The current leaders of the LDS church heavily believe in polygammy and many of them have ended up with two wives or more. Now before you yell liar listen to the evidence.
Current LDS Leaders allow a living man to be sealed to another woman after the death of his wife, or after divorce. This leads to the obvious situation of establishing multiple sealings on Earth that, according to Mormonism, will necessitate polygamy in heaven. Writing in 1897 LDS Apostle Charles W. Penrose stated:
In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory (“Mormon” Doctrine Plain and Simple, or Leaves from the Tree of Life, by Charles W. Penrose, p.66, 1897, Salt Lake City, UT).
This doctrine was reaffirmed in October of 2007 at the funeral for the second wife of President Howard W. Hunter, the fourteenth President of the LDS Church. The Deseret News reported:
President Hinckley affirmed the eternal nature of the marriage between Sister [Inis] Hunter and the former church president, whose first wife, Claire Jeffs, died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and is now buried beside him in the Salt Lake Cemetery.
Inis Hunter “will now be laid to rest on the other side,” he said. “They were sealed under the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood for time and for all eternity,” he said, recalling the marriage ceremony he performed for them in the Salt Lake Temple in April 1990. (“Sister Hunter’s humor and cheerfulness remembered as she is laid to rest,” Deseret News, Oct. 22, 2007).
Another example of plural sealings is Apostle Russell M. Nelson 's marriage in 2006 to a BYU professor. The BYU NewsNet for April 7, 2006 announced the temple marriage of Apostle Nelson, age 81, to Wendy Watson (see [link]). His first wife died in February of 2005 and this was the first marriage for his new wife. This would mean, according to LDS beliefs, that Nelson has two wives sealed to him for eternity.
Joseph Fielding Smith, tenth president of the LDS Church, remarried twice after the death of his first wife, and in his book, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 2, p. 67, he remarked: “…my wives will be mine in eternity.”
Harold B. Lee, the eleventh president of the church, also remarried after his wife 's death and was sealed to another woman and was looking forward to a polygamous relationship in heaven. He, in fact, wrote a poem in which he reflected that his second wife, Joan, would join his first wife, Fern, as his eternal wives:
My lovely Joan was sent to me: So Joan joins Fern
That three might be, more fitted for eternity.
“O Heavenly Father, my thanks to thee”
(Deseret News 1974 Church Almanac, p. 17)
I know that when my grandfather remarried after the death of my grandmother, the family certainly believed that the new wife, sealed to him in the temple, would be an equal wife with my grandmother in heaven. The official LDS Church Handbook of Instruction says:
Living Women — A living woman may be sealed to only one husband. . . .
Living Men — If a husband and wife have been sealed and the wife dies, the man may have another woman sealed to him if she is not already sealed. (Church Handbook of Instruction, p.72)
The church leaders realize the quagmire their doctrine of “eternal families” becomes with blended families, but don’t have any good answers when asked “Well don’t you still openly practice polygamy in this manner”?.
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