I rarely read the part of the threads that are simply LDS-bashing, because it has nothing to do with my interest.
However, what I have read didn’t put the charges made against the FLDS on par with what this particular person claims was the norm in the LDS church in the 1800s.
So when you said you could see it, I was asking for what you saw that made it the same.
I don’t really want to go off and research it, and if you want to tell me to pound sand, that’s fine.
I know when I make statements, and people ask me what basis I have, I like to tell them, because my point of posting was to educate and convince others.
I know other people just like to post for other reasons than to be informative. Nobody is required to be informative.
The article on marriage, which was published in the early editions of the Doctrine and Covenants was frequently used by the early Mormon Church to counteract the report that polygamy was being practiced. On Sept. 1, 1842, this statement appeared in the Times and Seasons (vol. 3, p. 909): "Inasmuch as the public mind has been unjustly abused... we make an extract on the subject of marriage, showing the rule of the church on this important matter. The extract is from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and is the only rule allowed in the church.
" '...Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy; we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife, and one woman, but one husband,... ' " In vol. 4, p. 143, of the Times and Seasons, we find the following: "We are charged with advocating a plurality of wives, and common property. Now this is as false as the many other ridiculous charges which are brought against us. No sect have [sic] a greater reverence for the laws of matrimony, or the rights of private property, and we do what others do not, practice what we preach." In the Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, vol. 3, p. 74, the following denial appeared: "But, for the information of those who may be assailed by those foolish tales about two wives, we would say that no such principle ever existed among the Latter-Day Saints, and never will;... the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants; and also all our periodicals are very strict on that subject, indeed far more so than the bible."
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines—Behold, and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as touching this matter. . . . all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same. . . . and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned . . . (Doctrine and Covenants 132:1-4).
One of the first women listed as a plural wife of Joseph Smith is Fanny Alger, a teenager who lived in the Smith home in the mid-1830's. Todd Compton, an LDS historian, commented that her marriage to him in Kirtland, Ohio, established a pattern that was repeated in Nauvoo, Illinois: Smith secretly marries a teenage servant or family friend living in his home, and his first wife Emma forces the young woman from the premises when she discovers the relationship (In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton, p. 25). Oliver Cowdery, one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, became aware of the relationship between Joseph and Fanny but considered it a case of adultery. In 1838 he wrote to his brother, Warren, about the episode: When he [Joseph Smith] was there we had some conversation in which in every instance I did not fail to affirm that what I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deviated from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself (Letter written by Oliver Cowdery and recorded by his brother Warren Cowdery; see photograph in The Mormon Kingdom, vol. 1, p. 27).
Oliver Cowdery, one of the "Three Witnesses" was excommunicated from the church for revealing Smith's affair. Smith set a pattern of rule in the LDS church that is still practiced today, when the "truth" doesn't "smell good".
Mr. Mind-Reader at it again...tell me, non-mormon CW, do you get these "revelations" of what other FReepers are thinking as a voice from the Holy Spirit, accompanied by a "burning in the bosom"?
Mr. Mind-Reader at it again...tell me, non-mormon CW, do you get these "revelations" of what other FReepers are thinking as a voice from the Holy Spirit, accompanied by a "burning in the bosom"?