“I bear my solemn testimony that plural marriage is as true as any principle that has been revealed from the heavens. I bear my testimony that it is a necessity, and that the Church of Christ in its fullness never existed without it. Where you have the eternity of marriage you are bound to have plural marriage; bound to and it is one of the marks of the Church of Jesus Christ in its sealing ordinances.” (G. Teasdale, J of D, vol. 25, p. 21)
So yes polygamy is essential and for those who do not practice it?
“. . . he that abideth not this law (polygamy) can in no wise enter into my glory, but shall be d**ned, saith the Lord.” (D & C, 132:27)

‘”The Lord has said, that those who reject this principle (polygamy) reject their salvation, they shall be d**ned, saith the Lord . . . they will finally go down to hell and be damned if they do not repent.” (0. Pratt, J of D, vol. 17, pp. 224-225)
There’s many quotes available on our site.
zoecircle.proboards91.com
We welcome lds questions and responces on the board. Hope you’ll visit.

That isn’t true. I’ve known women who were sealed to more than one man. Not “known of” — I’ve actually met and talked with them.

The early prophets have spewed a ton of information on this one.

in fact imo, the reverse is so; if since ~1843 u do not practice or believe in pm, u will not practice it in the heavens, which means u cannot advance in the celestial kingdom, (not that u wont be in the lower levels of the ck).

(for this post, i’m resticting my comments to christians only, after july 12, 1843)

since there appears to be more females than males (simple biology, xx & xy, y more fragile) and more rightous females than males (one reason, the war in heaven), it stands to reason there will be wives added. (pm has always been practiced in the heavens, and always will be.)

in regards to another Q u asked,
“and why wouldn’t women have more than one husband?” imo one of the reasons (and there are several) is not being able to determine who the father is of a paticular child (esp a female if the father(s) have recessive genes). ur first response to me i think would be, “well we have testing available now.” that is true for now, but in just a few short years, the hospitals, doctors’ offices etc will be dormant and many in shambles because of the coming “end of the world”, as described in Matt. 24.

and to be as consistant as our Heavenly Father is, “as above, so below”.

regards

These have received their washing and anointings in the temple of God on this earth; they have been chosen, ordained, and anointed kings and priests, to reign as such in the resurrection of the just. Such as have not received the fullness of the priesthood, (for the fullness of the priesthood includes the authority of both king and priest) and have not been anointed and ordained in the temple of the Most High, may obtain salvation in the celestial kingdom, but not a celestial crown. Many are called to enjoy a celestial glory, yet few are chosen to wear a celestial crown, or rather, to be rulers in the celestial kingdom.

Yes, to be sure, a lot of people have the “out of sight, out of mind” view towards things that are problematic or unpalatable. And that goes for all sorts of people on all kinds of subjects.

Aside from that, the history of the polygamy in the Church is a nettlesome topic. The most comprehensive and least biased (which is not to say it is unbiased, because it is definitely not an unbiased dry and analytical treatment of the historical facts) discussion of the topic is Todd Compton’s _In Sacred Lonliness_. I think that if someone did a completely comprehensive, dry, analytic review of all of the evidence dealing with Smith’s wives and then laid it all out, that would do a lot to end some of the silly speculation and idiotic accusations (yes, I consider the whole Fanny Alger thing idiotic given the paucity of evidence) and make the entire thing much more palatable to the mainstream LDS audience. I think a lot of people just dont want to deal with it, because its messy stuff. If someone would cut through the mess and present just the facts, then it would make things a lot easier to discuss.

Sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to misrepresent your comments.

I agree completely that there is a lot of unruly and unauthoritative speculation surrounding polygamy. I think that much of the speculation comes from peoples’ needs to justify and come to terms with polygamy in their own minds.

Since, as you said, there are so few modern authoritative statements from church leaders about polygamy, people are sort of left to come up with their own explanations in order to make polygamy “work” for them in a modern Mormon context.

The point I was trying to make in my previous post was that many members of the church I’ve spoken with take the approach that polygamy is a quaint historical artifact that has no real bearing on the modern church. It’s almost an “if we just ignore it, maybe it will go away” mentality, but I don’t necessarily think that approach is realistic or healthy (although it also seems to be the approach the institutional church is taking these days).

Its clear from D&C 132 that singles can enter into the celestial kingdom. Or, are you referring to something else more obscure?

Todd,

I dont think anyone is saying its an “irrelevant historical curiosity”, I know I certainly dont view it that way. My point is that outside of what the Scriptures say on the subject and what Church policy dictates on it, there is a large body of speculation that is unruly and open to comment by anyone coming from any point of view. So, when someone like Jenson asks questions about the esoterica of polygamy, who is going to be able to say anything authoritative? Nobody. We can all sit around and speculate though, and there isnt anything stopping anyone from doing so.

For example, we all know that if an LDS man is sealed to an LDS woman and the woman passes away, the man can remarry and be sealed to another woman, which essentially means he will have two wives in the next life (regardless of how the first wife feels about the situation). Of course, an LDS woman can only be sealed to one man. If her first husband dies, she can’t be sealed to a 2nd husband unless she goes through the ardous process of anulling her sealing to the first.

In the grand scheme of things, that sure sounds like polygamy to me. We may not be comfortable with polygamy (I know I’m sure as heck not), but treating it as some irrelevent historical curiosity that has no bearing on our lives as modern Mormons simply isn’t accurate.