Mormon Church Trying to Keep the Wheels On

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1876 seems late. My Mormon ancestors were practicing polygamy as they travelled to Utah with BY, in 1846/7.
 
There were several editions to the D&C. 1833, 1835, 1844 and 1876. Until 1876, the verse that I quoted was found in D&C 101:4.
 
I don’t understand this. If it was official dogma then why were they practicing polygamy? I thought somewhere the Mormon scriptures taught that polygamy was okay.
 
Polygamy was practiced with a wink wink, nudge nudge kind of attitude. After all, BH Roberts had three wives and he was refused a seat in the house of representatives in 1898!
 
The Mormon God changes his mind a lot. In the early Doctrine and Covenants, to avoid the crime of fornication and adultery, a man only had one wife and a woman, but one husband. Joe had multiple wives and some of his wives had multiple husbands. Then it was decided that not only could a man have multiple wives, but is was required in order to punch his passport to the Celestial Kingdom. Women can only have one husband. There are a few but rare exceptions where a woman can be sealed to more than one man.

In the Book of Mormon, it says that David and Solomon had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable. In the Doctrine and Covenants it says that David and Solomon’s wives were given to them by God and that it was not a sin. Make up your mind!

Mormons justify Jacob’s condemnation of polygamy by what it says in a latter verse. It says, referring to polygamy, “For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.”

Which brings up the obvious question. Where is Joe’s seed? And out of 55 wives, Bring’em Young managed to only have 56 children. That doesn’t sound very fruitful to me, but what do I know?

I have to stop. This stuff makes me want to bang my head on the wall.
 
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One of Ol’ Joe’s seeds by a few generations was on the old Amazon forums. Got mad as all get go if anyone spoke against him. Then tried to deny being related to him by saying the non-Mormon was “making it up.”

Didn’t like having his exact words, thank you copy and paste, with date and time stamp, flung back in his face. Made him even madder. 😏
 
I like your post, it’s well organized. It would be helpful to include a citation or reference but this is an informal forum so we can do our own research I guess. What I’ve read is that Mormon growth in the U.S., Europe, and Mexico is stagnant though they are experiencing rapid growth in West Africa.

Certainly, I agree with your assertions regarding the predatory nature of “revelation” within the false religious system of Mormonism.
 
In the beginning, polygamy was kept a secret from outsiders, from most in the church, and even from Joseph’s first wife, Emma, who once she found out was, let’s say, more than upset about it. Joseph lied about it to her and also to outside critics. It became common knowledge once D&C 131 was publicly released and when the Mormons moved to Utah Territory where they could practice it unfettered by civil authorities—well, at least until the U.S. government threatened the church with disenfranchisement unless they abandoned the practice, which they did under pressure in order to be granted statehood. Yes, they caved to the government.

In 1890, polygamy was officially “suspended” by the church, except in Mexico where it continued to be practiced long after the 1890 manifesto.
 
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Mormons lie when they said they believe in honoring, obeying and sustaining the laws. Polygamy was never legal. President John Taylor died a fugitive of the law. Several leaders were either on the lam or in prison. None of Joe’s plural wives were legal. The laws mean nothing to Mormons. They celebrate crime.
 
I don’t see that in my own family. My grandmother’s grandmother was a polygamist wife. Our family lore from Kirtland to Nauvoo to Utah is that they believed they were following divine direction, through Smith and then Young. (Don’t ask me why, I don’t know.)

The siblings of my great and great great grandparents were all intermarrying in polygamous relationships. Heber J. Grant, Zina Huntington, Erastus Snow…are in my family tree because of the amazing web of intermarriages that were going on at the time, in Utah. There was an enormous number of related children (dozens of half siblings with dozens of cousins, in one family kind of thing). All needed to marry off within a relatively small group of people. That isn’t something you can keep secret. This was going on openly once they reached Utah. From 1850 onward the scale of intermarriage, number of wives, and children from a single man, is quite astounding. My own great, great grandfather was having two or three babies per year, for 20 years, until his death.
Anyway, there is no secrecy, winking or nudging, with a family that is that large. Everyone was well aware. We all were taught, in my family, from that time on down that polygamy was a higher law that would make a comeback. The polygamy family lore in my family is related and passed on with pride. No winking or nudging. My Mormon family absolutely embraces the idea of polygamy and would practice it openly, were they directed to do so.
 
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The polygamists in early Utah went to great lengths to protect the secrecy of polygamy from outsiders. They threatened death to federal marshalls who intruded and taught their children to lie about their names and where they lived. There was a lot of hush hush, wink wink in those days. It was that or go to jail for many of them, including my great grandfather.
 
RebeccaJ said:
We all were taught, in my family, from that time on down that polygamy was a higher law that would make a comeback.
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Since polygamy was supposedly “suspended” instead of permanently ended, I think your relatives are by no means the only Mormons who believe this.

I also find it absurd that the Mormon church characterized polygamy as a “higher” form of marriage. I guess this was how Joseph tried to make it sound not only acceptable to his flock, but also even preferred. It’s absurd because in ancient times it was the pagan cultures surrounding Israel that practiced polygamy, and Israel decided that they wanted to be like their neighbors by adopting their practices.
 
Sure, they had connections to the polygamous Mormons in Canada. Mormons at the time left the USA more than once, to practice polygamy.

With both our polygamous Utah roots, most like we are related. My mom tells me she runs into “cousins” all the time, based on surnames. It would take a couple of hours to figure out how each of the cousins are related.
 
Interesting. My great grandfather had two wives who were sisters. He had 21 children, 10 from one and 11 from the other.
 
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