice of the Lord for ourselves and to learn to take the Holy Spirit as our guide, as we are constantly taught throughout the scriptures doctrine and covenants 45:57 “for they that are wise and have received the truth and have taken the Holy Spirit for their guide and have not been deceived. Verily, I say unto you, they shall not be hewn down and cast into the fire, but shall abide the day.” We are not told to take the leader as our guide. But the Holy Spirit, we are not meant to be spiritually blind. I’ll read again “woe unto the blind that will not see for they shall perish.” Also, we are not meant to believe that we cannot receive answers from God second Nephi 32.”Wherefore now, after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them, it will be because ye ask not neither. Do ye do ye not wherefore ye are not brought into light but must perish in the dark for behold. Again, I say unto you that if you will enter by the way and receive the holy ghost, it will show unto you all things which ye should do. Jesus continually tells us this commandment I give unto you that ye shall call upon me while I am near, draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you, seek me diligently and ye shall find me, ask and ye shall receive knock and it shall be opened unto you whatsoever. Ye ask the father in my name. It shall be given unto you that is expedient for you. So no, we are not meant to trust in the arm of flesh. Instead, we are given all of the tools we need to judge for ourselves. Moroni 7 “Wherefore take heed my beloved brethren that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God or that which is good and of God to be of the devil. For behold my brethren, it is given unto you to judge that ye may know good from evil. And the way to judge is as plain that ye may know with a perfect knowledge as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the spirit of Christ is given to every man that he may know good from evil. Wherefore I show unto you the way to judge for everything which invite to do good to persuade, to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ. Wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge. It is of God.” I will say that monogamous marriage helps men and women to become better men and women. That’s what it’s designed to do as we together, sacrifice our own selfishness and learn to care about the needs, desires and experiences of someone else and learn to care about our spouse as much as we care about ourselves and engage together as equal partners in the great work of raising our families. That is what marriage is designed to do. But whatsoever thing persuade men to do evil, to be selfish, to be self serving, to be prideful and believe not in Christ by say, claiming that there are sins that Christ’s blood cannot atone for, but we need to kill the people who do them and deny him and deny God’s ability to give us answers to teach us truth from heaven and serve not God. Then you may know with the perfect knowledge it is of the devil wherefore I beseech of you brethren that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil.” And if you will lay hold upon every good thing and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ. I know this is getting long, but I really want to read this quote that I loved from the book I cited before Paul Reeves book. Let’s Talk About Race and priesthood. And this book was commissioned and published by Deseret book. It also once and for all sets the record straight that the priesthood ban absolutely never was from God or from Jose Smith, but was an unfortunate doctrinal innovation of Brigham Young, just like polygamy. So here is how Paul Reeve tries to help his readers navigate the problem of false teachings from church presidents. I’m quoting him. Now. “Ultimately, prophets, (I personally would say church presidents) but ultimately prophets are human and their role is to point their followers toward the divine. God specifically said that he called weak vessels so that we wouldn’t place our faith in their strength or power. But in God’s only Jesus Christ is mighty to save. We do not need an infallible prophet. When we have an infallible savior as latter day saints, we believe in eternal progression, a beautiful doctrine that might help us to situate Brigham Young in a longer term perspective than his views from 1852. Allow in an eternal perspective. Brigham Young is not in some corner of the eternities stuck on his racial positions from 1852. I believe that he has had plenty of time to progress and we can too.” I actually love that. I also don’t believe that Brigham Young is stuck in some, some spot, some corner of the eternities still believing his teachings and views on women and on marriage. I actually personally love to believe that Brigham himself is cheering us on and encouraging and helping our efforts, desperately hoping that we are doing all we can to heal the damage from the false doctrines that he introduced. So going back to our initial question, why does this matter? Why shouldn’t we just leave it alone? I believe we might as well ask, why should we care about truth? Why should we care about, true doctrine versus false doctrine, truth versus error. What is the very purpose of the book of
[02:18:35] Mormon and the restoration to bring forth more truth, to help us understand the commandments and covenants of God that, that enable us to be His people, to come into the presence of God and bring forth the promises of Zion. shouldn’t we stop to wonder why these things haven’t happened? Why? After nearly 200 years as a church, we are no closer to these promises than we ever were. But in many ways, we seem to be getting even further away from them. How many times does the book of Mormon warn against false doctrines, false traditions, spiritual blindness when we are told that our leaders do not receive answers and told that we should not seek or expect to receive answers ourselves. That sounds to me an awful lot like Laman and Lemuel’s response when they were confused about doctrine. And if I asked them, have you inquired of the Lord? And they said unto me, we have not for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us. Isn’t that exactly what we are saying? And shouldn’t we pay attention to Nephi’s response? “Behold, I said unto them, how is it that you do not keep the commandments of the Lord? How is it that you will perish because of the hardness of your heart? Do you not remember the things which the Lord have said? If you will not harden your heart and ask me in faith, believing that you shall receive with diligence in keeping my commandments, Surely these things shall be made known unto you.” I know this promise is true. And for anyone including our leaders who feel like they aren’t receiving answers on this topic, is it at least possible that the Lord actually is providing answers, but people are refusing to receive them. We were told that we will receive whatever is expedient for us. If we ask the right questions, right? If we keep asking the Lord to help us understand His doctrine of polygamy, and we won’t consider any other possibility. But that this is indeed God’s doctrine. How can we possibly receive an answer if the answer, which I think we have made abundantly clear in this episode, is that polygamy never was of God. If we want to receive answers from God, we need to be open to receiving the answers that God will give us. This is why it matters as individuals and as people, we are ignoring or taking lightly the word of God in favor of our false traditions. And in the process, we are stunting our progression, failing in our commission and bringing ourselves continually under more and more condemnation 3 nephi 26:9. “And when they shall receive this, which is expedient that they shall, should have first to try their faith. And if it so be that they shall believe these things, then shall the greater things be manifest unto them. And if it so be that they will not believe these things,(we will not believe the clear teachings in the book of Mormon because we insist on wresting them to justify the false traditions of our fathers) If it so be that they will not believe these things then shall the greater things be withheld from them unto their condemnation.” It is so plain. Can we please acknowledge the truth of our situation? Second Nephi 27:6. “And it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall bring forth unto you the words of a book and they shall be the words of them which have slumbered and behold, the book shall be sealed and in the book shall be a revelation from God from the beginning of the world, world to the ending thereof. Wherefore because of the things which are sealed up, the things which are sealed shall not be delivered in the day of the wickedness and abominations of the people. Wherefore the book shall be kept from them.” wickedness and abominations. We have heard that phrase several times through this episode. Let’s connect it to Jacob 2 verse 10. “But, but notwithstanding the greatness of the task I must do according to the strict commands of God and tell you concerning your wickedness and abominations and verse 31. For behold, I the Lord have seen the sorrow and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem. Gay and in all the land of my people because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.” Jacob defines what that wickedness and abominations is polygamy and we are told very clearly that the further word will not come while we are still allowing these wickedness and abominations to have placed in our beliefs, in our church, in our scriptures and in our hearts, it is so plain that we cannot continue to countenance wickedness and abomination of polygamy. If we want to be the people of God to be brought out from under the condemnation and to progress in knowledge and truth and receive the promises that God has promised to give us. If we will repent of these things. This is not something that should be ignored and it’s not something that should be taken lightly. The Lord cares very deeply about these issues and we should too. doctrine and covenants 84:43. And I now give unto you a commandment to beware concerning yourselves, to give diligent heed to the words of eternal life. For you shall live by every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God down to verse 52. “And whoso receives not my voice is not acquainted with my voice and is not of me. And by this, ye may know the righteous from the wicked and that the whole world groaneth
[02:24:10] under sin and darkness even now. And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief and because you have treated lightly, the things you have received, which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation rested upon the Children of Zion even all and they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the book of Mormon and the former commandments, which I have given them not only to say but to do according to that which I have written that they may bring forth fruit meat for the Father’s Kingdom. Otherwise there remain a scourge and a judgment to be poured out upon the Children of Zion. For shall the Children of the kingdom pollute my holy land? Verily, I say unto you nay,” I believe those who claim we should just ignore this and put it on the shelf are exactly wrong. We should absolutely not ignore it or put it on the shelf. We should take it out and look at it very closely. We need to study it out. And then when we are able to see the truth, we need to have sufficient faith to sincerely repent of the false beliefs we have had and trust God to help us again find our bearings and build our foundation on the rock of Jesus Christ Instead of the sandy foundation of false traditions handed down by our fathers. I hope that you have been able to make it through this long episode. I believe these things so sincerely, I believe they are incredibly important and I do want to testify that God absolutely will make these things known to us. It is true that if we knock it will be opened and if we ask, we will receive, if we are willing to study it out with an open mind and an open a heart and an open spirit and ask the right questions. Thank you so much for sticking with me for these two years, for sticking with me for these three hours. I hope that this has been valuable to you. It absolutely has for me. I will see you next time.
