Plural marriage, the priesthood, and exaltation

[Stargazer]

32 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Well, don't the spirits go into bodies?

Yeah, later. Much later, when mortal fathers and mothers make them. God doesn't make mortal bodies. He lets us do that.

[Stargazer]

13 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Yes, it can seem like that, for those who don't take the time to actually understand where these women are coming from, or worse, don't actually care where they are coming from.

It's easy to understand where they're coming from. I can see that perfectly. All I have to do is imagine what I would feel like if my wife decided to take another husband. It's not pleasant.

I'd love it if, like Calm and Juliann have posited as a possibility, that Father will arrange for the number of exalted men and exalted women to be the same. Hip hip hooray if that were the case! 

I just don't see it as the most likely end scenario. And in that regard, all of us need to learn to trust God that, however it turns out, we will be happy beyond our wildest mortal imaginations.

[bluebell]

4 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

It's easy to understand where they're coming from. I can see that perfectly. All I have to do is imagine what I would feel like if my wife decided to take another husband. It's not pleasant.

I'd love it if, like Calm and Juliann have posited as a possibility, that Father will arrange for the number of exalted men and exalted women to be the same. Hip hip hooray if that were the case! 

I just don't see it as the most likely end scenario. And in that regard, all of us need to learn to trust God that, however it turns out, we will be happy beyond our wildest mortal imaginations.

If the only way that you can understand how a woman feels about polygamy is to imagine your wife taking a husband, then you don't understand why polygamy is so painful for a lot of women.  If you go back and read my response to JHLProf, you'll notice that 'sharing a husband' wasn't even given as a reason.

Edited December 12, 2021 by bluebell

[Stargazer]

22 minutes ago, bluebell said:

For a lot of women, it's already hard to trust how Heavenly Father feels about you when you read scriptures.  You mostly get silence or examples that make it easier to doubt His love than depend on it.  Polygamy can be a huge handful of salt into that already tender wound.

The problem is that the scriptures were written by men. And as vital as women are to the history of the human race, it is a small number of men who tend to get the notice of all, and around whom history visibly pivots. It's not just the Bible or the Book of Mormon.

Consider Genghis Khan. While Genghis is riding around with his horde, getting in all the newspapers, his wife Börte, sits at home, raises his children (a vital task of paramount importance), and keeps the home fires burning. Who gets all the fame? Not Börte. But she's the one who gave birth to and raised his successors in the Mongol Empire, and thus played a vital role in that empire.

Of course, it's not that cut-and-dried. Genghis Khan had quite a few wives and concubines. 

 

[Stargazer]

39 minutes ago, bluebell said:

If the only way that you can understand how a woman feels about polygamy is to imagine your wife taking a husband, then you don't understand why polygamy is so painful for a lot of women.  If you go back and read my response to JHLProf, you'll notice that 'sharing a husband' wasn't even given as a reason.

If I'm trying to imagine a woman's feelings about polygamy, I have to relate them to how I would feel in a similar situation. Not being a woman, I cannot possibly understand why polygamy is so painful for a lot of women. I can only approximate it to the extent I can bring myself into the matter.

As to your response to JHLProf, I do see how the apparent lack of regard for women plays into it. Women are for men, women provide children for men, women give men a feeling of being a man. And so on. Not a good look.

But I also see how I am only valuable as an exalted being if I can obtain and maintain a wife. By myself I cannot obtain the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom. It is only as a couple that I please God the way God wants to be pleased. Give me the priesthood and a wife, and I am surrounded by booby traps to my exaltation. Unrighteous dominion? I am finished. Looking on another woman in lust? I'm toast. And if I don't take the risk, and deliberately stay single, I'd guess I'd only be worthy of the Terrestrial Kingdom, or at most, the lower two degrees of the Celestial.

After flatly stating that women were made for men, and not the other way around (which is exactly what you're talking about), the Apostle Paul then goes on to say "Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord." (1 Cor 11:11) Paul put a lot of his personal opinion into the record, but the final word is that when it comes to exaltation, one comes to God in pairs. Nothing less. Which means that men and women, or women and men, each one of them is 100%. Not 50/50.

And when it comes to bad examples in the scriptures, men are hand's down way ahead on the leader board. For what that's worth.

I'm probably not being very convincing.  

ETA: And this is probably one of those times when, instead of just listening with an understanding heart, I'm doing that man-thing of trying to be Mr. Fixit. My apologies.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Stargazer

[Chum]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

And here we're fussing, in the middle of all that business, about how much we don't want to share our spouse.

Not strictly 'we'+'spouse'. If it were, we'd be discussing how men aren't happy sharing their wife with other men.

[Stargazer]

12 minutes ago, Chum said:

Not strictly 'we'+'spouse'. If it were, we'd be discussing how men aren't happy sharing their wife with other men.

Yes, I know, I was just trying to generalize the sentence.

Some of the discussions on this board seem like people arguing the proper arrangement of deck chairs on a sinking ship. But I guess if it's important to someone, it ought to be treated seriously.

[MacGyver]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Because they don’t want to waste their life following a religion that, if true, will give them something they do not want.

Our religion promises them eternal life and true happiness if they are faithful. Why wouldn't they want that?

[Chum]

1 hour ago, MacGyver said:

Our religion promises them eternal life and true happiness if they are faithful. Why wouldn't they want that?

I think the assumption is thin, that women will - for absolutely certain - be eternally happy as secondary wives.

[MacGyver]

18 minutes ago, Chum said:

I think the assumption is thin, that women will - for absolutely certain - be eternally happy as secondary wives.

God has promised that if we are faithful we will be eternally happy. We know very little about what that will look like.

So why worry about what eternal happiness will look like? It doesn't matter and it's out of our control. We have been promised that we will be happy. Why not have faith and trust in God to keep his promise and then strive to live how he would have us live?

[Calm]

1 hour ago, MacGyver said:

So why worry about what eternal happiness will look like? It doesn't matter and it's out of our control.

That is not exactly reassuring to many women given our past. One of the few scriptures which has God directly interacting with women has him apparently fundamentally altering who we are as individuals to desire something most would see as a negative, being ruled over by another fallible mortal, placing women in a subservient role to men.  Current scriptures do not change this relationship resulting from the curse, but appear to even perpetuate it.***

Quote

thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

If you thought you had at best an eternity as a ultimate Stepford wife, how fulfilling, comforting, and uplifting would making current sacrifices be if one believed one would be making sacrifices eternally?  If you saw men exercising talents and having opportunities that were difficult to experience if you accepted the role of wife and motherhood as your primary, maybe even sole purpose in mortality and extrapolated that role to eternity where the only purpose of women identified in the scriptures is to be wife and mother, why would you not assume your eternal experiences would also so limited?  
 

And if our best, exalted future was so limited eternally, how motivated would you be in investing your current life in that future, setting aside hopes and dreams in the here and now (such as sacrificing a fascinating and fun career to raise children or paying tithing instead of saving up for a year long world tour) when our society has now opened up the same opportunities to women as men have?

Being assured happiness without knowing what that involves besides peace and joy and not seeing much, if any consideration for women’s actual desires outside of the role of motherhood in the scriptures is not particularly reassuring.  Rather from the very first scripture story women’s desires are being manipulated into serving men as a punishment for a woman’s choice that we as a church applaud.  This makes it appear more likely that at least scripturally the promise of eternity we women can look forward to is becoming a blissed out breeder who produces children to add to her husband and God’s glory because God alters us fundamentally again so that is our greatest and perhaps only desire and happiness as opposed to God helping us to remove all obstacles to actual eternal progress as we accept his will, such freedom meaning freedom also from Eve’s curse, because God views us as worthwhile, unique individuals ourselves whom he wants to share all of creation with. 

***there is no scripture I am aware of that teaches us Eve’s Curse will be lifted, which lack led women in the 1800’s Church to assume we could only be free from Eve’s curse by no longer loving our husbands…while one of the first things we are taught in the Gospel is that the curse of Adam’s transgression is removed from all. In fact scriptures and temple ritual in the past seem to make clear men will continue to rule over their wives even in the eternities, which has deep implications about just how “one” women will be able to be with men.  Add in the belief that for highest celestial progression, one shares that limited “oneness” with many other wives…reassuring much?

Edited December 13, 2021 by Calm

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

I think the assumption is thin, that women will - for absolutely certain - be eternally happy as secondary wives.

Considering how different eternity will be it's impossible to say.

But do we not say similar things about all kinds of thinking and preferences here?  When we get to eternal joy and glory many things we think here will be left in the dust of the earth.

[Rain]

11 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

When one attends a session at the Temple, typically there are more females than males. It seems they grasp and accept the restored gospel more readily than males.

Or...those extra women could be stay at home moms with children in school or older women whose husbands often die younger than they do.

The number, by itself, of women to men in the temple tells one nothing.  

11 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

Of course, one man would not need to have multiple wives. I am not sure how God remains just, pure, true, holy giving the alternate option: women living single for eternity. To me that sounds like damnation - or the absence of progress. 

1 man: 1 woman, exalted shoudl work fine - assuming a 50/50 ratio of genders in the Celestial Kingdom. Not sure males are going to make it there in those kinds of numbers.

Same amount of children would be produced: True - just over a much longer span of time - which for eternal beings woudl be fine, unless the Intelligences / Spirit Children are tired of waiting and sing for joy at the thought of progress.

As to planets of women out there - not sure I understand your question but I believe many, many more women will be in the Celestial Kingdom as compared to men. That leaves us with misisonary work in the Spirit World followed by Temple work and/or polygamy - otherwise God condemns faithful women to be single for eternity which a just, loving, all-knowing God would not do. 

 

 

 

[MacGyver]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

And if our best, exalted future was so limited eternally, how motivated would you be in investing your current life in that future, setting aside hopes and dreams in the here and now (such as sacrificing a fascinating and fun career to raise children or paying tithing instead of saving up for a year long world tour) when our society has now opened up the same opportunities to women as men have?

Being assured happiness without knowing what that involves besides peace and joy and not seeing much, if any consideration for women’s actual desires outside of the role of motherhood in the scriptures is not particularly reassuring.

You don't know that your exalted future is limited in the way you fear. We have been promised by God that we will be happy beyond any happiness we can experience in this life. We have been promised that all of our personal sacrifices for His sake will be worth it. We really don't know much at all about what exaltation looks like for men or women. We are to walk by faith not by site. We cannot expect any kind of assurance that the Celestial Kingdom is as God has promised. The only assurance we have is the whisperings of the Holy Ghost and the tangible blessings we receive as we follow what the Savior would have us do. 

These worries about plural marriage and child bearing in the eternities serve absolutely no purpose, other than to weaken people's resolve to keep the commandments and sacrifice all things for the gospel's sake. And who do you think wants to weaken the resolve of the women in the church to keep the commandments and sacrifice all things for the gospel's sake? It's definitely not God, that's for sure.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, MacGyver said:

 

You don't know that your exalted future is limited in the way you fear

 

I don’t fear my future.  I love my future.  I rely on what God had told me directly, not fallible scriptures or prophets and apostles, inspired writings and revelations and good people that they are.  But I recognize that is a very personal solution and it does nothing for other women. 
 

Scriptures and speculations of earlier prophets as well as past temple rituals and even what is currently taught (we don’t know, trust in God) are sparse in knowledge or concepts of women as complete individuals and not as accessories for men even in comparison to the admittedly limited teachings of what men have to look forward to (helping or on their own—depending on interpretation—creating planets and ruling over their families, perhaps ministering to lower kingdoms) present a limited picture of what is women’s current interaction with God as well as their future unless one chooses to insert “daughters” and “women” into stories and blessings promised “sons of God”/man/men. 
 

Think of Sarah only being allowed to overhear the men/angels from the Lord sent to Abraham to talk about Abraham’s blessings when it was her who had prepared part of their meal and the subject intimately involved her future efforts as much as him rather than being able to sit with Abraham and look at God’s messengers and not hide her face in some tent. Even the answer to her laugh is given to Abraham by God’s messengers, not directly to Sarah, save a word or two at the end. And then they walk off with Abraham while Sarah appears to have stayed in her tent when they share with Abraham the magnitude of his blessings to come….even though it is taught now that God saw Sarah as an equal partner.
 

Being told over and over again to be good little Marthas and everything will be as we want in the end when what we want to be is Mary now isn’t helpful.
 

It is understandable to me that there are women who question if men have been given at least some answers about what is to come, then why haven’t women?  Why are the scriptures so quiet about women in general while teaching about some pretty trivial stuff about men?  For example, there are details of their offerings in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers 7&version=NIV.  And if one removes passages that deal with women being wives or mothers or sinners, there are far fewer specific stories of women to learn from or about how a woman fulfilled an inspired calling.  
 

And it isn’t like we see many Deborah or Anna roles in the Church, so what examples are there, some we have to even diminish to imagine how they might relate to ourselves.  Are there blessings of the mothers that we should be as eager to seek as men are taught that they should follow the example of Abraham?

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/1?lang=eng&id=2-4#p2

 The absence of very many examples of God working directly in women’s lives in our scriptures or rituals in order that they may grow in knowledge and righteousness can be an issue for women who struggle to liken the scriptures unto themselves, especially if single.  Too often they conclude this means God doesn’t really care about women as individuals, just what they can do for furthering the progression and rewards of his sons or his Church or others’ lives, God is not a personal God for them. To tell them “you don’t need to know” just underlines the absence of connection they see, it is not reassuring. 
 

Why keep offering comfort that doesn’t comfort?  If you had been given medicine by a doctor for decades and didn’t see any improvement, wouldn’t you ask for new medicine and if refused, change doctors?  Especially if you saw others suffering the same ailment perhaps not b cured, but it appeared their doctors were listening to them and attempting to find something that worked rather than simply telling them once again “this medicine is all you will need”.

It is not mourning with those who mourn or having true charity to ignore the impact or lack of impact on those you are assuming you are helping, to repeat what works for you instead of paying attention to whether or not it works for someone else. And if it doesn’t, then isn’t it better to learn to listen to what women who need more are experiencing rather than choosing to either dismiss concerns as unnecessary or to diminish what men have been given as if the promises of the Priesthood and the presence of men in almost all rituals of the Church, even those that formerly had a place for women other than the recipient?

And rather than saying “we can’t know, so just trust”, might not it be better to say “why don’t I wait with you and I will support you as much as I can in your efforts to seek to be one who possesses great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, just as God has generously given to men”.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Calm

[Tacenda]

9 hours ago, MacGyver said:

You don't know that your exalted future is limited in the way you fear. We have been promised by God that we will be happy beyond any happiness we can experience in this life. We have been promised that all of our personal sacrifices for His sake will be worth it. We really don't know much at all about what exaltation looks like for men or women. We are to walk by faith not by site. We cannot expect any kind of assurance that the Celestial Kingdom is as God has promised. The only assurance we have is the whisperings of the Holy Ghost and the tangible blessings we receive as we follow what the Savior would have us do. 

These worries about plural marriage and child bearing in the eternities serve absolutely no purpose, other than to weaken people's resolve to keep the commandments and sacrifice all things for the gospel's sake. And who do you think wants to weaken the resolve of the women in the church to keep the commandments and sacrifice all things for the gospel's sake? It's definitely not God, that's for sure.

You should read the book by Carol Lynn Pearson, "The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy - Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men". It may give you an idea of the actual feelings of women and even men. https://carollynnpearson.com/ghostofeternalpolygamy

[MacGyver]

3 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

You should read the book by Carol Lynn Pearson, "The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy - Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men". It may give you an idea of the actual feelings of women and even men. https://carollynnpearson.com/ghostofeternalpolygamy

I already know that many men and women are deeply troubled by any form of polygamy and especially how it was taught and practiced in the bible and early church history. But at some point people just need to get over it. Don't let what you don't know ruin what you do know. Stop worrying about what you don't understand and put your trust in God to keep his promise of everlasting happiness in the world to come if we are faithful to him. 

There's also personal revelation. Go to God in prayer and ask for understanding and to speak peace to your mind and heart about this subject so that you can move forward in faith and receive all the blessings for keeping the commandments and faithfully serving God and your follow man. God is eager to bestow this blessing upon each of his children, but we have to have faith and do what he asks of us, instead of doubting and disengaging from what we have covenanted to do. 

[Tacenda]

5 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

I already know that many men and women are deeply troubled by any form of polygamy and especially how it was taught and practiced in the bible and early church history. But at some point people just need to get over it. Don't let what you don't know ruin what you do know. Stop worrying about what you don't understand and put your trust in God to keep his promise of everlasting happiness in the world to come if we are faithful to him. 

There's also personal revelation. Go to God in prayer and ask for understanding and to speak peace to your mind and heart about this subject so that you can move forward in faith and receive all the blessings for keeping the commandments and faithfully serving God and your follow man. God is eager to bestow this blessing upon each of his children, but we have to have faith and do what he asks of us, instead of doubting and disengaging from what we have covenanted to do. 

Go to yourself, is probably my mantra now. We as individuals have God's kingdom inside of us. That is something I've gleaned somewhat from our own @mfbukowski. Each of us have been told too often to listen to the Holy Ghost or leaders or ? But God made us holy in that we can listen to our inner voice too. 

[MacGyver]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

And rather than saying “we can’t know, so just trust”, might not it be better to say “why don’t I wait with you and I will support you as much as I can in your efforts to seek to be one who possesses great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, just as God has generously given to men”.

Women have the same access to knowledge of God and the ability to keep his commandments as men do. We (men and women) aren't supposed to wait until we know all we want to know. We are supposed to act in faith. And then as we act in faith our faith grows little by little until we have a perfect knowledge. 

[bluebell]

10 hours ago, Calm said:

I don’t fear my future.  I love my future.  I rely on what God had told me directly, not fallible scriptures or prophets and apostles, inspired writings and revelations and good people that they are.  But I recognize that is a very personal solution and it does nothing for other women. 
 

Scriptures and speculations of earlier prophets as well as past temple rituals and even what is currently taught (we don’t know, trust in God) are sparse in knowledge or concepts of women as complete individuals and not as accessories for men even in comparison to the admittedly limited teachings of what men have to look forward to (helping or on their own—depending on interpretation—creating planets and ruling over their families, perhaps ministering to lower kingdoms) present a limited picture of what is women’s current interaction with God as well as their future unless one chooses to insert “daughters” and “women” into stories and blessings promised “sons of God”/man/men. 
 

Think of Sarah only being allowed to overhear the men/angels from the Lord sent to Abraham to talk about Abraham’s blessings when it was her who had prepared part of their meal and the subject intimately involved her future efforts as much as him rather than being able to sit with Abraham and look at God’s messengers and not hide her face in some tent. Even the answer to her laugh is given to Abraham by God’s messengers, not directly to Sarah, save a word or two at the end. And then they walk off with Abraham while Sarah appears to have stayed in her tent when they share with Abraham the magnitude of his blessings to come….even though it is taught now that God saw Sarah as an equal partner.
 

Being told over and over again to be good little Marthas and everything will be as we want in the end when what we want to be is Mary now isn’t helpful.
 

It is understandable to me that there are women who question if men have been given at least some answers about what is to come, then why haven’t women?  Why are the scriptures so quiet about women in general while teaching about some pretty trivial stuff about men?  For example, there are details of their offerings in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers 7&version=NIV.  And if one removes passages that deal with women being wives or mothers or sinners, there are far fewer specific stories of women to learn from or about how a woman fulfilled an inspired calling.  
 

And it isn’t like we see many Deborah or Anna roles in the Church, so what examples are there, some we have to even diminish to imagine how they might relate to ourselves.  Are there blessings of the mothers that we should be as eager to seek as men are taught that they should follow the example of Abraham?

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/1?lang=eng&id=2-4#p2

 The absence of very many examples of God working directly in women’s lives in our scriptures or rituals in order that they may grow in knowledge and righteousness can be an issue for women who struggle to liken the scriptures unto themselves, especially if single.  Too often they conclude this means God doesn’t really care about women as individuals, just what they can do for furthering the progression and rewards of his sons or his Church or others’ lives, God is not a personal God for them. To tell them “you don’t need to know” just underlines the absence of connection they see, it is not reassuring. 
 

Why keep offering comfort that doesn’t comfort?  If you had been given medicine by a doctor for decades and didn’t see any improvement, wouldn’t you ask for new medicine and if refused, change doctors?  Especially if you saw others suffering the same ailment perhaps not b cured, but it appeared their doctors were listening to them and attempting to find something that worked rather than simply telling them once again “this medicine is all you will need”.

It is not mourning with those who mourn or having true charity to ignore the impact or lack of impact on those you are assuming you are helping, to repeat what works for you instead of paying attention to whether or not it works for someone else. And if it doesn’t, then isn’t it better to learn to listen to what women who need more are experiencing rather than choosing to either dismiss concerns as unnecessary or to diminish what men have been given as if the promises of the Priesthood and the presence of men in almost all rituals of the Church, even those that formerly had a place for women other than the recipient?

And rather than saying “we can’t know, so just trust”, might not it be better to say “why don’t I wait with you and I will support you as much as I can in your efforts to seek to be one who possesses great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, just as God has generously given to men”.

I think this topic is a great example of the whole "we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are" idea.  

A lot of members have the mindset that if it's not a problem for them, it shouldn't be a problem for anyone.  It's the opposite of mourning with those that mourn but it's much easier so a lot go that direction.  It's uncomfortable to see people hurting and not be able to fix it and I think a lot of members get frustrated because they can't force others to see the issue as they do.  So they throw their hands up in the air, tell people that if they only had more faith or trust they would be fine, and walk away.

[bluebell]

33 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

Women have the same access to knowledge of God and the ability to keep his commandments as men do. We (men and women) aren't supposed to wait until we know all we want to know. We are supposed to act in faith. And then as we act in faith our faith grows little by little until we have a perfect knowledge. 

We do, but we are not show that equal access in the scriptures or in our interactions with our leadership so it's very easy to doubt it's reality when things get hard and faith is tested.

[MiserereNobis]

On 12/12/2021 at 11:10 AM, JLHPROF said:

Billions and billions of years ahead and previous and they [other religions] have no idea what we'll be doing there or what happened in the eternities before God created the earth

I don't view eternity as billions and billions of years. I view eternity as timeless: beyond or outside of time, a place where time does not exist.

Catholicism does have an idea what we'll be doing in heaven during eternity. It's called the Beatific Vision. See here (wikipedia, yes, but a good introduction to the topic).

We're of different views, obviously. I don't want to have billions of years ahead of me creating spirit children, watching those children suffer on earths that I have created, etc. The timelessness of perfect unity with God in the Beatific Vision sounds perfect to me. I have caught glimpses (to use the visual metaphor) of this Vision during intense contemplation while on monastic retreat. It is a peace that surpasses the ability to describe it.

Also, it seems to me that the LDS answer to what we'll be doing in eternity is extremely extremely vague. Posters here can't even agree on what it will be like.

(I remember Ahab talking about washing dishes and doing laundry in the celestial kingdom... strikes me as quite unheavenly, ha).

[juliann]

14 hours ago, MacGyver said:

 

These worries about plural marriage and child bearing in the eternities serve absolutely no purpose, other than to weaken people's resolve to keep the commandments and sacrifice all things for the gospel's sake. And who do you think wants to weaken the resolve of the women in the church to keep the commandments and sacrifice all things for the gospel's sake? It's definitely not God, that's for sure.

You are unaware of the damage this bizarre reluctance to do away with polygamy does to women here and now. Think it through. 

[juliann]

20 hours ago, Chum said:

I think the assumption is thin, that women will - for absolutely certain - be eternally happy as secondary wives.

Yup. We will be completely different people once we die. By golly, we will probably love slavery, too! 

What becomes absolutely comical in these everlasting discussions with polygamy advocates is that they are basing all of their future hopes on a 19th century artifact that required the political and social oppression of women to work. I am certain not one of these men are imagining a situation of being surrounded by women who have the same priesthood and power that they do. They are certainly envisioning being surrounded by adoring, compliant women who look to them for the final decision. They see their problem as being how to divide their attentions to women who pine for them as they take care of all the celestial household duties and whatever the heck spirit children are supposed to be. And, of course, the sex....since we all know from scripture that is how creation happened. Yup. They have lots of 19th century men telling them that, too!

[juliann]

On 12/11/2021 at 10:38 PM, Stargazer said:

Ok, I will regret asking this, but nevermind.

What is circular about it? And why is it unsustainable? 

By the way, I'm not demanding anything. My understanding of scripture is that there will be plural marriage in eternity. You disagree. I'm fine with that.

 

More women than men presumes that there is plural marriage. It doesn't provide any need for it, you have started with a premise and given a reason for it that doesn't prove it. You can also call it begging the question. 

There is no scripture that says there will be plural marriage in heaven and no one has provided one. I find it interesting that one must set aside every other statement by leaders and go back to some vague claim to scripture to keep polygamy alive. It makes me wonder which you would chose, a religion based on  continuous revelation or polygamy?