Bill Reel's Sunstone Presentation and a Path to the Disavowal of D&C 132

[Tacenda]

29 minutes ago, James Tunney said:

I have to agree. Why give him a break.  He didn't follow his own revelation.  He didn't always get Emma's approval and didn't limit his appetite to virgins.

It was mentioned in this conference talk, to give Joseph a break. I guess I was trying to be witty.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/faith-is-not-by-chance-but-by-choice?lang=eng

For example, questions concerning the Prophet Joseph Smith are not new. They have been hurled by his critics since this work began. To those of faith who, looking through the colored glasses of the 21st century, honestly question events or statements of the Prophet Joseph from nearly 200 years ago, may I share some friendly advice: For now, give Brother Joseph a break! In a future day, you will have 100 times more information than from all of today’s search engines combined, and it will come from our all-knowing Father in Heaven.¹⁹Consider the totality of Joseph’s life—born in poverty and given little formal education, he translated the Book of Mormon in less than 90 days.²⁰ Tens of thousands of honest, devoted men and women embraced the cause of the Restoration. At age 38, Joseph sealed his witness with his blood. I testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Settle this in your mind, and move forward!

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, sunstoned said:

What we do know is that JS's practice of polygamy/polyandry was not in keeping with section 132. Zina was not a virgin and he did not have Emma's permission.  His practice was done in secret, behind Emma's back.  If JS held section 132 in such low regard, then why should we feel obligated to support it.

What Joseph did or did not do is between him and God who will judge us all with mercy and justice. 

Edited August 5, 2016 by Bernard Gui

[James Tunney]

5 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

It was mentioned in this conference talk, to give Joseph a break. I guess I was trying to be witty.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/faith-is-not-by-chance-but-by-choice?lang=eng

For example, questions concerning the Prophet Joseph Smith are not new. They have been hurled by his critics since this work began. To those of faith who, looking through the colored glasses of the 21st century, honestly question events or statements of the Prophet Joseph from nearly 200 years ago, may I share some friendly advice: For now, give Brother Joseph a break! In a future day, you will have 100 times more information than from all of today’s search engines combined, and it will come from our all-knowing Father in Heaven.¹⁹Consider the totality of Joseph’s life—born in poverty and given little formal education, he translated the Book of Mormon in less than 90 days.²⁰ Tens of thousands of honest, devoted men and women embraced the cause of the Restoration. At age 38, Joseph sealed his witness with his blood. I testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Settle this in your mind, and move forward!

I appreciate your fervor in this issue and I don't doubt your sincerity.  However, we must question everyone and everything.  Trust is and should be tough to come by.  Brother Joseph had many flaws like many of us do.  However, because he made so many fantastical claims, he must be scrutinized and frankly blind faith is not healthy.  We all have heroes and sometimes those heroes don't live up to the status we give them.  Joseph would be first to say so.  However, he also loved the myth created around him and obviously relished in the attention his office gave him.  For heaven's sake, he had himself crowned king and wanted to create a theocracy through the counsel of the 50 prior to his being murdered. He asked Congress for 100,000 troops that thankfully Congress denied him to that end.  Anyway, I don't think we should give him a break.  We should instead seek to understand him and how mythologizing him and his legacy by the church has affected us.

[bcuzbcuz]

7 hours ago, Tacenda said:

Give Joseph a break.

Hey, hey, hey, hey. One break coming up! (Van Halen- David Lee Roth)

[JLHPROF]

7 hours ago, sunstoned said:

 he did not have Emma's permission.  His practice was done in secret, behind Emma's back. 

 

7 hours ago, James Tunney said:

I have to agree. Why give him a break?  He didn't follow his own revelation.  He didn't always get Emma's approval

Joseph followed this perfectly.  Emma's approval was not necessary once she had rejected the law.

D&C 132 -

 64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.

 65 Therefore, it shall be lawful in me, if she receive not this law, for him to receive all things whatsoever I, the Lord his God, will give unto him, because she did not believe and administer unto him according to my word; and she then becomes the transgressor; and he is exempt from the law of Sarah, who administered unto Abraham according to the law when I commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife.

 

[JLHPROF]

6 hours ago, James Tunney said:

 However, we must question everyone and everything. 

So much for faith.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, JLHPROF said:

 

Joseph followed this perfectly.  Emma's approval was not necessary once she had rejected the law.

D&C 132 -

 64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.

 65 Therefore, it shall be lawful in me, if she receive not this law, for him to receive all things whatsoever I, the Lord his God, will give unto him, because she did not believe and administer unto him according to my word; and she then becomes the transgressor; and he is exempt from the law of Sarah, who administered unto Abraham according to the law when I commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife.

 

That's interesting. Do we have any evidence that Emma had rejected the law before July 1843? In the case of Emily and Eliza Partridge, Joseph married them in secret around the first of March 1843, and then Emma later consented to their marriages, so rather than acknowledge he had already married them, he had a second marriage ceremony performed for each. It would seem to me that your statement that her approval wasn't necessary would apply only to those women who married Joseph Smith after July 1843, which is when she is said to have "rejected the law." I would be interested in learning when exactly Emma rejected plural marriage and how that coincides with the marriages Joseph entered into without her knowledge or consent.

[JLHPROF]

6 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

That's interesting. Do we have any evidence that Emma had rejected the law before July 1843? In the case of Emily and Eliza Partridge, Joseph married them in secret around the first of March 1843, and then Emma later consented to their marriages, so rather than acknowledge he had already married them, he had a second marriage ceremony performed for each. It would seem to me that your statement that her approval wasn't necessary would apply only to those women who married Joseph Smith after July 1843, which is when she is said to have "rejected the law." I would be interested in learning when exactly Emma rejected plural marriage and how that coincides with the marriages Joseph entered into without her knowledge or consent.

It's important to also remember that while Emma was Joseph's "legal" wife, once the principle of eternal marriage was restored she was NOT his first eternal companion.
Joseph had over a dozen wives by the time he was sealed to Emma.

Under priesthood law she wasn't the "first" wife.  If we read the sealing ceremony for the law of Sarah (as described in the Seer and other places) when it came time for Emma to be sealed to Joseph he could legitimately have asked his other wives permission first and THEY could have performed the act of giving Emma to their husband.

[jkwilliams]

9 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

It's important to also remember that while Emma was Joseph's "legal" wife, once the principle of eternal marriage was restored she was NOT his first eternal companion.
Joseph had over a dozen wives by the time he was sealed to Emma.

Under priesthood law she wasn't the "first" wife.  If we read the sealing ceremony for the law of Sarah (as described in the Seer and other places) when it came time for Emma to be sealed to Joseph he could legitimately have asked his other wives permission first and THEY could have performed the act of giving Emma to their husband.

That may work for you legalistically speaking, but it makes Joseph Smith sound like a rather terrible person. I'm speechless. 

Edited August 5, 2016 by jkwilliams

[Tacenda]

6 hours ago, James Tunney said:

I appreciate your fervor in this issue and I don't doubt your sincerity.  However, we must question everyone and everything.  Trust is and should be tough to come by.  Brother Joseph had many flaws like many of us do.  However, because he made so many fantastical claims, he must be scrutinized and frankly blind faith is not healthy.  We all have heroes and sometimes those heroes don't live up to the status we give them.  Joseph would be first to say so.  However, he also loved the myth created around him and obviously relished in the attention his office gave him.  For heaven's sake, he had himself crowned king and wanted to create a theocracy through the counsel of the 50 prior to his being murdered. He asked Congress for 100,000 troops that thankfully Congress denied him to that end.  Anyway, I don't think we should give him a break.  We should instead seek to understand him and how mythologizing him and his legacy by the church has affected us.

I could almost let this pass me by and enjoy a first, me as the TBM!

James I agree with you, I was just being sarcastic. I understand that Joseph would need a lot of breaks. But I do focus on the bad, when maybe I could try to look at the positives again. Which is why I fell hard when finding out the truth, since I may have put him right up there on a pedestal. 

 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I could almost let this pass me by and enjoy a first, me as the TBM!

James I agree with you, I was just being sarcastic. I understand that Joseph would need a lot of breaks. But I do focus on the bad, when maybe I could try to look at the positives again. Which is why I fell hard when finding out the truth, since I may have put him right up there on a pedestal. 

A rather notorious poster here once told me that, on his worst day, Joseph Smith was a better person than I could ever hope to be. That's always stuck with me, not because it accomplished its goal of shaming and slamming me, but because I wonder why we need Joseph Smith to be like Mary Poppins, "practically perfect in every way." He was a man like the rest of us, and, agree with him or not, he accomplished quite a lot in 38 years of life. But he wasn't perfect, and he made some poor choices that most of us would never even consider making. Of course, now someone will ask for specifics and then accuse me of attacking Joseph Smith's character. That's not the point. It's OK to acknowledge that he had flaws and made mistakes. It's when people build him up to sort of a demigod that they are terribly disappointed when they find out some of his human failings. 

[HappyJackWagon]

9 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I agree there is a great deal we don't understand and probably won't for a long time. 

Marion D. Hanks once told me (though I don't know if it originated with him): "To believe in God is to trust that all the rules will be fair and there will be wonderful surprises."

I agree.

This is why I bristle whenever I hear absolute claims about what constitutes a real marriage and what doesn't. Elder Oaks recently said he doesn't know how his marriage relationships will work in eternity. What we DON'T know far exceeds what we do. So as a rule I think it is wise not to make absolute claims of perfect understanding of God's will and practice. We simultaneously hear  about how we are just children/toddlers in the eyes of God but we also think we have it all figured out. Maybe we should just accept that whatever we think we "know" is subject to change.

[Tacenda]

10 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree.

This is why I bristle whenever I hear absolute claims about what constitutes a real marriage and what doesn't. Elder Oaks recently said he doesn't know how his marriage relationships will work in eternity. What we DON'T know far exceeds what we do. So as a rule I think it is wise not to make absolute claims of perfect understanding of God's will and practice. We simultaneously hear  about how we are just children/toddlers in the eyes of God but we also think we have it all figured out. Maybe we should just accept that whatever we think we "know" is subject to change.

Especially if some say a homosexual is a sinner. This tends to lead to many of them committing suicide, their believing that there is no way out. Not saying the leaders and Elder Oaks is labeling them as such, but we should be careful, because we really have no idea what God thinks about it. And the scriptures in the Bible don't do anything for me as far as homosexuality, it's right up there with women not cutting off their hair or not speaking in church, or .... the list goes on. 

Edited August 5, 2016 by Tacenda

[Scott Lloyd]

24 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree.

This is why I bristle whenever I hear absolute claims about what constitutes a real marriage and what doesn't. 

I presume you apply that to those who denounce the Prophet Joseph for his plural marriages. 

Or maybe not. 

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, bcuzbcuz said:

Hey, hey, hey, hey. One break coming up! (Van Halen- David Lee Roth)

Oh I thought you were doing fat Albert, then I realized you had one too many heys. 

[Jeanne]

10 hours ago, Tacenda said:

How about a PH blessing until then?

I think this would make VGJ feel a better connection that he may be looking for.

[HappyJackWagon]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I presume you apply that to those who denounce the Prophet Joseph for his plural marriages. 

Or maybe not. 

I don't think those who denounce eternal plural marriage know any more or better than those who proclaim it is God's way. Both are assuming too much of an understanding about God. This would also go for anyone who denounces gay marriage or guarantees gay marriage will happen in heaven. I don't know how it will work but neither does anyone else. So I usually fight back against the absolutism. That said, I don't mind sharing opinions about what I think will happen. But opinions aren't absolute certainty.

I'll also add that most people I see denouncing Joseph's plural marriages are most interested denouncing what they perceive to be coercive methods of examples of abuses of power as well as the age and marital status of his wives. Those things don't denounce polygamy of themselves but the abusive practices inherent in early church polygamy. (Don't get me wrong, many are very opposed to polygamy itself as I am, but the apparent abuses seem very contradictory to God' way even if polygamy will be a thing in eternity.

 

[bluebell]

12 hours ago, sunstoned said:

What we do know is that JS's practice of polygamy/polyandry was not in keeping with section 132. Zina was not a virgin and he did not have Emma's permission.  His practice was done in secret, behind Emma's back.  If JS held section 132 in such low regard, then why should we feel obligated to support it.

It doesn't make sense to me to equate how JS practiced polygamy (or even taught it personally) to a low regard for section 132.   There are many people who claim great regard for the commandments of God who frequently do a bad job of practicing it.  

Weakness, confusion, misunderstanding, lack of faith, etc. all contribute to such instances.

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I don't know how it will work but neither does anyone else.

It doesn't make sense to me to proclaim that if I don't know something, no one else does either.  

[Jeanne]

3 minutes ago, bluebell said:

It doesn't make sense to me to equate how JS practiced polygamy (or even taught it personally) to a low regard for section 132.   There are many people who claim great regard for the commandments of God who frequently do a bad job of practicing it.  

Weakness, confusion, misunderstanding, lack of faith, etc. all contribute to such instances.

Do you think Emma should have been told? 

[VideoGameJunkie]

17 hours ago, Calm said:

Are you desiring plural marriage as well?

What would your response be if I say I do desire plural marriage, but not in this fallen Telestial world, but waiting for the Millennium and CelestialKingdom where there is no jealousy. I've had dreams where I've lived plural marriage ordained of God and it was some of the best dreams I had and I felt in my dreams a load of outgoing and outpouring love. So to answer your question again do I desire plural marriage? Mostly yes, but only if God aproves it. Was kind of nervous how people of the board would react if I just came out and said I really want it. If it winds up being an option I'll live it as I see it pertains to a higher law. And there are 4 different girls in my ward who I would marry, including a pair of sisters like how lucky ancestors practiced plural marriage. My 1 wish for living plural marriage in the eternities is no jealousy from those involved and for the women to all love each other like sisters. During the Millennium if it is brought back I think it'd be good if the women already married to you were the ones to select who would be the other plural wives. So in closing not only do I kind of desire it, Ive had many dreams at night about it. Now don't run me off the board. My reasoning is I may never find a wife in this life and I believe our rewards in the next life are beyond amazing and I've had comforting confirmation feelings that going from a life of single loneliness to eternal plural marriage is the kind of huge rewards we can expect from the Lord. 

[stemelbow]

10 minutes ago, bluebell said:

It doesn't make sense to me to equate how JS practiced polygamy (or even taught it personally) to a low regard for section 132.   There are many people who claim great regard for the commandments of God who frequently do a bad job of practicing it.  

Weakness, confusion, misunderstanding, lack of faith, etc. all contribute to such instances.

interesting.  If Joseph was told he could only marry virgins and went on to marry non virgins, then how is that just doing a bad job of practicing?  It seems like a blatant disrespect for the revelation itself.  I mean I get the difficulty of saying something like, if Joseph was told not to think about other women romantically and did, then the he just did a bad job of it applying the teaching.  But this seems more like saying Joseph was told not to iron his shirt and he did anyway.  Did he just feel extra tempted to iron his shirt? 

[stemelbow]

11 minutes ago, bluebell said:

It doesn't make sense to me to proclaim that if I don't know something, no one else does either.  

To be fair he didn't say if he doesn't know something no one else does either.  he said no one else knows, and neither does he. 

It makes sense to say something like, "well I don't know how the world came to be and no one else does either".  But I'd get your concern if someone said, "Since I don't know how the world came to be, no one else does either."

[stemelbow]

10 minutes ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

What would your response be if I say I do desire plural marriage, but not in this fallen Telestial world, but waiting for the Millennium and CelestialKingdom where there is no jealousy. I've had dreams where I've lived plural marriage ordained of God and it was some of the best dreams I had and I felt in my dreams a load of outgoing and outpouring love. So to answer your question again do I desire plural marriage? Mostly yes, but only if God aproves it. Was kind of nervous how people of the board would react if I just came out and said I really want it. If it winds up being an option I'll live it as I see it pertains to a higher law. And there are 4 different girls in my ward who I would marry, including a pair of sisters like how lucky ancestors practiced plural marriage. My 1 wish for living plural marriage in the eternities is no jealousy from those involved and for the women to all love each other like sisters. During the Millennium if it is brought back I think it'd be good if the women already married to you were the ones to select who would be the other plural wives. So in closing not only do I kind of desire it, Ive had many dreams at night about it. Now don't run me off the board. My reasoning is I may never find a wife in this life and I believe our rewards in the next life are beyond amazing and I've had comforting confirmation feelings that going from a life of single loneliness to eternal plural marriage is the kind of huge rewards we can expect from the Lord. 

Dudes dreaming about multiple women?  Seeing women as having to learn to be okay with other sharing a man?  Feels like a good explanation why plural marriage should never have been practiced.  No offense of course.

Edited August 5, 2016 by stemelbow

[ksfisher]

4 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

Dudes dreaming about multiple women?  Seeing women as having to learn to be okay with other sharing a man?  Feels like a good explanation why plural marriage should never have been practiced.  No offense of course.

I would hope that most men would realize that the reality of being married to multiple wives is probably a lot different than the dream.  Being married to one person can be difficult enough at times (not saying at all that it isn't worth it).  Trying to be a husband and father to multiple wives and children in multiple households, holding down a full time job and a church calling, seems like way more stress than I want to deal with.