Posted on 02/03/2010 8:06:37 AM PST by Colofornian
SNIP
THE PRINCIPLE of plural marriage was revealed to the Mormons amid much secrecy. Dark clouds hovered over the church in the early 1840s, after rumors spread that its founder, Joseph Smith, had taken up the practice of polygamy. While denying the charge in public, by 1843 Smith had shared a revelation with his closest disciples. In this "new and everlasting covenant" with God, plural wives were to be taken so that the faithful might "multiply and replenish the earth."
After Smith was assassinated by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois, Brigham Young led believers on an epic 1,300-mile journey west to the Salt Lake Basin of present-day Utah. There the covenant was at last publicly revealed and with it, the notion that a man's righteousness before God would be measured by the size of his family; Brigham Young himself took 55 wives, who bore him 57 children.
But in 1890, faced with the seizure of church property under a federal antipolygamy law, the LDS leadership issued a manifesto announcing an end to plural marriage. That certainly didn't end the practice, and the LDS's tortured handling of the issue—some church leaders remained in plural marriages or even took on new wives after the manifesto's release—contributed to the schism between the LDS and the fundamentalists.
"The LDS issued that manifesto for political purposes, then later claimed it was a revelation," says Willie Jessop, the FLDS spokesman.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at ngm.nationalgeographic.com ...
From the article: Equally contentious has been the FLDS restoration of an early Mormon policy of transferring the wives and children of a church member to another man...critics argue that under Jeffs this "reassignment" became one more weapon to hold over the heads of those who dared step out of line.
From the article: Determining who is unworthy has been the exclusive province of the prophet. When in January 2004 Jeffs publicly ordered the expulsion of 21 men and the reassignment of their families, the community acquiesced. Jeffs's diary, also seized during the Texas raid, reveals a man who micromanaged the community's every decision, from chore assignments and housing arrangements to who married whom and which men were ousted—all directed by revelations Jeffs received as he slept. He claimed that God guided his every action, no matter how small. One diary entry reads: "The Lord directed that I go to the sun tanning salon and get sun tanned more evenly on their suntanning beds."
From the article:: Yet Jeffs's smiling portrait continues to adorn the living room of almost every FLDS home...In his diary Jeffs recounts reassigning the wives of three men, including his brother David, because God had shown him that they "couldn't exalt their ladies, had lost the confidence of God." One of his brother's wives had difficulty accepting the news and could barely bring herself to kiss her new husband. "She showed a great spirit of resistance, yet she went through with it," Jeffs records. "She needs to learn to submit to Priesthood."
Fascinating show. Sundays HBO.
HBO on Demand will catch you up on all episodes.
By the fruit of Joseph Smith we will know him.. . . . .
OK, the guy got it right 79 of 80 times and you want to press the issue, sheesh./sarcasm
That show certainly isn't any recommendation for the joys of polygamy, LOL...Don and Bill are both finding out that it's not all it's advertised to be.
In this “new and everlasting covenant” with God, plural wives were to be taken so that the faithful might “multiply and replenish the earth.”
... Brigham Young led believers on an epic 1,300-mile journey west to the Salt Lake Basin of present-day Utah. There the covenant was at last publicly revealed and with it, the notion that a man’s righteousness before God would be measured by the size of his family; Brigham Young himself took 55 wives, who bore him 57 children.
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Couple of things..
Some of Joey Smith’s children died childless..
He only had a handful of grandchildren...
And his main son was not a polygamist....
Since the excuse behind polygamy was to “multiply and replenish the earth.”
it wasnt from trying on Joey’s part that he failed...
Joey got to work with gusto...
Of 40+ one night stands he got about 4 illegitimate children
Emma his legal wife had about 4 surviving children...
All 8 could have been accomplished with only ONE wife...
Brigham Young did even worse...
For most of his one night stands he only got one child or none...
So did they disobey the mormon god ???
Then there were the mormon guys who did not rate a wife because:
There were none to spare...
They didnt deserve one...BY decided who mated with whom..
Joey Smith or Brigham Young stole their wife...
It would seem that by doing it the old fashioned way...
ONE MAN ONE WOMAN...
Much more would have been accomplished in a much shorter amount of time...
If each of those 100 moman had had a husband and one of their own alone...
The chances that the women would have all had 8-10 children each...
(as my apostate female ancestors did...)
would have increase several times by 1875 when BY died...
Instead of only 65 children...
There might well have been 800-1,000 new little mormons ..
plus their own children...
Say 5,000 more...
Just out of those there could have been another 13,000,000 BIC mormons in the US alone in 2010...
But JS and BY didnt obey the mormon god...
The idea was to muliple children and not one night stands..
This event that overtook Smith himself was just another in a long line of disputes internal to Mormonism and its many different groups ~ "sects" if you want to call them that.
What I've always found interesting is that while Smith was sitting there in jail he had his pistol at the ready. Obviously the situation he faced was a tad different than he might today.
Exactly. The four Mormon leaders had two weapons between them while incarcerated. They also fired them; Smith shot a few men. (Not exactly a "martyr" in the image of Jesus Christ)
Today, if we found out 2 of 4 inmates were shot & killed in possession of two firearms...I don't think we'd think much of it...and I don't think that jail would eventually become an American mecca pilgrimage to see where their "martyr" died. But that's Nauvoo, IL today.
TN, you raise an excellent point -- and one rarely emphasized. What you say, and whenever you repeat this again, this needs to be stressed against the backdrop of Jacob 2:24-30 & D&C 132:30 -- Mormon "scripture":
Although Jacob 2 in the Book of Mormon is anti-polygamy...some Mormons have pulled out Jacob 2:30 -- the phrase "raise up seed" -- as justification for Smith's polygamy. Certainly, Smith tried to justify Abraham's one-night or two-night stand with Hagar on that basis:
30 Abraham received promises concerning his seed, and of the fruit of his loins—from whose loins ye are, namely, my servant Joseph—which were to continue so long as they were in the world; and as touching Abraham and his seed, out of the world they should continue; both in the world and out of the world should they continue as innumerable as the stars; or, if ye were to count the sand upon the seashore ye could not number them.
The point here is that if God was instructing Smith to engage in polygamy to "raise up seed", then the Mormon god didn't know the future...and was surprised by that gun battle exchange in the Nauvoo jail.
To Whom It May Concern:
Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy—
I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during that period been solemnized in our Temples or in any other place in the Territory.
One case has been reported, in which the parties allege that the marriage was performed in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City, in the Spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay.
Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.
There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.
WILFORD WOODRUFF
President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
President Lorenzo Snow offered the following:
“I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.”
The vote to sustain the foregoing motion was unanimous.
Salt Lake City, Utah, October 6, 1890.
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Hebrews 11:35-40
35. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37. They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- 38. the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. |
"Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriage...I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws..."~ Wilford Woodruff, 4th LDS President
This so called 'prophet' killed more MORMONs on these trips that GENTILES ever did!
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The location for the temple was first marked by Brigham Young, the prophet and second president of the church, on July 28, 1847, just four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley. The temple site was dedicated on February 14, 1853. Groundbreaking ceremonies were presided over by Brigham Young, who laid the cornerstone on April 6 of that year. Sandstone was originally used for the foundation. During the Utah War the foundation was buried and the lot made to look like a plowed field to prevent unwanted attention from federal troops. After tensions had eased in 1858 and work on the temple resumed, it was discovered that many of the foundation stones had cracked, making them unsuitable for use. The inadequate sandstone was replaced by quartz monzonite (which has the appearance of granite) from Little Cottonwood Canyon, located twenty miles (32 km) southeast of the temple site. Oxen transported the granite initially, but as the Transcontinental Railroad neared completion in 1869 the remaining stones were carried by rail at a much faster rate. The capstone was laid on April 6, 1892 by means of an electric motor and switch operated personally by Wilford Woodruff, the church's fourth President, thus completing work on the temple's exterior. The Angel Moroni is twelve and one half feet tall. At the capstone ceremony it was proposed by President Woodruff that the interior of the building be finished within one year, thus allowing the temple to be dedicated forty years to the day of its commencement. John R. Winder was instrumental in overseeing the completion of the interior on schedule; he would serve as a member of the temple presidency until his death in 1910. President Woodruff dedicated the temple on April 6, 1893, exactly forty years after the cornerstone was laid. |
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