bluebell

This is what it says on Family Search: I'm not sure if a professional genealogist would be able to do the temple work for the people who are paying them but they could certainly to the genealogy part and then leave the ordinances up to the family.

If someone has they broke the rules to do it.

I see it differently and believe it was of God (though I do not believe it was always practiced in a way that God condoned, same as monogamy), but I get why some do not. (Edit to add: For me, a large part of my feelings towards it comes from reading the words of the women who practiced it, and why they did. But I'm glad that we aren't asked to have a testimony of it)

True, there is some interpretation happening with that specific evidence. But even with that possibility it wasn't Joseph and Emma that day, the historical record still shows others were being sealed for eternity that day, and that JS had been teaching about eternal marriage for months or years before he wrote the revelation on plural marriage that was requested by Hyrum for Emma in July 1843.

I think we do have a responsibility to study the scriptures ourselves, and not just get our learning from Sunday school. But, I also think the church failed in many ways with how they used to teach polygamy. I was blessed with a seminary teacher in high school who taught us about all of the different wives of Joseph Smith. But I also heard plenty that polygamy existed to take care of the widows and women that otherwise wouldn’t have husbands. I think for decades and decades the church had a defensive position in regards to teachings on plural marriage, and it really did mess up a lot of members when they learned that the faith promoting perspective was not always an accurate one. I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself for reacting like you did when learning new information that changed the paradigm you grew up with.

Yes, that is what the historical evidence suggests. Joseph Smith and Emma were sealed together on May 28th, 1843. This revelation came July 12th, 1843, so just a few months after they had been sealed. We can learn that Emma was already familiar with the concept of eternal marriage. She and Joseph had already been sealed. Joseph Smith had been teaching the concept of eternal marriage for a number of years.

Eternal sealings were happening before the revelation that is section 132. JS and Emma were sealed months before 132 was received.

I think we are probably just coming at this from two different perspectives. I agree that it was a very significant revelation at the time it was applicable, to the saints to who lived it, but when thinking of the lives of the majority of people, plural marriage is barely a blip.

I'm not sure that plural marriage can be described as being supported by 'significant revelation', but I think it would be more helpful to ask those who don't believe plural marriage was from God but still fully support the church and have temple recommends. I know quite a few but I've never asked them these questions and I don't want to put words in their mouth. If I had to guess, I think the answer most people who don't believe it was of God give is that this is one time when JS was a fallible prophet. For question 7, I don't think most people see disagreeing with polygamy as supporting or promoting "teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." Publicly preaching it was wrong and trying to call the church to repentance about it or teaching that JS was a fallen prophet, sure, that would probably be included. But not agreeing that a historical practice was from God being connected to question 7? I don't think that causes much angst for most members in this position. Sis. Nash (besides an author she's a church historian) had this disclaimer at the beginning of speaking about section 132 that I thought was really important for members who struggle with this to think about. "So before we jump into section 132, the revelation on eternal and plural marriage. I want everyone to understand that we do not need to leave this section feeling that we must have a testimony of plural marriage, that it’s a requirement to believe in it in order to be a faithful member of the church. That is not the case." Then she goes on to explain some good reasons to study the section, and some things that we can learn from it without having to accept polygamy.

I would guess that any new revelations we do receive that make it into the doctrine and covenants will be revelations applicable and relevant to our current lives. Since polygamy is completely historical at this point (or theoretical in terms of the next life) I don’t foresee us getting one on that subject anytime soon. I do think it’s important not to be offended on behalf of those we don’t know or for hurts or injustices we never suffered though.

Especially since there is no requirement that somebody accepts polygamy as being from God. You can tell your Bishop that you don’t believe it was from God and still get a temple. Recommend because you can still answer all the questions correctly.

Latter-day Saint scholar Brittnay Nash has a good take on it. She wrote the book “Let’s Talk about Polygamy” and was on the Follow Him podcast for section 132. I’m going to quote right from the transcript below. It’s all her speaking. ”For D&C 132, we have the backstory. I would love to share that with listeners so that they can approach it knowing how it came about and why we have a revelation written for one person. That person is Emma Smith. The historical context of the revelation is written down by William Clayton, who was one of Joseph Smith’s scribes and historians, but there are others that can corroborate with the account of how he recorded it. I’ll just read straight from his account where he had written down several of Joseph Smith’s revelations. They were in the red brick store. They were talking about plural marriage, and it was weighing on Joseph. He did not have Emma’s support to practice the principle. He didn’t know how to handle it. He was with his brother Hyrum and William Clayton. Hyrum said, “just write a revelation and the principle’s so plain I’ll take the revelation over to her once it’s complete and I’ll read it to her and she’ll believe because the doctrine’s so plain.” This is from William Clayton’s later reminiscences of that day. He says that Hyrum said to Joseph, “if you will write the revelation on celestial marriage, I will take it and read it to Emma and I believe I can convince her of its truth and you will hereafter have peace.” Joseph smiled and remarked, “you do not know Emma as well as I do.” Hyrum repeated his opinion and further remarked “the doctrine is so plain I can convince any reasonable man or woman of its truth, purity, and heavenly origin or words to their effect.” Joseph then said, “well, I will write the revelation and we will see.” We learned from this paragraph that this revelation came about to help appease Emma Smith’s concerns about plural marriage. It’s being dictated with Emma in mind and we see through the revelation that there are specific references to Joseph, specific references to Emma, which further conveys the domestic relationship in this revelation. Maybe he had other people besides Emma in mind for this revelation, but Emma was its primary audience. Hyrum presented the revelation to Emma. It did not go well. Emma rejected the revelation and according to existing records, she ended up burning it. She did not believe it. Joseph Smith and Emma were sealed together on May 28th, 1843. This revelation came July 12th, 1843, so just a few months after they had been sealed. We can learn that Emma was already familiar with the concept of eternal marriage. She and Joseph had already been sealed. Joseph Smith had been teaching the concept of eternal marriage for a number of years. By this time plural marriage was an appendage of that larger concept of eternal marriage. This revelation includes information about eternal marriage, but in my mind, this is a plural marriage document. It’s not intended to teach us solely about eternal marriage. This is not all there is to know about marriage. It’s intended to explain plural marriage to Emma. In the meantime, we get insight into what eternal marriage is. I don’t think it was easy for anyone when it was practiced in reality. Kind of how I want to frame this section going forward is in this quotation by Joseph F. Smith. He’s the son of Hyrum Smith, later becomes President of the Church. He has what I think is a good way to look at this revelation as a whole. He says, when the revelation was written in 1843, "--it was for a special purpose by the request of the patriarch Hyrum Smith and was not then designed to go forth to the church or to the world. It is most probable that had it then been written with a view to its going out as a doctrine of the church it would have been presented in a somewhat different form. There are personalities contained in a part of it which are not relevant to the principle itself, but rather to the circumstances which necessitated its being written. At that time, Joseph Smith on the day it was written, expressly declared that there was a great deal more connected with the doctrine, which would be revealed in due time, but this was sufficient for the occasion and was made to suffice for the time being." That really rings true to me in how we should approach this section. It was a revelation made by the request of Hyrum Smith to read to Emma who had preexisting knowledge of eternal marriage and plural marriage. Sometimes as I’ve read the section, I felt like I’ve kind of dropped into a topic mid conversation or things are alluded to and you think, oh what happened here? What’s this? It could feel a little disjointed while reading, that is because we are somewhat being dropped into a mid-conversation record. There’s that as well to be mindful of as we go through and take a look at this. If it were written with a view of its going out as a doctrine of the church, it would’ve been presented in a somewhat different form. There’s a great case to make because that’s a precedent. This was included in the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. It wasn’t publicly presented to the church until 1852. Once the Saints were in the Salt Lake Valley, they had lived here for several years. They had kept the practice of plural marriage quiet, as quiet as they could for that long. They weren’t preaching openly about it from the pulpit. If you were to live in a Latter-day Saint community, it would be obvious some people were practicing it. But if you are not in a Latter-day Saint community, if you lived in Europe, it would not have been something that was taught to you as a doctrine of the church. But finally in 1852, they decided they would start preaching publicly about it Orson Pratt who we’ve heard about several times already, who put together this edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was the one who first talked about plural marriage in front of a large audience in Salt Lake City. After that, the revelation was published, distributed in newspaper form and in some other formats over the years, and then finally came out canonized in 1876. Joseph Smith did not touch the revelation for it to be published. That was done completely without his say in the matter. He had long been dead after that. In earlier versions of the Doctrine and Covenants, when they were prepared for publication during Joseph Smith’s lifetime, he would make revisions to the revelations before they were printed so that they would be adapted for a broader readership. If we look through the revelations, they’re written for people.This is the same with them in mind as the revelations are being prepared for publication. It still includes the names of the people and the surrounding circumstances in the publications, but he does adapt them so that a broader audience can read them and understand them. Revelation is not necessarily a one and done event. It’s ongoing, so I don’t think it’s problematic to be revising revelations for publication ’cause you’re speaking to a different audience and we have an open canon. Revelation can be received in the preparing of publication. All of that is to say that there’s a precedent for Joseph Smith having changed revelations in preparation for them going to a broader audience than he originally intended for that revelation. That likely would’ve been the case for D&C 132. For our purposes if we read it with the understanding that it was for an audience of one, primarily for an audience of one, that can help us in our reading. It was written at a certain moment of time under certain pressures and circumstances. When you’re looking at a document, particularly something as important as what you’re going to declare as scripture, you want to make sure you know its provenance. Where did it come from? Who had it, whose possession was it in and for what period of time? That day, the revelation was copied by Joseph Kingsbury word for word. It was read back and verified as being the same document transcribed by William Clayton. Hyrum brought his William Clayton version of the revelation and Emma burned that revelation, but a copy was in the hands of Joseph Kingsbury. That copy was actually read in a very tight circle. It was read to the council of the 50 and a few other people had it in their possession for a short time. It did get small circulation during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and of course plural marriage was continued to be taught during and after Joseph Smith’s death by that corpus of people who had the revelation. It was not read publicly though until 1852. In that time period it had been in the possession of Newell K. Whitney and then was given to Brigham Young. We have record of the hands that it went between. Provenance is really important for establishing whether or not a record can be trusted as being what it says it is and having a line that you can trace of people. There wasn’t just a gap of 30 years and then this document shows up out of nowhere. And then what’s being said around the document, you like to be able to triangulate your sources. How many sources? Bad, good, it doesn’t matter if they’re friendly sources or unfriendly sources. What mentions this, the more sources you can get that at least make reference or illusion to something existing, the better. It’s quite clear that this document is what it says it is, that it was indeed dictated by Joseph Smith and kept in possession of church leaders until it was announced at the pulpit in 1852. That part at the end about provenance is really important because it helps us to understand historical documents a little better. Sometimes we want to dismiss things because we don’t like what they mean or what they say, but provenance is about looking at the evidence in order to judge, whether or not something is what it reports to believe. When it comes to section 132, the provenance seems clear. You can believe that Joseph Smith was wrong or deceived, but all the evidence we have supports this revelation coming from his hand.

One thing with section 132 that might be helpful is to remember that it was written specifically to Emma (at the request of Hyrum) to try to convince her of the truthfulness of polygamy. That, along with the fact that it was never revised by JS for publication to the general membership (while many if not most of the other revelations were), is good evidence that the version we have is not the version we would have had if JS had lived longer.

I can't really speak to it without watching the video, and to be honest I don't want to watch the video. I'm guessing that she's doing more than just being public about her personal views on JS and polygamy, but that's just a guess.

We also believe that there is nothing solely temporal in this world. Everything is spiritual as well. Praying for your peace and emotional comfort and rest during this really hard time.

I am so sorry for your loss Navidad. That is heartbreaking news. And I'm so sorry for the struggle the last few months have been on top of it all. To speak to your questions, the rule is that no one's proxy work can be done without getting permission from the closest family member. So for example, even I, a granddaughter, would not be allowed to do my own grandmother's temple work if grandfather was still alive and didn't give permission. Same if he had already died but my mother was alive or any other siblings and they didn't give it. When you go to do someone's temple work who could have living relatives, the temple requires that you get permission from the closest living relative, or declare that you are the closest, before you can proceed. Also, temple work can't be done for anyone for a year after they have died. So you have time to contemplate how you want to handle everything if someone comes to you with that question. And if they eventually do, I think you should answer honestly. I don't think you should worry about offending anyone by saying no. Anyone who would be offended by that needs to reassess their perspective. You can accept that someone might offer out of love for your family and your son but you are not obligated to allow them to express their love in that way to keep the peace between you. And again, I am so sorry you had to say goodbye to your son. I can't imagine how difficult it all has been.

Agreed

Everyone one else would say the same about themselves. It’s just that our biases play a bigger role in what we will accept as accurate than we’d like to admit.

I'd say both equally.

For me, what makes the man delusional is believing that he can infiltrate another organization and work his way up to the president of that organization when he has no idea how leadership in the organization works. He’s completely ignorant of what it will take to achieve his goal and yet he still fully believes his goal is possible.

Probably

It’s probably Hinckley. He was the prophet as I was growing up and becoming an adult, and I really loved his sense of humor.

Agreed. I hate when members misconstrue and make fun of other people’s beliefs.

We have a car like that. It’s a 2008 Range Rover Rover with a super charger. It’s incredibly fast, but you don’t feel it at all.

It's an interesting plan, from someone who doesn't really know as much about the church as he thinks he does. I never could figure out if he actually went through with it. I liked how the one guy with glass says that he thinks that this guy is "a really sweet guy who makes stuff up in his head". That's a kind way to look at him. And I liked how they went out of their way to say that they don't think this guy is anti-mormon, just misguided. And finally, I liked how they end with telling all the other Christians and Catholics who want to infiltrate the church in order to convince us we are wrong, to do it.