67: Levirate Marriage and Raising Up Seed | 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

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[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. As always, I will again say, please listen to the beginning episodes first, if at all possible. Go ahead and listen to what episode you’re interested in, but know that the scriptural case is laid out starting at the beginning and going on from there. I am so excited to be here on this beautiful spring day surrounded by my blossoms. It smells so good in here to record episode 67, which is our very deep dive into leveret marriage and raising up seed. So thank you for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. This is an episode that has been requested several times, probably at least 6 times in just the last month or two. And so I am, so I’m actually doing it. I didn’t, as I said, I didn’t anticipate doing a full episode on this topic cause I just didn’t think there was enough to it that it was meaty enough. It just seemed like one of all of these other really quite silly claims we make. But since it’s been requested, I decided to go ahead and look into it. And This was really interesting. Sometimes I’m, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a challenge to do something that feels important, right? Like, like I was after I recorded my last episode, I, um, just couldn’t quite settle on a topic, and I planned to do this, but every time I would start studying for all of the other topics I want to do would be going through my mind. And sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a true stupor of thought and just an ADD riddled brain, you know. But, um, I really sincerely, as I often do, but I really did sincerely pray like, Lord, tell me what you want me to do. And do you want me to keep doing this podcast? Cause there’s so many books I want to write, so many other things I want to do. And, and if you do, which topic do you want me to do? And, um, that night, I, um, had one of those beautiful experiences where I was actually instructed by the Lord in my sleep. And, um, And it was amazing and profound and wonderful. And I knew from previous experience that I would likely not remember much of what I had learned. So I just desperately begged. And can I please just remember at least this one piece and I kind of clung onto that all night wrestling with myself in my sleep. I couldn’t write it down cause I was asleep, so I was just like desperately trying to hold on to it. And sure enough, as soon as I woke up, I remembered that piece, and that’s really the main thing I remembered, but it was enough to give me the direction to do this episode on love or marriage and more specifically, raising up seed and what that means. That was the thing that I was taught. And so I’m really excited to bring this forth and I need to bring this episode forward and As I have dived in, I’ve been like, wow, there’s a lot to learn about Lever marriage. And even though it is just kind of a silly claim on its face,

[00:02:51] I am really hopeful that going into this extremely comprehensive look at it, we will be able to just lay it bare and take it away as an argument for any forever for anyone who cares to. Watch and learn anything about it. So the part that I, um, and the most excited about that I felt like were the new things I learned and the doors that those opened up are at the end of this episode. That’s where they fit in the best. So I’m hoping that you will stick around till then, even though we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about the details of Lever at marriage, that you will stick around to the end to, um, help me move forward the things that I was, that I began to learn from the Lord. So any OK, we’re gonna go ahead and start, start by talking about lever at marriage. It is an Old Testament law founded Deuteronomy 25. We’re gonna go into it a lot more. In short, what it basically is is if a woman and a man get married, and, um, he dies and they don’t have any children, then the, the woman has to marry his brother and his, his brother has to marry her to raise up seed to the. Bro, don’t know if I explained that very well. We’ll get into it more. But that’s in short, what it is. So we, it’s, it’s again, just a random Old Testament law, like all the other Old Testament laws that had absolutely nothing to do with Mormon polygamy. We’re going to talk more about that and just how it’s basically just our desperation to find any scriptural evidence to argue for polygamy that we pretend. That this somehow has anything to do with Mormon polygamy and in any way justifies or proves it to be of God. So that’s what we’re getting into. People claim that lever lever at marriage, when it has come up the most for me is when I say God has like show me anywhere that God has ever commanded polygamy, which he hasn’t ever done in scripture. God has never commanded polygamy, but people will bring up lever at marriage and say, here, here’s the time. So. It’s silly. We’re gonna get into it. So first of all, we’re gonna better understand what Lever at marriage is, what it even means, where it came from. So I think it’s easy to assume that it’s, it has something to do with the Levites because the words sound the same, but that’s nothing to do with it. It actually is from the word lever, which L E V I R, which is Latin for a husband’s brother. It’s more specific than just. Brother in law we say brother-in-law, but that could be my sister’s husband in this Latin it’s specifically your um your husband’s brother that’s what it means, right? And so that’s why it’s lever at marriage because it’s marriage to your brother’s your husband’s brother and so um it’s not called that anywhere in the Bible, it’s a Latin term that it was given because it was a common practice. Found in many societies. So not only was it like it’s encoded in the Hebrew law, but it’s also encoded in the Assyrian law and the Hittite law, which were neighbors and, you know, civilizations that intermingled and lived at the same time with the Hebrews and before them that they all shared common cultural practices and features. And so, um, it’s really interesting that, OK, um, a book of laws that was discovered that’s called the Middle Assyrian Law spends a few paragraphs talking about leveret marriage.

[00:05:55] And then, um, ancient baked cuneiform tablets were found that record the Hittite law were found, which record the Hittite law. There were, there are just thousands of them, I believe, of these tablets, and they also include lever at marriage. And so it’s, um, we know that it was practiced by many cultures and in coded into their lot, not just the Hebrews. So it’s interesting, I think that I really think that if the Book of Deuteronomy had been discovered more recently rather than recorded and passed down and bumping my blossoms, recorded and blas passed down over the millennia, it would be easier for us to see this as what it is, just an ancient archaic law of What we would consider to be backward civilizations that um has nothing that is not necessarily from God, but it’s just a cultural practice, right? But we can see that with the Assyrians and the Hittites, but somehow since it’s in our scriptures, we can’t see it with the Hebrews, even though that seems to clearly be what it is, it’s really Funny to claim that this practice that was the same through all of these cultures was inspired directly by God only for this one peoples and the rest were were not that had nothing to do with God, right? And um anyway, it’s also been practiced in many other cultures throughout times and in many places it is still practiced today so it was in. Different areas in the Baltics, um, I, I’ve, I’ve read papers covering it in some of these different areas. They’re not at all comprehensive. It was practiced in Mongolia and in areas of China. It’s still today is practiced in Kurdistan and in sub-Saharan Africa and other cultures where, um, I will say that every culture that practices it is nowhere that any of us would want to have been born, right? We consider them very backward, quite brutal. Societies, the thing that all cultures and societies who practice love at marriage or ever did practice that have in common, the the main thing they have in common is they view women as property, right? It serves it it it varied throughout different cultures, its purposes and the rules regulating it, but it generally serves the purpose of keeping the property in the family. So usually, um, the family would Have to purchase a bride, right? We talk, we talked about bride price in a previous episode. So they would purchase a bride, so she belonged to the family. So her duty was to have children, specifically sons, for the son she was married to. So that’s why if, um, her husband died and they didn’t have a son, she still belonged to the family, so they needed her to marry a brother, if that makes sense. And then And and and specifically in the Hebrew law, it was so that the dead son could, his inheritance would be kept in the family. That was another common the common practice that She wouldn’t take if if she was allowed to have an inheritance, which some of these societies allowed something that she wouldn’t then marry into a different family and take that son’s inheritance, which that family wanted to keep somewhere else, right? So, in, in a whole,

[00:08:52] it was, it was seeing the bride, the woman, as a possession and a tool to be used for the father-in-law’s purposes or the family’s purposes. That’s generally, um, how, how it was viewed, how it was used, what the purpose that it fulfilled. So, um, we’re gonna go on. So anyway, so you can hopefully see that this is not at all specific to the Hebrews or to revelation from God, right? This is a common thing just as polygamy has been a common theme throughout time, just as slavery has been very common throughout time and prostitution and rape and hierarchies and kings and all right, all of these things seem to be things that happen in this world. So, um, we’re going to look at where it’s found in our Bible. It’s Deuteronomy. Um, chapter 25 verses 5 through 10. So all of these other laws spend a few paragraphs, and we have 6 verses on it. It’s, it’s pretty similar. So this is what it says starting in verse 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no child, um, sorry, I lost it and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in unto her and take her to him to wife and perform the duty of Of the husband’s brother unto her, and it shall be that the first born which she beareth shall succeed in the name of the brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel. And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife go up to the gate of the elders and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel. He will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother. Then the elders of the city shall call him and speak unto him. And if he stand to do it and say, I like not to take her, then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders and loose his shoe from off his foot and spit in his face. And apparently that’s not translated very well. We’ll get into that. And shall answer and say, so shall it be done unto the that man that will. Not build up his brother’s house, and his name shall be called in Israel, the house of him that hath his shoe loosed. So that’s the, uh, what we have in Deuteronomy, and that is where this all comes from. This is what the Bible says about it. We’re going to look at every other reference, but I want you to get an understanding of this law. Um, I will point out this comes immediately after verse 4, which says, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. And it comes right before the verses that follow it, follow it, they give us the law that if two men are fighting and the wife of one of them trying to save his life grabs the genitals of the man attacking him, then she needs to have her hand cut off. So I’ll read, I’ll read verses 11 and 12. When men strive together, one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that siteth him. And putteth forth her hand and take taketh him by the secrets. Then shalt thou cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her. So I just want to put this law in context of where we find it, right? And, um, just like the law that comes immediately before and immediately after it, we actually have no recorded cases of this law,

[00:12:03] lover at marriage, being lived in the Bible, um, being fulfilled as it is written. The closest Examples we have are what the the story of Tamara, which we also have covered in a previous episode Tammara and Judah, which actually that story very much predates this law, I don’t know if it’s close over 500 years, right, that the story of Judah and Tamar came before the law, which shows that the law was really just writing down the practices that they were already were practicing in their society. So to really quickly go back over this. Story of story of Judah and tomorrow, which seems to be conveniently ignored often, right? Um, Judah, one of the sons of, um, Jacob, the the father of the house of of, of the Jews, the line through which Jesus was born, right? Um, his son, he, he, they got Tamar to marry his oldest son. That son was wicked, so God killed him according to the scriptures. The next son was supposed to marry her and, um, do the duty of a husband’s. Brother, as we said, but instead, he spilled his seat on the ground. It says, So God killed him. So the next son was very young. And, um, Judah told Tamar, go live with your in your father’s house till my next son comes of age, then I’ll have you marry him. But when he came, so she waited all those years, when he came of age, Judah didn’t keep his promise. So Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute who Judah visited and impregnated. He, she kept his signet and his tokens. And Um, and then later revealed herself to him. And so she was impregnated by her father-in-law, and that is actually the line that Jesus comes through. So that’s an interesting story, right? That’s where this, that’s the other evidence of this law. So we could just as well use this story to claim that prostitution is an eternal law of God that needed to be restored, that is necessary for salvation for the highest degree of the social kingdom and exaltation, right? I, I’ve made this point before. I’m just resting it for anyone who’s listening to this episode first or doesn’t remember the previous stories. So, um, that’s, that’s where it comes from, or that’s like the evidence of it before it was instantiated. You’ll, you’ll remember that. Tamar was impregnated by her father-in-law, not, um, her husband, her dead husband’s brother, right? And then, um,

[00:14:21] then we claimed that Ruth is, um, a case of Leet marriage. That is often came the story of the claimed the story of Ruth because she, Boaz, who is a kinsman to her brother, marries her. So we can argue that it’s not the same. really because, um, it wasn’t his brother, right? And he wasn’t keeping an inheritance. I not that I know of. Did they name their first child for her dead husband. It’s, you know, it’s more a story about Naomi and Ruth and Boaz than it is about the dead husband and keeping his alive name alive in Israel. But the cultural practice seems to be somewhat involved in that story. So That’s the closest we get to it anywhere in, um, scripture. So, and I will say that, um, you know, it’s, it’s kind of funny that we just ignore all of this stuff about prostitution, the savior’s lying, and, and yet say clearly God supported polygamy because he wouldn’t have allowed these people to do it and have the savior born through that. Um, you know, that descend from them if God didn’t love polygamy, that’s just we just have to keep tapping into like the, the just. I, I’m trying to think of a nice word to use, the, the, the lack of polygamist reasoning, right? of reasoning by polygamy advocates or polygamy defenders. So, um, OK, so now to make it abundantly clear that the defenders of Mormon polygamist doctrine do not in any way reference lever at marriage out of devotion to Old Testament law, the majority of which they completely ignore, but only out of motivated reasoning and proof texting at its finest. I have never heard or read them then use like the law of the ox not being harnessed when he’s plowing the fields or the law of Um, cutting off a woman’s hand if she gets involved in a fight between two men, and perhaps one of their genitals, right? Like, like, it’s clearly not the dedication to Old Testament law that um is bringing this forward in the polygamy discussion. It is really just the desire to find any shred of evidence. So, so it’s, it’s pretty weak. So, um, OK, I have also Never heard any defenders of polygamy or try those who use um lever at marriage to to try to defend it ever balance it with two laws plainly given in Leviticus 18 and 20. So this is Leviticus 1816. This is in a long list of prohibitions. It says, thou shalt not uncover the uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife. It is thy brother’s nakedness. She belongs to him. So that is a prohibition saying you’re not allowed to sleep with your brother’s wife or marry your brother’s wife, right? That strictly prohibits it. Then it goes on from there to 17 and 18 other verses that the polygamists always ignore that say, Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, for they are her near kinswomen.

[00:17:22] It is wickedness. So if you look at polygamists, and even the stories we claim about Joseph Smith, we claim that there were many mother-daughter pairs, and it is not at all uncommon in mother. In Mormon polygamy, that men would marry mother-daughter pairs, right? Like, especially if a man would marry a widow, and then as soon as the daughter was old enough, he would marry her. That happened not uncommonly, strictly prohibited in the biblical law that they like to claim to to support polygamy, right? The next verse, neither shall thou take a, a wife to her sister, to. Her to uncover her nakedness beside the other in her lifetime. So that strictly prohibits prohibits marrying sisters. You remember that Leah and Rachel were sisters, right? And what’s the word? Oh, Sarah, Sarah is the word, which means my adversary, my enemy, my tormentor is what polygamist wives were were literally called in the Old Testament. That’s the word for them. And so it was. Forbidding that from happening, I guess because the example from Rachel and Leah was so painful that they said, nope, that’s not a good, a good way to do it. How many sisters are, I mean, marrying sisters may be one of the most common practices, um, to, to, um, FLDS polygamy today, definitely an early Mormon polygamy. So we also completely ignore that law. So, um, OK, the Jews at least manage this seeming contradiction by explaining the difference is that for a man to marry his brother’s widow without it being an abomination, she has to be a widow, right? Her brother has to be dead. And, and more than that, she has to be childless. If she has had a child, he is not allowed to marry her. It’s abomination. You can actually hear different rabbis going into detail about how that is not allowed, that is banned. And um if, if a man um marries a woman and she dies and has children, then he can marry her sister, and they say that’s actually the most logical thing to do, that’s what he should do is marry her sister, so her sister can raise her sister’s children, but if the same thing happens in reverse, if. A woman dies, the man, I mean, did I, did I, oh, if a man dies, the woman cannot marry the man’s brother. That is for Vorboten, right? Is that the word? And then, um, anyway, and then going on, there was something else I was going to say, lost my spot. Oh, anyway,

[00:19:41] so the, so the in Jewish law, they at least explained that the only time this may happen is if a woman, her husband dies and she is childless, and they actually have to wait 3 months to make sure she’s not even pregnant or carrying a child because then it would be forbidden. So that’s, that’s the specifics that they go into. I will also point out that This law is it also contradicts section 132, which distinctly declares that the women have to be virgins, right? So you can’t have lever at marriage and section 132 work together to defend or um provide rules for polygamy because they contradict each other, but As we know very well, none of the polygamists followed any of the rules that they claim in Revelation, defending or regulating polygamy, right? They didn’t care at all if women were virgins from the very beginning. They didn’t care at all if the women were. if they already had children, it’s like they, they use these rules to try try to prove that God, um, approves of polygamy because God gives rules to regulate it, and yet they don’t follow any of the rules at all. Never have, never will. So anyway, so that’s, that’s the basics of love, right marriage. So, so I should probably explain why defenders of polygamy find this, um, law useful. It’s because, um, Of course, God commanded that a brother had to marry his dead brother’s wife. And so if he already had a wife, he would have to become a polygamist. And so that is literally the strength of this argument. That is the reasoning they use to prove that God commands polygamy, because God commands a brother to marry his dead brother’s wife. Even if he already has a wife, the law says nothing about that, but that’s the assumption and the interpretation, right? I will point out also, people like to claim that Boaz already had a wife when he married Ruth Ruth. There is zero evidence for that. It’s more polygamist read reading into the Bible, pre pretending scriptures say things that they don’t actually say. And so that’s how they find it to be useful evidence of God commanding polygamy. Never mind that it’s like this random one of over literally over 600 Old Testament laws that have nothing to do with this that we completely ignore, and it’s a possible side effect of some applications, possibly of this rarely. Applied law. There’s very specific law that would rarely come into practice and rarely to be applied, and we have no biblical case of it ever being applied, let alone of it ever causing polygamy, right? We do know that obviously polygamy existed in ancient Israel and among the Jews. However, it was obviously also not thought well of, um, in the New Testament tells us that bishops have to be husband to only one wife, right? And God very much decried it often. So it’s not, you know, we make up a lot of things about it.

[00:22:38] So, so what is more useful is to look at those who do honor and observe Tamaic law, right? So this is one of the 3 of the 603 laws that, um. That observant Jews still observe, right? Still strive to keep. And so they are the ones that they’re the reason we have this law, right? They preserved it and passed it down and have lived according to it for millennia. They still really value the Old Testament law. So we can learn much about it by listening to their interpretation and their understanding of it. So, um Liver at marriage is a um Jewish mitzvah or commandment or ceremony that um from God and it’s called yibu, Y I B B U M Yibom is what what the prac what the law is called that you have to marry, that a widow has a childless widow has to marry her brother-in-law, right? And um the belief how they understand this is very interesting. Their belief is that the um dead man’s, the dead husband’s soul, his essence, his being, they, they, they, it’s the same word as breath of life that um God breathed into Adam, the the the man’s soul returns into the um first child, the first son specifically of the That the wife conceives with the brother, right? And that’s really all that has to be done to fulfill this law is have one son to bring that bro, the dead brother soul back to to earth back to existence is how they understand it, right? And it’s anyway, it gets a little more complicated depending on who you listen to, but many um Jewish. Uh, um, people, people who just discuss and explain Jewish law actually use the word reincarnation. It’s kind of this strange intersection between Judaic law and the idea of reincarnation, just in this one instance. And I find it really interesting because why does it have to have to happen in this case when if a man dies without being married or if anyone else dies, does their essence need to be brought back into existence in some way? It’s just this one random time and random case that this has to happen. So that’s how they understand it, which will give us more, um, information later on as we go on. I, I will point out gibo is rarely practiced today, at least. Not among the Ashkenazi Jews. Some, some Sephardic Jews, I believe, still practice it, but in general, instead of focusing on those first couple of verses I read that talk about, um, that the brother has to marry the widow, they now focus on the next couple of verses which give them the way out. It’s called the holiza. It’s a khaliza. It’s an, it’s a basically a ceremony that they still definitely observed that has to be practiced, and that’s where the interpretation comes in because what so actually the

[00:25:36] Um, so most of the Jews are actually forbidden from practicing give them anymore. They’re not, they don’t allow that marriage to take place. Instead, they have to practice, they have to perform this khaliza where the widow has to, they, they, they are given very. specific instructions just like we are with baptism or any of our ordinances. It’s an ordinance for them. She has to loosen a special shoe off of his right foot using her right hand in this special way, right, and then she spits on the ground in front of his face. She spits on the ground in front of him, which they say is a better translation. Than our translation, which is to spit in his face. It obviously was meant to be a way to demean him, but now they kind of use it as a way to fulfill this, this commandment without having the marriage take place. So that’s what they do now is the Khalisa. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit more as we go forward. Again, there will be links below to any, all of the well, I can’t link everything I’ve read and looked into, but there will be several for anyone who wants to study further. So. Um, but I will say other than the Jews for observant Jews who keep the 633 Talmudiclas, for all of the rest of us who have no problem eating shellfish or pork or wearing wool and linen or other varied garments together or keeping milk and meat in the same kitchen, right? These Strange Old Testament laws that we universally ignore have nothing to do with us, and they definitely have nothing to do with polygamy. So I want to make that really clear. Please put any questions or, um, you know, I always prefer a discussion rather than just a presentation, but that’s the nature of a podcast, so we can continue the discussion in the, um, in the comments if anyone has any thoughts they want to share. So. Anyway, OK, I will, now, now we’re gonna go forward because defenders of polygamy take this claim even further to claim that not only does it prove that God commanded polygamy, can we agree that that’s ridiculous, but they falsely claim that Jesus supported and taught Leverett marriage and approved it. Therefore, Jesus himself acknowledged and approved and. Reported and taught polygamy. That’s, that’s where they take it to. So this is completely false and ridiculous. I have found, I know what scriptures they’re referring to, and every time I see someone make this claim, I say, are these the scriptures you’re referring to or is there something else? And usually they don’t even know those scriptures. They don’t even know the scriptures they’re referring to. They just heard this argument, so they just repeat this argument and believe. That Jesus taught polygamy by supporting Lori marriage. No, none of it, none of it is true. So we will go over the stories in the New Testament where Lori marriage makes its mark. It’s recorded in Matthew 22, Luke 12, I mean, Mark 12 and Luke 20. It’s actually, it’s not that common to have an event covered. In three of the four Gospels and in strikingly similar language and detail,

[00:28:31] um, usually like, like that’s quite rare. So this is, this is an interesting case. And what it really is, is, well, I’ll go ahead and read it. I’ll read the version in Matthew 22, starting at verse 23. The same day came the Sadducees, which, which say there is no resurrection, and asked him, so the Sadducees, who did not believe in resurrection, which Jesus was teaching, and did not believe in eternal life, had gotten together to try to formulate a trap for Jesus to try to force him to, um, like trick him into a corner to have to acknowledge that there’s no such thing as resurrection or eternal life. That’s what was happening here, right? Um, so they came to him and asked him, saying, Master, Moses say if a man die having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. So there it is, there’s a lover at marriage, and we are going to focus on these, these words raise up seed because they can become important. Um, we’ll talk about that later though. It’s going on with verse 25. Now there were, there were with us 7 brethren, and the first when he had married his wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife and his brother. Likewise, the second also, and the 3rd unto the 7th. And last of all, the woman died also. So do you, do you get at this woman there Her 7 brothers, each one of them died childless, married her to fulfill, um, Give them, but then died childless. So she’s saying, they’re saying, well, yeah, we’ll go on. And last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall be shall she be of the seven, for they all had her. So that’s what they’re trying to say. Now we’re going to talk about this a little bit more because it’s actually kind of, kind of funny, kind of interesting how this whole thing happened and how we use it. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. So he first decries them for their ignorance, right? And then he says, which I think, well, we’ll talk about this a little bit more, he says, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven, as Whitney said previously, like. You’re not capable of understanding anything, you know, you are ignorant. And then he goes on to say, which is actually the important answer for what they were challenging him with. They weren’t asking him about marriage here. Please notice that. They were using This really strange law of marriage in the Old Testament to try to trap him

[00:30:55] to disprove the possibility of resurrection or eternal life. So this is the really important answer was his answer about, is there resurrection and is there eternal life. So he says, for, um, for as in the resurrection, they marry or given in marriage, but as angels of God in heaven that I should have read before, and this is it. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken by, by, um, That which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at His doctrine. And so he put together different scriptures to prove to them that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must still be living because God has got of living, right? It was so astonishing. It was this, it was in these exchanges like the, um, Pharisees were shocked that he had silenced the Sadducees that way he’d out. Smart at them. They, they tried to ask him questions. It was this exchange that led to no one daring asking him questions after anymore after this, after these answers he were given, he gave to these challenges. So it’s amazing that like, it’s sad that we just ignore Jesus’ In inspired brilliance here. The way that he knew scripture and was able to bring it together through his brilliance and the inspiration of God to be able to answer this challenge. It really is like it is quite stunning and teaches us a lot about what about our Savior, right? That’s what we should focus on. But we completely ignore that cause we only care about what he said about marriage and eternal marriage, and then even worse, we use this exchange to claim that Jesus taught or fulfilled lover at marriage and that therefore he supported polygamy. I hope you can see from reading that how truly dishonest and ignorant. That really is. And so the funny thing here is that this this question that the Sadducees came up with actually it what what they were doing was finding a really problematic Old Testament law, coming up with a bizarre hypothetical to stretch it to its ultimate limit, and presenting that to try to make a point, right? What they failed to realize and what everyone else fails to realize as well. I just like I was up all night last night working on this and all of a sudden I was like, oh my goodness, and realized this question itself like undo this law. It it it’s great evidence to prove the um I guess the silliness of this entire law of lover at marriage because if this woman Married married all of those brothers, so she married the second brother cause she had to raise up seed to the first brother, right? Then she married the 3rd brother cause she had to raise up seed to which brother? Like by the time she married the 7th brother, if they had a child, who’s whose would it be? The 1st, because that was the 1st, the 6th because that was the last one married. Do you, do you see the problem? Like it it their own question doesn’t disprove um resurrection or eternal marriage. It disproves lever at marriage and shows how utterly ridiculous it is as an entire concept. So,

[00:34:06] and also, as I pointed out in a previous episode, it is interesting that the Sadducees naturally just assumed that if there was eternal life, that there was also eternal marriage, right? Because their question was. Like, like, whose wife is she in the next life because clearly she’s someone’s life because clearly marriage would extend beyond the grave, beyond resurrection. I find all of those things interesting. I hope what you’re getting, what I’m saying about their question disproving the law itself. I, I would love, tell me, tell me your thoughts like this when she married the 7th brother, if they had a son. Who’s of those other brothers would it be, right? How is that supposed to work? It’s really um actually a good case in point to say this is a problematic law, so it should teach us more about the law than it should teach us about, like, like about the lack of Old Testament law than anything else, right? So um. But again, had nothing to do with polygamy at all, but it wasn’t the only time that professors of religion tries to use strange bad Old Testament laws to try to trick or trap or manipulate Jesus. They did the same thing with a woman taken in adultery, right? They like, didn’t, I’ve talked about that in another episode as well. They didn’t care at all. her. They saw her as a means to an end, which sadly is how women were viewed in many of these ancient cultures, the ones that practiced love at marriage, for example. And, um, they used her and dragged her before him and tormented her just to try to trap him to say, OK, what are you gonna do? Cause we have this really bad, um, Old Testament law that requires that she be stoned. Are you to follow it or not, right? And so, and again, he taught them a higher lot and found a way through that challenge. They have another time that they use marriage to try to trap him, right? This is recorded, um, well, I find all of the different places. I know it’s multiple places, but I’m reading from, I think Mark 10. 0, it’s also in Matthew 19. This is Mark 10:2. And the Pharisees came to him and asked him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him. So again, they were using Old Testament teachings on marriage to try to create a trap for Jesus because they were problematic, right? And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement for to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your hearts, he wrote you this precept. Matthew adds, but from the beginning it was not so, continuing to verse 66. But from the beginning of the creation of God from the creation, God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. So then they are no more twain but one flesh. What God hath joined together,

[00:36:46] let not man put asunder. I just love that because we want to claim that Jesus supported polygamy. When Jesus clearly supported monogamy and says this is how God established it from the beginning, and any deviation from that is because of the hardness of your hearts, right? Basically. Your fallen nature and the fallen nature of the society you live in. He tells us that clearly. So that is the lens we should understand his answers to both of these questions about marriage, right? We can apply this answer to all of it. He basically in both cases is saying, you know and understand nothing. You don’t value marriage or God’s law. You don’t understand. And God, and you were only using these hiccups in the law caused by man’s fallen nature in order to dismiss God’s teachings, God’s eternal teachings. And I find it amazing that we are still doing this today. We are still trying to find these little random Old Testament laws to try to undermine God’s eternal commands and teachings. So, um, The other thing that I find really funny in this entire exchange is that this case that polygamists use to try to prove polygamy is actually the opposite. If anything, it proves polyandry, right? This is not the story, as we’ve talked about in previous previous episode, of a man with 7 wives. This is the story of a woman with 7 husbands. Can we focus and recognize that? Right? Like, that’s pretty important. Jesus answers all of it by saying, God created an established marriage between one man and one woman. Any deviation from that is an error, basically, or is due to the hardness of your hearts and your fallen nature, right? And so I think it’s pretty important to recognize that, um, that’s what it was about. Now, I want to say one thing that I think we don’t pay enough attention to about Jesus and his answers in these cases, the woman takes. Adultery and both of these cases of marriage is his focus on law, how Jesus approached law, right, how he approaches law. He said he’s constantly being condemned and criticized by the professors of religion of his day for not strictly adhering to the law that they thought was dominant, and his message was, I wrote it down. Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. I think that could also be said. The law was made for man and not man for the law, right? The law is here to serve man, to elevate man, to help man become the kind of people that love God and love their fellow man, love their neighbors themselves, right? What Jesus said is the entire purpose of the law. That is the purpose of the law. Jesus put the individual above the specifics of the law, continually, repeatedly, constantly, as opposed to the others. Who put the law above people, right? And interestingly again. That’s what polygamy does. The experiences of the women don’t matter. The women don’t matter at all.

[00:39:50] Even the men in these polygamous communities who also are like slaves to polygamy, you know, like just like Abraham and Jacob didn’t want polygamy and were victims of polygamy. Many polygamous men are the same way today. Many of them don’t want polygamy and don’t thrive in it, and certainly the women, but God commands this. It’s the means of exaltation that’s required. So you have to do it. So we’re doing that Old Testament that Phariseeical putting the law above the people where Jesus wants us to put the people above the law. That doesn’t mean to ignore the law, right? But it means that through grace, we are saved and that the individuals matter. Love is the most important. um, lesson that Jesus came to teach. And we obey the law because it helps us grow in love. And then as far as the law helps us grow in love, we obey it. But we don’t strictly obey all of the Old Testament law, especially to put it above the experiences and well-being of people, right? Jesus did the exact opposite. So, um, OK, that that’s, it’s interesting that uh just like polygamists put law above people, still with um observant Jews, and I, I don’t want to be critical, but you know it is interesting. They still also seem to put law above people in many cases. For example, you can listen to many different rabbis talking about Yibo and Shalisahalia. And, um, they, I, I heard one rabbi talking about some tragic examples of it. For example, um, like Alia has to be performed before that woman, that widow, that young widow, cause she died childless, can, can marry again to anybody else, right? And so he gave an example of she lived in America and her husband’s brother was behind the Iron Curtain. So he couldn’t leave to perform a Khalia, so she was never able to remarry because fulfilling Khalia was the most important part. There was another story of um. A woman whose husband’s brother was, I think, 2 when the husband died. So in, in Jewish law you have to be 13 that to be considered an adult, right? That’s when they have the bar mitzvah, which is another mitzvah, right? That’s the rule for a ceremony or a law, and a bat mitzvah is how I, I think they say it. So anyway. So that woman had to wait 11 years for the little brother to turn 13 to be able to perform a Khaliza so that she could be married. So they, they just kind of talked about, yeah, sometimes it’s tragic. This law causes problems just like all the others, but the law must be performed. And I think that Jesus would see the individual and allow a woman to remarry, even if her husband’s brother were behind the iron curtain and couldn’t perform Khalia, for example, you know.

[00:42:32] So, um, anyway, so that’s an interesting perspective. So I think that those are some interesting questions we need to bring, bring to it. How should we view law is one of the things Jesus is teaching us here. And also this, this case of, um, well, I, I, I want to, going back to this being about polyandry, not polygamy, and this being about 7 husbands as opposed to 7 wives. I find an interesting thing that I gave a little bit of thought to, but didn’t have time to get really in depth. So if anyone has any insight, please share them with me. But I find it so interesting that sort of, um, I did an episode on Isaiah 4:1, which is also in the Book of Mormon, and that’s where 7 in that day, 7 women will take hold of one man and, you know, and then, so it’s always 7, right? When we’re messing, well, many things, but when we’re messing with marriage, it’s always 7. So in Isaiah, it was 7 women taking hold of one man. With the Sadducees, it was 7 men marrying one woman. And I, I know that 7 is the word for completeness, like the number of this Earth, there are 7 continents, there are 7 days, there were 7 creative periods, right? But I am, I am, I would like to understand better why it’s 7 that is used in both of these examples. I find that to be interesting. So just like there are 7 churches, right? So if you have your thoughts, please share them. So now that we’ve covered Leveret marriage in the Bible and ancient history, we are going to look at how it came to be part of the Mormon polygamy dialogue. Like most things, biblical or scriptural and polygamist, it seems to have originated with Orson Pratt, who was the biblical scholar, the scriptural scholar on polygamy, right? He, um, he was always the expert that looked to to Brigham Young specifically looked to to explain and defend polygamy. It was Orson Pratt, Brigham Young had give, I’ve mentioned this many times, give the, um, big sermon explaining polygamy in the very 1st August 1852 conference where polygamy was revealed. It was also Orson Pratt that Brigham Young turned to when this, the, um, doctor, the Reverend Dr. JP Newman challenged Brigham Young to a debate. He was the, um, What was he, the, the chaplain of the US Senate, if that’s what it was called. He was, he was very well known. It brought national attention to this debate when he challenged Brigham Young to debate the question of does the Bible sanction polygamy? And he came all the way out to Utah to debate Brigham Young, but Brigham Young chose his champion and had Orson Pratt debate him instead. So I still, I’ve mentioned that before.

[00:45:07] I still want to do an episode on those debates. I think it would be fascinating. So hopefully I’ll be able to get to that. I’m, I’m planning to. But um it was Orson Pratt, this biblical scriptural polygamy scholar who made the first connection between Mormon polygamy and Leverett marriage, although he didn’t even call it that, never is it referred to as Leverett marriage anywhere in the Journal of Discourses or in any of these writings that I have found at least about these early Mormon leaders’ writings or teachings about polygamy. So, but the one time that he does talk about Deuteronomy 25 and this teaching that we now call Lever at marriage is in um was given in a sermon at the Tabernacle on the 24th of July 1859. So this must have been a big day to celebrate Utah statehood, right? The July 24th is. The Utah celebration day. And, um, and this is at the talk, we call it just the talk on polygamy. I’ll link it below. And he’s giving all of these justifications for polygamy, and one of them is his way of kind of twisting Deuteronomy 25 to claim that it’s about polygamy. So, um, little has been added since he first gave this justification. It’s just other people sort of, um, Regurgitating what he says. I will say this talk, like many of Orson Pratt is just filled with so much. I’m gonna read snippets of it, but you just have to read the whole talk to get a taste. Well, you have to read all of the things he said, but this talk has its fair share. I will, you will recall that um even Brian Hailes through Orson Pratt under the bus. I don’t quote them. I don’t know if you want to push back against Orson Pratt, go ahead, but I’m not going to defend him. So I, I don’t, I don’t quote him in my trilogy. I think some of those ideas are ridiculous and, uh. Yeah, yeah. And I don’t, I don’t. blame anybody for being offended by some of those ideas. They, they weren’t, uh, kind to, to women, I think. You could say Orson Pratt was an apostle and speaking in a special general conference. So that’s, that’s canon. Yeah, that’s canonized scripture, but. So as I said, this talk is the only time I’ve heard any of the leaders um in any way reference what polygamy advocates now use to defend polygamy, this lever at marriage. And so it it’s weird that, you know, it’s a weird place that Brianha. Orson Pratt actually seemed to agree. Brian Hills doesn’t agree with Orson Pratt, but a love for marriage, he seems to, I don’t know that he even knows that Orson Pratt talked about it. At least I didn’t get that impression. So here are some of Orson Pratt’s justifications. This is part of what he says in his talk. I will now repeat to you an expressed command of God given to certain persons to marry more than one wife. So he’s claiming God commanded certain people to be polygamists, right? And they could not get rid of it without breaking the law of God.

[00:48:00] However righteous and moral a man may have been in many other respects. Yet if he did not continue in all things in the book of the law, he was to be cursed. I’m cutting little parts out just because it’s so long and so redundant, so I’m trying to do it for clarity. Nothing to change, meaning you can read the whole thing linked below. Now among the things written in that book of the law, we find these words that he quotes Deuteronomy 255 to 6, which I’ve already quoted that if a woman dies, the bro, I mean, if a man dies, his brother has to marry his wife if she is widow, if she is childless, if she has no children. Must his brother do this if he has a family of his own? Yes, it does not matter whether he has a family or not. That command is given to him. It is the law of God, and the reason is given in order that the name of the dead might not perish and be cut off from Israel. The living brother had to preserve the inheritance in his deceased. Brother’s family. Now if the widow of the deceased brother married a stranger, a person that did not belong to that particular tribe, the inheritance would go to a stranger and would be shifting from tribe to tribe or even might become the inheritance of the one that did not belong to the tribe, to one that did not belong to the tribes of Israel. In order to prevent this, the first born male of the living brother was to be considered the son of the dead brother and was to receive the inheritance and perpetuate the same in the family and was to continue from generation to generation. Now suppose that there were 7 brothers as as there often. And families of the size of Israel. So you can see that so far he’s keeping in in line with, um, at least theoretically with with Deuteronomy 25 and with this the question, the challenge of the sad disease pose. But this is where he goes from here. So there are 7 brothers, right? Because, and he, and he points out that was common in Israel. I will point out I have 7 sons. Anyway, I think that’s funny. Suppose they married him, they suppose they married them wives. So whoops, now he just fell off big time from the narrative of the Sadducees were presenting. Now they each have a wife, right? And 6 of them should die without leaving male issue to bear up their name. But the 7th brother was living. Now, he, he is completely twisted and inverted anything. That the scriptures talk about. He also has changed the law. He specified that it has to be a male heir. I will point out it very clearly says just child. It does not say anything about a male male child, and the way the Jews still interpret it. If that woman has any children, she cannot marry her dead husband’s brother, and he cannot marry her. That is abomination. That is forbidden, right? So he’s twisted the law right there and says they have to have a son. He also has taken with the stats he said and completely turned it inside out to pretend it’s about polygamy. All 6 of the brothers died, but they all have a wife who didn’t have children, bizarrely, and now he’ll go on from there. Do you not see that this law in command would be binding on the 7th still living to take the 6 widows? This he would be compelled to do. And yet this generation. Say polygamy is a crime. I’m just, I’m just amused like I thought the Sadducees story was bizarre enough. They’re they’re weird hypothetical that these 7 brothers died. But, um, Orson Pratt takes it to new heights with these 7 brothers were all married and we’re all childless and 6 of them die.

[00:51:14] And, um, anyway, that that’s how he, yeah, how he uses it to again use the same story, this difficult Old Testament law to undermine the teachings of God, exactly what the scis were doing. And so, um, and yet this generation say polygamy is a crime. Well, here is the sanction of divine authority. Here a man is brought under obligation to take these six widows and raise up seed to his dead brothers. How long was this to continue? Is there any evidence in the Bible that It was to cease when Christianity should be introduced by our Savior and his apostles. What was the condition of the? Well, first of all, he say, is there any evidence that Old Testament law was supposed to end with the Savior? Remember that he asks that question. We’re going to get into that in a little bit. The answer is yes. Um, and then he goes on, what was the condition of the Jewish nation at the at the time Jesus went forth preaching, um, preaching repentance and baptism and admitting members into his church? I will tell you there were thousands and thousands that were polygamists and were obligated by the com. of God to be so. They could not get rid of it if they obeyed the law of Moses, and they did obey or and if they did not obey, they were to be cursed. So that’s, um, that’s where all of this comes from. Again, Orson Pratt laid the foundation for all of the arguments for polygamy that are still bandied about today. So That will be linked below. I just find it amusing in so many ways. So, um, we are going to talk about some of those points. We’ll address them, but first I just want to kind of spell out where these arguments are found, now why they’re still used to defend polygamy. So Ogden Kraut, who I’ve also spoken about before, you’ll remember he’s the foremost polygamy scholar. Um, he wrote, Jesus was married, Polygamy in the Bible, many other, many books. He’s very prolific in his writing, but he also relies heavily on this argument and in some of his many pained defenses of polygamy. So I’m going to quote from his book Polygamy and The Bible in this instance. Again, it’s so hard to pare down what to read, but I’m just going to reference Polygamy in the Bible pages 83 through 90. The link will be below. His books are available online, which I really appreciate. Just as I think it’s useful to understand what other lawsle at marriage is sandwiched between and Deuteronomy 25, I think it’s useful to, to know what, um, other claims of polygamy. Um, Ogden Kraut sandwiches Leverett marriage in between. So right before he, I, um, right before he talks about Leverett marriage, he references Deuteronomy 2115 to 17 and Exodus 21. which both treat, but which both teach that men must treat their wives equally and fairly, right? He can’t have a favorite wife and a less favorite wife. He can’t give better things to one wife than to another, and he can’t leave a better inheritance to the children from one wife than another. So That’s an interesting one that again has never been lived by any polygamist.

[00:54:12] If anything, that law was um made again in contradiction to what Abraham did because clearly that wasn’t how he lived polygamy and clearly it also wasn’t how Jacob lived polygamy, right? And interestingly, I’m glad he points this out. He’s using it to say, see, God regulates polygamy, therefore he approves it without recognizing that no polygamist ever follows any of the regulations, including especially this one. Again, go back and watch the episodes I’ve done on Brigham Young and his wives and the um Gordo house and the farmhouse and that, you know, and how um differently the wives were treated, but Kra, who himself was a polygamist who it seems to me had a favorite wife, you know, he seems to give a little out of this one. Here’s a quote from that section. He says, some men by nature were more favorable to certain wives than others. In some cases, however, it might not be so much the man’s fault as the woman’s, for some women may be kind while others are critical, one obedient, another unruly, one generous, but another greedy, etc. So, you know, that’s interesting, right? The man, of course, can’t be expected to treat his wife equally if one is more lovable than the other, right? We could add many things to his list. One might be old and one might be young. One he might have been married to for a long time, and one is a brand new teenage bride, one, right? One might be kind of unattractive or plain, and one might be very beautiful. So if the wife doesn’t measure up in this competition that they’re all in, because they are plural wives, then he can’t be blamed for treating them unfairly or unequally. I just find it to be very interesting and, um, you know, it’s, it’s, I, I, as I said, I’m glad he pointed out yet another Old Testament regulation of polygamy that no polygamists, especially, I mean, including Mormon polygamists have ever kept. So, um, then he goes on to give his defense of love at marriage, which is very similar. It’s just kind of resting what Orson Pratt already said, so I won’t bother to read it. But um then right after that, he gives another evidence of biblical scriptural support for polygamy, which um is basically About booty of war, right? So first, he quotes Deuteronomy 21, starting in verse 10. When thou goest forth to war against thine enemy, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them up into thine hands, and thou has taken them captive and seest among the captives a beautiful woman and has has a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to wife, to thy wife, and recall in this time that just means that you wanted to have Sex with her because that’s how you became, how she became your wife, right?

[00:56:54] And it goes on from there to explain a little more. So basically, you lust after her, right? Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails, and she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her and shall remain in thine house and bewail her father and mother for a full month. And after that, thou shalt go in unto her and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be if thou have no delight in her that thou shalt let her go whither she will, but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, for thou shalt not make merchandise of her because thou hast humbled her. So in case we need to clarify this, right, so when you have Killed the entire society. We’re gonna explain that a little more, except the young girls, except the young virgin girls. And you see one that you lust after, you take her home, let her have, well, she has to shave her head and completely change everything about her. She can mourn for a month, then you’re free to rape her. And at which point, if you’re done with her, if that’s all you wanted, then you can’t sell her as a slave because you’ve raped her. So you’ve down. her basically. So you just have to kind of put her out on the street. But, um, you can choose to keep her as a wife, or you can just be done with her at that point. So, um, that, that he is really excited about these verses. We’ll go on and quote him. He goes on, um, and, and gives a case in point. Very excitedly, he starts, uh, he quotes Numbers 31, so I’ll read verses 17 and 18. This is a case where this actually happened. Where, um, they were commanded. Now, therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man lying with him. But all the women children, that’s all the girls, right? All the young, the, the women children, the child women, um, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Wow, see how, how much God loves polygamy. This is what he told the children of Israel to do. So Ogden goes on to excitedly demonstrate that what happened in this chapter where This was commanded when the Israelites destroyed the Midianites, and he’s and and and the verses are listing what verse two literally calls the booty of war. And so in the list, along with the 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys, there are also 32,000 virgin girls. So now keep in mind they were commanded to kill all of everybody except the little girls, right, except the virgin girls. They were kept alive and you get to choose. So that’s what’s happened. This is what these girls have just gone through. This is, uh, it’s a complete genocide

[00:59:38] except the girls that they’re going to take home for their own, for as long as they want them, right? So Ogden goes on and it Decidedly does the math and announces, I’m quoting him now, and he uses exclamation points after every one of these sentences. These Israelites took back home an average of nearly 3 wives each, and this was only one battle. It happened on many other occasions. There is no doubt that the Lord approved of polygamy when he gave this lot to a people that already had a surplus of women. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s what polygamy is. That’s what it does. No ability to see women, just like 132. All you can see women have literally, you are only capable of seeing even little girls and all women as property, right? So we’re going to use this horrific, these horrific Old Testament stories that all of us try to figure out, but definitely don’t like to look at. He’s glorying in them as evidence of how much God loves. Polygamy and wants it for his chosen people, right? So, um, that’s, that’s what it is. Women do not exist other than as means to satisfy the lustful, prideful means of ends of men, right? That’s, that’s what this is. So, um, OK, we’re gonna move on from there. So started with Orson Pratt. Ogden Kraut continued it on, but it’s not just Ogden Kraut. So Todd Compton, I’ve interviewed him, nice guy, wrote, um, wrote about Joseph’s wives, right? But he in his book claims that Agnes Koololbraith, who was Don Carlos’s widow, married Joseph in Leverett marriage as an example of Leverett marriage. In fact, his chapter on Agnes Koolbraith is called the Leverett Marriage. So, so Don Carlos was the youngest brother of the Smiths, right? He was the one that Uh, it’s interesting. He and I believe Hiram’s brother-in-law were running the printing press, and both died very violently of a horrible sickness, and others took over the printing press after that, the, the printing of the newspaper, right? So that’s an, it’s an interesting story, but Agnes and Don Carlos had 3 daughters, and then, so, so already for many reasons it does not qualify as yum, right? She had 3 daughters already. She was not free to marry her brother’s husband, uh, I mean her husband’s brother. And um so it’s that’s strictly prohibited by Old Testament law. So there’s no way to claim that Joseph was marrying Agnes to fulfill this bizarre Old Testament law, and as with All of the claims of Joseph’s wives, the evidence that Agnes that Joseph ever married Agnes is extremely weak based on claims of, well, John Bennett,

[01:02:35] who was trying to have Joseph killed was wanting, wanting to lead to that end, listed as as one of Joseph’s wives. There are so many possible explanations for that. I’m not going to go into them here because that’s not the topic. But um that’s where it started and then others who had access to that claim, made that claim later on, you know, the decades later when they were looking for anyone to claim as a wife, and I will say that Agnes never claimed in any way that she married Joseph or participated at all in polygamy. She did not come west with the saints. She stayed stayed in Nauru, married a different man, and interestingly, with that other man, they had a son, and she named. They they named their first son Don Carlos after her husband, her dead husband, which is a common practice, right? You name someone for someone you loved who have who you have lost, still wasn’t lover at marriage. The new husband wasn’t her husband’s brother and she already had children, right? So, and then I will point out they they went to California and her daughter, um, Don Carlos’s and Agnes’s daughter, who was young when Don Carlos died. Her name is Ana Kobra and she became, she was brilliant, became actually the poet laureate of California, was, um, friends with Sam, Sam Clements, Mark Twain, and many other famous people and brilliant writers. She adamantly opposed polygamy her entire life. There are letters between her and I believe it’s Joseph F. Smith debating polygamy. She’s brilliant and spunky even from a young age and has the best arguments against it. And she never, never believed her mother was in any way involved in polygamy, neither Agnes nor Ina ever, um, acknowledge anything about polygamy. And in fact, Ina was extremely close with her mother. She only had one marriage as a young girl. She married a really, really like kind of psychotic guy. It was terrifying. They had to flee. She never married again, and she lived with her mother until her mother’s death, which she mourned until her death. So they were very close and there was no mention of polygamy in any way. So it’s, it’s anyway, they’re not good claims to even say that Joseph was married to Agnes, but it’s just massive like ignorance, willful ignorance to try to designate it as lever at marriage because that has nothing to do. With Leverett marriage, right? So it’s just ways to explain it. Then it gets even better. This is the last, well, no, I guess I have two more claims we have to look at of Robert marriage. So this is from Don Bradley. He’s Brian Hales’s researcher who um looks for the, uh, you know, does the research that Brian Hailes collects, and he claims, OK, get this one. He claims that Joseph married Emma as a fulfillment of Leverett marriage. So basically his explanation is that Alvin, Joseph’s brother, died, and um, so he, one of my favorite parts of his entire talk is that he, he talks about how Joseph constantly adapts Leverett marriage,

[01:05:29] which is actually his way basically of acknowledging that nothing we claimed Joseph did had anything to do with Leverett marriage. We just want to keep calling it that. And saying, yeah, it doesn’t work and it doesn’t work, but Joseph’s just adapting it to fit whatever circumstances he has. So, uh, it’s it’s truly bizarre, but he claims that Joseph was marrying Emma in order to raise up seed to Alvin. That’s that’s what he has come up with. So he goes on further to say that Emma was actually marrying Alvin, not Joseph. So Joseph was standing proxy for Alvin when he married Emma. It was his first like proxy work is what he’s what he’s claiming and um and then their when their first son, you’ll remember their first son died and he was named Alvin, which again was not uncommon. Joseph loved his brother Alvin. So to name his first son for his brother he had lost is a very common practice still now, nothing to do with Lever at marriage, right? And um, so he, but he says he was literally Alvin’s son, not Joseph. So, um, we’ve already talked about how God commanded that Joseph needed to take Emma to get the plates. That’s in the episode of, um, Emma and Joseph. Bradley believes it was because he was supposed to take Alvin, but Alvin died, and Emma was pregnant at the time. with Alvin. So he was actually taking Alvin with him, not Emma. And so I guess, you know, he was saying Joseph was really anyway, so Joseph had fathered Alvin, his son, by proxy and so was taking Alvin with him to get the plates. Here, here I’ll let him explain it. Joseph had fathered that child standing in Alvin’s shoes, or perhaps pants, um. For child fathering purposes and plate skating purposes, uh, Joseph was Alvin. So it goes on from there. And in this theory, polygamy actually started again with polyandry cause love marriage is about polyandry, right? And um which causes a whole bunch of other problems. One of the more troubling aspects of Joseph’s polygamy was his secrecy in keeping it from Emma. If the leverette theory of Joseph’s marriage to Emma is correct, his later secrecy about his polygamist activities may follow a pattern set in the very beginning of their marriage, to wit. Perhaps he kept from Emma, not only that he had multiple spouses, but also that she did. Truly you have a dizzying intellect. So there you have it. I, I don’t want to be hard on Don Bradley cause he too seems like a nice guy, but truly the, the logic of polygamy advocates never ceases to amaze me where they will take this stuff. So finally, most of you will recall this clip from with Brian Hailes. The Book of Mormon is the strongest book of scripture in its prohibition of polygamy of all scriptures. Like, it, it very strongly condemns and forbids polygamy more than any other book of scripture does, and it does so repeatedly. So I’m I, I guess I’m kind of curious how you make sense of that, where we believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God,

[01:08:51] and we believe it to be the most correct book, and yet how do you believe that and then also believe that polygamy is of God. Well, I, I mean, you, you referred to it earlier, um. You know, there’s the levirate law. Let me, let me talk about that for a second, because the verbiage could be important. In, in the Old Testament under the law of Moses, if a man dies, Um, his brother is to marry the widow if they don’t have any male offspring already. Now, if the, the brother is already married, the, the widow becomes his second wife. That’s polygamy. It was acknowledged to be, uh, Something that could be practiced in Christ’s time. I don’t know that we have any examples of it, but to say that Christ was against polygamy is not exactly supported because he acknowledged this, this dynamic which which could create polygamy, at least a a big a bigamy with with one extra wife. But the language of that, um, uh, and I, I can’t bring up the scripture, but it, it’s, uh, that the, the brother marries the widow to raise up seed to the deceased to the deceased. That language is the same language we find in Jacob 2:30. And you said it’s not a loophole. I think it absolutely isn’t a loophole, and I will probably just have to agree to disagree, but I don’t know what else it could possibly be referring to. But you’re absolutely right. There is no authorized polygamy. Within the Book of Mormon. Um, but I read that statement to raise up seed to be the same application that we see in the Levirate law, and that God was, was reserving that possibility, um, that he could command it, which, which he, uh, we, I believe he did through Joseph. voices, if not all of the leading voices that are the polygamy defenders, you’ll recall that the church um History, the the family history library when I asked for information about Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith put me in the temple ceilings, they recommended that I get Todd Compton’s book and Brian Hill’s book. So those are who the church relies on for their information. So they are all still. Continuing this story of Lever at marriage as an explanation justification defense, evidence of polygamy, Mormon polygamy, right? So, um, OK. So there are so many things we need to point out. First, we’re going to talk about the ridiculousness of claiming any random Old Testament law, any Old Testament law at all, to defend any latter-day practice. So you recall that the Orson Pratt said, where is there any evidence that this would have stopped with Jesus? Well, let’s, let’s look at some, right? First come the words of Jesus. Um,

[01:11:42] first, the words of Jesus Christ, Matthew 5:17. Think not I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. And there’s a lot more about it in the Bible. But as followers of Jesus Christ, who believe in the Book of Mormon, we have a very, very much more well understood. I am struggling with my words. This is me on no sleep and I apologize. We have a great understanding of this. As Christ explained it, as I, as Nephi explained it, the not law hath become dead unto us, and we are made alive in Christ because of our faith. Yet we keep the law because of the commandments, and we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ. We preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophesies that our children may know to what source they may look for remission of their sins. Where Therefore we speak concerning the law that our children may know the deadness of the law, and they, by knowing the deadness of the law, may look forward unto that life which is in Christ and know for what end the law was given. And after the law is fulfilled in Christ, that they need not harden their hearts against him when the law ought to be done away, right? So we have a great understanding that the Old Testament law is fulfilled and done away. It is dead. It is not how, um, Salvation is given that comes through Jesus Christ, and the law was actually given as a way to demonstrate the need of Jesus Christ to demonstrate that, right? Or even more profoundly, as Jesus himself teaches in 3 5:15, I’ll start with verse 3. Again, there are many examples we could pull from him I’m just choosing these. I think this is a good one. And he said unto them, marvel not that I said unto you that all things had passed away and that all things had become new. Behold, I say unto you that the law is fulfilled that was given unto Moses. Behold, I am he that gave the law, and I am he who covenanted with my people Israel. Therefore, the law in me is fulfilled, for I have come to fulfill the law. Therefore, it hath an end. Um, behold, I do not destroy the prophets, for as many as not been fulfilled in me verily I say unto you, shall be fulfilled. And because I said unto you that all things, all things have passed away, I do not destroy that which has been that which hath been spoken concerning things which are to come. For behold, the covenant which I have made with my people is not all fulfilled, but the law. was given unto Moses hath an end in me. Behold, I am the law and the light. Look unto me and endure unto the end, and ye shall live, for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life. Behold, I have given unto you a commandment. Therefore, keep I have given unto you the commandments, the commandments that Jesus brought right in the sermon on the Mount and other places. Therefore, keep my commandments, and this is the law and the prophets, for they truly testified of me, right? We have so much evidence saying that it’s OK that we don’t still keep Old Testament law. That’s, that is exactly what we believe the gospel

[01:14:42] is about, right? So I don’t know why Orson Pratt claimed that we should still keep Old Testament law, well, not keeping any Old Testament law, but there it is. And so, and, and, and there are so many examples I could use to um. To point this out about how Old Testament law is done away, and it’s so bizarre that we just pick little bits and pieces out whenever it suits us and pretend that we still have some use for the Old Testament law, right? And so with the 603 Old Testament Torah laws, there are far too many to point out the ridiculous of making this claim for us today that we don’t apply to ourselves. But I will just use one example, because I find it interesting that we can look at as kind of the prime example. Of this Old Testament law. It is the um ultimate symbol of being in the covenant, right? The main requirement of Old Testament mosaic law and the Abrahamic covenant, which is circumcision, right? So it’s discussed many times in the Old Testament. I’ll just read Genesis 17. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep between me and you and my thy seed after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised. It goes on to explain. It repeatedly, how it has to be done with everyone when they’re 8 days old, whether they’re born in your house or whether they’re slaves that you’ve bought, and, um, that it’s an ever that it must be circumcised as a covenant, that the covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut. From his people. He hath broken my covenant. So there it is. So, um, I wanted to like talk about this a little cause it’s interesting. Younger moms today probably won’t believe this, but when I had my first babies, I honestly thought circumcision was still sort of the standard of righteousness, the basically the requirement in Mormondom. It’s so sad and bizarre to say that, but it’s true. And so, um, the conversations about the necessity were just barely starting and um all the rage was the argument, like the safety zone was, well, he needs to look like dad, as if You know, is if any of my children have ever had like a beauty contest or comparisons or worried about it, you know, others could attest to that as a silly argument as well, but it was basically and and actually the biggest um My voice in my ear about having to have my voice circumcised was my mom, who would, you know, it was just what she was used to and she thought it looked weird and ugly if they weren’t circumcised. So she just was like very upset when I didn’t circums when I didn’t circumcise some of my some of my sons. And so anyway, it’s, it’s really interesting how this got passed down. So I want to look into it because how did that come to be again synonymous with religion when when it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So We’re gonna look at some of the teachings about circumcision. This is Galatians 5:2. Paul was not a fan of circumcision, right?

[01:17:40] Um, behold, I, Paul, say unto you, if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law. So we’re saying, if you are looking to circumcision to be the way that you, um, get into heaven or whatever it may be that you’re righteous, you’re, you’re missing the point. It’s not about fulfilling the Old Testament law. It’s about Jesus Christ, right? And he says, in Jesus Christ, Neither circumcision veeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. Then we have, again, in our own scriptures, right? Maroni 88. Listen to the words of Christ your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The whole need no physician, but they which are sick. Wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin. Wherefore, the curse of Adam is taken away. From them and me that it has no power over them and the law of circumcision is done away in me. I could have just read that last part, but it’s giving the discourse explaining why we should have an understanding why and then Doctrine Covenant 74, the entire section is on is on circumcision. I was going to read it, but I won’t, but it’s basically explaining why, um, it’s, it’s expounding on a New Testament scripture and it’s. Saying that, um, that that again that circumcision is done away in Jesus Christ. Children are holy being sanctified through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and that is what this scripture means. So it’s saying that if, if there’s an unbelieving Father, he’ll want his children to be circumcised Jews. So we actually in our religion should quite strongly oppose circumcision, not for other, not for Jews to it, we should just oppose it for ourselves. We should see. That it should not be done by us, right? So, so interesting. So where did my ideas come from? How did circumcision come into our, our worldview and become what I thought, you know, what I was raised to believe is what we were required to do with our sons. That’s a bizarre question. I had to discover these scriptures on my own to learn that circumcision actually is not something that we needed to do or even something we should do. And so, I’m gonna take a really interesting sidetrack just to give a demonstration and an example of how this happens. So, Nobody in the restoration would have been circumcised. Nobody in 1800s America would have been circumcised. It really was not done other than small Jewish enclaves that would have continued to practice it as part of their religion, right? It was not until the 1870s, starting in 1870, that it was again,

[01:20:10] that it was, well, not again, that it was brought into common practice in America by doctor mainly. Doctor Doctor Louis Sayer. He was an audacious. I get the impression pretty arrogant experimental surgeon at Bellevue Hospital Spital, who claims circumcision cured all kinds of paralysis and other ailments, including like things like club foot and other things like that in boys and men by resolving what what they believed he called what he called reflex neurosis, which was nerve inflammation caused by a type 4. Skin which caused systemic problems. So that’s mainly where it came from. It also was taught by Doctor John Kellogg, the cornflake guy, right? Who, who, who advocated circumcision for girls as well as boys. And in addition to its utility and cleanliness, prized it mainly, I’m, these are my own words. I just wrote them so I can read it, prized it mainly due to its supposed ability to deter masturbation. In his long chapter entitled Curative Treatment of the Effects of Self-abuse, I’ll link his look below the book below. This is what he wrote. Self abuse, right? We, we may have heard those terms. Among many, many other treatments, oh, among many other treatments, he includes this in younger children with whom moral considerations will have no particular weight, other devices may be used. Bandaging the parts has been practiced with. Success. Tying the hands is also successful in some cases, but this will not always succeed, for they will often contrive to continue the habit in other ways, as by working the limbs or lying upon the abdomen. Covering the organs with a cage has been practiced with entire success. A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of homosis, which is type foreskin. The operation Should be performed by a surgeon without ad administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. So, to punish boys for masturbating, you need to, um, circumcise them without any anesthetic as to let them know that that’s the punishment. The soreness, which continues for several weeks, interrupts the practice, and if it had not been previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. If any attempt is made to watch, um, then you must watch the child. He should be so carefully surrounded by vigilance that he cannot possibly transgress without detection. If he is only partially watched, he soon learns to elude observation. And thus the effect is only to make him cunning in his vice. Wow. So this, these are the sources of where widespread circumcision in America came from. I just think that is fascinating to see such a. case of the false traditions of our fathers reentering society and eclipsing the truth of our scripture, right? It’s amazing to see that happen. And for what I just read, please, if you haven’t listened to the discussion with Alicia Worthington on sexual health, listen to it and, and reading this from John Kellogg and some of the other things that were written. Did help me have, um,

[01:23:28] I think, I think we should have a lot of patience with some of the awful things some of our leaders have said because these were the things that they were raised on too. These were the things they were raised hearing and so we can cut our forebears some slack considering that, you know, John Kellogg and Doctor Louis Sayer were not Mormons and they weren’t the ones, you know, so we’re not the ones who started this information. It’s very unfortunate. So anyway, so back to Old Testament law, that’s the point I’m trying to make. Should we still circumcise or is it fulfilled in Christ? We should know the answer to that based on the scriptures and the sources of where it came from. It’s very interesting. Not trying to get it if anyone still believes in circumcision, that’s not the argument I was trying to have here. I just was trying to make this example. Um, because I think it’s a good case in point. So I hope at this point it is sufficiently clear that we have like completely covered that Old Testament law should not be used to justify anything in the latter days just as we completely ignore laws about um boring. A slave’s ear through with an all to the doorpost so that he can be your slave forever if he wants to keep his wife and children, right? That just as we completely ignore that law, or the law that starts by saying, and if a, if a man sells his daughter as a servant and then regulates that practice, just as we should ignore all of those laws, those are both found in Exodus 21. And so many others, we should also just ignore the leveret marriage law and stop trying to use it to justify our sad claims about God ever commanding polygamy. So, I hope that case is well made. Let me know what you think. So, um, anyway, still, as we said, none of the polygamists, the Mormon polygamists obeyed this law, lived it, none of them fulfilled it. So we’ll just really quickly look over how love marriage might compare with early polygamy in the LDS Church, right? Um, we’ve already pointed out Agnes Koolbrith doesn’t qualify and Don Carlos, even if Joseph Smith had married her, which he didn’t. But so we can look at the actual polygamists to see if they qualify, if anything they did had anything to do with Lever at marriage. Brigham Young had several brothers. Um, all of them outlived him, but one who also died elderly and the one who died a few years before. Brigham already had children and Brigham didn’t elderly Brigham didn’t marry the elderly widow. So there’s no lever at marriage with Brigham Young. But we can think maybe he considered Joseph Smith to be a brother, right? Other church members, they called each other brother Joseph. And so maybe he considered that. So maybe he was looking at it in that way as as um as sort of a spiritual brother, right? And so we can look, well, OK, his how does does his plural marriage qualify in that way? Well, his first two plural marriages were both to women who were already married to non-members and had children with them, right? They both divorced their non-member husbands or left them. They left them and married Brigham.

[01:26:28] Well, There was no official marriage, right, became polygamous wives to Brigham and so, um, he had, he did have children with them, but that doesn’t qualify as gibbum or Leverett marriage. His next two plural marriages were two girls, 15 and 19 years old, 19 and 15 years old. Who had never been married, so they can’t qualify. They interestingly do qualify for 132 as being virgins, but since there’s a contradiction, they can’t qualify as lever at marriage, right, which is where we command God. I mean, we claim God commanded it. And so, um. That doesn’t work. And then it wasn’t until his 7th marriage, which was his 5th plural marriage, that he married a woman who later claimed to be Joseph’s widow. So, um, again, we could look into those claims, that’ll be for another day. And so we can ask, was he raising up seed to Joseph’s name to succeed in the name of his brother, which is dead, that his name not be put out of Israel, quoting Deuteronomy 25. Well, their first born son was was named Edward Partridge, the This wife was Emily Partridge. The first born son was named Edward Partridge after Emily’s father, right? So not after Joseph Smith. And, uh, and he, along with all the rest of Brigham Young’s many, what is it? 56 children were given the last, the surname of Young. They were all given Brigham Young’s name, right? So he was Edward Partridge Young was the first child they have, which would have been the one fulfilling lover marriage. And um, there was no raising up seed to Joseph there. They did have one son, I think their only other son was named Joseph Don Carlos Young. Again, not Joseph Smith’s name or surname. And, um, he was decidedly Brigham’s son was given the last name of Young. And all of Brigham’s king children, Brigham talked about as his kingdom, that he was raising up his kingdom so that he could be a god, right? And um I will just point out quickly, he married, well, well, we don’t know exactly, around 57 women, um, around 8 of them, much later claimed to have been married to Joseph, to have been Joseph’s widows. So among his 57 children born by the 16 wives he had children with, all of them were given the sur name Young, as I said, not a single smith of the lot. Many were named Brigham, um, so they were given Brigham’s name. Many were named for the scriptures, including one named Mohanrai Morienkamer You. Only two of the 57 total, the one we already named Emily Partridge’s son, um, Joseph Don Carlos Young, and one other son were named Joseph, and both were younger brothers who, who were not the first born son, who had an older brother that was not named for Joseph.

[01:29:12] So, Not only was Brigham not in any way fulfilling Giha, he seems to have been going out of his way to intentionally not raise that seat to Joseph Smith, right? And so, um, so that’s that, there’s also no mention of it anywhere in any of his teachings or anything. So, so he does, he does, however, claim no one else is going to have children for you so that you can be a god to reign over them. You have to do it yourself. So this was his kingdom. So anyway, OK, then we’ll look at just one other example, Hebrewy Kimball, right? He had 43 wives and 66 children by 7 of them. His best place, um, best claim to have been claiming, um, love marriage might be his claim to have married Mary Fielding Smith. But, um, you know, again, for so many reasons doesn’t work. She already had children with Hiram, as Whitney Horning made clear, despite Heber’s boastful and rather embarrassing claims at her gravesite, she was actually never involved in polygamy and Anyway, and then again, Heber didn’t have all of his children had the last name. Kimball, there was not a Smith and the lot. He didn’t have an oldest son named Joseph anywhere. So it should be painfully clear that lover marriage, Giba, any part of the discarded lower law fulfilled by Christ had absolutely nothing that would ever to do with Mormon polygamy and cannot be used to justify, explain, defend it in any way because it adds zero connection to it. Is that clear? Can, OK. So we can put that to rest. So now is where I want to. About what I really wanted to focus on on this episode. It’s been so long already. I apologize. But this, um, and this part I’ve had to kind of tack on as a, I didn’t, I would have loved to spend my entire study time just going into this so I could get it into a comprehensively and really gain a good understanding of it. And I haven’t been able to. And I have to record today to have any chance of releasing it when I, um, The day I’m releasing it today, I guess, when you’re seeing it. So what I’m hoping is that I can share what I have been thinking about and found and kind of been taught so far, and we can all just go on to study it together to gain more and more insight to see what we can come up with, because I think it’s an important thing that has been very over Overlooked. So it is the question of what it actually means to raise up, or more specifically to raise up seed. That, that is what I was taught about in my dream. And I was taught so much that I know I don’t remember. But the little piece I was allowed to remember is just this kind of Understanding I was given of what raise up means, right? That being raised up means to be brought into the presence of God, to be raised up to a new level spiritually, right?

[01:32:04] We’ll go, we’ll go on to describe this a little bit more. Let’s try to, try to, again, I haven’t put this together like I would have liked to. I’d like To just do a complete another episode completely on it, but I want to include it here, so I’ll do my best. But I think that the, the Jewish understanding of Yibam actually helps us gain some understanding here because they literally believed they were, um, raising that son to be in the image or the reincarnation of his dead. not his father, but you know what I’m saying, right? And so it was actually to to to raise up seed to that brother meant to recreate him in his image. Does that makes sense? Like you were reincarnating him and it’s what is what they literally literally believe. And so I think that’s important. It’s, in other words, that The child that was being raised up unto him was in the similitude of him, or was one with him, right? And so, um, if we understand this through an internal lens where the lower law was given as a precursor to the higher law with some important symbolic, um, things we can find like literal, the literal. Um, law has little to do with us, but, um, the, the, the quote I had about the ox not being muzzled or when he’s plowing the field, some of the New Testament writers bring that up to, um, give the symbolic meaning of it. And I think maybe there’s a symbolic meaning of this love at marriage that we can look to, right? When we, when we look through it through this internal lens. And so, um, just as We are first created earthy and fleshy and then spiritual, right? We are born again, we are first of the earth, but then we are of the spirit. There are so many scriptures of this throughout the New Testament. They can seem somewhat enigmatic unless you have experienced them, right? They seem Mysterious, unless you have experienced some of these things, and then you know what the writers were trying to explain. They’re the mysteries of God, because you can’t really understand them through words. You can only understand them experientially. And so I think that that’s what this is talking about. I think, as I’ve covered in some other episodes, the purpose of the gospel truly is to elevate us spiritually, right? First, to help us to have to be born again. In Jesus Christ, so that we’re no longer earthy, but we are spiritual as it, as it talks about. And then, well, let’s read, let’s read a few verses. Let’s read Romans 8:6, for there are so many I could choose. This is just one in my hurry, I grabbed.

[01:34:42] For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. So then they are, they are in the flesh. So they then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if it so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the spirit of God, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of the sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. You’ll recall, this is what baptism symbolizes and represents, right? The old self being buried and the new self being, um, raised up in the image of Jesus Christ. This is what happens to the people at at King Benjamin’s sermon when they are born again and remade when their entire, um, Hearts are changed that they have more no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually, right? That’s, that’s what this is all describing, and it goes on from there. But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies. The spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after flesh, for if ye lived after flesh, ye shall die. But if ye live through the Spirit, but if ye live through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Are you catching somebody like raised up to be the sons of God, right? We’re getting little hints of it. There’s so much more. Again, maybe I need to do an entire episode on this later. Um, for if you’ve not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father, the spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if it’s so by that we so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be glorified together. That is such an important scripture, and there’s so many more that I could grab. And this covers so much of what I’m trying to say. But when we talk about being raised up, let’s think of all of the examples. There, I, I, I, like I said, I wanted to search all of the scriptures for raised up seats. So I’m gonna let you guys help me because Because I ran out of time. But, um, Moses raised up a serpent on the staff, right? Christ was raised up on the cross. Um, there’s so much talk of being raised up from the dead, which is being resurrected, which is what Christ came to teach about, right? So it’s being elevated to a new status, right? So going from being carnally minded to being born again and being spiritually minded. And then Um, it’s, uh, so many people talk about this, um,

[01:37:26] I, I can give you lots of recommended books, anyone who’s interested or lots of sources, but then you are on that level of, um, being born again and then just like it’s, it’s it’s describing Jacob’s ladder. Right? Then you go to the next level where you are brought into the presence of God. And I’ve covered in another verse. You can look up in the scriptures, God, privilege of seeing, or Jesus, privilege of seeing, being brought face to face with Jesus Christ, seeing him face to face, which is another thing the scriptures talk much about. And at that point, when you are given a commission and having your calling an election made sure and being given, and Aaron becoming basically uh Um, a prophet of God in, you know, in that way we understand it to be someone who was given a commission by God to go and prophesy of him as someone who has come into his presence. And then from there, there’s another level to be raised up, I believe. I believe this is what the gospel is giving us, which is to be translated just like the city of Enoch, right? Joseph Smith talked a lot about the city of Enoch, and that’s how our, that’s what our ultimate goal is to help the earth receive its para cycle glory and be reunited with the city of Enoch because the entire earth is, is raised up, right? And so that’s what this gospel is. And that’s what I believe God is talking about when he talks about raise up people or raise up seed, raise them to a new level. Jesus Christ. He was raised up and that took him from being at the highest level to becoming the next level where he was a Jesus where he was a Christ, right? He wasn’t Christ until he was raised up. There’s a real both symbolism and literalness to this. And so when we are talking about Raise up seed. There is so much here. So we overcome physical death by being raised up and resurrected, right? We overcome spiritual death by being raised up and brought into the presence of Jesus Christ, right? Because separation from God is spiritual death and being reunited with God is being raised up from that spiritual death. Um, I’ll read John 17:3, and this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the one true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, right? And so that’s what I believe raise up is talking about and teaching us, and it brings so much more, um, insight into the scriptures forever. We’re, we’re told to have you received his image in your countenance, right? So just like, like we are remade in the image of Jesus Christ in each of these levels, each of these times that we are raised up. Sorry, I’m, ah, I just think it is so, um, profound and amazing and beautiful and Um, inviting and inspiring, and, um, and just, just ennobling,

[01:40:10] this is what the gospel is. This is what we’ve been given that we have lost because instead of understanding what God means by raising up seed, we have interpreted it in this completely, um, defamed way that just ruined it. Like, the adversary is brilliant to continually pervert what God continually tries to. Give us. And I love that, um, God gives us the opportunity to learn these things and experience these things that we can be raised up in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So there are so many things. I also want to talk about this go so many other places. One thing I think it’s important to look at is seed. What does seed represent, right? Because there’s one thing to be raised up or to raise up. It’s another thing to raise up seed. That’s even more specific. I talked about in this foundational lower law of love at marriage. But again, in Jacob 2:30, right, where God wants to raise up seed, we’re going to make some important distinctions in just a second. But, um, that’s, it’s really important to consider the symbolic meaning of seed. And there is so much here, and I’m just giving you the tiny little beginnings of scratching the surface because this gets all so profound. But think of a seed, right? It already contains the entire blueprint for everything it’s going to be. It already has all that it needs. It just needs to be nurtured in, in the right environment where it can, where it can become itself, right? So, oh, I, I don’t even know which order to go in because there’s so much here and it’s just too much. I didn’t even have time to write it all out. But, um, let’s see. OK, we’re gonna just talk about a couple of things, um, to raise up seed, you have to have it in the right environment, as we talked about, right? Because first, raise up seed also has a double meaning, as I alluded to before. Raise up seed can mean to nurture a seed to become a plant, but then it also means to nurture the plant to produce fruit, and inside of the fruit is seeds. Right? So you are still, you are raising up seed and, and helping that seed to grow into a plant. You are raising up seed to help that plant produce fruit. Like it is. And, and the fruit is made in the image of its master because it, it contains within its seed, the next generation. There’s just so much here. It is profound and deep and complex and beautiful and Ah, I, I, I love the scriptures and the, the brilliance that is within them. You know, God never wants us to be bored. It’s really sad that we’re ever bored talking about the gospel because it is anything but boring. And so, um, I want to point out that being brought into the correct environment is exactly what God was doing with Lehi and his descendants. That’s exactly what he’s telling us he’s doing and Jacob 2,

[01:42:59] for example. So let’s read just verse 25, wherefore thus sayeth 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 a righteous branch, raise up, right? Bring them to the higher spiritual level from the fruit of the loins of Joseph, who was raised up like there’s so much here. I can’t even parse it all, just Let you guys do it, do it on your own, or we can continue the discussion afterward. Um, let’s continue on to verse 29. Wherefore this people shall keep my commandment, sayeth the Lord of hosts, or curse be the land for their sakes because God wants to raise up seeds so they will not, they can’t do the abominations of old, and that is why he brought them out of Israel. And then it goes on to verse 30 when he says he wants to raise up seed and again, there’s an important distinction, but I want to save that. And so, um, now let’s talk a little bit more about seed, right? EA 32 teaches us much about seed, but everyone is familiar with this. Um, I’ll just read this portion of it. Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Remember, the seed already contains everything it needs. All of the instructions, all the DNA is already there, right? It just needs to be nurtured. Um, we will compare the word to a seed. If you will give place that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold if it be. A true seed or a good seed, if you do not cast it out by your own unbelief that you will resist the spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts. And when you feel these swelling motions, you will begin to stay within yourselves. It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good for it beginneth to enlarge my soul. Yeah, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding. Yeah, it beginneth to be delicious to me. I, I think this is Hitting me hard right now because this is exactly what has happened to me as I have learned these things about marriage and about the truth of marriage and about the falsehood of polygamy. I hope that I hope that some of you have experienced that as we’ve gone on this journey together to learn these things and discover what God truly established. And what the adversary brought in to try to corrupt it from fulfilling its purpose, right? Um, we’ll continue verse 29. Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, yay. Nevertheless, it hath not grown up to perfect knowledge. But behold, as the seed swelleth and sprouteth and begins to grow, then you must needs say that it is a good seed, for behold it swelleth and sprouteth and begin it to beginneth to grow. Are you gaining as you’re learning these things and studying these? Gaining new insights, seeing new things, having new sprouts, form of understanding, feeling overwhelmed by the goodness of truth, right? I hope so. I hope many of you have, have experienced that and are experienced that through the series, the course of this podcast. And now behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yeah, it will strengthen your faith,

[01:45:48] for you will say, I know that this is a good seed for it sprouteth and beginneth to grow, right? You can see that that. The word is the seed. I always thought it was faith. It was the seed. No, it’s the word that’s the seed. And you can see if that is a good, if that is a good teaching or a bad teaching. And now behold, you are sure that are you sure that this is good? See I say unto you, yeah, for every seed bringeth forth its own likeness. Right? Just like we talked about, the seed already contains all the DNA. It brings forth the plant, which brings forth the fruit, which has the seed and the Same likeness as the original seed. And so you can know if that seed leads to more and more goodness and life and truth and love, or if it leads to bad fruits, right? I think that just like, uh, there’s so much to this with, with, but, um, to, to these meanings. But just like with all of the bad corrupted ideas that made their way into early Utah. This is another one of those bad seeds, right? All of those have been bad seeds. All of those led to bad fruits, all of those false doctrines, blood atonement. Um, Adam God teaching, um, the, the racism, right, along with polygamy. Those are many of the examples of the bad seeds that made their way. Into the gospel that have brought forth bad fruit. We have disavowed almost all of them. We have discontinued and condemned all of them, and actually we have disavowed polygamy. President Hinckley did. We just haven’t done it officially, but we, we wish that none of those had ever been there. We would love it. We’re really embarrassed about it. We would love it if none of those bad teachings had ever made their way into the gospel. We can see that they were not good seeds and they did not bring forth good fruit, right? And, um, so if we continue on with verse, with chapter 32, starting verse 37 now, and behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, you will say, let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up and bring forth fruit unto us, right? So, again, how many times in scripture, that’s another thing to study in connection with seed, we need to study fruit. Right? All of the parables of the olive trees and the parable. I mean, all of the sa you’re talking about bringing forth fruit. That is the goal is to the the you don’t plant seeds. The reason you plant seeds is to harvest the fruit. That is what all of the gospel is about, right? It’s, it’s those throughout,

[01:48:14] like, are we read or are wets because Wheat developed the grain and the tear doesn’t. It’s about the harvest, right? What we produce. So let us nourish it with great the care that it may grow, get root, that it may grow up and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if you nourish it with much care, it will get root and grow up and bring forth fruit. And thus, if you will not not nourish the word looking forth with an eye single to the faith. Um, with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, you can never pluck up the fruit of the tree of life. It’s telling us what this fruit means, right? It’s the love of God. It fills us with the love of God. It raises us up to experience, um, partaking of the love of God, which is being born again in In the spirit of God, right, all of these symbols just intermingle beautifully. But if you will nourish the word, yeah, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow by your faith with great diligence and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root, and behold, it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you for any of you who still. reject these scriptures that we’ve been talking about throughout about God’s establishment of marriage. I just, I think this is so important. It has such broad application. This is just one application of how we find truth throughout the scriptures, right? Throughout the Book of Mormon, we are taught how to discover truth. And how to let it grow within us. Behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is the most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white. Yeah and pure above all that is pure, and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are fill filled that ye hunger not that ye shall not. Neither shall ye thirst. God is promising that the gospel that He has given us is effective, right? If we will find truth and plant it and live according to it and seek it and not revile against it because of the traditions of our fathers, we will be brought step by step. Um, wait, we will be raised up step by step, um, line upon line, precept upon precept, and level by level, right? We will continually be raised up more and more to know God, to come to know God. Then my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith and your diligence and patience and long suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit and To you, right? We are on the right path. That is what the gospel is all about. That is what God is wanting by raising up seed. And they’re, oh, I want to go into so many more things, but I think we’re gonna have to continue the discussion and the comments, or do it later. I would love to hear your insights. I have so many thoughts on all of this that are just profound, but I do want to, um,

[01:51:03] quickly testify at the truthful. of this, of the truthfulness of the gospel that God has given us and of the ability and willingness and just eager desire of God to raise us up as much as we are willing as, you know, in, in God’s time and in God’s way, we don’t need to be frantic or come from a, um, fear mentality or a lack of lack mentality. Like, I need this, I need this just. That we can trust in God’s promises that if we will do these things, if we will start with a good seed with truth, plant it and nourish it in these ways, we will be raised up level by level as we progress through the gospel, that those promises are sure and they are glorious, truly glorious. So the big thing I wanted to point out now as we are ending this is The critical question is who is the seed being raised up to, right? In the lover of marriage that we are given in Deuteronomy, that is, I think, setting the symbolic foundation for these later things that we are taught in the Book of Mormon. They were raising up seed to the brother, meaning they were reincarnating the brother. They were bringing forth the child in the image of the brother. It was the brothers seed, right? In the Book of Mormon and Jacob 2:30, God desires to raise up seed unto Himself, not up to somebody else, right? And so again, nothing about polygamy qualifies those. It’s used to claim that God wants to raise up seed to. But all of those polygamist teachings, those polygamous men were imagining themselves as gods, raising up seed to themselves. There are so many teachings I can dig out about them needing to basically give birth to their kingdom that they would rule over, that would elect them to be a god, right? So they were making themselves gods and using polygamy to raise up seed to themselves for their own glory in their own kingdom. This is an essentially important distinction. God said, I have brought you forth out of the land, for there were these corruptions that were getting in the way of what I wanted to do with my gospel, the purpose for which it was given to help my children. To be raised up, to be elevated spiritually from level to level to till they can come into my presence. I want to raise up seed unto me. So I brought you away from where those corruptions and abominations were getting in the way of allowing this to happen. So I could bring you forth to a new land where I could try this again so that my gospel can actually be planted and nourished, so the seed can produce a plant so that the plant can produce fruit which contains the next generation of seed, right? They, God is teaching so clearly. That he that if these abominations are intermingled with the gospel, the gospel can’t serve its purpose. It can’t, if we are looking to polygamy and this doctrine of works, like, that’s another thing to think about. The seed that ALMA promises us that if we will plant it, it will lead, it will fill us with the love of God, right? It’s harkening back to Lehi’s dream. The, um, love of God that overwhelms us, the fruit that is white above all of the fruit. Polygamy does the exact opposite. People, the teachings of polygamy are so demoralizing and works based and fear-based,

[01:54:32] and you are never good enough. You are never good enough. You can’t be righteous enough and you’re always in fear of not qualifying. It is the opposite. It of what God is promising the gospel is supposed to do to us and for us and in us and through us. And that’s why this is so important. So we need to make sure that we can’t, don’t let these terrors, again, are the false ideas, right? The, the false teachings, the bad seeds, the bad words, the false ideas. We can’t let them continue to, to choke out the good seed so that they’re not room for the gospel to be effective in our lives. That is why this and other topics like this. This is why the, the search for truth is so critically important because we need to have truth discerned from error in order to have the gospel be efficacious in our lives. So that’s, um, the thing that the Lord began to teach me that I am so excited to go learn as much more about as I can, that I am so thankful to. Know that those promises of the Lord Lord are sure to be able to testify at the truthfulness of them, that they are true, that the gospel is true, that it does work in our lives. It does raise us up, and it does bring forth this fruit. And so I testify of these things in the name of the true savior of the true gospel in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. And thank you again for joining me, and I will see you next time.

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

67: Levirate Marriage and Raising Up Seed | 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

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