Posted on 04/06/2008 5:27:22 AM PDT by SkyPilot
What's interesting when you visit the pro-polygamy Web sites, is that they will cite any Biblical figure who has had two wives--even if he married them serially (silence, for example, over when the first wife died). By that logic, the account you cite, MamaB, would take on quite an interesting interpretation: "I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." (John 4:17-18)
(The pro-polygamists would conclude that she had some of those husbands simultaneously; ergo, she's polyandry; therefore, Mormon women should practice polyandry if they so choose...'cause, after all, DU assures us, plural spouses is "moral!")
Many like to quote Jacob 2:27 yet they ignore verse 30.
Jacob 2
27 Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none;
28 For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.
29 Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes.
30 For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.
So unless the Lord employ this ordinance it is forbidden to take upon one self!
Seems pretty straightforward.. not any man.. not only men who are sanctioned.
That FLDS Fake-LDS was never given the ordinance! That rogue organization had one purpose to do ungodly thing there is no histroy of them helping to build up the Lord Kingdom on earth
I am reading from the Helen Mar Kimball account from her family experience and letters and other thing tell what the real LDS did it is nothing what others are saying here many were very poor but continue to go on mission and were very sick most of their lives as the struggled the opposition and other earthly foe who worked against them.
It people have the patience to read those accounts they will see nothing of the kind of imagining some are having was able to take place people were too busy with the Lord's work and sickness and able to build up the Kingdom.
Oh but we can point out joey's flaws because at least in the cases you cited, they were not lying about it at the same time they were telling the congregation that is was against god's will. Or in joeys case, his inability to hear god correctly confusing the god edict condemning polygamy (D&C 1935) with god edict enforced by an angel w/ sword to be polygamous. Cant your committee of gods get their story straight?
Eerdman's Dictionary: "Sons of Concubines inherited paternal land at the father's discretion (Compare Gen. 25:6, where the sons of Abraham's concubines are given gifts but no property, with the tradition that the four sons of Bilhah and Zilpah--Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher -- were allotted land by their father Jacob/Israel)." http://books.google.com/books?id=P9sYIRXZZ2MC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=eerdmans+dictionary+concubines+isaiah&source=web&ots=sAb3FKiKxv&sig=tks-pcDVt6ZyrGUX7PwvApPO59g&hl=en
DU, to use your word, who is "sucking" now?
And speaking of inheritance, what was much, much worse than being a concubine's heir? (Why the answer to that would be, "An LDS plural wife!")
C. Carmon Hardy, in Solemn Covenant, outlines the outlandish case of Margaret Geddes. A Scottish immigrant, she became a plural LDS wife at age 19 in Oregon. Her husband died, and 7 years later she became yet another man's plural wife in 1898--when adding plural wives was supposedly already done away with by the lying, conniving Mormons who had at least 262 known plural-wife additions between 1890 and 1910 [see A Solemn Covenant, p. 183]. [These plural marriages were approved one by one, and ceremonies were done by LDS officials--sometimes LDS apostles, sometimes those who were to become an apostle].
Well, by then she had moved to Plain City, Utah, where it wasn't suppose to be in "plain" view for a supposedly "single" woman to be pregnant (the following year). And why was she deemed "single" by the locals? Because her marriage was kept secret. So she was charged with adultery: During the hearing before the bishopric, Margaret steadfastly refused to give the name of the child's father, despite threats of excommunication. (B. Carmon Hardy, A Solemn Covenant, p. 184)
Well, the feds found out about her, and since the Reed Smoot federal investigation was going on, they summoned her as a witness: Her husband and others asked her to sully her own reputation, to do everything possible to conceal the real fathers' name. After tearful pleas that she not be made 'a bad woman' in the eyes of her children, she was finally brought to agree she would do what we could. (A Solemn Covenant, pp. 184-185)
When her husband was also called to testify, ...he flatly denied he had married her, or anyone else, since the Manifesto. Margaret's humilitations were not yet at an end...[her husband] died. When his estate was to be settled, no provision was found for either Margaret or her son. Margaret was aware that, as a plural wife, she had no legal claim on Eccles's considerable fortune. She did, however, expect something for [her son] Albert. After years of silence, Margaret Geddes decided to bring suit for a just distributioin of the estate. In the course of the trial, she spared no one. She told how most of her adult life had been spent as a polygamous wife, shifting from place to place under assumed names to protect her husbands...She revealed that it was Apostle Marriner W. Merrill who married her to Eccles in August of 1898. She described the ceremony as brief and one in which the word union instead of marriage was employed so that, if later questioned, all could deny that a 'marriage' had been performed...Albert was declared a legal heir to the estate. (A Solemn Covenant, p. 185)
[Oh, and since Geddes didn't "spare anyone," for another tidbit on the LDS apostle (Marriner Merrill), who conducted the 1898 marriage between Geddes and Eccles, according to Hardy's book (Appendix), Merrill had 8 wives--the last being 1901 when he was age 69 and his 8th wife was 32--and she delivered a child a year later. Apparently, all 8 wives were present at his funeral...His first wife had children over a 21-year span; his second wife over a 19-year span; his third wife over a 20-year span; his fourth wife over a 24-year span...and there's no info on wife #5, #6, and #7 other than names and marriage dates. When they got married, his first wife was 19; his second and third "brides" were age 15 or 16 (probably 15); his fourth wife was also 15...]
In a post to somebody else, you wrote: As for the singular thing, how many polygamous marriages happened en mass? I venture to say the number would be vanishing small.
The fact that it was happening at all, Moonie-like with Sun Yung Moon's mass weddings, is sickening from the angle of the bride. Thomas Chamberlain II married the first 2 of 6 wives--both 17 year olds--on the same day, Nov. 3, 1873 (A SolemnCovenant, appendix). And then 6 years later, there was the infamous case of John Miles marrying THREE women on the same day: Subsequently, due to confusion as to which of the wives had greatest seniority, Caroline became disaffected and took steps to have her husband arrested. Miles eventually won in court on grounds that, without independent proof of his marriage to the other women, Caroline must be presumed to be his only wife. (A Solemn Covenant, p. 45)
Miles couldn't even be "man enough" or honest enough to stand up in court and say, "Yes, she's my wife...and so is she...and so is she."
And that's so galling even about the LDS FAIR Web site with one of their apologetics that tries to pretend that polygamy was a legitimate biblical "civil disobedience" issue...yet even the FAIR folks acknowledge in one of their apologetic pieces that part of "civil disobedience," is that you are willing to accept the human penalty that comes with disobeying. So by ignoring cases like the Miles, FAIR winds up speaking out of both sides of its mouth...more dissembling to protect the original dissembling, lying for the Lord, prevications, parsing of words, speaking in codes, hiding, practicing open and indirect deceit, disengenous behavior, dishonorable employment of cover ups, circumspection by people like Lorenzo Snow (A Solemn Covenant, p. 187), compartmentalizing for the Lord (A Solemn Covenant, p. 188)...Hardy's book has a whole chapter on "Lying for the Lord..." the problem is that the LDS lied so much in the 19th century & early 20th century, he couldn't even begin to contain the lies to that chapter!
(Hardy even tells how when one polygamist was applying for a marriage license, the official asked him if he was married. His wife replied, "She's in the cemetary," implying she was dead. As it turned out, his existing wife at that very moment was indeed standing in the cemetary...But that's what "lying for the Lord" does!)
So to wrap up the wonderful plural wife inheritance system, in the Geddes case at least, so much for the financial "aftercare" of LDS plural-wife widows!!!! Why, Margaret Geddes and her child was treated worse or as bad as any Biblical concubine and her child. (And you have the utter gall to reference it as something "sacred!") You call her account a "sacred" series of events, where even "marriage" couldn't be said at her marriage so as to possibly apply plausible deniability?
What part of if it is not SANCTION BY THE LORD IT IS FORBIDDEN?
In verse 8 the Lord Tells David what he gave him And that the Lord would have "I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things." Had David received premission and in verse 9 the Lord reminds Daivd of what he did not give him!
Did you Read all of 2 Samuel 12
1 Samuel 12
7 ¶ And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;
8 And I gave thee thy masters house,
and thy masters wives into thy bosom,
and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah;
and if that had been too little,
I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.
9 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord,
to do evil in his sight?
thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword,
and hast taken his wife to be thy wife,
and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.
10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house;
because thou hast despised me,
and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.
11 Thus saith the Lord, Behold,
I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house,
and I will take thy wives before thine eyes,
and give them unto thy neighbour,
and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.
12 For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.
13 And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.
14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.
Jacob 2:23 But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.
While I am not a follower of the LDS, this passage certainly rings true. Sounds to me like it is describing the LDS itself.
Since you don't seem to understand the scriptures yourself you take a big leap and try to pin this on the LDS for your lack of discernment!
Any human being with even a minimal amount of "dsicernment" would read Doctrine and Covenants section 132 and recoil in horror. Doctrine and Covenants 132 is a Doctrine of Demons. If you are too blind to see that, then I have nothing but pity for you.
Joseph Smith was a False Prophet and Mormonism is a lie. It is the same lie told the Eve when she was promised that if she would eat of the tree, she would becomes as God. It was a lie. Mormonism teaches that if you eat of the tree of polygamy, then you too can be a god.
That, resty, is the darkest and most vile Doctrine of Demons this side of Islam.
Turn from it, resty. You are defending the darkness and attempting in vain to put lipstick on the pig that is Mormonism. You can't dress it up, resty. The whole Mormon religion is as ugly as the Child Molesting Cults which have grown out of it. Use some discernment. Read D&C 132 for what it is. Evil and vile and straight from the pit of Hell. Run from it resty. While you have a chance.
Once again, very weak argument, made no stronger by your use of oversized fonts.
I can see how you twisted the words into that interpretation, of course I have seen such twisting of scriptures used to justify any action anyone wanted to perform. Such has been done time and time again for two millenia, by the Roman Catholic Church, and many others. I guess I should not be suprised to see mormons do the same. In the end, it ultimately winds up being a case of people deciding what interpretation they want to believe, and this is no different... you want to believe that such acts are sanctioned, and so you will buy into the twisted interpretation.
Since you apparently believe that polygamy IS commanded by God, then why does the LDS church not practice it? You claim that the FLDS is unsanctioned, yet they seem to be living in accordance to the teachings of the BOM more than the LDS church does. And yet you claim THEY are the ones in violation? You say they were never given the ordinance? Their church did not spring up out of whole cloth... they seperated themselves from you when your church abandonded the commands of God, and rightly so they should (that is, of course, assuming it WAS a command of God to practice polygamy). Therefore, YOUR church is the one who has created a new church, not the FLDS. The FLDS, for all their sins, are at least not hypocritical. You yourself, and others here who are LDS, have defended the commands to commit polygamy, and yet you do not practice it. I have little doubt that when the members of the FLDS pray, they feel as absolutely certain that they are being witnessed of God, just as you believe you are.
If you believe that God commanded that the act of polygamy be practiced, and you do not follow that command even while in the same breath you admit that it is commanded, then you have sold out. I cannot see what you gained from selling out in this manner. Apparently it ended persecution of mormons, or the LDS gained in some other respect, but in any event, you have violated what you believe God commanded you to do in order to gain something in this world.. for secular reasons. A true believer in God should be willing to suffer any price even unto death, to follow the commands of God. This does not speak well for those who would call themselves “saints”.
All in all, it is very sad to see such brainwashing, and I will pray for your eyes to be opened to the truth before it is too late.
I agree completely. However, you and I and others here have spoken the truth to them, and they WILL not see. There are none so blind as that. There is nothing that can be done in such cases, and all we can do is look upon them with pity. Debating it with them is a waste of time, and all we can really do is try to help those who are not yet brainwashed to learn to use their heads before they are as indoctrinated as much as she is.
As an old saying goes... Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
“While I am not a follower of the LDS, this passage certainly rings true. Sounds to me like it is describing the LDS itself. “
“Since you don’t seem to understand the scriptures yourself you take a big leap and try to pin this on the LDS for your lack of discernment! “
If the shoe fits....
The leap you claim I am making is much shorter than the one you are trying to convince us of.
Good luck to you.
DU, this seems (or similar arguments derived from this) to be your most common refrain.
Polygamy is moral because it's biblical... I am standing up for one and only one point in this story, Polygamy is biblical and moral according to the bible. I stand up for this because it's true. If you want to start posting to me about how these Guys were marrying under aged girls or holding their heads under water to get them to behave, or how polygamy is illegal in the US of A we can have a nice boring mutual admiration association meeting, but polygamy is biblical and as the Bible is the standard of Christian morality, it's moral. [DU on post #2232]
[To MetMom]: Polygamy is something that is practiced at some times and not at others...in general the large portion of the people are never asked to practice it, but it's biblical, and can be done without salaciousness. [DU on post #2240]
Godzilla, nice response to DU on 2,260. Some clips from that post I'll comment on:
Nice that you bring adultery into the mix too. Joey committed adultery with at least 11 of his wives. Ive looked Section 132 over, there is nothing in there that permits adultery in conjunction with polygamy. [Godzilla]
Exactly! DU's logic, if he was applying it equally to Joseph Smith as he did Abraham, would be: (1) Joseph Smith was a righteous man; (2) Therefore, when Smith committed adultery by marrying the wives of 11 other men, we know that God doesn't honor unworthy men, therefore adultery must be honorable and moral!
The incarceration of those who disagreed and wanted out, also illegal. you keep trying to tie my statement that polygamy is morally approved of in the Bible (which you have admitted) and that makes it moral now (which you have denied) out to be support for these people and it's simply not. Reality won't twist for you and you just end up looking like a liar. [DU]
Whos lying here DU, I never said that the bible morally approved of polygamy at best it was tolerated like divorce (which according to your logic would have been morally approved of too). Jesus made it clear that it was no longer acceptable, which makes it no longer moral now. [Godzilla]
Good response, zilla. According to DU's logic, (1) Many divorced men are righteous men; (2) Therefore, when these men got divorced, we know that God doesn't honor unworthy men, therefore adultery must be honorable and moral!
I guess we can apply what we'll call "DU's logic" throughout the Bible! (1) 2 Peter 2:4-9 says that Lot was a "righteous soul." (2) Therefore, since Lot was righteous, and his two adult daughters got him drunk and comitted incest with him in that condition, then since we know God saved him from the wrath of Sodom & Gomorrah, God wouldn't do that for an "unworthy" man...therefore, incest --by DU's crazy logic!--is "moral!"
Let this be an important lesson to you all if you ever want to make it in the marketing, political, educational, or theological cultic arenas: All you have to do is to re-brand something or redefine it with a nice "re-branding"...and "presto!" Bigamy becomes "celestial marriage." (Doesn't that sound soooo devine???)
As SkyPilot said: If polygamy is immoral, then Joseph Smith was immoral. If he was immoral and never repented of his sin (and actually magnified it with his 27 "wives"), then his halo as a "prophet" is ripped to shreds. Then, your whole world collapses.
So, allow me to quote 3 choice tidbits from a "Lying for the Lord" chapter--a chapter of LDS history that shows that since corruption followed and continues to follow polygamy to this very day, it fails to portray that institution as "moral" as DU claims:
Dorothy Allred Solomon, recalling her upbringing in a prominent fundamentalist home, summarized the atmosphere by saying, 'Although we were reared to treasure truth and 'cling to the light,' our way of life was filled with secrets.' The resort to distortion, what was referred to as 'Mormon logic,' rested uncomfortably on every aspect of their existence...In a letter to [LDS] President John Taylor in 1187, Charles W. Penrose expressed concern that 'the endless subterfuges and prevarications which our present condition impose...threaten to make our rising generation a race of deceivers.'...Much of the Salt Lake Tribune's ferocity in these years was fueled by disgust that Mormon leaders would, while claiming their church to be the Lord's special vessel of truth, so frequently corrupt it. (B. Carmon Hardy, A Solemn Covenant, pp. 378, 368, 377)
DU, if ya wanna know why some of us posters are fueled by disgust over what's been happenin' in ElDorado, Hildale, Colorado City, Bountiful, Juarez, etc. it's because those religionists who keep claiming to be the ONLY Lord's special vessel of truth too frequently show their corruption in defending the indefensible!
Good post.
I am still waiting for one of them to explain the Lords use of deception, thru the use of the lingua of the King James era, in order to make the BOM appear legitimate. It has always been my understanding that deception was a tool of the Father of Lies. I guess it is pretty much routine for them to simply ignore those things which are inconvenient?
Tell PM what recoil in horror also remember there are simular passages in the Bible from the Lord that many can recoil in horror if they don’t read them with total understanding!
Some of the things written in the Bible made many of agnostic and atheist recoil too.
Yet the children of the Lord either trusted the Lord and many were given understanding.
Anyone can say false prophet etc.
Please stick to the topic at hand which is;
Did the Lord give wives to his prophets & servants like Abraham, David, Gedeon, Israel etc Yes or No?
There is nothing in the Bible that even comes close to the VILE and SATANIC DOCTRINES OF DEMONS that are contained in Doctrine and Covenants section 132.
This section should creep out anyone who has any spiritual discernment. It was penned by Joseph Smith under the inspiration of Satan. If you can't see that, then you are blind.
You still haven’t answered my question are we going to dance around like MHG?:)
Please stick to the topic at hand which is;
Did the Lord give wives to his prophets & servants like Abraham, David, Gedeon, Israel etc Yes or No?
The topic at hand is The Vile and Satanic Doctrines of Demons contained in Doctrine and Covenants section 132a.
I'm not going to debate you resty. I am WARNING you. If you believe that Joseph Smith penned those SATANIC VERSES at the direction of God, then you are on the road to hell. Time is short, resty. Turn from this evil doctrine and quit trying to defend it. Your eternal soul is in danger.
If you want to win this "debate" then you may declare victory as I withdraw from the debate. The issue is not winning this debate, but saving your soul from this EVIL and VILE doctrine and the False Prophet who promulgated it.
Run resty. Your eternal destiny is at stake.
It seem some days you Dr. Jekyll and other days you are Mr Hyde!
Of course you make a point about the deception and lying, but Moses was not polygamous, so Mormons claiming so are deceived and deceiving -it just ain’t so!
The Book of Jasher [which is a historical chronicle of the tribes of Adam down the ages, through Abraham’s ancestors and his descendents to the time Joshua entered Canaan], states that when Moses was made king of Cush, after he had fled Egypt, that the Cushites [Ethiopians] made him king after the death of the king whom Moses had advised for nine years, while there.
They gave to Moses the wife of the dead king, and it seems that in Moses’ position, refusing to take her would have been a political disaster. He got the king’s house, so he got the dead king’s wife: but the Book of Jasher states that Moses did not go in to her and have sexual relations with her [for political and religious reasons].
“And they placed the royal crown upon his head, and they gave him for a wife Adoniah the Cushite queen, wife of Kikianus.
And Moses feared the Lord God of his fathers, so that he came not to her, nor did he turn his eyes to her.
For Moses remembered how Abraham had made his servant Eliezer swear, saying unto him, Thou shalt not take a woman from the daughters of Canaan for my son Isaac....”
http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/72.htm [and the next page after that one]
Then, Abraham was not told by YHWH to take Hagar as a wife, but when he listened to Sarah, they both suffered grief...then, God had Abraham send Hagar away, which in the Hebrew can mean the same as divorce.
The Book of Jasher explicitly states that after Sarah died, Abraham again took a wife [as Genesis states, also], using the same term that is used for Sarah, for “wife”, and so Abraham was monogamous, but for the time of listening to Sarah, which has brought grief for the world, through Ismael’s descendents.
Another thing that ancient history records is that Hagar married a husband after she was sent away by Abraham, and her descendents by that one are called “Hagarites”.
They are intermarried with Ishmael’s descendents down through history.
So Mormon’s who use the failings of fallen men to excuse their own disobedience to Jesus Christ, who gave one woman to be the wife of one man, when He formed Adam in His image [as God the Word, who was to come; Romans 5:14], are simply speaking deception and are deceived, to heap up sin by their own lusts’ fulfillments.
When YHWH gave the law through Moses, He said [for a future king who would come]; “A king must not multiply wives unto himself”.
David was not right in his multiplying wives. He broke the law, and his family life was horrid, with one son raping one daughter, and another son killing that half brother who did that deed because David would not discipline him.
David sinned and suffered, but he also repented, and his repentence and seeking YHWH with all his heart is the reason that YHWH said he was a man after YHWH’s heart.
Even Jacob, the deceiver/supplanter, did not become a true follower of YHWH until his encounter with Jesus Christ, in the pre-incarnate Person of God the Word -who was to come [Romans 5:14; Hosea 12:3-5]- as the second creation human being [whose name as the second Man is “Israel”; Isaiah 49], when He appeared to Jacob and wrestled with him, and gave Jacob His own New Man Name [which was to come] as a sign of the adoption into His name, which was to come, in Genesis 32.
-And the legacy of sexual immorality which David left Solomon only grew, in Solomon, who became a reprobate, as 1 Kings chapter 11 states, because of his taking the wives whom YHWH had said not to do, and taking heathen ones and worshipping their gods.
No where in the Word of God does anything good come of taking multiple wives, while the first is living. The only thing we see in the Word is dysfunctional families and heartache increased, and no happy homes, because of that.
Jesus forbids the practice of polygamy, and no one can serve as bishop in the NT Church if they have more than one wife, and only if the one wife be dead are they free to marry another, says the Word of God in the NT;
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