Jeff Roundy

When Joseph Smith was 17 years old, he was told by the angel Moroni that his name should be had for good and evil among among all nations. This was a bold statement for an unknown, uneducated farmboy in a small rural town. This video explores how dramatically that statement has turned out to be reality.

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This video in the Evidences series is going to talk about Joseph Smith. There was a prophecy made in his early youth about his name being had for good and evil among all nations, which is hard to comprehend when he’s 17 years old as an uneducated farm boy in rural New York to be told this. This is what the Angel Moroni spoke to Joseph. He said, “He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.”

Then fast forward to 1839 in Liberty Jail, falsely imprisoned there, he had a revelation and this is what he was told. “The ends of the earth shall inquire after thy name, and fool shall have the in derision, and hell shall rage against thee.” Again, to look forward now and talk about Joseph’s name being known among all nations and being had for good and evil. To share some interesting things that I pulled together. One would be back about the time of Joseph in 1845, Josiah Quincy Jr. who was a relative of former presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, son of a president of Harvard University and will go on to become the mayor of Boston. He pinned a book called Figures of the Past: From the Leaves of Old Journals. In the final chapter, Quincy states this. “It is by no means improbable that some future textbook will contain a question, something like this. ‘What historical American of the 19th century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his country men?’ And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.”

It’s pretty cool. Now to bring it to right now, in 2015 a Smithsonian did a collector’s edition of their magazine, of the 100 most significant Americans of all time. They had it in 10 different categories including religious figures, and Joseph Smith was number one in the religious category. Now, another fascinating thing having to do with Google, Google Ads has a project it’s called Ngram Viewer. What this does, it’s kind of a fun tool you can play around with. They analyzed 5 million books that Google has scanned from public libraries and it goes clear back to 1500. It represents about 4%, so it’s a small sample, but it is a good sample that you can test names, phrases, things, and specifically relative to each other. It’s an interesting thing. It’s kind of fun to put Joseph Smith’s name in there and compare it to some different ones.

So, I’m going to pop up on the screen here some different things. Joseph Smith will always appear in blue. For example, here is Mother Theresa. You can see a good example there with Joseph and Mother Theresa. The next one on here is the Dalai Lama. You can see where Joseph Smith correlates nicely with the Dalai Lama there over time. The next one is Fidel Castro, again, additional names being shown. Victor Hugo as the next one on here. The next one, C.S. Lewis, famous author. Then Thomas Edison. Here’s just a sample of different ones. Again, another evidence of Joseph Smith’s name being much more recognized.

There was a neat story that was in the Deseret News a few years ago that was talking about a elder John Groberg in the mid 1950s. He became a future General Authority. He wrote a book, The Other Side of Heaven. You may be familiar with the movie, but he writes as a young missionary there serving on a remote island of Tafahi in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. To his surprise, he quickly discovered that those he was teaching had never heard of the Great Depression, the Korean War, then famous sports figures or the periods internationally celebrated movie stars. They recognized neither the names of prominent world leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, and Charles de Gaulle. Nor, for that matter the names of the countries that those men led: the United States of America, the Soviet Union, and France. Although not a single resident of the island was then a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which today is about 50% of the island. Although at that point there was not a single member, they did know the name of Joseph Smith.

When Elder Groberg mentioned Joseph Smith, he later recalled their faces lit up immediately. Everyone looked at him. The father of the family with whom he was visiting said, don’t talk to us about that false prophet, not in our home. We know all about him. Our minister has told us. Elder Groberg says, he “could scarcely believe what he was hearing.” He “immediately thought of Moroni’s prediction to the young prophet recorded in Joseph Smith History 133” that I just read. His name should be had for good and evil among all nations. “To me”, Elder Groberg recalls, “this was a direct fulfillment of prophecy.”

Now, if you want to talk also about Joseph’s name had for evil in a sense is the famous play, The Book of Mormon, the Broadway musical. The show has been awarded nine Tony Awards, one of which was for the best musical and a Grammy award for best musical theater album. In fact, the Broadway cast recording became the highest charting Broadway cast album in over four decades, reaching number three on the billboard charts. Some have been very critical. In fact, Tim Allen said he almost walked out of that show and thought it was a very disparaging towards a religion. In fact he made the comment that he didn’t think any other religion would be treated this way, or if they were, there would be an uproar about it. He was surprised with the reaction from the Latter-Day Saints in just turning the other cheek essentially.

I wanted to share an interesting thing. It’s been estimated that the show’s creators spent seven years writing and producing the Book of Mormon musical. Let’s take a look on the screen here of what the Church did in Africa during those seven years. I thought these were some fun ways to see the fulfillment of this prophecy. Now I want to close just showing you a quick clip from the Face to Face with Elder Cook. They had a video showing quotes from the Standard of Truth that Joseph Smith spoke, and this is in languages throughout the world. So please enjoy.

America:
The Standard of Truth has been erected.

Russia:
No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.

Brazil:
Persecutions may rage.

Tonga:
Mobs may combine.

Ghana:
Armies may assemble.

Philippines:
Calumny may defame.

Samoa:
But the truth of God will go forth.

France:
Boldly, nobly, and independent.

Ghana:
Till it has penetrated every continent.

Japan:
Visited every clime.

Mexico:
Swept every country.

Brazil:
And sounded in every ear.

Germany:
Till the purposes of God shall be accomplished.

South Africa:
And the great Jehovah shall say the work is done.

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Resources:

Articles:

Deseret News/Church News article “Joseph Smith ‘most influential’ 19th Century American”: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/7…

Deseret News/Church News article “Joseph Smith’s name had for good and evil among all nations”: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/8…

lds.org article “Joseph Smith atop Smithsonian Magazine’s Top Religious Figures List”: https://www.lds.org/church/news/josep…

MormonNewsroom.org article “Why I Won’t Be Seeing the Book of Mormon Musical”: https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/articl…

Miscellaneous:

Google Books Ngram Viewer – Google Books Ngram Viewer is an online search engine that charts the frequencies of any set of comma-delimited search strings using a yearly count of n-grams found in sources printed between 1500 and 2008: https://books.google.com/ngrams/

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.

This video shares two instances of miraculous divine protection, in Joseph Smith’s young life before receiving his prophetic calling and First Vision.

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On this video in the Evidences series, I’m going to talk about two miracles that happened in the early life of the prophet Joseph Smith.

The first was the surgery on Joseph Smith’s leg from osteomyelitis that Joseph contracted as a result of the typhus fever epidemic that was going through the area where they lived. It was West Lebanon, New Hampshire. This was when Joseph was seven. His family was living there, and it was swept throughout the area of this upper Connecticut valley. Many of the members of the Smith Family contracted the disease. Sophronia, his sister, almost died from it.

Joseph, he had the typhus fever. It went down into his left leg and the disease went into the bone and it is called osteomyelitis. The procedure for this was amputation. That’s really what any doctor prescribed for this. A doctor came and met at the Smith home with Lucy, in particular, and Lucy would not have this for her son. She asked for a second opinion, and another, in fact, a group of doctors came, medical students from the nearby school, the Dartmouth School of Medicine that had been established by Nathan Smith.

Nathan Smith had a procedure. It was an experimental procedure of operating on the bone. He was the only doctor in the country that performed this surgery. It was a way to potentially save the leg from amputation. Lucy agreed to this, and Joseph agreed. His conditions though were interesting. Normally, the procedure involved tying down the person to the bed, spread eagle, and then administering alcohol there to help ease the pain. Joseph said he wouldn’t have either. He just wanted his dad to sit with him on the bed, and his mom to be out of the room as the procedure happened.

So they went forward, this procedure was successful, and the recovery was pretty lengthy. Three years that it took, Joseph with crutches, and he had, in fact, always had a limp the rest of his life. It was slightly shortened leg from this surgery.

Some particular miracles about this, in particular, related to the fact that Nathan Smith who was essentially the only doctor that could have performed this surgery was five miles from the Smith home. Nathan Smith was not supposed to be at Dartmouth at this time. He’d agreed to go help start the medical school at Yale, but his family had contracted the diseases there with the typhoid fever as well, so he was delayed in going. That is why he was there at the time.

This procedure turned out to be almost 100 years before its time. In fact, there was a medical journal in 1876 that talked about this procedure and recommended not doing it because it appeared that Nathan Smith was the only one that could successfully do it. Thousands of people lost their legs during the Civil War from osteomyelitis there from amputation.

It did come around and began being practiced during World War I with the invention of the x-ray machine. Later, Penicillin was invented in 1828 and really began being applied in 1842, and the surgery was essentially lost to time.

I truly see this as miraculous in many ways. The fact that Nathan Smith lived five miles from the prophet Joseph Smith. He was delayed from going. He shouldn’t have been there at the time. He was 100 years ahead of his time. He was the only one in the entire country that could have performed the surgery. It really is quite miraculous that Joseph was able to keep his leg. Even in World War I when they did perform this surgery, there were many complications and many fatalities in performing this operation. Really it is quite a miracle.

The second miracle I just want to mention briefly because we know very, very little about this. It was just a short paragraph in Lucy Mack Smith, the prophet’s mother’s journal about when Joseph was 14. This was several months before the first vision, that’s a key note to be aware of; there was an assassination attempt upon Joseph’s life. One night, he was coming home; it was about twilight. He was just coming into the door, and two shots were fired right at Joseph. They both missed him, but Joseph jumped into the house and they closed the house up. The next morning, they went out to try and see if they could see anything that had happened. They saw tracks and positioning that looked like somebody was underneath a wagon close to the house where they were positioned; looked like trying to kill Joseph. Two shots fired.

You have to say why. This really would be a strange. There would be no reason for anyone to try and kill Joseph Smith, but this was several months before the first vision. Another divine intervention, I believe, in preserving the prophet’s life, to prepare him to restore the church to the earth.

That’s it. I hope you’re enjoying these videos. I’m just getting into a rhythm here to be putting these out. My goal is to try and get them out each week. One that’s addressing criticisms of the church and one that’s focused on evidences of the restoration. I hope you’re enjoying, and please subscribe. Thanks.

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Resources:

Articles:

Joseph Smith’s Doc Only Man Who Could Save Leg – Deseret News Jul 12, 2008: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/7…

Joseph Smith Owed His Life to Dr Nathan Smith – History of Mormonism website: https://historyofmormonism.com/2013/1…

Excerpt from Lucy Smith Journal on Assassination Attempt on Joseph several months before the First Vision https://ldsmag.com/young-joseph-smith…

Videos:

Saving Joseph’s Leg – Joseph Smith Papers Video on MormonChannel https://www.mormonchannel.org/listen/…

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.

Many fear that polygamy may be practiced (or even be required) in the afterlife. This video discusses the doctrine in the revelations along with modern day prophets to hopefully bring much more clarity to this issue and provide some refreshing thoughts and peace of mind if this is a worry.

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On this video, this is part three of polygamy. This is where I specifically talk about the afterlife and if we will have polygamy being practiced in the afterlife, just some of those issues. I know this is a very sensitive topic and I hope I’ll do justice to it. I’ve got a lot of great stuff to share.

Let me just start, though, by sharing something from the worldwide devotional just a few months ago with Elder Cook at the launch of the new church history book, Saints. While he was speaking, Elder Cook said that, about polygamy, he said, “In the senior councils of the church, there is a feeling that polygamy as it was practiced served its purpose and we should honor those saints, but that purpose has been accomplished.”

Now Kate Holbrook who was there, from the church history department, she said in this Face to Face Devotional, this broadcast from the Nauvoo Temple, she said, “Monogamy is the rule, plural marriage is the exception, and our church leaders have taught us that plural marriage is not necessary for exaltation or for eternal glory.” But challenges and fears still exist, and I’m hoping this video can help to alleviate some of these. Some of these fears may be unspoken, but I want to go in to start with right into the doctrine itself from the revelation that Joseph Smith received, D&C 132, and look at the verses. I think it’s very comforting to look at the actual words, how they’re spelled out.

If you look in D&C 132 at the beginning, verses four, six and seven. We talked in the original video on polygamy that one of the reasons was a restitution of all things. Well, the restitution of polygamy actually was a restitution of the new and everlasting covenant of marriage and the sealing power. As a segment of that, if God allowed it to be practiced or commanded it be practiced for a time was polygamy. But what was really restored, the great joy, the crowning part of the Restoration, was really the sealing power in eternal marriage.

Let’s start by looking at D&C 132, verses four, six and seven. If you look at those underlying parts there, “I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant.” Look at verse six. And by the way, notice if there’s anything in here about plural marriage. You’re not seeing anything about that at this point at all. Verse six, “As pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant, he that receiveth a fullness thereof must and shall abide the law.” Now, verse seven says, here’s the conditions of this law.This is what it is, that these covenants are to be bound and they’re to be “sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise of him who is anointed.” It says the keys are with the prophet, only one man at a time on the earth will hold all the keys there, and that “all contracts that are not made into this and have an end when men are dead.”

So the seal by the Holy Spirit of Promise is a stamp of approval by the Holy Ghost through our faithfulness and the sealing to be done by him who was anointed through the keys. So that is the conditions of the law. Now if we go to the law of the new and everlasting covenant marriage, go forward to verses 18 and 19. “If a man marry a wife, which is my law, and if he doesn’t do it through the anointed appointed that power then is not valid neither a force when they are out of this world, they cannot hear it, my glory.” Verse 19, “And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed into them by the holy spirit of promise by him who was anointed unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood, they shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities and powers, dominions, all heights and depths to their exaltation in glory and all things and have been sealed upon their head.”

This is the crowning blessing of the gospel. Notice there is nothing about plural marriage in any of this. Now finally you get to verse 32. This is the verse to where it’s beginning to talk about Joseph being commanded to practice plural marriage here. Now, this was knowledge to Joseph in 1831 as he was doing the inspired version of the translation of the Bible. This is where he received this beginning knowledge of this. It was recorded in 1843 this section of the Doctrine and Covenants, but this is back when the knowledge started in 1831. “Go ye, therefore, and do the works of Abraham; enter ye into my law and ye shall be saved. But if ye enter not into my law, ye cannot receive the promise of my father, which he made to Abraham. God commanded Abraham and Sara gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law.”

Now If I can break for a minute and say in their culture they practiced polygamy back then at that time. So this would have been a natural thing for them to do. But God’s law at that time is always monogamy unless God commands. So that’s why it had to be commanded for them to do this and it was the law for them at that time as it was commanded. So back to this, “And from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises. Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily I say to you, nay, for I the Lord commanded it. Abraham was commanded to offer his son Isaac; nevertheless, it is written: Thou shall not kill. Abraham, however, did not refuse, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. Abraham received concubines,” like Hagar, “and they bore him children, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness because they were given unto him, and he abode in my law; as Isaac, also, and Jacob did none other thing than that which they were commanded, and because they did none other things than that which they were commanded, they have entered into their exaltation.”

Now this is not us. We are not commanded to do this, but if we were commanded to do this specifically, then we would be required to practice that. So D&C 132 verse 50 then. This is the one I really want to hone in on. “Behold, I have seen your sacrifices, and will forgive all your sins.” Remember, this is 1843 what had transpired to that point with Joseph. “I have seen your sacrifices in obedience to that which I have told you. Go, therefore, and I make a way for your escape, as I accepted the offering of Abraham of his son Isaac.”

And here’s where the magic happens in my mind, the peace that can be found right in the revelation, the ram in the thicket, so to speak, in the Abrahamic sacrifice. I’m going to recommend to you if you have even the slightest fear about polygamy in the afterlife, to spend one hour, I’m going to put it at the top of my resources, of an interview with Dr. Valerie Hudson. She was a professor for 24 years at BYU. She’s written a lot. In fact, her book, Women in Eternity, Women in Zion, fantastic book she coauthored with Alma Don Sorensen. I’m going to share a quick quote in a minute from that.

Here are some snippets that I wanted to share from Dr Hudson’s interview by Fair Mormon. She said, “The Lord has apparently chosen to explain his reasoning and reveal his mind on polygamy in terms of a specific analogy between two situations that occurred to one man, Abraham. His commandment to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and his commandment to Abraham to marry Hagar polygamously.” And then it quotes that verse 36 we just read.

“This is not an arbitrary analogy being made and since it is the only analogy being made, we must pay attention to it and try to understand why that analogy was chosen. God wants us to see how and why he views those two situations as analogous. Sacrifice Isaac, take Hagar to wife. By choosing the story of Isaac to be the analogy of the story of polygamy, the Lord reveals his mind to us. The Lord is telling us that the term Abrahamic sacrifice refers not only to the story of Isaac, but applies to the story of Hagar as well. Of all the possible analogies of sacrifice that God has commanded in the history of the world, God chooses the most wrenching sacrifice that he has ever commanded to serve as the analogy wherewith to instruct us concerning polygamy. The sacrifice of one’s own innocent child by one’s own hand. This choice of analogy by the Lord is meant to reveal to us that in the Lord’s eyes, the Hagar situation is no light matter or run-of-the-mill sacrifice, but rather as likened to the heaviest and most heart wrenching of all sacrifices God has ever required of man.”

Then she continues. She says, “This is to me the strongest possible scriptural evidence that D&C 132 is in complete harmony with Jacob 2 and that, therefore, the general law of rule of marriage is monogamy and the lawful exception is polygamy. And God maintains as strong a discrimination between the two forms of marriage in this dispensation as he did in Jacob’s time. We can now say why it is that God is not indifferent between monogamy and polygamy. In the Lord’s eyes, monogamy is not a sacrifice, it’s a blessing. But polygamy is a sacrifice and not just any sacrifice. The Lord tells us it is an Abrahamic sacrifice.” And remember he told Joseph there would be an escape. “However, as with Abraham’s sacrifice, which points to the sacrifice of the innocent Son of God in the Atonement, sometimes Christ-like suffering is the greater good and the most loving course of action. Thus in a sense despite the suffering involved in a Christ-like sacrifice, or Abrahamic sacrifice, there is a joy which comes from knowing that sacrifice is, in God’s eyes, the right and loving thing to do.”

Then in this interview, I would highly suggest, she goes through and debunks many other small reasons sometimes given for why polygamy will be needed in Heaven. For the Cliffs Notes version of this, I don’t want to take the time to do that, but I highly recommend you listen to it. But this is the meat right here with this Abrahamic sacrifice discussion. Now I want you to think of this about would polygamy be practiced in Heaven if it was an Abrahamic sacrifice on a daily basis. When you think of this scripture, 1 Corinthians 2 verse 9, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

Or how about this one? Revelations 21:3 and 4, “And he will dwell with them and they shall be his people and God, himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

So maybe sometimes people struggle because they’ve heard leaders say things and it’s throwing them off and there’s fear, concern. I’m going to share a couple of quotes here from… Let’s start with Joseph Smith. If you go to the Hales’ website, josephsmithspolygamy.org, a couple of snippets here in yellow. “There is no record of Joseph Smith or any other priesthood leader stating that all exalted men are polygamous.” Here, President Woodruff said, “I don’t know that I ever heard him make use of that expression or use that form of expression of it being required.” Here’s Bathsheba Smith, apostle’s wife. She said, “I had never heard of that.” Joseph Kingsbury said, “No sir. He did not teach me that. He did not say anything about that.” And he recalled, “I heard it preached from the stand that a man could be exalted in eternity with one wife. Despite these clear statements, the folklore persists.

How about other leaders? Now this is great. This is really important. This is a snippet from the LDS Perspective Podcast on polygamy with Brian and Laura Hales and they said, “With the heightened dialogue, you have more people researching the topic, bringing up issues. One thing they do is quote mine in the journal discourses. Now you know what quote mining is, right? You’re looking for something specifically, so you find what you want and you go, ‘Aha, I’ve caught it.’

Well, the Fundamentalist sects of Mormons have done this for years to justify the continued practice of polygamy. The same quotes keep coming up over and over and over again. There’s a couple by Brigham Young and another one by Joseph F. Smith. What it seems like they’re saying that polygamy is required for exaltation. If you read those quotes in context, you will either read from the speaker themselves that they’re simply opining on the topic. This is something they personally believe, even though it hasn’t been revealed or as simply being quoted out of context. But these quotes have been exploited as more and more people are learning about polygamy. I think to incite fear. Just to say ”This is a really horrible thing, and look, these people say we have to do it, so now this really is something we need to worry about, because it is our problem because our theology teaches this.’ When actually our theology does not teach that. No prophet has ever said that polygamy is required for exaltation. Joseph Smith didn’t say it and President Thomas S. Monson hasn’t said it, either.” He was the prophet at the time.

Now I want to share this quote. I shared a whole video on this called, it was Doctrines, Opinions, Practices: Sorting it all out. What is church doctrine? Here’s a quote from that video. This is on the Church Newsroom website. Statement on church doctrine from May of 2007. “Not every statement made by a church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church. With divine inspiration, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in the official Church publications. This doctrine resides in the four standard works of scripture, official declarations and proclamations, and the Articles of Faith. Isolated statements are often taken out of context, leaving their original meaning distorted.”

Then to finish Dr. Hudson’s interview, the conclusion of it, she did finish with some somber thoughts. She said, “In an informal survey,” she was told and she didn’t conduct the survey, but, “80% of LDS answered said they felt the Lord would restore the practice of polygamy before the second coming.” She says, and this is painful to share, but she said, “I know women who don’t want to go to Heaven because they think Heaven would be hell because they believe they will be commanded to practice polygamy there. I know young girls at BYU, my students, who have called me before their wedding day in the temple and have said, ‘I can’t go through with this. I can’t go through with a temple marriage, because if I marry him in the temple, then he could practice polygamy in the next life.’ But the most heartbreaking of all are the women who tell me that as they kneel across the alter from their husband in the temple in marriage, they promised themselves they would not love him, that they would force their heart not to love him because they knew if he was a good man, he’d be commanded to practice polygamy in the next life.” She says, “I ask you my brothers and sisters who profits from this mischief? Who is it that laughs at the misery and heartache produced. It isn’t God; it is Lucifer.”

Now there is a lot of confusion on sealing rules. It can seem unfair at times. They do change over time and line upon line. In fact, there were these sealing transfers we talked about in Joseph’s day, how they thought of sealing very different than we think of today in many ways and there were all these sealing transfers that happened from Wilford Woodruff, the revelation in 1894 of similar to how we think of it today, but back then. Let me share this little snippet from Dr. Hudson’s book. She said, “Wilford Woodruff had over 400 of his dead female ancestors sealed to him as wives. These practices seem to indicate that the parties involved understood the man in question was more a proxy so the woman could receive the marriage ordinance and thus her exaltation, rather than an understanding that these women were married in some meaningful sense to these particular men for all eternity. What can it mean to have a dead woman sealed to you whom you have never met in this life, who’s will on the matter you cannot possibly know, and who is in fact one of your great, great grandmothers?”

She said, “These marriages make sense best as proxy marriages. Indeed, when President Wilford Woodruff announced in 1894 that women could be sealed to their dead husbands and children to their dead parents, even if the deceased had not been baptized before their deaths…”, which was required back then. “Many thousands of sealing transfers took place to rightfully reorganize family lines. There were over 13,000 sealing transfers that happened. This understanding of sealing transferability in the final welding together of all of those who are worthy to become members of God’s eternal family may help us envision an honorable escape for those faithful men and women who were commanded to depart from the law of marriage and the natural joy that derives from living that law. If God is truly no respecter of persons than the time period in which one entered mortality should not determine one’s opportunity for ending an Abrahamic sacrifice.”

So I love that thought of sealing transferability when if a couple’s divorced, the church doesn’t cancel the sealing. And there’s a focus on the individuality, the faithfulness, that is required for an individual person. They need that sealing ordinance to be exalted, but it’s an individual sealing and the sealing transferability can happen. That’s what will happen in the next life and all will be sorted out. We have to live faithful individually to our covenants. I love this on the lds.org website under the Gospel Topics Essay on plural marriage. It said, “Members are permitted to perform ordinances on behalf of deceased men and women who married more than once on earth, sealing them to all of the spouses to whom they were legally married. The precise nature of these relationships in the next life is not known and many family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. Latter Day Saints are encouraged to trust in our wise, Heavenly Father who loves his children and does all things for their growth and salvation.”

Now will polygamy be allowed in Heaven? Possibly, but it would be not required. We know that for sure. And it would be under a scenario where it would have to be a joy for all that surpasses all understanding and definitely not an Abrahamic sacrifice. So I think that’s what we know, what we know from the scriptures. Now in conclusion, this is the last of these three videos on polygamy and I wanted to share this from the Gospel Topics Essay in the way they conclude. “Plural marriage was among the most challenging aspects of the Restoration. For many who practiced it, plural marriage was a trial of faith. It violated both cultural and legal norms, leading to persecution and revilement. Despite these hardships, plural marriage benefited the church in innumerable ways. Through the lineage of these 19th-century Saints, many Latter-Day Saints who have been faithful to their gospel covenants as righteous mothers and fathers, loyal disciples of Jesus Christ, devoted church members, leaders and missionaries, and good citizens and prominent public officials. Modern Latter-Day Saints honor and respect these faithful pioneers who gave so much for their faith, families, and community.” As they performed their Abrahamic sacrifice.

I hope you enjoyed these videos and I hope they helped. Subscribe for more content.

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Resources:

See Polygamy – The Beginnings and The Ending(s) Videos for related resources

Two additional resources for this video specifically:

Podcast:

Polygamy as an Abrahamic Sacrifice – Fairmormon interview with Dr Valerie Hudson: https://www.fairmormon.org/blog/2012/…

Book:

Women in Eternity, Women in Zion by Dr. Valerie Hudson and Alma Don Sorenson

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.

This video discusses what polygamy looked like in the 19th Century in Utah, why the practice was stopped and why its ending presented new challenges for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (otherwise known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church).

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On this video, I’m going to be talking about polygamy, part 2. I was going to do the endings of polygamy and the afterlife, but as I put together the material there, I had quite a bit for the afterlife. And I didn’t want to really breeze through it quickly, so decided to do a part 3, which will be the next video I put out, and cover that specifically. So this is about the ending(s) plural, and I’ll get to that in a minute, of polygamy.

First of all, let’s talk about some of the stats with polygamy. When the saints were in Utah, at the height of the practice of polygamy, if you include everyone, the men, the women, and the children together, the stats at the height was about 50% of the population in 1857, which was known as The Reformation Period, when they were really focused on this. By 1870, it was down to about 25-30%. Over the entire time span that they were in Utah, until the manifesto, statisticians have estimated around 15-20% of the population.

This varied widely by different towns as well. Porterville was 60%, it was one of the highest. Coalville was one of the lowest at about 6%, as an example. Also, if you take a look at the picture on the screen, this is often when you think about polygamists, you’ll think of a huge number of wives, for example, Brigham Young here. But this was not the typical polygamist in Utah. In fact, 2/3 of those that were practicing polygamy, the men had two wives. Another 20% had three wives. Really, only one in ten had more than three wives in the practice of polygamy.

Also, they had very easy divorce laws. It was the easiest in the entire United States. Very liberal laws. If you remember, when they were in Illinois, I talked about this in the last video. Extremely difficult to get a divorce. Most on the frontier would not go through the legal steps because of the challenges. And basically go by behavior in the community to have a divorce. So very liberal. And in fact, 10% of the polygamists wives did actually divorce. They felt a lot of freedom to change. Many of them would actually enter another polygamist relationship when they get divorced. The divorce rate of monogamist was at 1%. Polygamist at 10%. Kind of interesting.

Also, to give you an idea on the numbers, when I talked about in the last video about Jacob 2 as one of the reasons for polygamy, to raise up seed unto the Lord. And if you look, it was interesting in the Face to Face devotional that Elder Cook had as they launched the new church history publication Saints from the Nauvoo Temple, they had some people there from the church history department. Matt Grow said that the church history department has done a recent study that found that as of today, 20% of the members of the church came as a result of the practice of polygamy. I found that stunning. In fact, I was curious. I would love to see a stat of what this was 50 or 60 years ago, before the global expansion of the church and the dramatic number of converts the last half century. In fact, it was probably at 40, maybe even 50%. So I would say, it worked for that purpose specifically.

Okay. So, who practiced polygamy? If you will look at this slide from the Gospel Topics Essay on LDS.org on plural marriage, it says, “During the years that plural marriage was publicly taught, all Latter-day Saints were expected to accept the principle as a revelation from God. Not all, however, were expected to live it. Indeed, this system of marriage could not have been universal due to the ratio of men to women. Church leaders viewed plural marriage as a command to the Church generally, while recognizing that individuals who did not enter the practice could still stand approved of God. Women were free to choose their spouses, whether to enter into a polygamous or monogamous union, or whether to marry at all. Some men entered plural marriage because they were asked to do so by church leaders, while others initiated the process themselves. All were required to obtain the approval of church leaders before entering a plural marriage.” A very key part of the revelation, that it was controlled through priesthood keys.

My fourth great-grandpa was one of the original bishops here in the Salt Lake valley. He was asked to practice polygamy, and declined. He did not want to do it. His son was one of those asked to help settle the frontier down in southern Utah. Kanarraville was where he was, and he did take on a second wife as he went down there in practice. And he was a bishop in the Kanarraville area down there. So, different things happened there along the way.

Let’s talk about the laws that came about, and why polygamy manifesto came in 1890. What led up to that. So first of all, in 1856, the Republican party, partially part of their platform was to take on slavery and polygamy. They called it the twin relics of barbarism. And that was part of the first shot at polygamy. Then some laws that came about. If you look at the screen here, in 1862, Congress passed the Moral Anti-bigamy Act, which made practicing polygamy a felony. However, the law was full of loopholes and didn’t hold any weight in the Latter-Day Saint dominated Utah courts.

So, in 1874, the government resolved that judicial loophole with the Poland Act. This law stated that all polygamy cases would be tried in federal courts, with federally appointed judges. This was the Latter-day Saint judges or juries couldn’t just dismiss the cases. Along the way, the church members were still practicing polygamy, and practicing civil disobedience in a sense, but they believed it was part of their First Amendment rights, the freedom of religion, to practice your religion.

So in 1879, the church had challenged this in Supreme Court. It was held up as constitutional. And then in 1882, because the last act, you had to prove that a marriage happened. Essentially, witnesses, which was again very challenging. So in 1882, they started to put some teeth in this. The Edmunds Act made unlawful cohabitation a crime, and anyone who broke the law could be in prison for six months. Unlawful cohabitation was a much easier judicial standard to prove than bigamy or polygamy, because prosecutors didn’t have to provide evidence of a marriage.

So then the big one was the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887. And at this point, in 1885 to 1889, most of the apostles, stake presidents, they were either in hiding or in prison. It was an extremely challenging time, what was beginning to happen, and this specific act was really what was the final nail in the coffin of polygamy. This act accomplished three things. Number one, it disenfranchised, took the vote away from all the women in Utah, and polygamous men. That was a big deal. Utah was actually the second state to allow voting. Wyoming was the first, in 1869. Utah was in 1870. In fact, many that were against polygamy thought that women would rise up if they gave them the vote. In fact, they did just the opposite of that. They rallied around polygamy. But they took that away. Two, they froze the assets of the Church in excess of $50,000. Basically bankrupting the Church and crippling it’s missionary efforts. And third, it declared all children of plural marriages to be illegitimate in the eyes of the government.

This was then challenged in the Supreme Court in 1890. It was held up to be constitutional. That is what led to Wilford Woodruff praying heavily about the Manifesto. The issuing of the Manifesto. This was extremely challenging, but he had a vision of where the church would end up with this. And the Lord even said to talk to the people, the Latter-Day Saints, and share with them this question. With 60 million people against us, we are going to lose everything. All the temples, all of the men, the leaders of the church, everyone will be imprisoned, and polygamy will be stopped in the end, or we can stop it now through a Manifesto, and be able to keep all these things. And that was how the Lord asked Wilford Woodruff essentially to share this with the church. Very interesting.

The actual Manifesto was similar to a press release the way it is. It had some ambiguity. It didn’t really have a manual with it how to go about this. And what about if you were already in polygamous relationships. And listen to the last sentence of this. Wilford Woodruff, President Woodruff, “And now I publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-Day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.” So some Saints viewed this as a political expediency that helped Utah to become a state, but they didn’t feel like, necessarily, maybe this was still God’s law. It trumped the law of the land. Some still practiced it. It went down significantly, and a lot of the marriages that happened were down in Mexico during this time period. But some did still happen.

It is interesting to see what Wilford Woodruff … there were some excerpts in the Manifesto that they put. This is actually in their canonized scriptures here, some excerpts from three addresses by Wilford Woodruff. And this is where we get that famous line that many have memorized from Wilford Woodruff. He says, “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this church to lead you astray. It is not in the program. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place.” And I think Wilford Woodruff felt like he really needed to say this now, with this big, big change on deck there.

And if you look on the screen here, something that he did publish as part of the excerpts here. He says, “I should have let all the temples go out of our hands. I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of Heaven commanded me to do what I did do. And when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write.” So, as we go on, what then happens is very challenging situations, politically. The first Senator that was elected was B.H. Roberts, to the Senate, and we had tremendous problems there. He actually was not seated. There was 7 million signatures in our country to protest B.H. Roberts being seated as a Senator, even though we were a state, because he was a polygamist. And he did take on one wife after the Manifesto was executed. So it was a big furor in the country back then. That was in 1898.

1902, Reed Smoot is elected Senator, and he is a monogamist, but after what happened with Reed Smoot and many countrymen throughout the United States not believing the Church as far as them not practicing polygamy now, they had four years of hearings with Reed Smoot. And it was just brutal, gut-wrenching. Joseph F. Smith, the prophet at that time in 1904, came and testified before Congress. After that, he said that he was going to put out a second Manifesto. This was a watershed moment for the Church. This is where, really, the true deadline, if you will for practicing polygamy came about here.

If you look on the screen, this is from the Gospel Topics Essay on plural marriage. “In this legal setting, President Smith sought to protect the Church while stating the truth. His testimony conveyed a distinction Church leaders had long understood. The manifesto removed the divine command for the Church collectively to sustain and defend plural marriage. It had not, up to this time, prohibited individuals from continuing to practice or perform plural marriage as a matter of religious conscience.

During his Senate testimony, President Smith promised publicly to clarify the Church’s position about plural marriage. At the April 1904 general conference, President Smith issued a forceful statement, known as the Second Manifesto, attaching penalties to entering into plural marriage. If any officer or member of the Church shall assume to solemnize or enter into any such marriage, he will be deemed in transgression against the Church, and will be liable to be dealt with according to the rules and regulations thereof, and excommunicated therefrom. This statement had been approved by the leading councils of the Church and was unanimously sustained at the conference as authoritative and binding on the Church.

The Second Manifesto was a watershed event. For the first time, Church members were put on notice that new plural marriages stood unapproved by God and the Church.” This was a very big deal. Two of the Twelve were actually dropped for performing plural marriages. One of them was actually excommunicated, the other disfellowshipped for performing plural marriages after this Second Manifesto.

I didn’t actually get a chance. I was going to put together a little visual. I love how Brian Hales at a Fair Mormon conference had a great visual just showing this timeline of polygamy practiced in the Church. So if you can envision this, from 1834 to 1852, polygamy was permitted in the Church. From 1852 in Utah, to 1890, polygamy was actually commanded. You can go back to, it wasn’t commanded for everyone to practice, but it was commanded on the church level there. From 1890 to 1904, polygamy was again permitted. And if you think about it, the Lord is so merciful. This was gut wrenching. Very challenging. Wait until I talk about that in the next video, about this Abrahamic sacrifice. And we will be required to do this in the afterlife necessarily.

And so, you think about how structurally challenging, and culturally in society, to do something like this. The Lord allowed it to phase in, and to phase out, and I think that’s very merciful. Now, the thing I wanted to finish with on this was polygamists today. And where they trace their roots back to some critical events during this time frame here. In 1886, supposedly, John Taylor had a special meeting with a group of 13. It was eight hours long. It was on September 27, 1886. In this meeting, supposedly, he said he had a vision that polygamy was to carry on and continue on forward. Even outside the Church, if it had to be, to continue forward. And he even set apart, supposedly, five people to ensure that this was able to carry on. Even if it had to go outside the Church. This was the key crux that they lean back to, is that these keys went outside the church structure on here.

There are some real challenges to this. In the book Persistence of Polygamy, if you look at the screen here, I actually just took a screenshot of this page. I thought it was fascinating. If you look at these 13 people that were at that meeting, the five in the middle there that’s kind of the grayed out box there, those were the five that were set apart. And let’s look at their behavior. The actual behavior.

How many of these men took upon themselves plural wives after the Manifesto? It’s all zeros. None of them. If you go past the Second Manifesto, none of them took on a second wife except for one, Lorin Woolley. And if you look, who reported that there was this special meeting that took place? There may have been a meeting. There may have even been a revelation for John Taylor to continue forward and rally around practicing polygamy at that time in 1886. But look at the date, 1912. This is 26 years after the event, and he was the one that took on a wife after the Second Manifesto there. Very interesting. None of the others. There’s one other, it was 43 years later, Daniel Bateman talked about this meeting that John Taylor had.

But there’s a much more critical measure here that I would say, and it’s following the living prophet. If you think about it, this principle here. And I love what Dallin H. Oaks said in this BYU Devotional in June of 1992. “The most important difference between dead prophets and living ones is that those who are dead are not here to receive and declare the Lord’s latest words to his people. If they were, there would be no differences among the messages of the prophets.”

This continued to be a challenge for several decades. In 1933, Heber J. Grant actually issued a Third or Final Manifesto, as some call it. Very strong wording. Actually, it required a loyalty pledge for those who were viewed as potentially practicing polygamy. If they did not sign this loyalty pledge, they were excommunicated. This is actually where the Fundamentalist groups got their start, the two big groups. The AUB, the Apolistic United Brethren, and then FLDS today. And there’s estimate maybe 30 to 60 thousand people still practicing today in those two groups. So that’s where they tie back to. But what a great principal for us. The keys are with the living prophet.

I hope this video was helpful, and I look forward to the next one about practicing polygamy in the afterlife.

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Resources:

See Polygamy – The Beginnings Video for related resources

Additional Gospel Topics Essays:

Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah: https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-mar…

The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage https://www.lds.org/topics/the-manife…

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.

This video discusses the beginnings of polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While we often avoid this painful topic, faithful members who seek a better understanding of it, will have tools to answer the avalanche of criticisms leveled against us regarding this charged and sensitive topic. This video explains why polygamy was practiced, how to avoid judging its history through our present day eyes, better understanding for the criticisms leveled against Joesph Smith for how he started the practice, and how participants who struggled to live it were buoyed up by miraculous manifestations leading them to know it was, indeed, from God for that particular time, and for His particular purposes. The next video, part 2, will discuss the endings of polygamy in the church and what the afterlife might look like with regard to this principle (hint: would God require us to live an Abrahamic sacrifice throughout eternity?).

So, in this video I’m going to be talking about polygamy or plural marriage. I’m going to do a part two, which will be about the endings of polygamy and the afterlife and hopefully that’ll be a very comforting aspect to this, but this one, I want to really focus on the beginnings of polygamy. Also, this is a topic we don’t talk about much, where I think we want to distance ourselves from it. Say, “It was a long time ago. We don’t practice that anymore. It’s a painful topic. Feels very unfair. It’s challenging” and so, I think we have not studied the issues a lot and so one of the challenges is this is being pounded in today’s internet world and critics really are having a heyday with this topic and challenging people’s faiths with lots of different issues. There are actually great answers for many of the key criticisms, but it’s just we haven’t really taken time to study some of the issues because we really probably don’t want to. So, hopefully this video will be helpful in that way.

So, let’s talk a little bit about the history here. In fact, polygamy has actually been practiced in many cultures throughout the history of the world. The ancient Chinese, Native Americans, many African countries. In fact, still today, Hindus up until 1955. They changed that. The Muslims, in fact, still do. In fact, a third of the world today is still in areas where polygamy’s practiced or allowed, and if you are part of the Judeo-Christian culture and believe in the Old Testament, then you have to acknowledge that God allowed polygamy at times. In the Bible, in the Old Testament, there are 29 polygamists. Some of the famous ones, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon.

So, now let’s talk about how polygamy was started by Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in our day. Some of the key things I want to talk about with this topic as I get into this is one is presentism and that is basically taking how you see things today and applying that back to an earlier day and that can be fraught with risk, especially on some of these topics we’ll be going through.

A great example would be the second thing I would say is the understanding of sealing that we have today is very different than the way that they saw sealing back then. It was enrolled line-upon-line. In its infancy, they saw the sealing in a lot of different ways. First of all, they required the Melchizedek priesthood for a man to be sealed and so, if a wife had a husband die and he didn’t get the Melchizedek priesthood, she could not be sealed to him. They wouldn’t allow Melchizedek priesthoods to be done on a proxy basis after they were gone. Same thing with parents. You couldn’t be sealed to your parents if there wasn’t a Melchizedek priesthood holder as the father.

They saw a great desire to be sealed to general authorities or leaders binding there. They also had these dynastic sealings where they were trying to combine families in a sense, especially the leaders. A famous one was Heber C. Kimball wanted his daughter, Helen Mar Kimball, I’ll talk about her in a minute for another issue, but to Joseph Smith as a way to combine their two families. There’s a great book that I would recommend. This is just a great read. It’s fascinating. The Development of Temple Doctrine. Wilford Woodruff is when the revelation came in 1894 that basically set the stage for how we do sealings today and it’s just fascinating to see how that came about. Right after the Salt Lake temple dedication, that’s when we started the genealogy society, et cetera. So one little nugget that’s quite fascinating at the end of all this is in 1894 when Wilford Woodruff released the new sealing doctrine that he received from revelation, there were actually 13,000 sealings at that point that had been done between unrelated individuals. So, the sealing types of which we would not do today.

The third thing to remember is scarce records on this topic. It was practiced in the beginning very confidentially before it was rolled to the Church as a whole. So, there’s not a lot of records, and then also I would suggest reading some of the accounts of the people that were given this practice early on and what they had to say about it, especially the women. To give you some examples, Zina Huntington, “I made a greater sacrifice than to give my life, for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable woman. Nevertheless, I searched the scripture and by humble prayer to my heavenly father, I obtained a testimony for myself.” Mary Elizabeth Rollings, “A personage stood in front of the bed looking at me. Its clothes were whiter than anything I’d ever seen. I could look at its person, but when I saw its face so bright and more beautiful than any earthly being could be and those eyes piercing me through and through, I could not endure it.” And this is what Joseph had promised her, that she would receive this witness.

Lucy Walker. “Every feeling in my soul revolted against it.” After several restless nights on her knees in prayer, she said, “My room became filled with a heavenly influence. To me it was in comparison like the brilliant sun bursting through the darkest cloud. My soul was filled with a calm, sweet peace that I never knew. Supreme happiness took possession of my whole being and I received a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truth of the marriage covenant called celestial or plural marriage, which has been like an anchor to the soul through all the trials of life.”

You think about many pin this on Joseph as just Joseph. You have to answer for all these experiences. I did a video once called, “How Could They Have All Lied?” And it reminds me of this as we see these experiences that were had.

Elizabeth Whitney, her and her husband together, “We pondered upon the doctrine of polygamy continually and our prayers were unceasing that the Lord would grant us some special manifestation concerning this new and strange doctrine. The Lord was very merciful to us. He revealed unto us his power and glory. We were seemingly wrapped in a heavenly vision, a halo of light encircled us, and we were convinced in our own minds that God heard and approved our prayers. Our hearts were comforted and our faith made so perfect.

Now for a few brethren. Let’s look at Heber C. Kimball. “I never felt more sorrowful. I wept days. I had a good wife. I was satisfied.” Brigham Young, “It was the first time in my life that I desired the grave. I had to pray unceasingly and I had to exercise faith and the Lord revealed to me the truth of it and that satisfied me.” John Taylor, “I had always entertained strict ideas of virtue and I felt as a married man that this was to me, an appalling thing to do. Nothing but a knowledge of God, and the revelations of God, could have induced me to embrace such a principle as this. We, the Twelve, seemed to put off, as far as we could, what might be termed the evil day.”

And one of my favorites, Benjamin Johnson. Joseph had talked to him about marrying his sister and he said, “And almost an agony of feeling. I looked him straight in the face and said, ‘Brother Joseph, this is something I did not expect and I do not understand it. You know whether it is right. I do not. I want to do just as you tell me and I will try, but if I ever should know that you do this to dishonor and debauch my sister, I will kill you as sure as the Lord lives,’ and while his eye did not move from mine, he said with a smile in a soft tone, ‘But Benjamin, you will never know that, but you will know the principle is true and will greatly rejoice in what it is, what it will bring to you,’ but, ‘How?’ I asked, ‘Can I teach my sister when I myself do not understand?’ ‘But you will see and understand that,’ he said, ‘And when you open your mouth to talk to your sister, light will come to you and your mouth will be full and your tongue loose.'”

And then he described the experience talking to his sister. “I stood before her trembling, my knees shaking. Just so soon as I found power to open my mouth, it was filled, for the light of the Lord shown upon my understanding, and the subject that had seemed so dark now appeared of all subjects pertaining to our gospel, the most lucid and plain, and so my sister and myself were converted together.

I love some of those stories and that can help us see this principle at its inception. So, why was polygamy practiced? Why was it started up? So, I want to go through a timeline. 1831 was when Joseph Smith was going through trying to do the inspired version of the the Bible and is looking at the verses and was asking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Great Patriarchs, and how it was that they were allowed to practice polygamy.

It was revealed to him at this time and it was codified in the revelation that was written out in 1843 that is now Doctrine and Covenants section 132. In that, there are four reasons told as to why and I’m going to give you four other really good ones too, but four key ones from D&C 132. Raise up seed now onto me, as it said in Jacob 2. In the Book of Mormon it says monogamy is the principle, but at times polygamy can be the the law for a period if it was to raise up seed unto the Lord. And it’s interesting, there were lower birth rates of polygamous wives than monogamous. However, the overall number of women that had married was much higher, and so the actual overall births were quite a bit higher in studies showing this, but the most important was who they were born to and the houses that they were raised in and those influences. The keys were through the prophet and that’s how the practice was done. I’ll talk more about that in the second video about really the Utah days.

Number two, Abrahamic sacrifice was a key test to ultimately try the saints. If you look at the screen, Helen Mar Kimball said, “The Prophet said that the practice of this principle would be the hardest trial the saints would ever have to test their faith. I did not try to conceal the fact of it’s having been a trial, but confess it had been one of the severest in my life, but that it had also proven one of the greatest of blessings. I could truly say it had done the most towards making me a saint and a free woman in every sense of the word and I knew many others who could say the same and to whom it had proven one of the greatest boons, a blessing in disguise.”

Number three is it also was a restitution of all things. Acts 3:19 through 21 says before the Lord comes again for the second coming, there would be a restitution of all things. This was part of that. And then number four, it allowed women the opportunity or more opportunities for exaltation. We learned in section 132 verse 19 that exaltation is achieved through the sealing power there of marriage, and so it did require a worthy spouse worthy husband, and so there was an interesting study that professor Catherine Danes did in 19th Century Utah, even though the men and women numbers were similar, the actual temple worthiness as measured by temple recommends and endowments was skewed to the women. So, it did allow those women in excess in that respect to have the blessings and benefits of that special ordinance.

Now, for the quick reasons why I think it was wonderful for the benefits that this provided at this time, one is those adoptions in dynastic sealings helped to form a powerful cohesion for the journey ahead. That was just brutal for them. Number two, it separated the saints from their environment. Sociologists have actually proved that for a religion to successfully grow, it requires to be a demanding religion and actually to have some moderate tension with its host community. You could say polygamy certainly did that. In fact, if you look at the RLDS, they rejected polygamy and if you look today, they are very small numbers and barely recognizable amongst the protestants in differences. Number three, economic advantages. So, if you think about it, the wealth was more equally distributed through this process of plural marriage, specifically because you had to prove and show that you had the resources to support another wife. And about 50% of the plural marriages in total happened between 1844 and 1859, which was the part of the transition to Utah, the settling of the frontier, essentially very harsh conditions and would be much more difficult without those resources maybe spread to that degree. The last thing I would say is social support, especially when the men were off serving missions.

Okay. So, when we jump forward to 1834. This is when Joseph was actually commanded by an angel to begin the practice of polygamy. He didn’t start right away. He wasn’t told, it sounds like, how to do it at all. There’s no manual. He was on his own. He talked about how challenging it was to break the molds of things. He says, “I tried for a number of years to get the minds of the saints prepared to receive the things of God, but we frequently see some of them, after suffering all they have for the work of God, will fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to their traditions.”

So, his first attempt, it didn’t go well, but it was with Fanny Alger and it was a housekeeper in the house. She was 18 or 19 at the time. Like I said, 1835, 1836 he got permission from the parents. He had Levi Hancock be the mediator as well as the one to perform the marriage. It doesn’t appear that Emma knew, but it’s a little uncertain. There aren’t records really clearly from either one of them personally firsthand, but she did find out. She blew up and could barely be consoled, and Joseph did not practice polygamy for another five years until the angel appeared again. That was in 1841. So, second time on there and Joseph began a practice that has become very hard to understand in our day today, and that was marrying women who were already married.

Now, if you look here, this is from the Gospel Topics Essays. He says, or they say there, “Joseph Smith’s sealings to women already married may have been an early version of linking one family to another. These ties extended both vertically from parent to child, and horizontally from one family to another. Today, such eternal bonds are achieved through the temple marriages of individuals who are also sealed to their own birth families. In Nauvoo, most, if not all, the first husbands seemed to have continued living in the same household with their wives during Joseph’s lifetime, and complaints about these sealings with Joseph Smith are virtually absent from the documentary record. These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma. He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships. This could explain why according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having demurred on plural marriage even after he’d entered into the practice. After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.

Another possibility is that in an era when lifespans were shorter than they are today, faithful women felt an urgency to be sealed by priesthood authority. Several of these women were married either to non-Mormons or former Mormons, and more than one of the women later expressed unhappiness in their present marriages. Living in a time when divorce was difficult to obtain, these women may have believed the sealing to Joseph Smith would give them blessings they might not otherwise receive in the next life.” As one example, Orson Hyde was a member of the Twelve. So, he’s one you would say, “Wow, that must have been a very faithful brother.” I’m sure he was, but his wife, Miranda, actually, when divorce laws were much easier and they were in Utah, she did divorce Orson Hyde back then. So, that was one of these women. So, one of the things I’d like to share this from a phenomenal book. If there’s one book I would like to recommend on this, it’s this publication. So Brian and Laura Hales have studied this topic I think more than anybody, done more research. They have a 1500 page trilogy on this. They’ve tried to get every document out there. They run a phenomenal website called Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. Very helpful for answers in even reader’s digest fashion. This is their book summarizing the 1500 page trilogy, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Toward a Better Understanding. One tiny snippet out of that on this topic, “As odd as these arrangements seem to us today, it is important to note that there is no unambiguous evidence indicating that Joseph ever treated these women as wives and sexual partners. Observers may take solace that none of the civil couples tied to this union left any public complaints against Joseph for the arrangements.” In fact, even Joseph’s enemies did not use this against him at the time, which is a good indication they knew that these were eternity only marriages.

Now, there were two that may have been for time and eternity and these are the ones that critics have just bashed on for years and it’s a fascinating study in how these things can be portrayed by critics, and I want to just dive into one because it was just solved in a sense by a DNA study in 2016. So, one of these, there were 14 marriages to women that were already married. Two of them potentially according to the laws of the land, had not been divorced. However, they had been separated from their husbands and where it was very challenging and difficult to get divorces, especially if you’re poor, especially if you’re on the frontier, behavior was looked at significantly to determine that. So, in a sense they had the church divorce. Also, according to the scriptures, the new and everlasting covenant actually does away with all old covenants. So, in a sense, the old covenant would have been done away with this happening. However, critics said, “Hey, no, it’s not in the records, on the legal records back in Illinois in that time,” and so, they looked at this one thing, Sylvia Sessions on her death bed was one of these 14, called her daughter, Josephine Lyon, in and said, “Josephine, you are Joseph Smith’s daughter.”

Told her that. Well, so that was the evidence right there that Joseph practiced sexual relations with women that were married, which is called polyandry and it’s really in four times in D&C 132. It’s considered adultery, and so that’s where they thought they had kind of the smoking gun, the evidence here, but as I mentioned, you could also say that the old marriage was done away because of the new and everlasting covenant. However, DNA evidence in 2016 just showed that William Lyon, who was Sylvia’s prior husband was the father, not Joseph. So, I think she was talking about in a spiritual sense because of that sealing that had happened.

So, that’s the kind of stuff that’s happening out there and you don’t know these details and it can be very simple. Another issue that critics will bring up about this specific topic is they’ll say, “Joseph sent men off on missions so he can marry their wives,” which is just a crock. In fact, if you look, three of these we don’t have dates for. So, you can’t include those. The 11 we do have dates for only one of them, this would apply to, and it was Orson Hyde and literally was a year after he was out on his mission. We have a date, but we actually have a second date for Marinda and it was actually after Orson got home. So, even that. So, it’s easily debunked. The truth is there.

Okay. 1842. This was the third time the angel came. If you recall on the Gospel Topics Essay, it talks a little bit about that. The angel said that Joseph had demurred on practicing fully polygamy and there was actually a sword and he was threatened with destruction in this, and so this is when Joseph really started marrying heavily. 35 total wives, six of them we don’t have dates. 23 out of 29 happen in this next 18 months, so about 80%overall. According to my calculations, only about a quarter of these involved any type of sexual relations. So, even though he was commanded there and there were no children that can be found even with DNA evidence now there, but one of the biggest complaints that critics will also make are underage marriages, and there were two specific marriages that were under 16.

Now, one of them is very low documentation associated with it. Nancy Winchester, age 14 to 15, but possibly not even, some historians said maybe not even included as a wife. No real documentation to go off of on there. However, Hellen Mar Kimball was the other one. She was 14, three months away from being 15, and that marriage is very comforting if we know two things. One, no sexual relations. This was one of those that we talked about a dynastic sealing between the families. It was her father’s request, Heber. She agreed, and it was not viewed as a sexual situation at all. In fact, in Utah, there was a policy that they asked that if a marriage was done before age 18 that they wait until 18 for consummation and they subscribed that back to they believe from Joseph. There’s another thing I want to just show you. This was a graph that was, and this is another great book, The Persistence of Polygamy.

They’ve got a graph. They’ve done research on the census records of marriages, and so if you actually look, now 14 years old would have been eyebrow raising, but not completely unusual. If you look at this chart right here, this shows on the far right in 1850, those that were married at age 14 and under in the Midwest was 1.5% of the marriages, and I’ve got a great one to share with you. The governor of the state, Thomas Ford, governor of Illinois, was married at age 28 to a 15 year old. So, there’s a great example and this is a great case in using presentism that we do on this. So, the last thing on that, I wanted to just say in 1842, 1843, there were rumors being spread heavily. This was a confidential thing at the time. In the Gospel Topics Essay, it says here, “Nevertheless, rumors spread, a few men unscrupulously used these rumors to seduce women to join them in an unauthorized practice, sometimes referred to as spiritual wifery.”

John C. Bennet was the big one there. “When this was discovered, the men were cut off from the church. The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy, but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated, celestial plural marriage. The statements emphasized that the C,hurch practiced no marital laws other than monogamy while implicitly leaving open the possibility that individuals under direction of God’s living prophet might do so.”

Okay, let’s go to 1843 and talk about Emma. So, Emma was up and down about polygamy. We don’t know a lot of details. In fact, there’s nothing in first person for Joseph or Emma. So, it’s very difficult on these. We are told in section 132 that Joseph had transgressed and Emma was to forgive him. We don’t know what that means, but it may be that he practiced polygamy without her acknowledgment. Maybe he was trying to not hurt her. Maybe he was trying to not have her be accountable and be responsible for the doctrine, or it could be that he did and he did tell her and she blew up and there was a discussion in there of the Law of Sarah, the first wife to give permission, but if rejected by the first wife, then maybe he felt justified to move forward. We don’t know. Up and down, but I do want to share a very powerful quote here from Emma Smith to Marie Jane Woodward, a domestic working the Smith home, overheard an emotional conversation between Emma and Joseph regarding plural marriage. Knowing that Mary Jane had been listening, Emma approached her the next morning. “She told me to sit down on the bed by her and we both sat down on the bed that I was making.

She looked very sad and cast down and there she said to me, ‘The principal of plural marriage is right, but I am like other women. I am naturally jealous-hearted and can talk back to Joseph as long as any wife can talk back to her husband, but what I want to say to you is this. You heard me finding fault with the principle. I want to say that principle is right. It is from our Father in Heaven. What I said I have got to repent of. The principle is right, but I am jealous-hearted. Now, never tell anybody that you heard me find fault with Joseph or that principle. The principle’s right, and if I or you or anyone else find fault with that principle, we’ve got to humble ourselves and repent of it.'”

At Joseph’s death, Emma cried over the casket and said Joseph was her crown. She loved Joseph to the end. So, at the martyrdom, there were 29 men, 50 women, that had been entered into the practice and by the time they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, there were 196 men and 521 women, and then it became an official practice in 1852. I’ll talk about that a lot more in the next video. Hope you enjoyed. Subscribe for more. See you next time.

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Resources:

Websites:

LDS.ORG Gospel Topics Essay: Plural Marriage in Kirtland & Nauvoo https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-mar…

Brian & Laura Hales Website Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: http://josephsmithspolygamy.org

Fairmormon – many subtopics covered https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mo…

Podcasts:

Hales – series of podcasts on their own channel – titled Joseph Smith’s Polygamy http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/audio/

LDS Perspectives Podcast Interview – Tough Questions About Mormon Polygamy http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/0…

YouTube Videos:

The Interpreter Foundation – Special Roundtable Discussion: Polygamy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-tgk…

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward A Better Understanding – Brian & Laura Hales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOV9Z…

Books:

The Persistence of Polygamy – Joesph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy by Newell Bringhurst and Craig Foster

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy – Toward A Better Understanding by Brian and Laura Hales

Wiford Woodruff’s Witness: The Development of Temple Doctrine by Jennifer Ann Mackley

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.

One of the most challenging items Latter-day Saints grapple with in their history is the priesthood and temple restriction for those of African decent in force between 1852 and 1978. This video tries to shed light on what led up to the ban, why it may have gone on for so long and thoughts on how God could have allowed this to happen. I still tried to keep it to a cliff-notes version but due to the topic, it ran longer than many of the other videos. I will also be producing a ‘part 2’ which will address misunderstood scriptures also relating to this history.

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So in this video I wanted to talk about the priesthood and temple ban that was from 1852 to 1978. I want to talk about the history leading up to the ban, how the ban was explained and became entrenched, what led to the overturn of the ban and how that happened, the aftermath that followed, and then finish with some thoughts about how God would allow this to happen. I first want to share some official statements from the Church recently. In 2012 the church issued a statement, some of which contained this paragraph. “At some point, the Church stopped ordaining male members of African descent, although there were a few exceptions. It is not known precisely why, how or when this restriction began in the church, but it has ended. The Church unequivocally condemns racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the church.”

Then many don’t know this, but the inside of your scriptures, if you go to your electronic version, so your 1981 printed copy won’t have this, but in 2013 the Church added a new introduction to the Official Declaration number two, which was the revelation reversing the ban. In this I just have one sentence I’ll read: “Church records offer no clear insight into the origins of this practice. Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice.” So interesting. Then in 2013 the Church put out a Gospel Topics essay entitled “Race in the Priesthood.” I wanted to share one paragraph from that. They talk a lot in there about the racist culture of the time, and remember a lot of times we use a thing called presentism where we evaluate somebody’s past with our current view of things.

It was a very racist culture that the Church was founded in back then, and many things were used to justify that that had been around for, in some cases, centuries the opinions that were used. But as far as one sentence that I wanted to share from that essay says, “Today, the church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a primordial life, that mixed race marriages are a sin, or that blacks or people of any race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

So let’s start with the history leading to the ban. First of all, the Book of Mormon says, “All are alike unto God,” and in five places in the Doctrine and Covenants it talks about going to preach the gospel to all the world, to every creature. So this really was the instruction to the saints. In the very early days in Missouri, W.W. Phelps wrote a piece welcoming free slaves to Missouri there, and it’s what really created all of the challenges, most of the challenges I should say in Missouri. They destroyed the press there and they drove the saints out of Jackson County. This was a big part of why. After all the problems when W.W. Phelps had put this out, he really did a 180 in his approach there. But that was the first foray into some of the challenges this was going to bring. Joseph Smith allowed blacks to have the priesthood. Some of the famous ones that we know of, very specifically, Elijah Abel and Q. Walker Lewis up in Mole, Massachusetts.

I love this quote from Joseph Smith talking about blacks. Many thought they did not even have souls. Here’s a quote from him: “They came into the world slaves, mentally and physically. Change their situation with the whites and they would be like them. They have souls, and are subjects of salvation.” I love this story of a man in Nauvoo who was selling liquor on Sunday to raise money to buy his child out of slavery. It was against the law there in Nauvoo. Joseph was the mayor of the town and had to inflict a fine on the man, but the next day he brought him a horse and gave it to him, and it was enough money he could sell to buy his child and free his child from slavery there. Also, when Joseph ran for president in 1844, part of his platform was an anti-slavery approach to the nation.

Also, Brigham Young. Many often look at Brigham Young’s statements in the past and view him as a racist. It is interesting to see in March of 1847, William McCary was another black man who was ordained to the priesthood. He was in Winter Quarters, and he felt like he was being picked on, abused by the saints there in Winter Quarters. Brigham Young met with him in March of 1847, and I want to share with you five snippets of things that Brigham Young told William McCary. One is “Your body is not what is your mission.” Two, “It’s nothing to do with the blood, for of one blood has God made all flesh,” kind of paraphrasing, Acts 17:26. He says, “We have one of our best elders, an African.” This was Q. Walker Lewis up in Lowell, Massachusetts, so Brigham obviously knew he was an elder and he was an African, and he was one of our best. He says, “We don’t care about the color,” and he says, “Show by your actions that you don’t care for what they say.”

The very next month, William McCary, Brigham was gone, but William McCary began to apostatize and really set up a separate group and was trying to target the women there with interracial polygamy. He was doing a sexualized sealing induction into this. It was really a very sad tale. They drove him out of town, excommunicated him from the church. Parley P. Pratt was the first one with this situation. This was the first comment about tying the priesthood ban to any type of a curse, and he says it was due to the curse of Ham that William McCary had that made him unworthy to hold the priesthood, so that was in April of 1847. Now in 1849, Lorenzo Snow was meeting with Brigham Young privately and asked Brigham, “when will the door be unlocked for the Africans?” And Brigham says at that point that it won’t be until all of the children of Abel, the seed of Abel, will be able to have the opportunity to have the priesthood, til they will have the priesthood, the seed of Cain as he viewed the blacks there.

So it was what happened during that two year period. Well, he learned about the William McCary situation. He found out that Q. Walker Lewis’ son, Enoch Lewis, got married to a white woman, which was against the laws. It was against the laws until 1967 in our country, and they had a child. That was a huge challenge for Brigham and for any in the nation the way they viewed that. Then they were also considering people from the south coming into Utah and the challenges that was going to bring with having their slaves come in. What would be the rules with regard to that? There weren’t a lot of slaves that ended up coming. In 1860, they had about 59 blacks in Utah. 29 were considered slaves. There Brigham did have a good attitude. In fact, he told one lady when she was looking to sell a slave, he asked if she would please sell it to somebody benevolent, and if she couldn’t find somebody, that he would buy him from her and release him to his freedom.

So he articulated in 1852 to the legislature, that that was the first public announcement that blacks could not hold the priesthood, and he viewed it as the reason was that they were at the seed of Cain, and this was a common thought. The LDS.org essay, “Race and the Priesthood,” the Gospel Topics essay talks about how this was a common held belief since 1730 that the blacks were from the seed of Cain, but Brigham ties it now to the priesthood. He also says he was afraid of intermarriage, and that that would potentially ruin the church if nobody could qualify to hold the priesthood down the road. That was part of his justification that he used. Again, this is in the Gospel Topics essay.

Now, an interesting sidebar wasn’t just the Latter Day Saints that had challenges with integration. The Latter Day Saints, they were banning people from having the priesthood, but they allowed them to be baptized and to worship together in the congregations. By 1852, Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists all had schisms or complete fractures over this issue. After the ban, there were different periods of controversy and challenge and debate. Orson Pratt was a defender against what Brigham was using as the justification for the ban being the seed of Cain. He felt like that was against Article of Faith number two that mentioned being punished for somebody else’s sins, a multi-generational curse, if you will. In 1869, in the School of the Prophets, Lorenzo Young asked Brigham if possibly it was due to the being neutral in the preexistence, that the blacks were were neutral and not valid in the preexistence, and that was the reason why their skin color was and that that was the reason for the the priesthood curse.

He said, “Absolutely not.” He says, “They received a body. There were no neutral spirits that received bodies. That that was the reward for keeping your first estate.” After Brigham’s death though, that certainly picked up some new life, and many were, of Orson Pratt’s opinion, that we couldn’t use a past curse as their rationale, so this did take on a quite a bit of life after Brigham, especially at the turn of the century. Now, one of the challenges that came was polygamy, and the nation made fun of the saints here in Utah often as degenerate, that the children from polygamy, they compared them to multiracial children. In fact, this is a book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. It talks about it. It’s a really helpful read. In fact, this is from the cover of Life magazine in 1904. If you look closely at that child right there, African American.

This is another good book on that, All Abraham’s Children, Armand Mauss, Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage. That’s a great book on that too. So decade after decade, this just went on and more justification, more tradition, more cultural, that became very entrenched. So as time went on, things did begin to change, especially with President David O. McKay in the 1940s and 50s. He did soften the stance on different things. He did pray. He said he didn’t feel inspired though to lift the ban at that time. May have been that he needed to do, and there was a lot of work that needed to be done with the leadership and the Church as a whole to bring them along. In 1963, then Elder Kimball wrote to his son, he said, “I know the Lord could change the policy and forgive the possible error.” And then we had the civil rights in the 60s. We had a tremendous growth. It was beginning to start with the international church, and then they had the temple announced in Brazil in the mid 70s.

A lot of these things were adding a lot of focus to the issue. Interesting experience, in 1969 Hugh B. Brown in the First Presidency pushed for a procedural vote to reverse the ban. He felt like because it was a policy as they had looked at it, that it could be reversed by a procedural vote, and it lost by one vote. It was Herald B. Lee who said that he felt that it needed to be a revelation to be overturned. In 1973, Lester Bush wrote an article and dialogue. He had done a tremendous amount of historical research that had showed how Joseph Smith had approved of ordaining a brother into the priesthood and how Brigham Young had instituted it as a policy. There’s evidence that Spencer W. Kimball had a copy of this and had it marked up, so there were a lot of those kinds of things that were happening leading up to the revelation that did come in 1978. It was the only revelation received in the history of the Church that was given to the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles all at the same time.

I wanted to share with you a few of the quotes from some of the people that participated in that. Bruce R. McConkie, as he described this powerful pentecostal experience, he says, “And we all heard the same voice, received the same message, and became personal witnesses that the word received was the mind and will and voice of the Lord.” He said, “It was in a miraculous and marvelous manner beyond anything that any then present had ever experienced.” Elder Hague, I really love this one. He said that, “As President Kimball arose from the altar, we surrounded it according to seniority, I being number 12. He turned to his right and I was the first member of the circle that he encountered. He put his arms around me, and as I embraced him, I felt the beating of his heart and the intense emotion that filled him. He then continued around the circle embracing each of the brethren. No one spoke. Overcome with emotion, we simply shook hands and quietly went to our dressing rooms.”

I love what Elder McConkie said. He said, “The reason the Lord chose to reveal this to the First Presidency and the Twelve rather than only to His prophet is due to the tremendous import in eternal significance of what was revealed. The Lord wanted independent witnesses who could bear record that the thing had happened.” Then it was a sustained by the entire body of the Church and canonized now as the Official Declaration Number Two. So following this grand revelation, it’s interesting to see some of the things that have been said after this. One of the famous ones was Bruce R. McConkie. Here’s the quote: “Forget everything that I have said or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past.”

President Hinckley and the 2006 April General Conference said, “How can any man holding the Melchizedek Priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood, whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color is ineligible?” Then a couple of other quotes, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, April 2013 conference: “Except in the case of His only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to him, but He deals with it. So we should we. And when you see imperfection remember that the limitation is not in the divinity of the work.”

Then to finish up with a couple other things. I wanted to share the LDL sociologist, Armand Mauss, spoke at the Fair Mormon Conference in 2002, and he proposed kind of a hypothetical Q and A. It was kind of a fun process, but I took three quick snippets out of that, three questions and answers that I thought you’d find interesting. “Question: Why would early LDS leaders such as Brigham Young make seemingly racist comments?” “Answer: Because he was a 19th century American, and hardly any white people at that time, North or South, believed in equality for blacks. Slavery was still an unsettled issue throughout the nation with some even in the south opposed to it, and many even in the north who were willing to tolerate it. Brigham Young’s ideas were really right in the mainstream of American thinking at the time. They were very close to the ideas of other prominent Americans from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, who himself did not even free all slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation.

“Question: But don’t Mormons believe that their church is led by prophets of God? How could prophets have permitted racist ideas and practices to become parts of their religion?” “Prophets are not perfect,” is the answer, “and don’t claim to be, nor do they always act as prophets in what they say and do. People in all ages, including those who become prophets, grew up without questioning much that is assumed by everyone else in their respective cultures, unless some experience motivates them to seek revelation on a given matter.” “Question: Well, maybe so, but racism is such an obvious evil that I would think authentic prophets would have been more sensitive to it.” “Answer: Why? It seems obvious to all of us now, but not to who believed in Manifest Destiny, the White Man’s Burden and the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Even the original apostles of Jesus assume that non-Jews cannot become Christians unless they first accepted Judaism and circumcision. The Apostle Paul disputed that, but the idea persisted.” You might even recall Peter had to have a vision to take the gospel to the Gentiles rather than just the Jews.

And one of my favorite quotes ever is from apostle Ezra Taft Benson at the time, 1975, and he said, “If you see some individuals in the church doing things that disturb you, or you feel the Church is not doing things the way you think they could or should be done, the following principles might be helpful: God has to do work through mortals of varying degrees of spiritual progress. Sometimes he temporarily grants to man their unwise requests in order that they might learn from their own sad experiences. Some refer to this as the Samuel principle. The children of Israel wanted a king like all the other nations. The prophet Samuel was displeased and prayed to the Lord about it. The Lord responded by saying, ‘Samuel, they have not rejected thee, but they rejected me that I should not rein over them.’ The Lord told Samuel to warn the people of the consequences if they had a king. Samuel gave them the warning, but they still insisted on their king, so God gave them a king and let them suffer. They learned the hard way. God wanted it to be otherwise, but within certain bounds He grants unto men according to their desires.”

Now if you look today, the church is growing like wildfire in Africa. We have 500,000 members there now. In the October 2018 conference, 12 new temples were announced. Two of them were in Africa in Nigeria and Cape Verde. So one last question I ask myself, I ponder this, is could Brigham have received a revelation from God to withhold the priesthood and temple from the Africans? I say to myself, it’s definitely not for any of the reasons we’ve talked about in this video and all excuses have been given, but it could have been because of the racist attitudes of the members of the church and the byproduct of the culture that they lived in and went on for over a century. When the people were ready, the Lord obviously revealed it in an unbelievable manner to everybody, and if that was truly the case, Official Declaration Two could be viewed as a call to repentance.

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Resources:

Websites:

Official Church Statement: Race and the Church: All Are Alike Unto God https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/articl…

Official Church Gospel Topics Essay – Race & The Priesthood https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-t…

Introduction to Official Declaration 2 (at end of D&C) added in 2013 https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-tes…

Blacklds.org

Blacksinthescriptures.com

Books:

All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage, by Armand Mauss

Neither White Nor Black, by Lester Bush and Armand Mauss

Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, by Paul Reeve

Podcasts:

LDS Perspectives Episode 43: Discussing the Priesthood Ban with members of the Genesis Group http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2017/0…

LDS Perspectives Episode 83: A History of Blacks and Global Mormonism with Russell Stevenson http://www.ldsperspectives.com/2018/0…

YouTube Videos:

Marvin Perkins at 2014 FairMormon Conference: Black Man Speaks Candidly About LDS, Race, Past Priesthood Restriction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfzFS…

Darius Gray presents at SLCC Lecture in 2007: Blacks in the Bible

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.