When is an “everlasting covenant” not an “everlasting covenant?” When it’s politically expedient for Utah to be recognized as a State; also known as “because we said so.”
Besides using your common sense, (and your common knowledge of the meaning of the word everlasting), Dictionary.com defines the word everlasting as “lasting forever; eternal.”
Even the 1997 edition of the LDS published book Gospel Principles says, “The fulness [sic] of the gospel is called the new and everlasting covenant. . . . The Lord calls it ‘everlasting’ because it is ordained by an everlasting God and because the covenant will never be changed.“
Yet, this very concept does not apply to the “new and everlasting covenant” of polygamy. And why not? Because the “new and everlasting covenant” of polygamy isn’t popular anymore in Mormonism.
In 1843, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith received the following from “God” on the new (and everlasting) doctrine of polygamy:
For behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory. For all who will have a blessing at my hands shall abide the law which was appointed . . . before the foundation of the world. And as pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant, it was instituted for the fulness [sic] of my glory; and he that receiveth a fulness [sic] thereof must and shall be damned, saith the Lord God. Doctrine & Covenants, 132:4-6, July 12, 1843
This is further advanced by Mormonism’s second prophet Brigham Young when he said in the Deseret News on November 14, 1855:
“Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned . . .“
Joseph F. Smith in the Journal of Discourses, volume 20, page 31 said:
“I understand the law of celestial marriage to mean that every man in this Church, who has the ability to obey and practice it in righteousness and will not, shall be damned, I say I understand it to mean this and nothing less, and I testify in the name of Jesus that it does mean that.”
Although polygamy is not an issue for fundamentalist Mormons who continue to practice the teachings of Joseph Smith, it is a huge problem for mainstream Mormons who try to separate themselves from polygamy. The mainstream Mormon has to come to one of the following conclusions:
1. The Mormon god is incapable of foreseeing that his own “everlasting covenant” wouldn’t be everlasting.
2. The Mormon god is not the same yesterday, today, and forever and is subject to change on a whim, (or when it’s advantageous for Utah to become a state). In that case it just further proves the god of Mormonism is not the God of Christians. And besides, who wants to follow a god who changes from day to day? One who says one thing one day, then something else the next?
3. The fundamentalist Mormons who still practice the “everlasting covenant” of polygamy (and who would be damned if they didn’t) are true Mormons and the mainstream Mormons are apostate.
4. Joseph Smith wasn’t a true prophet.
So to my mainstream Mormon readers, which is it?
Christ Alone Wyoming 
As a former believer and returned LDS missionary, I think the response is not that polygamy is now a false doctrine, but that the LDS church doesn’t “currently” practice it. As far as I know, it is still believed that polygamy will be practiced in the hereafter. It’s not a case of the LDS church changing their position, it’s that the world/society isn’t ready to accept certain doctrine.
You can see how this reasoning may be applied to any church doctrine, such as blacks not being allowed to hold the priesthood. The LDS church is perfect and unchanging; it’s the world itself that decides which principles it’s fit for. I’m sure there are those who believe that after the second coming, when the LDS church is in charge, doctrines like polygamy will be reinstated.
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Thank you for your comment Vince, and your ability to disagree without insult.
I understand your point that mainstream LDS currently does not practice polygamy but plan to in the future again (even though they denounce it as an apostate act).
But what you said got me a little confused. Help me out: What you’re saying is that the world dictates God’s plans, laws and ordinances? If the world doesn’t accept something from God, He merely changes it?
This argument (if I’m hearing you correctly) is easily proven incorrect when you examine the myriad of other teachings (Mormon or even Christian) that the world rejects yet God does not change. Jesus being the ONLY WAY to Heaven is a great example of this (John 14:6) which Esteban seems to have such trouble with.
Again, the issue is that God (who I think we can all agree knows the future) issued an EVERLASTING covenant, one by which must be followed to obtain exaltation and godhood. This EVERLASTING covenant is still found in D&C yet mainstream LDS continues to denounce fundamentalist LDS groups (yes, there’s a bunch of off-chutes of LDS that many Mormons won’t admit, even while they claim the existence of Christian denominations proves Christianity is false).
What was EVERLASTING one minute cannot be undone the next or the thing which was EVERLASTING was never EVERLASTING.
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Sorry for the confusion Pilgrim; the fact is I left the LDS church years ago, and was offering the viewpoint I’d had as one of its members. Being raised in the LDS faith, it seems the explanation I’d always heard for the church’s change in policy was that, while God’s covenants are everlasting, human beings are imperfect and not always ready to practice them. This is the reason given why Christ’s “true church” was removed from the Earth until Joseph Smith restored it.
Ironically, it was during my mission that I began to be bothered by the way the church apparently revised its own doctrine and history to be more contemporary. However, like all good members I dismissed these doubts as being influenced by “the devil” and sought arguments against them.
I believe it’s that type of reasoning that makes it very difficult to debate with active Mormons. I once tried to explain to a questioning family member why I no longer believed in Joseph Smith, and a day or two later they testified to me that they still had faith, regardless of what I had told them about church history. Though I had merely stated my own reasons for disbelieving, I felt as if I had intentionally attacked someone’s dearest beliefs. Now when a Mormon asks me why I lost faith, I just shrug and say “I have my reasons.”
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God never said there is anything wrong with plural marriage. The church simply stopped the active practice of it. Was it to get Utah into the Union? There is no doubt that it was part of the reason that God put a hold on the practice. Though, it may more have been that the practice was interfering with getting the restored gospel out due to it being a point of contention. It still is, over a 100 years after the practice was stopped. Real differences in doctrine aught to be the issue rather than a minor one such as this.
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Paul,
Interesting that you should say that God said there is nothing wrong with plural marriage, but I’d really like to see that in Scripture. Rather than post it all here, I suggest you look at my article dealing with God’s view of polygamy from Scriptural evidence at http://watchmansbagpipes.blogspot.com/search/label/Marriage
Now I ask you to look at the following passages in the Book of Mormon and tell me what “God” says about polygamy: Jacob 1:15; Jacob 2:23-24; Jacob 3:5; Mosiah 11:2; Ether 10:5. It is called “wicked practices,” “committing whoredoms,” “abominable,” “did not keep the commandments of God,” “did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord.” So if you believe God gave the BOM to Smith, and that it is indeed God speaking in the BOM, then you have to conclude God has spoken against polygamy. Even when he wrote D&C 42:22 Smith had God say, “Thou shalt love thy wife with all they heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else.”
But Smith’s “God” changed his mind when Smith decided to have adulterous relationships and call it “celestial marriage.” Which then resulted in D&C 132.
Try reading the manifesto by Wilford Woodruff. He just said they weren’t teaching it or allowing it to be practiced at the time (which was actually a lie, as history demonstrates). Woodruff took it upon himself to say that because the law of the land outlawed polygamy that he would use his “influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.” He ended the manifesto by saying, “I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.” Notice all he did was give advice that they not do so. Then he claimed a revelation from God showed him what would happen to the church if they didn’t cease contracting plural marriages – the church would suffer devastating losses.
So is the LDS god powerless to triumph against the gov’t to save an “everlasting” ordinance? This IS a real difference in doctrine! D&C 132 says that everyone must obey this command and if they don’t they will be damned! LDS doctrine is still that only polygamous men will make it to the top tier in the celestial heaven and become a god. It all goes together.
So God said this was eternal and that those who did not participate would be damned, and yet for the expedience of Utah becoming a state he allowed the cessation of the eternal ordinance? So according to D&C 132 all men not polygamous are now damned!
D&C 132 was nothing but a cover for Smith’s debauchery of young women. The God of the Bible would never have given such a command.
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I wonder what would happen if an old Mormon met a new Mormon and the subject of polygamy/celestial marriage came up.
Well wonder no more:
http://defendingcontending.com/2010/12/10/old-mormon-vs-new-mormon-celestial-marriage/
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That one was one of my favorites!
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Glen, I did read your posting regarding plural marriage. Due to its length, it would need refuting that would greatly increase its length. Having read rule 7, I’m pretty sure my response would not remain up nor am sure if this would be the most appropriate spot to post it. And, by refuting your posting here or there would most likely result in being banned from further posting. Unless given permission otherwise, I will need to pass on the refutation and repeat the last line of my posting above: “Real differences in doctrine aught to be the issue rather than a minor one such as this.” And, just in case no one noticed, I never said I was LDS nor FLDS, or member of a polygamist group. Most definitely, I am “above reproach, the husband of one wife” (1 Tim. 3:2). My blog’s “About” section can further enlighten my religious affiliation.
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Paul,
Well, I went to your site, and I couldn’t see where it showed your affiliation – PCUSA or PCA? Of course I could have missed it. However, with some of the stuff I saw I would guess PCUSA.
I am very familiar with the tours of Nauvoo, having been there numerous times, including touring the temple when it was first built. Any tour there gives a sanitized version of LDS history, as well as propaganda about their persecution. You will never get a real understanding of the LDS history by tours of Nauvoo with the Mormons.
As for your not being a Mormon, well I couldn’t see why anyone else would defend polygamy, but I can see where liberal Christians would. However, since the post here was about the LDS and polygamy, it was very important to demonstrate what the LDS own teachings say about it before Smith got caught in adultery.
There is no refuting my post on God’s view of marriage unless you twist the context. If you care to on my post, feel free, but I’m pretty sure I know where you will go with it.
You asked for “real differences in doctrine” between real Christians and the cult of the LDS. How about the fact that their god is a man who lives on another planet, and their Christ has no resemblance to the Christ of Scripture, etc. In fact, I post several articles on “real differences” on my blog, if you are truly interested.
The fact of the matter is that Mormons are not Christians by any any biblical definition.
______________________________________________________________________
Paul,
Correction on the above. When I went to your link it came up on the article about the Presbyterian church going to Nauvoo, and I hit the link at the bottom and thought that was the church you were at. Sorry about that misunderstanding in regards to your church affiliation.
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Here’s a sad tale of a liberal church who clearly can’t see the distinction between black and white, true and false, right and wrong, up and down:
http://defendingcontending.com/2010/09/28/compromising-with-a-cult/
Here’s another tale of a church (from the same denomination) that actually has a backbone:
http://defendingcontending.com/2010/11/14/a-story-about-a-presbyterian-church-the-boyscouts-and-mormonism/
And finally, here’s a helpful primer on the differences between the “Jesus” of Mormonism and the Jesus of Christianity:
http://defendingcontending.com/2010/03/14/which-jesus-do-you-worship/
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Pilgrim,
That first article you have is about the church which Paul had on his post which I mistakenly thought was his. Sad compromising.
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Glenn, I must admit, you’re the first to ever consider me a liberal Christian. I actually had to grin at that as I recall a parishioner who once called me an uber Christian and another, in the same day, the most conservative Christian he had ever met (it wasn’t meant as a compliment as he was protesting my emphatic statement that there is but one truth and all else that contradicts that is wrong). According to my wife’s grandmother and mother, I’m pretty sure I’d find a very unwelcoming pulpit from either the PCUSA or PCA. I’m pretty sure that’d be the case for a whole lot of denominations as well that have developed fuzzy doctrines that do not reflect the Word of God. (My mother’s church, United Methodist, rejected me outright.)
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Paul,
You missed the second comment, which Pilgrim attached at the bottom of my first one: I misunderstood from your blog that you were at that liberal Presbyterian Church. However, I figured out differently. I saw the rest of your blog was quite conservative, and your article on marriage made me wonder how you could write that and then say God sees nothing wrong with plural marriage.
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…my emphatic statement that there is but one truth and all else that contradicts that is wrong…
Yet your comments regarding Mormonism show a different side–your willingness to say that God condones the sin of polygamy (let’s call it what it is, without softening it by calling it “plural marriage”). If God “sees nothing wrong with polygamy” then why did the Holy Spirit lead the apostle Paul to tell Timothy that “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife…” (1st Timothy 3:2). Yet the prophets/presidents of early Mormonism took more than one wife (many more, in fact). And you think God led them to do this? According to your statement above, is this the “one truth” or is this something that “contradicts” that truth? If you say it is the truth, then God is made a liar. If it contradicts truth, then it is wrong, and must be seen to be sin.
Consider also the words of Christ. Matthew 19:9–“whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” Let’s use some logic here. If Jesus said that a man who divorces his wife on improper grounds and marries another has committed adultery, does it really make sense to think that he would condone a man who marries another woman while he is still married to the first? If a divorced man commits adultery by marrying another, doesn’t the man who is still married commit adultery by marrying another?
There is, indeed, one truth. And everything that contradicts that truth is wrong. The Mormon belief that the sin of polygamy is “from God” falls in the latter category.
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