D&C 132 – Joseph Smith's Polygamy Revelation

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I am your host John delin uh we are here for another very exciting episode in the LDS discussions series called uh Joseph Smith's polygamy Revelation Doctrine and Covenants or DNC 132 um for those who haven't joined us previously and are just stumbling upon this in whatever way the algorithms uh serve it to you uh we are in the middle of what I think is a really important series where our friend Mike who has a website called LDS discussions at ldsdiscussions.com has taken the time to examine as a convert to the Mormon Church uh he has taken the time to uh provide an analysis of uh let's just say 40 50 Mormon church truth claims in a way that attempts to be as neutral and as objective as possible so that people who are truly interested in understanding the reality and the truth about the Mormon church or the LDS church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can do so um in a way that doesn't feel angry or antagonistic and so we have done many many episodes already uh you can find this series on Spotify as its own series under LDS discussions you can find it on the Apple podcast app there is a YouTube playlist under the Mormon stories podcast Channel and of course you can find it in the traditional Mormon stories podcast um feeds audio and video uh and we hope that you are loving this series and or are going to love this episode so uh we're doing we're covering polygamy in at least five parts uh specifically Joseph Smith's polygamy but also some other uh things in addition and we're doing that because that is one of the most important issues uh that people want to analyze as they're trying to determine the truth and the reality about the Mormon church so we're going we're we are now into what I believe is our second part in our five part series on polygamy and what we're going to be doing is a deep dive into DNC 132 which is basically Joseph Smith's Revelation on polygamy uh I should note that Sandra Tanner who is a legend in the Mormon history Mormon studies field we did a multi-part episode with Sandra um on Mormon stories podcast breaking down DNC 132 that will be a much more lengthy analysis than what we're going to be doing today but I do want to reference that and I'm also going to just say that um you can find the essay upon which this entire entire series is built at ldsdiscussions.com polygamy so without any further Ado what I'd like to do now is bring on uh both Mike uh the the hero and the celebrity of LDS discussions hey Mike welcome back hey everybody how's it going it's good to have you Mike it's good to be back and we're also super excited to have a special guest because you shouldn't talk about polygamy without having a woman in the room if possible and we have our dear friend Alicia uh Alicia Lee is that what you're going by here yeah and Alicia you've been in here you've been a dear friend for a while um you do a tick tock channel that uh is very very popular also discussing Mormon church truth claims but Alicia why don't you just quickly introduce yourself to our audience plug whatever socials you want to plug and just give us a little bit of your background thanks John yeah I'm Alicia Alicia Lee um I have a tick tock Channel called Faith unraveled um I didn't deconstruct until I was 41. I was very devoted to the gospel still to this day love love love the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints um these topics are very very important to me so coming on um today to talk about one of the most important points to me this topic is very personal to me this topic of plurality as it's outlined in DNC 132 mostly because this was such a huge part of my own faith deconstruction I've talked a lot about polygamy on my channel Faith unraveled um I I get a little more um I feel like I insert a little more of my personal experience on my Tick Tock channel so I'm gonna try to keep it a lot more objective here just really stick to the doctrine and I also just want to point out I'm not a historian I'm just basically a lifelong consumer of Mormon doctor and I was actually preparing for a an upcoming Seminary calling when I had my safety construction I just ended up in a rabbit hole that's kind of a whole other story um but yeah to this day I just feel very called to this conversation like I said I just love the people of the church so much and this topic especially is very important to me and just conceptualizing um these topics that are outlined in Doctrine and Covenants so often in Sunday School classes and Doctrine and Covenants or in gospel Doctrine classes when we look at these when we look at these topics like DNC 132 where um you know which is kind of thought of as the section on Eternal Marriage Eternal families we don't so much get into dissecting the tech next we look at more of the implications like going to the temple and eternal families and you know the Plan of Salvation and we talk about it um in sort of these tangential ways and it wasn't until I was 41 that I really took a deep dive on what exactly it says in the text and really started to dissect the text and it wasn't until that moment that I really saw Joseph Smith through a different lens so I'm gonna try as much as I can to not insert my own lens my own view of him and just let the viewers kind of take this in and see how they see it because I feel like there's really only one of two ways when you really start to dissect this text either you're going to start to see God in a new light the way that he's talking about Emma and talking about really The Sisters of the church or you're going to see Joseph Smith in a new light yeah yeah that's a that's a really good uh breakdown and a really good analysis well Alicia we're really glad you're here so thank you for for joining us thank you very much um yeah before we jump in Mike before we jump into the first slide is there anything you want to say uh at the outset are you ready to jump in no just you know we've we had a number of episodes in a row now that have been kind of heavier um as far as having an emotional kind of feel to them um between the two we did with the race and the priesthood and now we're into these polygamy episodes so just to say to everybody out there that you know these are tough episodes they're not fun um they're certainly not fun to put the slides together for and and to talk about but I think it's it as Alicia said this this is a central Revelation in the church and so as painful as it might be to go through it we got to get through it and um you know it'll be okay when we're done we'll all be okay and just to um you know take it slow if you need to but we're gonna you know kind of get through these these next few episodes and hopefully give everybody a fuller perspective of polygamy in the church and then from that point you're going to do with it what you want but we're just here to kind of present what the data says and what the history says all right um thanks Mike and I'm gonna I'm gonna reiterate something that you said Alicia and maybe extend on it for me one of the most important Reflections on DNC 132 is the reality that I think most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in my experience have never read it or have never read it uh really thinking about it or in detail because this this for sure if you had to pick one chapter or in the in in the case of the Doctrine and Covenants one section of all of Mormon scripture which includes the Old Testament the New Testament Doctrine and Covenants you know Pearl gray price which is the book of Moses in the book of Abraham if you had to pick one section or chapter that and I'm not trying to stack the deck here but just full stop one chapter section that's the most disturbing if you actually read it I think it's DNC 132 and that's why I'm very confident that most members of the church have just have just never really taken the time to read it and I think part of that is because I think in past Church curriculum the church is actively either discouraged reading it or tried to control what parts of it you know the church members read or just have avoided it all together but but but I do think that this is one of the least read chapters or sections and the most disturbing chapters or sections in the entire Mormon Canon now Alicia do you agree with that do you disagree with that I absolutely agree and I think what we do is we automatically jump to the implications of having an eternal family and what this Doctrine means and we talk about being with our loved ones who are deceased and we talk about the beauty of it but we're not really breaking down what is there at least in my case I really didn't break down what was actually written and I think as we review this text it's really important even though I know the majority of your listeners probably already know this but we really have to frame this as Joseph Smith is speaking as the mouthpiece of God and I I don't think I really fully conceptualized that and so we have to look at this under that under that framework and actually see what is it what exactly is being said and then and then we will also talk about here today the implications of what is being said what does that mean for me as a woman right in the afterlife yeah so I think this is going to be really insightful yeah yeah and I do think I'll also make a reference I'll make a lot of references during today's episode but there's a book and a there's a book called The Ghost of Eternal polygamy um By Carolyn Pearson uh I'm going to include that in the show notes and we actually did an episode with Carolyn Pearson about her book but it's basically about how polygamy still haunts uh the Mormon church and specifically Mormon women and many Mormon men to this day in fact I had Patrick Mason on Mormon stories the church's sort of top believing Mormon scholar and he just basically flat out said polygamy Joseph Smith polygamy looks a lot like sin to me and I don't feel the need to include DNC 132 in my own Canon of Mormon scripture in other words he basically just the the church is taught believing Mormon scholar Cuts DNC 132 out of his own personal Mormon Canon just right up right off the top yeah that says a lot again this is not trying to stack the deck or Influence People we're just trying to provide some background in context yeah and I can point out just as being a convert to the church I was never we never read DNC 132 ever and so I joined the church and I remember having lessons on Eternal families and you would refer to a few verses in DNC 130s but not at any point um did they have us read the whole thing did they have us read kind of those later verses that we're going to cover today and it wasn't until I started doing the Deep dive that I finally read it and I was talking to Alicia about this before we started today and I think when you read the entirety of DNC 132 especially um in the series that we're doing and you understand um the previous episodes about how we've talked about how some of these these Revelations have come to be and the challenges that Joseph Smith was faced seeing when these Revelations came whether it's the priesthood restoration um the first Vision which I know is not Revelation but a vision um you start to see patterns and and so to your point John we're not trying to stack the deck but I would again reiterate that if you've been following this series along a lot of these things we're going to talk about today will fit into those those common threads that we've been doing and that's why I always say you know this really is like a giant puzzle and you're putting these pieces back together um reading DNC 132 by itself is is really difficult um especially when you start to to read it at face value but I think the the greater value to me is being able to read it in this larger context of what we're doing because it shows not just the text of dnc132 but the ways um that these things come to be and the ways are implemented and most importantly as you guys have already touched on this is still Doctrine today and so the fact that most members haven't read it the fact that most members don't know that later part of DNC 132 or at least kind of just say oh it doesn't apply to me the truth is this is Doctrine and this absolutely applies to every woman in the church and every man in the church and so whatever you want to do with it that's up to you but but the fact is you can't say um one of the things I always used to hear was I'm so glad we don't have to live in a time with polygamy and now I look and I go you absolutely do it's just that you're not doing it right now and so you might live to your 80. so for 80 years you avoid it but then for eternity you don't and so I think that's really why this is so important because it does impact you this is not history this is this is reality absolutely and you know we should just say for those who don't know the top two Mormon leaders right now are in polygamous marriages in the in heaven or in the afterlife in other words they were sealed eternally to their first wives their first wives died this is Russell M Nelson and deloney jokes their first wives died and now they're eternally sealed to their second wives and so the top Mormon church leadership believe that they will have multiple wives in the afterlife that's just a fact nobody nobody is going to deny that that's true yeah um okay so without any further Ado uh why don't we go ahead and jump in first to a recap that you put together Mike yeah so this is just if you've watched our last episode or listened to it this is just a really quick recap because we got through the basic timeline of how polygamy was kind of implemented and now we're going to get into the Texas DNC 132 which on the timeline perspective is actually pretty late because Joseph Smith by the time dnc132 is dictated um is going to be um after he's already married to dozens of women and so we talked about that timeline in the last episode so if you haven't watched that I would watch that first um and one of the things we talked about which to me is um one of the most important things is that Hiram Smith is going to request this Revelation from Joseph Because he believes that he can convince Emma of the doctrine's truth Purity and Heavenly origin um and and what really is just one of those things that for me was an aha moment was when I found out that Hiram asks Joseph Smith to use the peeps last year Stone which they called the urmanthumb but as we've talked about in all the previous episodes that is the same term as the the treasure digging peep Shear stone that Joseph would have um Joseph Smith declines to use that stone and then rolls off a 3200 plus word revelation without the use of any um stone that he would have used to get early Revelations and to translate The Book of Mormon with and we talked about that in the last episode because I think that's important to show how gifted Joseph Smith was at being able to orally dictate long chunks of text without material around him and again as we talked about that that basically was almost like a full day's work of translating The Book of Mormon that he was able to do in one sitting and I think that's something that should be noted um and then the last thing we talked about in the last episode was that the church today if you look at the heading of nc-132 it'll say that there are indications Joseph received as early as 1831 and we talked about how the church has want to tell you what that reference is because that reference was to Mary the Native American women or have them as concubines in order to make their children whiter they literally say to make them white and delights and just to be clear that was a that was a revelation allegedly given to Joseph Smith for early Mormon missionaries that were going off to the frontier to preach to quote lamanites they were given permission to take Native American women as concubines in 1831 yes and we have a positive Source uh w w Phelps who that's a later recollection and then we have a negative source which is Ezra booth and Ezra Booth was not a fan uh when he talked about this so the fact that we have a positive source and a negative Source telling us the same thing um gives us a really I think a solid foundation to know that the 1831 ideas have nothing to do with what we're going to talk about today and we're literally um Joseph Smith telling these missionaries to take the women of the Native Americans as concubines potentially wise but there's no mention of ceilings or anything in order to make their posterity wider and we like I said we have two sources so for the church to continually say that he probably received this in 1831 yeah is really misleading especially when they're not giving you um that text in the heading which is for good reason yeah I'm I I don't think many credible historians claim that this Revelation even believing I don't think very many credible believing Mormon scholars believe that this Revelation was given in 1831 I think universally Universe almost universally credible Mormon believing Mormon Scholars are going to put this Revelation in 1843 and that that brings me to a list of my biggest concerns uh you know with with uh DNC 132 right off the bat these are kind of structural concerns um but but you know you know we're taught that Joseph Smith came up with DNC 132 because he was reading the Old Testament and the Old Testament kind of um you know talks about polygamy and so Joseph Smith was kind of pondering on that and then the Revelation came as a result but but generally speaking it's understood within broader Christianity that uh Old Testament polygamy was not commanded by God um you know like Mike there's one instance that you've highlighted in the pre-show where maybe you know it was highlighted in one instance but generally speaking it's viewed as a cultural practice um that is not Divine and if you don't believe me just look at Islam Islam and Judaism and you know they they all share this kind of common you know Middle Eastern kind of Heritage back you know pre-pre-christian Heritage where men could have up to four wives and uh and so it's it's more that Abraham Isaac and Jacob and David and Solomon were were living polygamy as a cultural practice according to the Old Testament then it was ever something God commanded of them um a couple other problems in my view structurally with DNC 132 is that you know polygamy contradicts the The Book of Mormon um generally speaking and the Doctrine and Covenants um you know or at least the 1835 version of the Doctrine and Covenants and we we covered that in a previous episode but but we're also going to cover that in a later slide so I'm not gonna like belabor that point but you have to just understand that that this was you know when Joseph Smith received this Revelation it was scripturally forbidden uh polygamy was scripturally named and forbidden a couple other problems with um dnc-132 structurally is the Joseph Smith already had around 30 wives before DNC 132 was revealed and you know it's just it's you know you wouldn't expect you know doc you know the word of wisdom you know to be observed until after DNC 89 had been revealed you wouldn't expect baptisms for the dead to be happening um you know before Joseph Smith received the revelation of baptisms for the dead and so on and so forth and so it makes it it almost makes it look like this was a revelation out of convenience but not a revelation that came from God and then it was uh written down by the prophet and then taught to the membership and by the way where's the where's common consent like the Doctrine and Covenants has a practice called common consent where the general church membership is supposed to vote on and sustain a revelation or a policy before it's adopted there was no uh sustaining of DNC 132 because Joseph was already 30 wives in before he ever received the Revelation and I would say he had already started calling other men to the practice as well right right Mike and Alicia yeah so that that makes no sense but then but then I think a couple other structural problems with DNC you've already alluded to this Mike that the DNC 132 really came as a response to Emma's violent objections because um what's factual is that Joseph Smith was I don't know 22 wives in to uh his practice of polygamy um before you know Emma ever was sealed to him clearly she got upset when she found out that that 22 wives were already sealed to Joseph before he ever bothered to tell her that um he had received this Revelation and Joseph was already in the dog house with them because in the early 1830s Joseph was caught in what I believe is clearly an adulterous affair with a servant in his house a domestic servant in his house Fanny Alger Oliver cowdery would would agree with me because Oliver Calgary who was in the first presidency at the time uh Joseph was in a relationship with Fanny uh called Joseph's relationship with vanny Alger a dirty filthy nasty Affair I believe is the terms that that Oliver cowdery used and he can't sort of say Oliver Calgary is a credible witness to the Book of Mormon and a credible scribe but then when he calls Joseph Smith out for adultery well he's no longer credible like that's a problem and so Joseph was in the doghouse for Fanny Alger in that Affair he was in the doghouse for having 22 wives before ever receiving the Revelation or telling Emma about it and then Emma was fighting him so fear fiercely that you almost get the impression that Joseph and Hiram who Hiram was also practicing polygamy at the time it's like Joseph and Heimer like man what are we going to do we've got this thing now and and we're doing it but Emma's mad and it's almost like they sat together and said well it looks like we need a revelation to kind of put Emma in her place and that's a really important context for almost the violent threats that come that we're going to be covering uh that that come out in DNC 132 I to me those violent threats by God or by Jesus towards Emma really really um fit within this context of Joseph and Hiram saying how do we force Emma to be okay with this and so for me that's really important context to understanding some of the main problems in addition to the fact that Joseph was not only denying uh polygamy to Emma and lying about it he was denying it to the general church membership and he was lying about it and denying it to the general public both verbally and in the written word like in the newspapers so this just had lies and cover-ups and deception all over it um that then lead to the necessity of creating an ex post facto Revelation to justify the prior bad behavior now that's going to sound really strong to our viewers and listeners but I think Patrick Mason I think Richard Bushman I think any credible believing Mormon scholar which is not Brian Hales in my view is going to agree with the framing that I just put forward now Alicia let's give you the first chance to respond to what I said and please disagree with me if you'd like or just say you agree or if you want to add any color we'd love to hear that as well yeah I don't don't disagree I don't disagree with anything you just said I think where this breaks down for me is that it either it's one of two options and I hate to frame anything in a binary way but this is canonized scripture this is LDS canonized scripture so I know there's this approach of like cafeteria Mormonism and I love Patrick Mason and I support everyone in whatever way they want to approach the gospel okay but for me what this was about was realizing that this is either coming from God or it is coming from Joseph Smith and it has to be one of those two either it is cut these are either the words of God and so as we're reading through this and as we're going through this breakdown I think that was ultimately the thing for me is this actually what God Said did did God actually say he was going to destroy Emma if she didn't get on board for this and is it more likely that this was just Joseph Smith's Personal Agenda and if this is Joseph Smith's Personal Agenda then we have a real problem because this is canonized Mormon scripture yeah yeah and Patrick Mason would say it was Joseph's opinion not um not killing my scripture Mike is there anything else you want to say about about this slide or did I cover it no I mean I think we'll cover most of these points I would argue not argue but the mindset that Patrick Mason seemed to give and I'm sure he would give a lot more Nuance to this I'm not trying to speak for him at all um you hear members sometimes they'll say I don't believe that God commanded Joseph Smith into polygamy and the problem is is we're going to talk about throughout this episode is that DNC 132 is canon in Scripture if you believe that Joseph Smith made up DNC 132 to justify his actions or you don't want to defend it the problem is you still then would have to deal with the implications of DNC 132 being from Joseph and not from God because of the fact that it's still Doctrine today because of the fact that this is um kind of like the selling point of the church which is eternal family so I think um it's hard for me to accept the stance that Joseph Smith made up polygamy or um he was speaking for himself and speaking as a man and not speaking for God in this Revelation because of the fact that this is such a heavy Revelation uh in the church today because of the whole ceilings and eternal families and so to untangle those is a problem and I think it's one of the reasons that the church tries so hard to say that the Revelation really isn't about polygmy it's about Celestial marriage and polygamies kind of tacked onto the end but as you'll see as we go through these next four episodes you cannot separate the two because Joseph Smith did not separate it John Taylor is going to get a revelation from God which is kind of a spoiler for a future episode we're going to do um where God literally tells them you know what part of this is not Everlasting and so polygamy is absolutely um what is meant by the new and Everlasting Covenant and to say Joseph Smith made it up then or not made it up but that you're not going to defend it but then you have to say well then how in the world do we still justify the church claiming the sole authority to giving um the ability to be with your family together uh forever uh if Joseph Smith kind of made up the core revelation okay all right well with that um let's go ahead and jump into our first substantive slide which is uh entitled the very first of DNC contradicts The Book of Mormon which we've alluded to already go ahead take it away Mike so this is just the very first verse of DNC 132 which says verily thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph that in as much as you've inquired of my hand to know and understand where an eye the Lord Justified my servants Abraham Isaac and Jacob as also Moses David and Solomon my servants excuse me touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines and so this very first verse is just riddled with with some problems and so the first one is Isaac never had wiser concubines and so for for God through Joseph Smith to include Isaac and this group is problematic right off the bat um and and then you know so we've already got issues with with Biblical history and we'll talk more about Abraham in a few slides but Abraham uh and this Revelation is going to be constantly referred to as if he was commanded and he was not um but the bigger problem with this first verse is right off the bat here Joseph Smith is going to directly contradict the Book of Mormon because in Jacob 20 uh chapter 2 it says but the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes for behold thus saith the Lord this people began to wax in iniquity they understand not the scriptures for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms because of the things which were written concerning David and Solomon his son behold David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines which thing was abominable before me saith the Lord and so right off the bat you have verse 1 saying not only did I not find it abominable but I Justified it where's the Book of Mormon written you know 14 years earlier saying is God directly saying it's abominable that contradiction right off the bat should raise a lot of red flags um for anyone in the church who is noticing this contradiction because you cannot reconcile these two things okay all right so that's the first problem uh a significant contradiction with the Book of Mormon um should we go to the next slide yeah so next slide kind of works off of this first one and this is a slide from missing Sunday which again it shows the top is is the Book of Mormon from Jacob which I just read and the bottom is um doctrine of covenants verse 38. and so in verse 38 of DNC 132 it says David also received many wives in concubines and also Solomon from the beginning of creation until this time and in nothing did they sin saving those things which they received not of me and so you've got Jacob um saying that it was abominable and then you've got the Book of Mormon saying that you know God's saying he justified it and then later on he's saying that they did uh nothing did they sin and so you've now got two verses where God is justifying and defending David and Solomon whereas in the Book of Mormon which we're told is like the most correct book on Earth he's calling it abominable and so this right off the bat is where you start to see Joseph Smith starting to kind of turn morality upside down we talked about this in the last episode where Joseph Smith is teaching people um things that you thought were sin or not sin um which is a lot in a lot of ways it's softening up people's moral compass so they're willing to accept practices and ideas that go against every fiber they're being and we're seeing this now being done in the voice of God which to me again it's a huge red flag and it's highly problematic yeah yeah which is it is it highly abominable or is it uh not a sin that's a clear that's clear contradiction yep okay all right and Alicia just jump in anytime you've got you've got something to add um yeah yeah I just I just think it's interesting that Joseph Smith points to the Old Testament as his rationale for this Revelation um but it's his modifications to the Old Testament that he's using to justify this Revelation so other Protestant Believers don't believe that this was commanded by God I think we already said that but I think it's just really notable that so often in my mind when there were these kind of issues in my mind like wow that just doesn't seem right but it's in the Old Testament and we have to remember that that Joseph Smith is um you know translating he's uh qualifying this by making changes and qualifications to what's written in the Old Testament other Protestant Believers don't see this as a commandment by God and Joseph Smith is saying not only is this a commandment this is ultimately what's going to um exalt these men of the Old Testament it because this is a law this is required of God a commandment of God yeah yeah absolutely great Point Alicia okay let's uh let's go to the next slide which is DNC 132 misrepresents the Bible to justify Joseph's polygamy yeah and Nexus is perfect that Alicia just said that because here is where Joseph Smith is going to kind of reframe the Bible in a way that fits what he is trying to create and so verse 34 says God commanded Abraham and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife and why did she do it because this was the law and from Hagar spring many people this therefore was fulfilling among other things the promises was Abraham therefore under condemnation verily I say unto you nay for I the Lord commanded it Abraham was commanded to offer us on Isaac nevertheless It Was Written Thou shalt not kill Abraham however did not refuse and it was accounted unto him for righteousness and so just to point out at no point in the Bible does God command Abraham to enter into polygamy it is non-existent and so Joseph Smith is rewriting the Bible in order to give his credibility to to what he's doing he's trying to justify polygamy by finding these parallels in the Bible that he can use and so this is again a huge red flag because Joseph is basically rewriting the Bible and I would argue again that if Abraham was commanded to enter into polygamy we'd have it in the Bible and I would definitely argue that when Joseph was doing the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible there would be some um addition to show that Abraham was commanded into polygamy by God it's not there and so Joseph Smith here is creating this out of thin air in order to create this justification among his members and I think that's something that's a problem when Joseph Smith revises himself and um one of the things that is a theme in this this Revelation which we mentioned last slide is Joseph is referencing this abrahamic test which which is in the Bible to try to flip sin upside down which is to say you know yeah thou shall not kill but if God tells you to kill you better kill and um we're going to talk about this a lot more in these polygamy episodes because Joseph will do this a lot to these women to say yeah I know you're repulsed by this but I speak for God and God's telling me that this is what you need to do and once you start changing the Bible to redefine morality uh it it leads really good people to do really bad things and Joseph Smith here is weaving this in the voice of God and the one thing out the last thing I'll note on this language is just interesting me I don't really know what to make of it is that in verse 34 it's almost like Joseph is speaking in his own voice because he says God commanded Abraham and then in the next verse he says nay for I the Lord commanded it it's almost like when he was orally dictating here he got a little bit confused between speaking for himself and speaking for God and I find that interesting although I don't quite know what to make of it oh that's a good point is it is it third person or first person he's switching between third person and first person within a few verses yeah it's like if you guys like Seinfeld there's that episode where George Costanza starts speaking in the third person he's like George is getting upset I mean it's just it's it sticks out to me it's like why is he speaking as if Joseph is writing it in 34 but then in 35 he switches back and again if you come at it from a historical standpoint or from the standpoint of what we're doing in these episodes it actually makes perfect sense because in an orally dictated text Joseph Smith might be kind of losing his track here and all of a sudden at 35 he's like oh crap this isn't the voice of God he switches back to God's voice but it is noteworthy that you have that change between the first and third person there totally Alicia I want to get you in here but I'm just going to give a quick uh uh just a quick reaction that um you know not only is it not commanded in the Old Testament when you read Mormon history kind of in the mid 19th century and you see how Mormon prophets kind of almost double down and say that polygamy is not just you know God's commandment but it's like a requirement for the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom you know when you think about how strongly it became urged uh eventually after Joseph's death then you wonder why didn't Jesus talk about it why didn't Jesus um enter into plural marriages why didn't Jesus say oh you know um you know marriage is super important and polygamist marriage is the highest form of marriage of all instead and I'm sure we've covered this in the past and we'll probably cover it in the in the series Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven there's no you know people are not given or you know divorced in heaven or whatever his words are but like why was Jesus silent on polygamy why don't we have it in the Bible and behold Jesus Took unto him Mary is a wife and then he took on Martha as a wife and then he took on you know Samantha is a wife like none of that and then you add to that in the Book of Mormon again you've got a clear opportunity if if this is the rest of restoration of all things if Jesus is going to come down and tell his Book of Mormon Prophets the pure Doctrine unadulterated by the Catholic Church why isn't polygamy commanded in the in the Book of Mormon but instead it's denounced in the Book of Mormon like none of that none of that makes sense um if if this is going to be a restoration of all things in my view and the only other thing I'll add is there's a really important part of Mormon lore that I don't think many people are aware of which is that Joseph Smith apparently taught that he was a descendant of Jesus and that he had the blood of Jesus in his veins and he also taught um and Joseph F Smith and Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce Bruce R McConkey passed down the teaching that that that Jesus was married and that Jesus was probably married in polygamous marriages and I know this because Margaret Pope who I believe was the sister of Bruce R McConkey um uh would teach this at BYU when I was there she would literally have like a test question true or false Jesus was married uh and likely polygamously married you know when he was on the earth and then the correct answer was true and uh I'm probably getting a tiny bit of the details of that story wrong but anybody who wants to dig into Mormon history will find that it became a teaching within you know Hiram Smith his descendants Joseph F Smith Joseph Fielding Smith and then the McConkey family that that the blood of Jesus ran through the veins of Joseph Smith's descendants and that Jesus in fact was not only married but was likely a polygamist now Alicia I don't know did you ever hear that no I'm so glad you mentioned that and the bit about Jesus I know everything that I read of Jesus is like um or the text that we have that was attributed to Jesus um is like it feels like a very solo Journey like it never at any point is there like this connection between you can't have salvation unless you're married and you're right I mean I never really have thought about that before but you're right um the thing that I really wanted to speak to also is just this idea of turning morality upside down I really want to take a pause here because for you know 99 of people in religion the reason that they opt into religion is because it is a moral compass and people view it as um you know a source of morality a source that teaches you right from wrong and so um and the happiness letter really you guys are going to outline the happiness letter I think in another time but this is another place that this idea is is um first sort of represented and it's this idea that what you naturally perceive as right and wrong isn't necessarily in alignment with God's will and I just want to propose it for me in reading this text this was the first time that I realized that in some cases religion isn't the source of morality maybe religion can in some cases turn what is actually correct upside down for you so that you get it backwards and I just look at this so much you know for me I just always think about the implications and thinking about the implications of say the lgbtq kids in the church and parents feeling like they have to stay strong to the gospel tenants first before that natural impulse as a mother to align with your child and so we see this all threaded throughout Doctrine and Covenants where things might not seem correct to you morally but darn it this is what God Said So that's what you've got to go with you are taught here to not trust your inner compass and that for me is huge it's everything like why am I opting into a religion if it's really going to take my own moral compass and and and twist it inside out yeah yeah absolutely all right uh well this is good Mike let's go ahead and go uh to the next slide which is the Joseph creates a problem to sell you the solution yeah and so this is one of those things that for me um I started to notice more obviously once I started doing the Deep dive but we you'd mention this in your bullet point but the DNC in 1835 is going to have a section that is going to tell you that all legal contracts of marriage made before a person is baptized into this church should be held sacred and fulfilled that is a very direct way of saying that if you are married before you join the Mormon Church um your cut your marriage doesn't just dissolve and now we're going to have Joseph Smith just about eight years later say all covenants contracts bonds obligations Oaths vows performances connections associations or expectations that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise are of no efficacy virtue or force in and after the resurrection from the dead for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead and so Joseph here is in order to create the a system of plural marriage is going to create this problem which is to say if you don't enter into this new system of marriage um basically your marriage is no longer valid and not only is it no longer valid but you will not be with your family um after you die and this is something that you touched on earlier and Alicia's touchdown as well which is every religion and I can say this is somebody who converted to Mormonism every religion in Christianity fully believes when you die you're going to be able to find your family again and and so Joseph here is creating a problem in order to sell you the solution to get you on board um and you can see that by the fact that he's directly contradicting the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants with regards to what marriage is valid yeah that that was one of the hardest changes for me to make was this shift because it for decades I believe that the Mormon Church's teachings on Eternal families was by far the coolest and and best teaching you know the the Mormon church had to offered by far and once I realized that wait a minute every other Christian Church just just by default all families are together forever yeah it's actually Joseph Smith and these teachings about eternal families that are actually dividing families if you're not a faithful Mormon or if you don't accept a Mormon baptism in the afterlife or if you don't accept your baptism for the dead then you're not with your family then it then it all of a sudden took a doctrine that I thought was beautiful and kind of made it horrific and that's that's my reaction um well and I don't think I don't I think the majority of members do think that you're gonna see people that you're not sealed to I mean have you ever been to an LDS funeral where a friend says I know I'll see them again they're not sealed I mean some so how does that work and then is there no agency in the next life like you can't associate with who who you want to associate with like is that just gone now because you're on the other side like how exactly like the functionality of it all just doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it yeah that that's a good point yeah Mike uh go ahead and jump to the next slide which is the Joseph concedes that it was Joseph himself that wanted polygamy yeah and so um this is one of those things like I mentioned earlier there's those aha moments when you read these things and so we read verse one already but I want to read it again because it tells you directly that it was Joseph Smith who was wanting to know from God why biblical figures could have wives and concubines um even though as I mentioned that's a very bad reading um of both the Bible and the Book of Mormon it says verily thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph that in as much as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I the Lord Justified my servants you know as having many wives and concubines so this is going to undercut in verse one this idea that Joseph Smith was a reluctant polygamist because many want to claim now that you know Joseph didn't want to do this but God sent the angel with a drawn sword and we will get into that in the next episode um but right here Joseph is making it clear through the voice of God that Joseph is the one that came up with the idea of how come they got wives and concubines and so he goes to God to ask us and I really think it's a small point but I think it's a really important point because not only are we going to see this here when we talk about the happiness letter which is a letter that Joseph Smith himself writes both in his own voice and the voice of God you're going to see this exact same theme where Joseph Smith is saying basically these are the things you get when you have these I believe in the happiness letter it's called all the desires of your heart and in here Joseph Smith is saying in the voice of God that he is the one asking and I just think that's important to note because it is not God going to Joseph and saying Joseph Smith you now need to marry these other women if you don't I'm going to send an angel to kill you Joseph is going to God to ask him why they got wives and concubines and I think that has got to be something that we keep in the back of our head as we go through these verses because it is Joseph initiating this conversation and not God yeah yeah it and and I think a lot of people you know Alicia when when you were basically saying um you know you have to ask yourself is this from God or is it from Joseph if it's from Joseph there's a very probably reasonable explanation of where where this comes from Alicia maybe you want to share with us what you think might have motivated this if if it might if it might have been Joseph do we want to get into what I think or do we want to leave it up to the viewers I mean I think that just all the information presented really Paints the picture for itself yeah um I mean really the question is is this something that God commanded and it was so important but somehow was left out by Jesus and a number of other places or was it something that Joseph Smith wanted um yeah yeah and I won't I'm not asking you to opine so I'll just say it I'll just say what you know for me I've had a small taste of like notoriety or fame or power just because the podcast is you know uh it's been viewed by lots of people these days and so and so I sometimes have traveled around the country to meet people who like the podcast I've had a small taste of like Fame and power and I can just say it's alluring and as soon as you get a taste for that you'll find that um you know that just like with rock stars and and just like with with actors and and Powerful business people and rich people um it's just very natural for you to all of a sudden start to have a Wandering eye and and start to wonder if there are opportunities for sexual gratification and and I I would say that one option is this came from God but but Mike the point you're making is is that it starts with Joseph inquiring why is he inquiring one thing might be that he was a man uh with with the high libido who was was looking for spiritual justifications or religious justifications for physical behaviors that he wanted to be involved in I would imagine the apologetic argument would be Joseph Smith was studying the Bible realized that that was a practice and then was like well why am I not doing that shouldn't I be doing that if I'm restoring all things I would of course say that to me as we've done to so many episodes now kind of outlining how Joseph Smith seems to have Revelations um that tend to justify the actions he's taking on other issues um that this would indicate to me that Joseph is writing this Revelation almost as a way because remember this Revelation is being written to Emma Smith and so I think this is Joseph trying to say to Emma that this is God saying to him hey you asked me why this is okay and I'm going to tell you but I also think that it when we get to the happiness letter which was written before this he makes the same kind of reference where he says you get all the desires of your heart if you ask God for them and in the happiness so you have the same thing as here where Joseph is asking God because this is what he wants and so I would argue this is what Joseph wants because it's the desires of his heart Alicia you're gonna you're gonna add something yeah just real quick I don't know if I'm necessarily convinced that it was all about sex I did initially but the more I kind of look into it I think that power may have been a big motivating factor for Joseph Smith as well yeah yeah yeah 100 motivations are almost literally never just one thing and so it's it's a probably a combination like of trying to make sense of Scripture Power and a sex drive I mean that's and I'm not that that just seems that's one theory for where this came from if it didn't come from God but Mike that's a great point that the the Mormon apologetic attempt to portray Joseph Smith as a reluctant polygamist I just don't think history really allows for that I don't either all right let's go to the next slide which is Joseph redefines adultery in DNC 132. yeah and so we're gonna read two verses here so in verse 41 it says and as ye have asked concerning adultery verily verily I say unto you if a man receiveth a wife in the new and Everlasting Covenant and if she be with another man and I have not appointed her by the holy anointing she hath committed adultery and shall be destroyed if she not if she be not in the new and Everlasting Covenant and she'd be with another man she has command it's adultery and so this is an area where Joseph Smith now is making himself the sole Arbiter of what is adultery and this teaching is going to be what ultimately leads to the ideas of spiritual life free and um this is going to put a lot of pressure on women to listen to Joseph Smith's proposals because he can and will as well outline in these future episodes um he's going to tell them that being with other men would be sin uh but being with Joseph Smith is not and so we will talk about that in the happiness letter because he will absolutely say directly basically if you just accept this commandment from God to be with me you're going to not only will you enjoy it those are the words in the letter now we enjoy it but it'll be right but if you don't do it you will be committing sin if you do it with someone else and so this allows Joseph Smith to wield um the redefinition of adultery unto the followers by saying basically that if you do it in this law you're safe if you do it outside this law you're not and as I mentioned I will talk about this a lot more as we go too but this is what is going to lead to Joseph Smith's brother an apostle in the church John C Bennett and other men using these exact teachings to get women to have sexual relationships with him because they're going to say if you do it in the system you're okay as long as you don't do it outside of it you know we're good and and this is written into the doctrine yeah hey Mike yes in the previous slide can we go back to that Joseph concedes that it was Joseph himself that wanted polygamy um because there was something that I wanted to point out there and again this is just something that we probably read like you know dozens of times but can we just pause here for a minute that the word concubine exists in our canonized scripture tell us why tell us what tell us about that word and what that means to you well I just I mean if I were giving a talk I might say let's turn to the Webster dictionary definition of concubine I mean think about what that means the definition of the word concubine is literally mistress someone who lives in the home as a mistress okay so going back to is this something that God said or was this Joseph Smith's agenda really let's just pause on this this is part of our Mormon scripture we're not just referencing that a prophet had a concubine it was part of the cultural practices of the day we are saying that God commands him to have wives and concubines yeah I mean that's distressing to me to say the least yeah like I've I've heard the word concubine defined as sexual slave and and you just have to ask why would God if you whatever you know you again this question of is this heavenly father or Joseph Smith why would God ever you know if God views women as equal to men if God loves women as much as men uh if God cherishes women Above All Else and holds them on a pedestal why would he even abide the word concubine in the scriptural Canon ever yeah exactly yeah I mean just imagine going into your Bishop's interview and uh you mentioned that you're having an affair with someone and The Bishop's like well you know we're gonna have to have a disciplinary counselor he's like no no no not only is it okay but God justifies that I mean he's my concubine Bishop she's like occupied it's just it's one of those things where it like I said earlier it leads good people to do bad things when you have the voice of God flipping morality upside down and this is one of those instances where Joseph Smith in my opinion is using this Revelation to try to justify things that were called vomitable in the Book of Mormon because he needs to flip that upside down in order to justify what's happening in 1843 and we talked about this with with the priesthood restoration uh with race and the priesthood all these different topics where prophets of this church are willing to flip things upside down when needed and Joseph Smith was really good at it and we're going to talk about that a lot more as we we go through the rest of these episodes but um to Alicia's Point putting the word concubine in there is not by mistake he needs that in there because he needs to justify those actions in order to justify the current ones that he's doing um so that Emma Smith will effectively accept it once and for all and and that's because in the Old Testament wives and concubines are like they're lumped together so if Joseph's gonna if Joseph's gonna claim this is Old Testament based and he's going to want plural wives then he's got to also justify concubines I think so yeah my takeaway is that this was to resolve Fanny Alger that was my takeaway meaning what do you mean what do you mean um well uh it needs to be retroactive going back to Annie Alger living in the home I mean there's no really other way to describe her other than a concubine so my takeaway is that this Revelation and the reference to not only plural wives but concubines is to resolve Fanny Alger I guess there was a marriage there but anyway that was my take I don't know if that's correct or not that's good yeah okay so we're the the next slide is um uh you know polyandrous marriages violate DNC 132 41 but I think we should begin by just explaining what polyandry is and what a polyandrous marriage is because I know that you know when I first went through my faith crisis let's just say 2000 2001 my friend Paul at Microsoft he's like John it's not the polygamy that's a problem it's the polyandry and I'm like oh no no you're saying it wrong it's polygamy he's like oh no no you just don't know what's going on so uh Alicia do you want to Define your understanding of what polyandry means um my understanding is when it's two men that are married to the same woman yeah yeah a woman a woman married to multiple men is another way to think about it right yeah yep and that's polyandry Paulie means multiple and Andrew means men so basically multiple men for a woman so that's polyandry and most Mormons have never heard of that word before to this date in 2022 and they certainly don't know what it means if they haven't heard of the word but it turns out that Joseph Smith practiced Polly Andrews so Mike not having given that background let's talk about this slide yeah and so we did talk about this in the last episode just it really quickly Joseph Smith I think eight of his first 11 uh marriages were polyandras where he was marrying women who were already married to other men some were in the church some of the men were in the church some were not and so this is being dictated obviously years later and so this verse is really important because it says and as ye have asked concerning adultery verily verily I say unto you if a man receiveth a wife in the new and Everlasting Covenant and if she'd be with another man and I have not appointed unto her by the holy anointing she hath committed adultery and shall be destroyed and we just read that verse but now think about this because what he's saying is if a man receiveth the wife in this new system of plural marriage with Joseph Joseph Smith doing in these polyandrous marriages but the thing is and this is one of the interesting Parts because the gospel topics essay is very quick to point out that these women continue to live with their legal husbands and have you know marital relations with them uh and they're doing that to make Joseph Smith's image clean but the problem is Joseph Smith here is effectively leading them directly into adultery because he's literally saying if she be with another man I have not appointed unto this new law she's committing adultery so Joseph Smith is marrying these women and even if he doesn't have relations with him we don't really know um but the church wants to tell you oh no they continue to live with their their first husband and have normal marital relations with them well the moment she has sex with her legal husband um under the legal under the law she's now in violation of DNC 132 and it's really interesting because this is one of those things where um Joseph Smith is going to be led off the hook because he's marrying her and he can't commit sin in that regard but as soon as she goes back to original husband she does and so I feel like this is one of those things that lets Joseph off the hook while creating a huge theological problem for the practice of polyandrous marriages what Joseph had been doing for years leading up to this Revelation yeah and people people won't know Mormons won't know that Joseph you know there's at least one instance of him literally going to a married man sending that married man on a mission we talked about this in a previous episode sending the married man on a mission and then recruiting his wife who stays behind to be Joseph's polygamous wife that's the type of thing Joseph would do some say he entered into polyandrous marriages so that he could if if a if a pregnancy happened well then the the birth the childbirth would just it would be assumed that the child was the husbands the legal husbands not Josephs but the other point that I want to make is and Mike I'm sure you mentioned this in a later slide but I think it it Bears me mentioning here that DNC 132 also says that a new polygamous spouse number one needs to be approved by the first spouse which is the law of Sarah and then secondly uh it needs that she needs to be a virgin and that's is that is that in a subsequent slide Mike yeah we'll be covering okay yeah and so again polyandrous marriages fail for all those reasons that the women can't be virgins uh if they're married and the law of Sarah wasn't invoked so the first wife you know at least in Emma's case was it wasn't able to approve it um at least anything else you want to say about polyandry well what I want to say consequence is being presented um but it talks about the consequence of Destruction like listen to this she hath committed adultery and shall be destroyed like take that in it's not just these are the conditions but this is the consequence if you don't keep these conditions Emma she hath committed adultery I mean it's so bad that it's almost laughable like can you imagine in like a ctr8 class the kids are passing around the scriptures and Little Tommy gets to she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed I mean take that it is literally so bad and imagine imagine you're a polyandrous wife of Joseph Smith and you read DNC 132 like say 20 or 30 years later and all of a sudden you get to this part and you look at it you're like what the frick like I now am condemned to be destroyed because I married Joseph Smith and I went back and had relations with my first husband you'd be like what what it's what is this crap and this is what happens when you're when you're dictating a text on the Fly because I don't think Joseph Smith at this point is this concerned with that as he would have been maybe a few years earlier and so to your point you are condemning these women to be destroyed that you brought in these marriages and that verse gives Joseph Smith the carve out so he said no problem no trouble and it's just we're gonna this is gonna be a theme throughout these verses which is that all of these threats go to the women and no matter what Joseph Smith does God is like you're cool he literally is going to write him a blank check and say you whatever you do I am going to justify but these women you're marrying they're the ones that need to watch watch what they're doing and this is just horrible because he's going to marry like a dozen polyandrous wives that he's now condemning to be destroyed for doing that yeah it's just it's horrible yeah I I really feel like that's where the emphasis needs to be if you are a woman in the church you need to read DNC 132 and yeah is this really God saying that yeah do either of you remember how many times destroyed is mentioned in the in DNC 132 like it's multiple times right it's multiple times we got we got a few to go as we go yeah is it ever mentioned in the context of a man being destroyed or is it always mentioned in the context of a woman being destroyed I think it's always a woman because I think there are Parts where a man could commit adultery but like I don't think there's ever a threat of Destruction attached to that yeah and then and then you just think about it back to Alicia's original question which is is this Jesus because the god of the god of the DNC is Jesus it's Jehovah according to Mormonism so what do we know about Jesus he you know an adulterous quote adulteress is thrown in front of him everybody around is like you know waiting to see what Jesus is going to say Jesus doesn't say for behold now you shall be destroyed he says to her go thy way in sin no more and in some sense he was almost more it seems like he was more upset with the men that were judging her um than he was the woman so is Jesus the Jesus you know from the New Testament a guy that's going to basically say if you're you know if if you are brought into a you know polyandrous marriage and then you have sex with your actual legal husband I'm gonna destroy you is that is that the Jesus you know and if it's not then where then what is the scripture is this can this be scripture for you I guess that's the question that this scripture asks okay I think maybe maybe we've we've made the point um let's let's go to the next slide which is wives of Unfaithful men will be given to another yes yeah and this one is one that hits me a little bit for because I'm in a mixed Faith marriage and I think this is one that every member of the church needs to understand because this verse is going to make this pretty clear but in verse 39 it says David's wives and concubines were given unto him of me by the hand of Nathan my servant and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah and his wife and therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation and received his portion and he shall not inherit them out of this world for I gave them unto another saith the Lord and so the doctrine of the church is that if the man is not faithful to the church this is not just in the case of marriage that the wife will simply be given to another for eternity and this has massive implications for those of you in mixed Faith marriages and also has massive implications for you where you're both in the same urge because it tells you directly that if if the male spouse were to Fall Away the woman is simply going to be handed off to another man for eternity to have eternal progression question for Eternal sexual relations and this is something that women will often say oh I don't know that that's the doctrine of the church it's right there in verse 39. Elise anything you want to add to that one um this one makes me a little more emotional than I expected to be um just because uh someone who was very Orthodox I mean I really took this stuff seriously um and I don't think my husband would mind me mentioning that I took things like Temple trips more seriously than he did um you know ppis family homes things like that and I don't know if men in the church really understand this pressure that we as women feel first of all when I got sealed I gave myself to my husband as he gave himself to God and I know that's changed but when I got married in 1997 that was the case and that essentially makes my husband the gatekeeper for me and I have this promise what a beautiful promise this is that if he does not fulfill his obligations that I fulfill mind that no problem I will be handed off to another family in the next life and I'm not even clear on the Doctrine does this mean that I'm going to be handed off to another family or does this make me a ministering angel I'm not exactly sure on that Doctrine but I know that I for sure am going to be fine but I may not have my husband with me this is an incredible wedge in so many people's marriages because as a woman you just know everything is hinging on your husband you know this eternal promise of being together as an eternal family is hinging on him also making it and um anyway I just think that this is a wedge in so many marriages and as Mike mentioned for a mixed Faith marriage imagine the pressure that exists there and I think I just had this concept that sort of magically I was just gonna want to be with another family I mean that I would just want to be a plural wife in another family if my husband didn't do his job and didn't pull his weight to make it um it's just so I it's trouble doubling to say the least yeah I'll add a few a few quick things from my perspective on this because it's also very personal to me one is just a a doctrinal point but also kind of a a women's worth and Value Point all throughout the DNC 132 one of the things that's most disturbing to me is the way women are referenced as objects almost as if they're cattle to be assigned because you know Jesus or Jehovah's speaking and he's constantly saying if women don't do this I will give them to another if you break this rule then I'll give these women to another and it's just like what are you know it's objects it's like a car you might give to somebody you might give someone a pen you don't give a woman to anyone right so like so just just the discussion of women is if they're cattle or chattel or objects all throughout DNC 132 is deeply problematic language for me secondly that that is literally what leads to you know the Warren Jeff's like Behavior if if you watched my episode with with Elisa wall if you've studied uh the flds church and polygamy you've got um you've got prophets like Warren Jeff's literally taking wives and children away from men who don't obey the prophet and reassigning the wives and and and children to other men if you don't give the profit enough money or if you tell the prophet you don't don't like something he's doing and all I'm going to say is that behavior starts with Joseph Smith and DNC 132 and you really can't get away with it and it's deeply problematic the third point I'm just going to make is that this this idea of people being reassigned is is very personal to me my sister Gina she's my oldest sister um she you know wasn't she was you know she wasn't able to find a man to marry uh in Houston in the 1970s and early 80s and so she ended up falling in love with a a non Mormon who was from Canada great guy and she ended up marrying him and uh she ended up moving off to Canada with him and she wasn't active at the time so she marries this this non-mormon guy they go off and start this life together in Canada and then as soon as they start having kids um you know all of a sudden Gina's like oh my gosh how do I make sure my kids are moral and all of a sudden she gets her testimony back in Mormonism and decides she really wants to raise her kids Mormon even though her husband isn't a member and I remember very distinctly as Gina was 20 or 25 years into her marriage talking to her where she basically said you know life's okay but the truth is I'm stuck with a husband that uh isn't going to take me to the Celestial Kingdom and I know that in the afterlife I'm going to be reassigned to another man and so uh you know that just makes it so to some extent I'm kind of just ticking the time away in this life uh you know uh because I don't believe in divorce so I'm going to be ticking the time away in this life until I die and can actually marry my eternal companion and you know that that led to some really unfortunate sad Behavior where she didn't really go to doctors and she started to develop cramps and stomach pains and she just ignored it and a couple years later um and by the way she was living in in um you know Cary Illinois uh you know in the northwest suburbs right there in Chicago Mike and Gina um starts to pass out and she goes to a doctor in October let's just say six years ago she finds out that she has terminal colon cancer um and within two months she's dead and I remember talking to her in November of that year saying man Gene are you sad that you're dying are you sad that you know you're you're not going to know your grandkids and she basically says no I'm very much at peace I've paid my I paid up on all my tithing I've got a current Temple recommend and I'm ready to go and it was this tea teaching that you know non you know obedient men who are not actively tithe-paying obedient Mormon men are not going to be able to take their faithful wives to the Celestial Kingdom it's a pernicious doctrine that is that that has real consequences and it was something that led to a really tragic end for my own my own sister Gina and I just I just wanted to kind of say me too Alicia this Doctrine is really fraught and is really problematic and and my my brother-in-law John Faust did not deserve to be treated that way in his life you know and my sister Gina deserved to love every minute of her life she didn't deserve to Pine for her death where then she could actually marry the man of her dreams and and um you know uh speaking as someone who's in a mixed Faith marriage now I think the the the words here are are damning not just for the the fact that and again I'm speaking as a guy which I know carries a lot of privilege given that we're talking about polygamy um so for me not believing I'm still a member of the church but I'm not believing and so under the the rules of DNC 132 my wife will be given to another guy but not only will my wife be given to another guy all of the kids of these marriages are given to this other guy too so DNC 132 is basically saying to the women you and whoever you're CO2 are just going to be handed off to some other dude you don't know who they're going to be you're going to be given to another and I know a lot of people say well we have choices we'll have choices but but the reality is as we're going to see later on this in this in this episode your choice is to accept or to be destroyed so if you're given to another guy with your kids in for the eternities to populate planets with and you say no and you reject that you're not going to be there you're going to be destroyed and so yeah it punishes the guys by taking away your family for eternity and just giving it to some other dude that's going to have sex with with your wife and I realize I feel like when I say that I'm treating my life as as property and I'm not trying to be I'm just saying like if you think about that like Alicia said earlier if you taught in a in a Sunday school class of some teenagers um hey uh Eternal Marriage and Mormonism is the most amazing thing because if your husband Falls away you're going to be handed off to another guy you don't know for eternity to have sex with all the girls in the class would be like what the frick are you talking about but it's right there and so this is one of those things that to me as being in that mixed Faith marriage is really painful and as Alicia said earlier it almost becomes silly when you think about the absurdity of God telling Joseph Smith to tell these women and in this case Emma that if the if the husband Falls away don't worry about you just be given to another guy because you are just a pawn in the Eternal plan to populate these planets and yeah yeah I don't want to beat a dead horse here it's just it's not just the wife that gets given to another it's all of their kids as well and it has a lot of as you said John real real day implications for people who understand what is being said by by God through Joseph Smith in this Revelation yeah amen all right so the next slide is uh Joseph Fielding Smith who was one of the presidents of the church he expands on DNC 132 so this is a prophet Syrian Revelator we're talking about here yeah and this is just piggybacking off the last slide because one of the things I've heard this from many members now because I've talked about this a lot like on Twitter and stuff over the years and those when you talk about how women will be given to another they'll say they'll point to this Joseph Fielding Smith quote and say he was just speaking as a man and I used to think that was right because I didn't realize it was in DNC 132 but Joseph Fielding Smith says in his um I think it's a book answers to gospel questions he says excuse me when the wife is faithful and desires to obey the Divine Law and the husband is rebellious or unwilling to obey the will of the Lord if she maintains her Integrity to the best of her ability she will be given to another husband in eternity and will receive all the blessings of the Celestial Kingdom so what he's saying is what DNC 132 says which is if you're a woman who is faithful to the church when they say um you know faithful to the will of the Lord they mean to the will of the leaders of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if she is faithful to what the leaders tell her through the church her reward is that she'll be given to another guy um as an eternal husband and so it just confirms what Joseph Smith says through God in DNC 132 and it also makes clear that it's not just like I mentioned it's not just talking about if you're Unfaithful like you have an affair it's if you're unfaithful to the Commandments that you're given through the church and if God respected women at a minimum I mean there's the numeric problem of one man multiple women you know my friend Kim Turner used to say it's like pennies to a dime right it's you're you're you're just numerically a fraction of the value if if one man gets multiple women but but if God was really a respecter of women he would say if your husband isn't faithful you will get to choose uh the man of your dreams to be married to in the afterlife but again it's just this given language that's problematic yeah it's just it said like there'd be a singles word in the Celestial Kingdom where you could meet someone new it would be a lot better than to keep saying you're being given to another it's just the language it's the yeah it's the threats to women where the men are left off the hook all that stuff any final word on this Alicia are we ready for the next slide yeah yeah just real quick I feel disposable when I read these verses about um just the the way that God is speaking about his you know about Emma and about the women of the church urge it makes me feel like God thinks that I am pretty disposable and for me personally it makes me rethink the con the general conference structure of having a few of these women sprinkled in here and there um of going into The Bishop's hallway and seeing the framed photographs of all of the men in the general presidencies and no women and so to me I see this Common Thread that comes directly from this source of Doctrine that's still threaded through the culture of the church today yeah I'm so sorry Alicia that's that's sad it's true you know I mean like I don't mean to sound like a jerk but it's like one of the things about the way that plural marriage or polygamy was set up is that a lot of these men are married to a lot of women and so if you are one of the women and you leave the man who does that impact more does it impact the woman who has to completely change her life and find a new husband or does it impact the man who then has instead of 18 17 wives so there were 10 10 women divorced Brigham Young but he married 56 women so when a woman left you think he's like oh my goodness how am I gonna fix my life he's like no I've got 55 more to go I I do think that it makes this system makes women more disposable because of the fact that you are now just one of many it's not like you are the one the soul mate it's like no no you're just one and as we've talked about in kind of how DNC 132 is set up your purpose is to you know raise up seed and so that's really our purpose but if you leave you've just got other women to do it with whereas as a woman you then have to pick up your life and put it back together and so it does make you disposable especially when the men are constantly giving the free passes we'll get to in these these later verses all right well let's the next slide maybe we've covered it so uh but let's just Joseph can use discernment to give women to other men let's at least read it uh we haven't covered it but we don't need to go into big details so verse 44 says and if she hath not committed adultery but is innocent and hath not broken her vow and she knoweth it and I reveal it unto you my servant Joseph then you shall have power by the power of my holy priesthood to take her and give her unto him that hath not committed adultery but have been fulfilled or been faithful for he shall be made ruler over many and so this is doing a couple of things we um it's saying that Joseph Smith has the ultimate power to claim via discernment uh that he believes a husband is not being faithful and in turn can then give her unto another man and also um you know as we've talked about in previous episodes it creates this power of discernment that we've shown uh fails over and over again with top leaders of the church and then the last point I'll make is um so the God is telling Joseph that he can give her unto him that has not committed adultery but has been faithful for he shall be made ruler over many and so it almost implies that the man is to be made ruler over many women and so that's why you can give a woman unto a man who has been faithful and it's just more of that language that just shows that women really are just the props in the in the game that the men are playing Alicia I agree yeah yeah and again I already referenced this but this plays out in really ugly ways with Warren Jeffs and with other fundamentalists Mormon prophets and it's all it's you know if you if you attack Warren Jeffs you have to be consistent and say Warren Jeff's got it not just from Joseph Smith but for Mormon scripture in DNC 132 that remains canonized you can't just you can't just stop with Warren Jeffs you got to take it all the way up the tree and yeah in my opinion yeah yeah so uh all right the next slide is uh God endorses literally anything Joseph Smith decides to do way too much power yeah and so these two verses are going to basically allow Joseph to do whatever he wants and so it says and again verily I say whomsoever you bless I will bless and whomsoever you curse I will curse saith the Lord for I the Lord am thy God and again verily I say unto you my servant Joseph that whatsoever you give on Earth and to whomsoever you give anyone on Earth by my word and according to my law it shall be visited with blessings and not cursings and with my power saith the Lord and shall be without condemnation on Earth and in heaven and these like these verses to me are really bizarre because it's effective telling Joseph Smith if you curse someone and you threaten someone to damnation that God's going to fulfill that promise which is very self-serving when you are telling these young women um that they will be blessed by God if they submit to your proposals or they'll be destroyed if they don't and this is going to be a central theme we're going to see in our next episodes where Joseph Smith is going to tell these young girls who are vulnerable who Revere him as a prophet um that it cannot be a sin to Mary and have sex with them because God commanded it and on the flip side uh if you don't do it you're gonna you're gonna then get the condemnation and this is just basically God telling Joseph basically whoever you curse I'm going to curse for you and whatever you do I'm gonna bless and I this just seems very bizarre to me yeah it's just way it's it's way too much power for one man to have yeah and the fact that God would tell Joseph to tell the world that Joseph has all this power you know if God God should tell some a bunch of other people that Joseph should have this power but if it's coming through Joseph that immediately calls in a question the conflict of interest in Joseph yeah revealing this Revelation where he just coincidentally happens to to gain all power from God to do whatever he wants basically it's saying whatever Joseph does is approved by God and that's just that's way too much power at that point he's making himself God in a sense and when when God is the one saying that God is telling him whatever he does is good there's a problem and it kind of goes we'll we'll talk about the angel with the drawn sword um in the future episodes but it's like why doesn't the angel go to the women first and say hey we need you to fulfill this commandment or else we're going to to destroy you or Joseph or whatever but it's always through Joseph everything is through Joseph just as today everything is through Russell Nelson um you know when people joke that it's a pyramid um shape that's the organizational structure when one person is the sole Arbiter of what God wants and what God doesn't want it creates a lot of potential problems and we're seeing it play out here in this revelation Alicia I think we also see it played out with Warren Jeffs I mean I know people don't like to look at that but if you look at I even have here somewhere the their book of scripture the flds book of scripture and I think it goes through like roulon and definitely Warren some of the stuff that he's written from jail and it it reads so similarly to DNC and if you look at the way that like the lost boys are handled and the way that their marriage arrangements are handled everything goes through the prophet and it's just so similar to the way that Joseph Smith conducted the church in these early days and again I mean I guess we could say you know Revelation is ongoing and things can change but this is in our scriptures so yeah it's kind of it's kind of irresponsible and questionable I'm just I'm just riffing here but but if if God wants if God can't just talk to us all directly right why can't God talk to us all directly oh I don't know because we need Faith or something and so he's going to call prophets and then the prophets tell us what God wants and it's like okay that's a bit of stretch but then if if it's if we're going to take it one step further and say that anything the Prophet Joseph says is of God then why is it just God telling us to begin with like and then if if Joseph can't make any mistakes then again that's just way too much power and it's almost irresponsible of God to do that and again I love your point Mike that if God really loved women if God really respected women he would have given this Revelation to all the women and they would have all come forward and said hey all the women in the Mormon church we all received a witness from God that like Joseph has this power and we all received it so now we know but God didn't do that Joseph saying God gave him all that power it's just way way too much power um way too much power to give one human all right the next slide oh go ahead Alicia I was gonna say it's just very clear that women here in this narrative women are an accessory yeah so who are we an accessory to that's what I want to know am I an accessory to God that's what I want to know and that's what occurs to me yeah yeah I mean I guess ultimately you are but yeah and that's why you know when when you whenever you hear whenever you hear a leader of the church say you have to trust in the Lord what they're really saying is you have to trust in the leaders of the church and that's why if you you if you apply that rule of thumb when you look at past leaders of the church when when you look at the statements that are now disavowed it makes a lot more sense because you're saying you have to trust in Brigham Young that members of black skin can have the priesthood because if you trusted in the Lord back then your um sense of discernment would have would have failed you because you would have believed it because the prophet was telling you and now 140 years later you'd be like well either God was wrong or Brigham Young was wrong and that's why so often when you hear that phrase you have to trust in the Lord it really is a code for saying you have to trust in the leaders of the church and as I've said earlier like John just said when you give the leaders of the church that much Authority and power to flip your moral compass upside down it leads really good people to do really bad things yeah absolutely all right well the next uh the next slide is gone God rescinds whatever offer Joseph made to Emma and this is an interesting verse because it kind of doesn't make sense unless you realize this this Revelation is being given to try to calm Emma down but it says verily I say unto you a commandment I give unto mine handmade Emma Smith your first I put first in parenthesis your wife whom I have given unto you that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her for I did it saith the Lord to prove you all as I did Abraham and that I might require an offering at your hand by Covenant and sacrifice and so we don't quite know with with certainty what this is referring to because some people believe um the Emma Smith was going to try to take a second husband um for her own which a lot of people think might be William law um because William Clayton had written in this journal that Emma said that she had thought that she thought that if he would indulge himself she would too um other people say that she was is threatening to get a divorce from him and that they were trying to find a way to to make that work we don't quite know what that is because obviously we don't have enough sources um but clearly Joseph Smith offered something to Emma we just don't know what exactly it was and the one thing I just want to point out is it's really interesting to me that God turns this offer and rescinding the offer to an abrahamic test for Emma but for Joseph he gets to continually marry and have sex with other women so if this is truly about abrahamic Tess God would go to Joseph and say Joseph I need you to marry a fanny Alger and have sex with her fully to fully implement this law and that Joseph would go to Mary Fanny and maybe they'd head to the bedroom and God would be like dude just kidding abrahamic test I want to make sure loyal but it's interesting that that is allowed to go through fully over and over and over again with dozens of women and yeah with Emma Smith when there's something being offered to her that she wants that Joseph doesn't want her to have it turns into an abrahamic test that's pulled back it's really convenient to Joseph Smith once again in this room Revelation that he's getting what he wants she can't have what she wants it's a great point a reference a good reference that I have to this question about Emma and William law is an episode I did with Grant Palmer the late Grant Palmer before he passed away uh there's a Mormon stories episode where Grant Palmer talks about sexual allegations against Joseph Smith and he provides his support for the idea that that at some point Emma said to Joseph look man you're getting all these women I want multiple men and then Joseph said all right well I'll give you William law who's at the time in the first presidency of the church I guess you get the sense that William law and his wife weren't totally down for that um but but Joseph you know it appears as though maybe according to Grand Palmer Joseph offered William law to Emma as a consolation prize and and that's so check out the grand Palmer episode if you want to hear Grant Palmer's argument for that anything you want to add to that Alicia no that's great I love Palmer yeah he's great okay uh the next slide is God commands Emma to accept the women given to Joseph yeah and so this is more um I'm not seeing the slide right now uh here you go oh there we go this is more of you know I keep trying to put the word given to in quotes because it's in there but just to just to really Hammer home the fact that this phrase is used so often in this Revelation so it says and let mine handmade Emma Smith receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph and who are virtuous and pure before me and those who are not pure and have said they were pure shall be destroyed saith the Lord God for I am the Lord thy God and ye shall obey my voice and I give unto my servant Joseph that he shall be made ruler over many things for he hath been Faithful over a few things and from henceforth I will strengthen him and so this puts women into this position of being properties we've talked about over and over or Eternal Jewels for the men as God makes clear that the women are given unto my servant Joseph and that he shall be ruler over many things and this is another area where God is going to set Joseph Smith apart from everyone else in the church and we saw this with the priesthood restoration where Joseph continually had to set himself up further and further um as he was being questioned in this case he's being questioned from Emma and he has to do the same thing which is to put himself above Emma Smith in order to force her to accept that he has the ultimate Authority here and you know one of the things that this makes me think of is just think of a man today telling his wife that she must accept his extramarital relationships because the women that he's cheating on her with are really pure and virtuous do you think the woman's gonna be like oh my goodness I feel so much better now that you're having sex with other women that are pure I just don't understand why for Emma this would be calming this would be like the most you know the idea that she should feel better and accept these women because God through Joseph says they're pure it's just it doesn't work you know I just this is another area where it feels like Joseph is trying to justify his actions to Emma in a way that he thinks will make it more enticing but in reality I don't understand I don't think there's any woman who would be okay with her husband having all of these relationships um because the women that he's cheating on her with are having extramarital relationships with are pure and if they do something outside of that marriage that or outside that relationship that's not pure they'll be destroyed I don't think any woman's gonna be like oh my goodness I feel so much better now I just Alicia you you can speak as one woman yeah yeah I have a lot to say about this one I'll try to be concise so this is the first time that really I took in that this is god um threatening Emma into submission okay and I want to think back to um this as a this is a theme that continues to this day I would argue argue is still threaded throughout our culture and what's really interesting about this to me is that the way that I've seen it at least in the last 10 years that this has been sort of passed off to the general women of the church the general leader women female leaders of the church um we've seen it a few times one is specifically and I'm just going to call it out there is a talk called and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit it's a talk by Julie Beck it was my favorite talk I literally have portions of this talk that are memorized because what this talk is about is if the women of the church want the best blessing that can possibly be poured out unto you which is the gift of the spirit that it is your obligation to be obedient to obey your temple covenants to not be selfish not take too much time for yourself to not it has a verbiage where it talks about not seeking appreciation not seeking Praise And if you do these things that you will have the best gift which is the gift of the spirit and that to me is just completely another reference to this to this message of submission um there was another um I think they call it a a sister to sister event where General women's leaders answered questions from the audience and one of the sisters had asked how do I handle this priesthood holder who's really dismissive during my meetings and the response was that your obligation as a woman is to be long-suffering to be patient to be loving to not be critical we do not criticize I think that was an actual quote from the meeting and so when I look back at these original verses of 132 I think that it is arguable that this message of submission God you know pushing women into submission is still threaded throughout our culture today we are admonished to be submissive to be loving to take the Lord's counsel to be obedient it's still it's still there that's what I would argue um yeah absolutely yeah and that talk was from a BYU event and yeah she said we do not criticize leaders ever ever ever I believe was her exact quote and yeah you're right and to what you said Alicia earlier when you are at the mercy of your husband to get to the Celestial Kingdom like you said earlier when you knew that your salvation exaltation hinged on your husbands it does force you to be more submissive because you don't want to do something that would that would make your husband uh leave you and find another and and this Revelation is very clear that it's very easy for men to find another because they'll be given to them uh whereas a woman will be destroyed if she doesn't go along and to say that there is not at least some impact of that on the modern day church I think would really miss um the experiences at least that I've heard from a lot of people in Alicia you've said it yourself that you do feel like you need to be more perfect because the men have more of a free pass than the women doing so you have to effectively do a better job at kind of Crossing all those t's than than the men doing and that is riddled in this this revelation yeah all right well we've got a lot of we've got a lot of slides to go so I don't want I don't want to rush but we've got a lot a lot of ghosts yeah we do and so let's go to the next one yeah most people will know about and this is where Emma is basically threatened with destruction if she does not come along with this and so he says and I command mind handmade Emma Smith to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph and To None else but if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed saith the Lord for I am the Lord thy God and will destroy her if she'd not abide not in my law but if she will not abide this commandment then shall my servant Joseph do all things for her even as he has said and I will bless him and multiply him and give unto him a hundredfold in this world of fathers and mothers brothers and sisters husbands and lands wives and children in crowns of Eternal lives in the Eternal Worlds and so God is making clear here that whatever offer Emma was given has been rescinded is non-negotiable and she will be destroyed if she were to leave Joseph Smith or partake in uh the same practice of Joseph Smith of having an extra marital relation and meanwhile Joseph Smith is being told he'll be blessed with Abiding and cleaving unto many other women while Emma will be destroyed if she were to abide and cleave on to another and Emma gets rewarded with having to sit and watch it all happen regardless of what she does and then the final part is just saying again that their God is saying that wives and children uh are basically you know crowns of Eternal lives in the Eternal Worlds which is a way of saying that wives are kind of like that you know another jewel in the Eternal crown and it just it keeps being laid out here it's just really frustrating to watch if you like Alicia said at the beginning I would love to see this read to a um a group of teenagers in Sunday school and try to explain the context of the fact that she'll as a woman in the church you will be destroyed if you do not agree with polygamy yeah yeah I'm gonna say that that I'm going to give another scriptural evidence for why this scripture can't be Doctrine um I'm going to read from Doctrine and Covenants section 121 verse uh verse 41 and 42. uh you know God says or Jesus says in DNC 121 41 no power or influence can ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood only by persuasion by long-suffering by gentleness and meekness and by love and unfeigned by kindness and pure knowledge which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy and without guile you know that's that's basically God talking about what unrighteous Dominion is and if you go on later in DNC 121 it says anyone who who acts in a way that's coercive um Amen to the priesthood of that man I I think DNC 132 violates DNC 121 because this is coercive language that's threatening with existence and if you go to Luna Lindsey corbden's book recovering agency Luna lays out the 31 um 31 signs of a high demand religion or another you know more shocking word to use for that sometimes is cult but but Lindsay calls it dispensing of existence whenever you're threatening someone with destruction that's the sign of a cult and so I'm going to just call out DNC 132 54-55 as violating DNC 121 as as being unrighteous dominion and as being the sure sign of a coercive abusive organization Alicia anything you want to add I mean I just think these contradictions are really interesting and of course we have our pool of people that always remind me on Tick Tock that not everyone believes that Joseph Smith wrote 132 and that's the only way to explain these contradictions but the fact is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accepts this as Joseph Smith's Revelation it's canonizes scripture as we've mentioned so I just think it's interesting that these contradictions that was a really good point though John it's just not that Jesus any of us really believe in that Jesus is going to I mean think about how difficult polygamy is going to be to accept right like it means you're sharing your husband with not just one other woman but possibly in Brigham Young case 50 other women that's not a trivial that's not a trivial decision and there may just be some women that just aren't down for that but but DNC 130 2 basically says do it or you'll be destroyed and that's coercive and manipulative and uh that's all that's all I have to say to quote Forrest Gump that's all I have to say no and the two points I would add is one and this is one of those areas where in the church as a convert I was always told about how great free agency was you have the free agency to choose to drink coffee if you want to but there are consequences but I would argue in this case do you really have free agency if you're a woman right when your choices accept this or be destroyed I I just don't think you could do that and then the second point I would make is you know as John said you know we're told uh that the world's not ready for polygamy right and people aren't going to be willing to accept this and it's always funny because you'll hear the apologetic that the church couldn't let people with black skin into the church until 1978 because the world wasn't ready for it and yet God was willing to force this upon the church in the 1830s when clearly the world was not ready for it it's just it's another contradiction that just shows that God doesn't quite the god of Mormonism is very indecisive very always changing and very much like just contradictory in all of the things that are revealed once you look at them at face value yeah all right let's go to the next slide which is the God grants Emma a quid pro quo to forgive Joseph Smith and so kind of going on that theme of kind of coercive uh words it says and again verily I say let mine handmade forgive my servant Joseph his trespass says trespasses and then shall she be forgiven her trespasses wherein she has trespassed against me and I the Lord thy God will bless her and multiply her and make her heart make her heart to rejoice and so Joseph Smith is literally having extramarital relationships behind his wife's back whatever you want to call them they're beyond his his marriage with her and then God is telling her that she has to forgive Joseph if she wants God to forgive her this is you know it's a quid pro quo it's like saying okay you forgive Joseph and then I'll forgive you and this lines up with Joseph Smith's 1831's teachings that there's no sin if there's no accuser and so here Joseph is telling Emma through God that if she basically stops accusing Joseph of you know basically adultery then she will then be forgiven but if she keeps accusing her then all of the Hellfire is going to be brought down on her which is literally what he says in 1841 which we'll get to in the next slide but it's really interesting that Joseph's own words in 1841 kind of make it into this Revelation two years later yeah yep Mike did you say there is no sin if there is no accuser that's what Joseph Smith said it's in the happiness letter episode yeah well it's in our next slide it's actually from an 1841 sermon and it's right as polygamy's ramping up and so yeah I mean this is how he's flipping morality upside down and it just it's interesting how this language that we'll get into the next slide is going to make made its way into 18 into a revelation 1843 in the voice of God did you have an observation about that Alicia I just think it's wild yeah I've just taken it in yeah yeah the happiness letter is a great episode and um that you'll hear you viewers and listeners will hear I'll just quickly say that as a parent this idea because when you go back to this you know he's not just threatening Emma um with destruction but he's also saying but if you do what I say let Joseph have sex with other women I'm going to give you infinite blessings it just as a parent it just feels so manipulative I can't imagine this telling a kid you know mow the lawn and if you don't mow the lawn I'll punch you in the face and beat you up to a bloody pulp but if you do mow the lawn then I'll give you a thousand dollars like what kind of parent would use extreme forms of manipulation again it violates DNC 121 but it's just on it's just uncivil and it's not christ-like or loving at least is is the way that I conceive parenting yeah and I'll take that one step further because we talk about this all the way back in our first episode on Treasure digging that Joseph Smith basically is asking members of the church to do all these things for him and the promise is no longer a physical treasure it's an eternal reward so in your um analogy there John you're saying mow the lawn I'm going to punch your face but if you do it I'm going to give you a thousand dollars but what Joseph Smith would be saying is mow the lawn I'm going to punch you in the face but if you do it I'm going to give you something in the next life that I never have to produce here and I think that's what's interesting because Joseph Smith is telling Emma to accept these horrific things happening in reality yeah so that he can offer something in the afterlife which he never has to actually give her so he could promise her whatever he wants because he knows in his head I don't have to do any of that because you know that's after I die and I think that is where that treasure digging kind of mentality of you got to keep digging for the treasure yeah really allow Joseph to create this theology where he could keep people digging because no longer will he have to stop when he can't find that treasure because he doesn't have to deliver anything and it shows here because he's asking for all of these physical things in the in the immediate future for himself and promising all of these women including Emma something he never has to deliver it's like mow the lawn or I'll beat you to a bloody pulp or let me have sex with other women no sorry or or mow the lawn and the checks in the mail right yeah yeah and you'll get it after you die I mean it's just it's a really convenient way to make promises you never have to fulfill yeah all right the next slide is God invoking very similar language to Joseph's own from 1841. yeah so we read this in the last episode and uh Alicia this is what I was talking about with the no sin uh no accuser this is from Joseph's a sermon in 1841 he says I charge the Saints not to follow the example of the adversary in accusing the Brethren and said if you do not accuse each other God will not accuse you if you have no accuser you will enter Heaven and if you follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me I will take you into heaven as my backload if you will not accuse me I will not accuse you if you will throw a cloak of Charity over my sins I will over yours for charity covereth a multitude of sins what many people call sin is not sin I do many things to break down Superstition and I will break it down so this is Joseph Smith flipping morality upside down he's giving this teaching right as he's ramping up polygamy and he's doing it because it's just as we're showing now with DNC 132 he's telling these women guys if you don't accuse me of wrongdoing I am not going to come after you but if you accuse me wrongdoing you're on your own and this just really puts a lot of pressure If you believe Joseph Smith be a prophet to do whatever he says because if you don't you know there are a lot of threats await you and and this is really um Joseph Smith laying out the laying the marker down and saying if I tell you to do it it's not sin because it's from God got it this reminded me of Dallin Oaks it is wrong to criticize leaders even if the criticism is true yeah yeah that's exactly it felt like a Common Thread to me yeah yeah and that's the number two ranking Mormon church leader in the world today saying that it's it's it's evil to criticize Mormon church leaders even if the criticism is accurate that's yeah that's a that's just wrong on every level okay yeah so we're revisiting a theme that God writes Joseph Smith a blank check can you go back one slide I think we skipped one oh we did I think so okay okay and this will be a really quick one but this is just kind of kind of an interesting one because in verse 57 God says through Joseph and again I say let not my servant Joseph put his property out of his hands lest an enemy come and destroy him for Satan's secret to destroy for I am the Lord thy God and he is my servant and behold and lo I am with him as I was with Abraham thy father even unto his exaltation and glory and this is interesting because not only is this very self-serving for Joseph Smith to say I can't put my property out of my hands but that very same day Joseph is going to do that very thing and so if you're watching this um I'm not going to read it because it's just a ton of words but this is from the Joseph this paper project which is a paragraph of all of the property Joseph is going to deed over to Emma Smith after he writes this Revelation and so it's really interesting that in the Revelation he's like you cannot put property out of your hands and then later that day I mean apparently I'm guessing after Emma reads it he's going to give her a whole paragraph with the property I mean it's just super detailed it's like all the tracks of parcels of land and it's just Lot Number Four block number 99 it just goes on forever so if you're watching it you can see it it's also on LDS discussions.com but so the very day he's told about to give property away he gives her a whole bunch of property and I find that to show just how uh flexible Joseph Smith is with these Revelations that he's literally going to contradict it the same day he gives it yeah and that almost looks like a bribe it's like Emma let me have these other women and I'll give you a bunch of land uh in return is that the way God works I don't know yeah sure well it sure seems like he's making deals with her because obviously this Revelation didn't do what what Hiram thought it would and um I think that it shows that when you give a whole whole uh paragraph with a land like that that it it's not just one small piece and so to do that on the same day that you're writing a revelation it it's interesting and I and I have to just say I know we're taking this episode is taking time but it's because it's so important but I'm just gonna say it God could have solved the Emma problem very easily he could have just gone to Emma and told Emma that what he wanted Emma to do but he didn't do that why does God not love Emma was she not worth it are women not worthy like God could have solved the Emma problem just by communicating directly with them or if he didn't or if he didn't want to appear to her which which maybe she deserved with such a significant request he at least could have spoken to her through her brain through her ears through her heart through the Holy Ghost why wasn't God able to inspire Emma don't tell me that it's because I'm at a hard heart don't tell me it's because she was faithless I I you know what what Mormon has ever sacrificed more than Emma I I don't know that that you could find many men or women who sacrificed more than Emma so don't tell me she was faithless God why didn't you just talk to the woman you know yeah Alicia am I am I being unfair there no I totally resonate with everything you just said absolutely it's just another you know and I think that for a lot of these issues we they're chalked up to like oh it was the cultural practices of the day uh except that this is written into our scripture so it's not just you know like a women's lib issue and we've made progress and we need to view things differently if God's able to speak to a woman today and she's worthy of that then why why wouldn't at that point God have just you know had just spoken directly to Emma so and I think I know the answer to that but yeah yeah we'll let the listeners draw their own conclusions right no it's just it shows that you know we're told God has got to order yet at the same time we're told that instead of just visiting Emma and sending an angel down to her and say hey this is what needs to be done he forces this very convoluted response from Joseph which is problematic from the get-go and as John said it just doesn't feel like it got to order it feels like a man who's speaking for God and trying to make everything fit to his current day needs which is what we've been showing in all these episodes and that's where it adds up so let's go to the next slide which is God writes Joseph a blank check yeah and this is kind of what we've been hinting about um basically through this whole episode which is that God is in this Revelation is basically over and over telling Emma that nothing Joseph can do is wrong and so this is three verses it says now is touching the law of the priesthood there are many things pertaining there unto verily if a man be called of my father as was Aaron by mine own voice and by the voice of him that sent me and I have endowed with him the keys of the power of this priesthood if you do anything in my name and according to my law and by my word he will not commit sin and I will justify him let no one therefore set on my servant Joseph for I will justify him for he shall do the sacrifice which I require at his hands for his transgressions saith the Lord your God so just as we outline with the priesthood restoration the first Vision every time Joseph Smith starts to get put into a box and he's forced into a jam his credibility is being questioned he is really good at using Revelations to separate himself from everyone else and here he's just saying basically if Joseph does anything by my word he cannot be sinning except Joseph's the one giving the word and so that's where you get the ultimate Authority just being written out to Joseph in the form of a blank check just saying whatever you're going to do it's good and I think that's as John said earlier it's too much power for one person to have when no one else is allowed to get it for themselves yeah my favorite example of this is when William Clayton who's married to sisters wants to take their youngest sister as a wife so he asked Joseph Smith's permission I think it was William Clayton and Joseph Smith says oh I've had a revelation you can't take three sisters into one family it's gonna create too much drama but by chance could we arrange for me to take her instead and she was 17 and she declined but it's just laughable it is some of these like Revelations like oh I got a pivot here and you know oh no the Lord's the Lord's revealed it to me you can't take a third sister but I'm gonna take her instead you know it's just like oh gosh it's it's rough and like you said that when you claim to be the only one that can have the discernment and all of a sudden in their stories of Brigham Young I think doing that a lot too where all of a sudden someone asked for a woman to marry and all of a sudden he's like no no she's not right for you and also he marries her and oftentimes they happen to be the young attractive ones and that just again just shows how this system can be so easily abused by people that claim to speak for God yeah all right let's go to the next slide which we've referenced earlier in this episode The Law of Sarah and getting specific about polygamy yeah and so this is where the law of Sarah which is so often kind of referred to by the church comes in and says and again as pertaining to the law of the priesthood If any man espouse a virgin and desire to espouse another and the first give her consent and if he espoused the second and they are virgins and have vowed to no other man that he is justif then as he justified he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth to him and to no one else and if he has 10 virgins given unto him by this law he cannot commit adultery for they belong to him and they are given unto him therefore he is is he justified so as we mentioned earlier Joseph Smith is going to break this rule in just about every way because Emma does not give consent for his early marriages and he espoused many non-virgins via polyandry and so this puts women again over and over again as being almost labeled as property is the phrase given unto him I think is in three times in these two verses which is a really common theme and as John mentioned earlier a lot of times you'll hear people now say that virgin didn't mean what we think of as virgin but virgin actually just met someone who's pure of heart and so I looked up that Webster's 1828 dictionary and I looked up Virgin and the definition was a woman who has had no carnal knowledge of man which is pretty clear that virgin in 1828 meant someone who had not had sex yet so the apologetic that virgin meant pure is absolute crap just like saying that skin didn't mean skin we did the preset episodes this is trying to retrofit in other definitions in order to give Joseph an out so this Revelation is violated in in basically every single way and it puts a lot of women uh with a threat of damnation as we mentioned earlier that married him in polyandrous relationships I'll add just a couple things it's it's not just saying given unto it's saying belongeth unto yep and then it's like maybe it's one maybe it's ten you know it's just like let's do 20. it's almost like an auction like do I hear 30 do I hear 50 and then you know what about women who did have sex you know before marriage what if what if they weren't virgins like why is God all of a sudden caring about your status and sexuality I mean how many modern Christians or Latter-Day Saints or Muslims did have pre-marital sex and as long as they believe in the atonement and repent according to Mormon Doctrine their sins those Scarlet shall be white as snow so why is God even using the word virgin here at all why does God care about their sexual history as it relates to polygamy especially if Joseph Smith is just going to disregard it all why would God throw the word virgin in there in the first place Alicia you may have feelings about this well virginity aside I get asked all the time if I still believe in God and I guess that's a complex question with a complex answer but what I will say is that I don't believe in a God who would make this statement for they belong to him and they are given unto him therefore he is Justified and um you know why this is I don't believe in a God who views me as property of my husband I don't believe in a God that views me as a prize as an accessory so that's what really stood out to me with the love Sarah okay all right so the word virgins that that's not getting under your skin necessarily I was but I guess I gather tangent okay okay all right so um so the next slide is uh women that Joseph Smith had married before DNC 132 we referenced this earlier but now we've got the list yeah and this it's not we're not going to read off all the names so if you're watching this you can see it if you're listening it's about 30 women I know there are some um questions on some of the exact dating on some of them so it could be that there are a few that were not married before DNC 132 but we have about 30 uh women who we have records that were married before this Revelation was dictated and I think that is shows you immediately that the law of Sarah was never being used so if we want to believe Joseph Smith got this in 1831 he is directly violating this in every one of his relationships Alicia I almost want you to read some of those names because it's almost like they deserve to be named right yeah all right Steve how fast you can go yeah I mean the ones that stand out to me Lucy Walker because I've read her journal entries um if any of our listeners haven't had an opportunity to read some of the journal entries of these women um I'm absolutely not take I think whatever consensual relationship that you're in as an adult is fine with me what we're talking about here the problem isn't polygamy the problem is coercion and power and when we look at the journal entries of specifically Helen Mark Kimball and Lucy Walker Lucy Walker who had lost her mother and she was making this decision to go into this plurality with the promise that she would be with her family for eternity and that um I believe it was Lucy Walker that um maybe one of you can correct me if I'm wrong here that the Gates of Heaven would be closed to her if she declined and she's got her deceased mother she's got all these siblings and it's just so painful to see that these decisions were not being made out of agency these decisions were being made under power and coercion and it is painful to read um Lucy Walker had wished that she could die she wished she would have rather been buried she viewed herself as a human sacrifice Helen Mark Kimball talked about all of the activities that she would no longer that would no longer be available to her and people always argue this idea of like well whether they had sex or not you know we don't have evidence that they had sex even if they didn't have sex he was taking her and pulling her aside removing her from you know Dances and this opportunity to you know socialize and to interact and she was devastated about this absolutely devastated but just remember her parents were also on board for this and they viewed this as like we're gonna get to be with Joseph Smith in the next life so this is like for the parents this is like a really big thing for their daughter to be sealed of the Prophet Joseph Smith and it's just so painful to read and if you haven't had an opportunity there's not journal entries for everyone but for those two in particular Lucy Walker and Helen Mark Kimball read their words listen to what this experience was like for them going into this um this plurality it was very painful it was a very very dark time in Mormon history I think whether you're a Believer or not I think we can all agree that this was a very dark time in Mormon history I'll just add my two cents as well I want to give a shout out to Todd Compton's uh book in sacred loneliness and there's a Mormon stories episode with Todd Compton he's the one that did the work to kind of uh write the the history of all of Joseph Smith's plural wives it's a great book um and it's a great Mormon stories episode it's a classic it's in the first 30 episodes I'm pretty sure of 1700 or whatever and uh also a shout out to Lindsey Hansen Parks here polygamy episode which at least in its original form just went through each of Joseph Smith's plural wives and talked about you know the plural marriages in the history um I'll you know I'll say of course Fanny Alger if we're looking at this list Fannie Alger was the adulterous affair she was a a domestic helper in the home so there's coercion there um you know we we can't forget uh um you know uh sorry Helen Mark Kimball who is 14 years old and she was threatened not only you know with Dan Nation as I understand it but promised that her family would all be saved um if she if she submitted and then of course there's mirinda Nancy Johnson Hyde I believe and that's the one whose husband was sent off on a mission and then she was propositioned but but the main point of all of this if just not to lose kind of the main point is that all of these marriages uh were entered into without Emma's consent so they were all all these marriages were violations of the law of Sarah because Emma was not consulted first right is that the point Mike yeah that's it it's just to show the names I mean uh Alicia did a good job I think just outlining that it's not these you know and I feel I actually now that I you know look at it it is you should not have a list of names because as you mentioned each of one of those women have their own story but for the purposes of this this particular episode it's just to show that these are all the women he had entered into relationships with before he dictates this Revelation and many of them would have been before um the law of Sarah was likely ever thought up by Joseph because that seems to be a creation that he comes up with um pretty much on the spot which we'll get into in a few slides as to how you can kind of show that I also need to take this time to mention something that that viewers and listeners often remind me of there's no such thing as marriage with a 14 year old you know if it's if it's a minor and especially if there's coercion with the man and who has superpowers it's not marriage it's either assault or rape or maybe some other stronger word but you can't really call it marriage when it involves a 14 or a 15 year old and a man who's claiming to have the power of God yeah the power of God part and the thing is there were women there were girls that got married when they were 14 or 15 back then it's just they'd be married to someone maybe who was 20. not I think he was 37 at that time or 38 36 somewhere in there so when you're over double their age saying and you're getting the consent of the girl because you're claiming it's through a divine power I think that is where you start to see just a lot of abuse and Alicia said it earlier a lot of people say well he didn't have sex with her we don't know there's no evidence that he did that doesn't mean he didn't they were married they could have um under the the laws of dnc-132 they should have um but it doesn't matter because as Alicia said that it's still being used to control these women to control what they can do who they can talk to who they you know it takes away their chance a true love it takes away their chance at right being able to find a husband for attorney that they want to spend an attorney with not some old guy who claims older guy who claims I need you because God told me yeah exactly any final thought on that Alicia I just I wish I could remember which one of those was 12 years old she was approached by Joseph Smith and told that she would be I want to say it was like it was yeah yeah so she's 12 years old she's moved with her family and and I guess Joseph Smith is in the home and says to her um you will be one of my plural wives so just think that through yeah she's 12. yeah and we covered that in the last episode and I will say I don't believe that that quote is true I think she's trying to retrofit um this early Revelation in so that it makes more sense for the church because I think they do uh are aware of the fact that they need to get it in before Fanny Alger um but the fact is you like you had mentioned earlier it's like the either or thing either you got to believe that Joseph Smith is is kind of you know propositioning a propositioning a 12 year old or that these women and the church itself are willing to make up stories after the fact to retrofit back in and neither one of them is a real good outcome yeah got it yeah yeah good Insight great insight all right well let's go to the next slide which is that women are given to men to make babies yeah and I know that title sounds kind of abrasive but let's just read the verse so it says but if one or either of the ten versions after she is a spouse shall be with another man she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the Earth according to my commandment and to fulfill the promise which was given by my father before the foundation of the world and for their exaltation in the Eternal Worlds that they may bear The Souls of men for Heron is the work of my father continued that he may be glorified and so they're telling every woman in the church that what they have to look forward to for attorney is you are given to men to basically be Eternal baby making machines um to one man and no one else so that you can glorify two men your husband and God and so I know that sounds abrasive but just read it they're telling you that you are given given to a man and that your job is to replenish the Earth which is going to be these planets you're going to create is you know as God's and was it priestesses or whatever let me just right there let's let Alicia weigh in on that yes I just think it's laughable that this is heaven to someone this is someone's idea of Heaven I mean if this is contrived uh this is like someone's idea of Heaven I don't know anyone that would agree that this was an idea of Heaven that would be suitable for anyone that we're just going to make babies for eternity I mean I I don't think my husband would want that so I just think it's funny to think about this like who actually who actually thinks this sounds like heaven and um to the extent that if you don't even make it to the highest level you won't even need the reproductive parts right I mean it's just anyway we just have to laugh and I'll I'll refer people to the the there's a cartoon um well there's a there's a movie that was released in the 80s called the godmakers that was created by Ed Decker who I've interviewed on Mormon stories and there's a cartoon that was like created you know by I think the the makers of Hanna-Barbera cartoons but it basically just shows the the vision of DNC 132 um Illustrated through cartoon in the in the heavens where where in fact women end up becoming baby making machines of making gazillions and gazillions of spirit children babies and that's that's what you know it all comes from from the scripture so we don't need to belabor the point but yeah well and it's considered anti-mormon Doctrine I mean that that that film if you want to call it is considered anti-mormon Doctrine and it literally comes out of our Doctrine yeah yeah I mean I can't speak to it specifically I've actually never watched it but it's in there and so people get really upset when you say oh we're not going to have sex forever and I guess you could make the argument in DNC 132 that you're given to replenish this Earth but there have been so many teachings that tell you that there's Eternal progression and that that's what you're going to be you're gonna be populating planets it's just it's one of those things that probably sound sounded good at the time and now you look at it it just seems very cartoonish so the church is like oh I don't know we teach that it's like but you did and so like I talked about earlier when you talk about Patrick Mason saying he doesn't defend DNC 132 there are implications to trying to say we don't believe in certain things that are Doctrine and those are implications that are not ones they want to deal with yep all right let's go back to a theme we can probably cover this quickly that women must accept polygamy or be destroyed yeah and so this one is just another kind of rehash it does feel sometimes like when Joseph is orally dictating these he repeats himself a lot which I guess um is going to happen when you're doing that but it says and again verily verily I say unto you if any man have a wife who holds the keys of his 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 so it's just very simple every woman in the church today needs to understand this you will either accept your husband's polygamous Brides in this life or the next or you will be destroyed as you watch your husband do it anyway and it just isn't this awful convenient for all men um in this revelation yeah it is all right well let's jump to the next slide if it's okay uh God revokes the law of Sarah just four verses after creating it yeah and so this one's interesting because four verses earlier we talked about lost Sarah so now in verse 65 it says therefore it shall be lawful in me if she received 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 a 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 so first of all I'm putting this in all caps God never commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife this is Joseph Smith completely screwing up Biblical history in order to justify what he's doing he's misusing the Bible because he needs to rationalize his decisions and his actions second this is exactly what you expect to see from an orally dictated scripture we talked about this in the Book of Mormon when Joseph Smith would make mistakes in the text of the Book of Mormon and then he'd either fix it immediately or like a verse or two later and we read a bunch of those um in the episode about Book of Mormon authorship this is a perfect example because in verse 61 Joseph Smith's going to create the law of Sarah and now he's orally dictating this and he's going to realize oh frick I just gave Emma Smith my wife the ultimate out she can tell me no and I am screwed and so all of a sudden he's going to have to fix that four verses later in the voice of God because otherwise Joseph Smith could be stopped deadness tracks by Emma because he wrote it in the voice of God and so this is God changing his mind four verses later and I think this is a really good tell um that Joseph Smith is kind of writing this as he goes this is not something he memorized 13 or 14 years earlier or 12 years earlier and again isn't it amazing that not only does women have to accept their husbands having sex with other women but if she refuses to accept this she is the one that becomes a transgressor in the eyes of God so it's just this is an amazing verse to me I want to know if Joseph Smith ever used the word Frick but Alicia let's hear let's hear your reaction and then I have a quick reaction I just had to look this up because it's actually in the same section that God says that he is not a god of confusion yeah there's that yeah that is confusing I mean my that's a great point and my point was what what does it mean to tell Emma you get to choose Joseph's subsequent wives you get to approve them and then to say but if you don't approve them Joseph gets to have them anyway like you could say it allows Emma the chance to show her obedience but what what type of God is that what type of consent is that to say I give you the choice but if you don't approve we're doing it anyway okay just I mean like again just imagine going to your wife and being like hey baby so here's the deal I want to marry and have sex with Mary she is uh super pure and virtuous and you have two choices you can either accept this marriage and allow me to go over there and spend some nights with her or God's Gonna destroy you and I'm gonna go down there and do it anyways just just make your decision baby but just know I love you like Alicia sounds facetious that's what it is let's hear Alicia's reaction I'm trying not to laugh because when we put it into modern context it really is so ridiculous like the absurdity is funny um but I'm trying not to laugh because I really am trying to hold space for the fact that this was reality for Emma and I just can't imagine what this would have been like and then I start to go through the idea of like did she even have an option for a divorce where would she have gone at this point and I we haven't really talked about this much but the implications of her destruction I mean what is if Joseph Smith is the author of this and not God um like what are the implications of that like what is he really trying to say is he threatening her like does she really have nowhere to go because at this point she feels that her life is in danger I think based on this text from 132 we have every reason to believe that this may have been an act actual threat to Emma from Joseph Smith I don't think it's far-fetched when you're using this kind of language about destruction and if you don't accept it it is a really just an ugly an ugly thing yeah I mean I've heard some people say that um this is when Joseph is getting really into masonry and um you know and masonry people do you know kind of disappear and there's a lot of actual you know violent penalties as we know from the temple ceremony um but you know I think either way it's like if if Emma does believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet I think there's indications to say that she really did believe it um I think the threat of Eternal damnation Eternal destruction is very powerful and again it's also something that Joseph doesn't have to produce you can make promises and you can make threats for eternity that you never have to to actually deliver on but it still sends the message it's like um we'll talk about the happiness letter a lot but it's kind of like a mob thing like wouldn't it be a shame if all these things happen to you in the afterlife um and and to my earlier example of asking your wife to take a you know to say a second wife I'm not trying to make fun of it I'm saying that you need to put this Doctrine into practice to understand what every woman in the church is subjected to still today for eternity so so um yeah it does sound funny when you sit there and go I want to go marry uh you know take a second wife marry down the street and you have two choices to accept it or be destroyed by God as I do it anyways but that is what the doctrine says so we need to stop sometimes a church wants to kind of gloss over this and not actually look at how this the implications and the practice of it and I think that's something we have to do in order to better understand how this still hovers over every member of the church today couldn't agree more yeah I think putting it into contextualizing it into like modern terms is really actually important that we do that it is it may sound funny but this is the reality of it so looking at it that way I think is really important yeah like if if someone hears me say that and they go why are you mocking my beliefs I would say if you find that to be mocking then you need to revisit what those beliefs are because I am strictly speaking as to how this works in in practice in reality and if that bothers you that's not me that's not me that's bothering it's the fact that that is what your beliefs are that you didn't know before because I would have never have known that as an active member um and to think about I I cannot picture polygamy was the thing that was always bothering me as a convert because I mentioned this last episode so I don't need to rehash all but my wife and I started dating when we were in high school and so you're always jealous of when you're out with other groups of friends that I know that's super normal high school stuff but the thought of then all of a sudden you join this church and you hear about polygamy and I'm like I cannot picture putting my wife through that knowing how when we were in high school we'd get jealous of each other just being with other groups of people for a long period of time or something to put my wife through this this idea that she has to then watch as I leave the house and go spend the night somewhere else or knowing that I'm driving some other woman around town would kill her and so to think that this stuff uh would still be in the attorneys was what really kind of kept me from being able to fully accept a lot of the teaching in the church and and so that's why I think you need to put this into reality because this is what every woman is going to be subjected to into the attorneys if you believe what the church created in these scriptures amen I'm going to add just as an aside that that this this is something that believing Mormons just completely reject but I think there are certain teachings that that should be mandatory not just not just for every investigator to the church but for for every let's just say child or youth in the church and you know an example would be you know how many Africans or African-Americans who have black skin were baptized into the Mormon Church without being taught that the church taught the dark skin was a curse from Cain that Mormon scriptures teach the dark skin is a curse from Cain and of a product of you know wickedness in the pre-existence how many tens or hundreds of thousands of of Africans or African-Americans have been baptized in the church and then they found out that this was the church's teaching and the church's practice for you know 150 years that's unconscionable right and I think this this DNC 132 entire I don't know is exit Jesus the right word like this entire uh analysis that we're doing should be mandatory teaching not just for every investigator but for every teenager because it's so comprehensively disturbing and revolting that everybody deserves is just a matter of basic informed consent everybody deserves to know this before they decide to sign up because again DNC 132 as we're going to say in a couple more slides again is still Canon it's still Mormon scripture it's still on the books and it's still being practiced but you can you can reach Mormon adulthood and in some odd way have never actually read what this DNC 132 is saying it should be mandatory for all members and for all investigators any any disagreement there no well not only do I agree I mean look at what the actual approaches in instead of instead of that option it's anyone who talks about it is considered anti-mormon oh they're talking about anti-mormon stuff again like just literally talking about the doctrine as it's written is considered anti-mormon yeah yep yeah yeah yeah if you're telling people to avoid looking at the church's teachings at face value then you've got a problem and we see that over and over again as we've been going through all these episodes it's like you you talk about it at face value and they're like oh my goodness it's anti-mormon it's like no I'm literally just talking about what is still Canon and to your point John the fact is most people don't know the specifics those later verses because they just don't teach them like Mike is this something you would have liked would you have liked to had you know the missionaries more missionaries they'll do six discussions would you have wanted a seventh discussion before you joined the church which was hey Mike hey there's this there's this one teaching that's really you know challenging for a lot of Mormons uh and non-mormons so let's just spend our seventh missionary discussion just reading DNC 132 just so that you know what you're really signing up for Mike would you have value that and would that have made a difference for you before you decided to give your life 10 of your income 10 you know so much of your time and your Eternal commitment in your your children to the church would you have liked to know that before you made the decision to get baptized yes but as you basically pointed out had they done that seventh discussion I never joined and I'm not going to do all those things and I also think that not only should that be part of the uh preach my gospel but that should be part of the temple prep class because this is what you're going into the temple to basically agree to and as we've talked about over and over again oftentimes in the church they have the milk before meat thing and you're agreeing to things you don't really understand and in this case most people are agreeing into this thinking the celestial marriage is like the first what 20 or 30 verses whatever it is and then they leave out the rest which you're also agreeing to and I think you know if you're born in the church you might not know these specifics just as I didn't know as a convert and so yeah I think it should be in the missionary discussions I also think it should be in the temple prep class yeah yep all right well we've got some closing Point slides kind of analyzing but we've got a final slide that's kind of giving this is the final like textual analysis we're doing before we get to some summary points is that right yeah so this is the final one before we do just some quick apologetics but um this is verse 66 and it just says and now it's pertaining to this law verily verily I say unto you I will reveal more unto you Hereafter therefore let this suffice suffice for the present behold I am Alpha and Omega amen and so this is just like I said it's not terribly noteworthy it's just noting that Joseph Smith is clearly aware that the Implement implementation of polygamy is causing a lot of issues and by leaving the Revelation more open-ended it really gives him a lot more freedom to go in and change add or subtract as needs arise especially given how Emma might react but I just think it's noteworthy that that it's 2022 and no further polygamy Revelation ever came other than to take it away yeah right and yeah yeah and it didn't come as a oh go ahead at least oh I'm sorry I literally have the same note here because I do think it's notable because we haven't had any we had initially these big you know interesting it's just the Grandeur of these early Revelations and it's kind of disappeared but the flds still do have those big Revelations that change the way that their people eat and they're what they're allowed to play with and their marriage and all that kind of thing so it's interesting to look at that deviation how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't seem to have these big Revelations anymore like they did in the beginning days but flds have and we can see how that's turned out not to mention Deborah Snuffer who also has his own Revelations like yeah all sorts of conservative Mormons are still getting Revelations but not the LDS church yeah yeah exactly so Mike you do an analysis of ways that Joseph Smith violates his own Revelation in DNC 132 this is kind of a summative point right yeah we could go through this quick so it's just to say that Joseph Smith is going to violate almost every aspect of DNC 132 which is stunning given that the church is going to claim that Joseph Smith knew of this since 1831 and so as we've mentioned polyandry directly violates CNC 132 because they would not be virgins at the time of marriage and as we talked about the dictionary is very clear from 1828 that a version is someone who did not previously have carnal knowledge of men which would mean sex it also directly violates dnc-132 as the women who then would live with their legal husbands would be in violation of it because they would then be with a man that they were not bound to by the new and Everlasting Covenant um Joseph Smith is going to deed land to Emma on the very same day that God tells him not to deed Emma any land and anyways we just talked about the law of Sarah is violated by Joseph Smith repeatedly dozens of times before he dictates DNC 132 which is likely why he's going to Nuke that just a few verses later I think once he realizes the power that would give to a woman if the law of Sarah was up was going to be upheld without that um you know removal four verses later I think we've made this point sufficiently he violates you know the 1835 DNC 101 which forbids polygamy yeah right so that's violating scripture not to mention the Book of Mormon scripture that also denounces polygamy yes exactly right yeah it's violating all the other scriptures along with violating the the exact Revelation he's dictating in 1843. yeah like what's the value of Revelation in scripture if it's just so you know viable yes it is I mean this just shows that he's writing this in 1843 after he's already violated all these points and then you kind of look at it and you're like is it because he doesn't know the Eman like Emma probably doesn't know about a lot of this stuff so maybe because he's writing this Revelation to Emma he doesn't realize she's going to know he's already violating it but for us today we can look at that and go you're literally violating all these rules you're setting forth which makes no sense if this is truly from God there's also this really interesting apologetics um stance that's not totally common but there are a lot a lot of people that I've just discovered talking to believing members who just think that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet and that's why he was breaking all these rules and that he had just gone sideways and that maybe even polygamy was a deviation from God's you know um Direction and so I think this is really interesting a really interesting stance because it is like well then why is this still canonized scripture that the church accepts you know so it's just kind of like how do you you can't you can't hold both you can't because then you'd go well if Joseph was a fallen Prophet then shouldn't the future prophets have known uh which parts were were Doctrine which weren't because remember this is not going to be canonized until what the 1870s so clearly God would have gone to one of them be like guys Joseph went off the rails but we are not going to put that in the doctrine because this is this was something he did we need to stop it but instead they go Full Throttle saying that it's from God and Brigham Young says you can't enter Heaven if you're not what I forgot the phrase if you're not a believer in polygamy so I mean it goes the opposite way so I I do know that apologetic exists a lot but I also would then say you know we talk about the implications a lot it's like what are the implications of that because everything in the church flows throughout the idea that this is Doctrine because none of the other prophets are aware that it's all that it is you know made up and in Patrick Mason's defense and people like him he has another option somewhere between everything Joseph said was was of God and Joseph was a fallen prophet he literally says I can't I can't conclude that Joseph became a fallen Prophet because he still likes the king father discourse that came out of Nauvoo after a lot of this polygamy happened so so the way Patrick and the way I dealt with this back when I was still a Believer is is that God has a really low bar for His prophets the prophets can be racist prophets can be sexist prophets can be homophobic prophets can can even murder like in the case of Moses Moses murdered I think uh you know one of his slave masters or slave drivers and Noah got drunk and Patrick would say that the Bible allows for deeply flawed men to still be Prophets yeah and you know that's fine if people won't if that's how people view it that's we have no condemnation of that now we come to my least favorite part of your episodes Mike which is where we give and I think it's an important part it's just my least favorite it's where we give acknowledgment to horribly flawed uh terribly reasoned justifications for uh all this bad bad behavior where we talk about Mormon apologetics so let's talk about the first one which is um that God wasn't specific enough yeah and this is directly from the church's gospel topics essay where they say although the Lord commanded the adoption and later the cessation of plural marriage in the latter days he did not give exact instructions on how to obey the commandment and I just want to point out right off the bat that plural marriage is not over it is still the doctrine of the church um as you mentioned earlier in the episode John Russell on Nelson and Alan H Oaks are both Eternal polygamists they're both sealed to multiple women and they absolutely believe they will be with both of them for the eternity they can populate worlds with them that's just that's just a fact and um the manifestos that kind of end of polygamy are often referred to as inspired declarations They Don't Really call them Revelations um in the same way that they call DNC 132 because it's not overriding DNC 132 it's just a declaration to end it for now and so um I just want to get that out of the way but what I do want to do is go through these next uh I think there's two slides just to show how clear God is actually being in this Revelation when he gives instructions yeah Gordon B Hinckley when he was interviewed by Larry King I think it's an important point to reference that Larry King calls you know Gordman Hinckley in the Mormon church out on polygamy and I think Gordon me Hinckley refers to it as the Fleck a little Fleck of History yeah and I think he says hey we don't practice it anymore and that's I think that's fundamentally I mean it's clever and it's kind of humorous and and maybe charismatic or or even Savvy but it's not honest to just dismiss polygamy as a Fleck of history that we're no longer practicing Alicia how do you feel about that uh yeah I would definitely agree I mean again I know I feel like I just keep repeating the same point but it's still in our Scriptures it still applies today we have eternally polygamy um already existing and I think to just gloss over it like that is just not honest yeah it's not honest it's not it's not what we want our prophets to be doing all right the next slide is God tells us that DNC 132 is clear and from a house of order yeah and so I just want to read this because this is kind of going to answer that apologetic that God's not clear so you know God in DNC 132 as Alicia point out earlier behold mine house is a house of order saith the Lord God and not a house of confusion so God is saying right off the bat I am not confusing here I'm being pretty strict and so I'm going to summarize some of the verses so these next two slides kind of just go over that so um verse 15 says that marriage is not performed in the new and Everlasting Covenant will end at death making all marriages on Earth null and void except the ones performed by Joseph Smith and the church verse 41 says if a woman enters into the new and Everlasting Covenant and then be with another man she has committed committed adultery and will be destroyed as I said this is not going to end well for polyandrous wives verse 44 says if a woman is faithful but the husband breaks The Vow then the woman will be given to another who is pure and only Joseph holds the power to do that verse 51 says Emma is not allowed to partake of the offer which Joseph made to her which was either to take an additional husband or to offer divorce instead DNC 132 rescinds it calling it an abrahamic test and go to the next slide we'll just read through all these real quick verse 54 um go back one there go verse 54 says Michelle abiding cleave to Joseph Smith but she does not accept Joseph's polygamy she'll be destroyed verse 57 says Joseph should not put any of his property out of his hands for Satan seeketh to destroy verses 61 and 62 says men are only allowed to marry virgins Mia Joseph is going to marry 11 women who are already married to other men verse 61 says that men must con gain the consent of the first wife although four verses later in 65 they take that away verse 63 says the Commandment is to take virgins and replenish and multiply the Earth but if those versions be with another man they'll be destroyed um again the space clear that women are to be given to men which is a theme but just to say that all of those verses are actually pretty clear on how to um live by this Rule and so to say that God wasn't wasn't very clear in the essay I think overlooks the fact that DNC the 3132 actually includes a lot of rules it's just the church doesn't really want to tell the members uh what those rules are because of the fact that Joseph Smith is going to break them yeah yeah yeah the that's a great example of how specific uh God can get and the DNC is full of super specific it's like go and take the copyright and go to Canada and sell the copyright and Martin Harris give Joseph all your money give him whatever he wants like like you really just can't claim that you know that God was just too vague in general about polygamy it was really clear and explicit it was I mean it's almost like two clear points you know to talk about a man a spouse a virgin they have 10 others I mean it's very clear and yet the church wants to go oh he didn't really know how to do it it's like no I mean if that's not clear I don't know what is you know I think that's where it gets down to that's a great great point all right let's do the next slide which is the idea that Joseph had to be threatened with an angel in a flaming sword and that he almost wanted to die because it was so horrific for him to have to sleep with all these women Joseph The Reluctant polygamist yeah and so this is uh from the essay as well it says when God commands a difficult task he sometimes sends additional Messengers to encourage his people to obey consistent with this pattern Joseph told Associates that an angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward during the third and final appearance the angel came with a drawn sword threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the Commandment fully and as we mentioned earlier Joseph Smith is one that wants to know about polygamy he literally puts in the first verse verily thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to no one understand where an eye the Lord Justified my servants um as having wives in concubines so this is basically the church is saying Joseph didn't really want to do this but God was really the one that just was doing it and but then DNC 132 is the exact opposite it's God saying since you asked me why they had wives and concubines I'm going to tell you and I feel like that alone should tell you that those two statements cannot be reconciled in a way that's going to be Faith promoting also you already referenced the happiness letter and Joseph's saying hey if you have a desire of your heart God can make you happy and give you what you need and that was all in the context of Joseph trying to persuade Nancy Rigdon to to have sex with him and so clearly this reluctant polygamous thing just doesn't add up Joseph wanted to have sex with teenage girls I think the evidence is undeniable Alicia what's your take yeah well I just keep thinking about this group of people that believe that Joseph Smith Never practiced polygamy yeah and there is this discrepancy between Doctrine and Covenants 132 and sections of the Book of Mormon at least one section of the Book of Mormon um and I think that we have enough evidence that we can be confident in knowing that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy so I don't know then it makes me think about the um the Book of Mormon and where that I don't know it's just it's a you know these are this is problematic yeah that's just it yeah yeah who is going to believe that a 38 year old man is reluctant to be able to have sex with 30 women half of them being teenagers like who's buying that you know and I heard someone make this this kind of joke once and it's not it's going to come off as abrasive but the angel we'll go over the angel with the drawing sword story in the next episode but the angel with the drawn sword story is almost like Joseph Smith giving um like you know a drug to a woman to make her submit because if God really wanted this to happen he would have sent the angel to the women yeah but instead Joseph Smith is going to bring the story but he's not going to bring the story up until the women say no so once they say no this is how he's going to use the story to pressure them and so to me the church using that to say is reluctant is not really true because he's using that story to pressure the women after they've said no he was truly reluctant those stories of the angel with the drawn sword would come long before he proposed to anyone but instead they're coming after he proposes to women who say no and he uses that to get them to submit to his proposal and so I feel like the essay is being dishonest there because it's trying to make it sound like the angel came to Joseph completely Uninvited but the reality is the Angel only came through Joseph to the you know in the story to these women after they said no it's a much different story than the church portrays in the essay Alicia what's your take on the psychology of that of like oh oh Nancy God's gonna kill me if you don't let me have sex with you what's your take on the psychology of that yeah so I was just gonna say one thing that occurred to me early on during my deconstruction was that Joseph Smith is blaming God on his bad behavior I mean that's the other way I don't know if these members could sort of embrace that if you are a faithful person and you feel like you've had um you know a lifelong relationship with God through prayer is this something that you can imagine God commanding Joseph to do and if not can you imagine that he's actually blaming this horrible horrible behavior on Jesus on God and I think when you think about it that way it just really reconceptualizes it that um you actually can feel defensive I mean especially people who identify as Christians that like that's really offensive that he's blaming God you know on all this bad behavior and that's what he turns to every single time oh I you know I didn't want to but and that's the popular apologetic stance on it is it like well he didn't want to God was commanding him to do this well in my view he's essentially blaming God yeah yeah and a lot of Christians that I talk to feel like they're mad at the Mormon church for ruining God for for so many people because if this is how God behaves so many Mormons leave the church and become agnostics and atheists which there's nothing wrong with that but my Christian friends don't like it um yeah all right uh let's go to the next slide uh which is that the Revelation almost feels like two revelations in one and so one of the Apologetics I talked about this earlier is they'll say that the early part of the Revelation is strictly monogamous marriage and then the second part is plural marriage and they try to separate the two because obviously the fact that the new and Everlasting Covenant has the words Everlasting in it uh should tell you that it should not have ended and so they'll say that it's really two revelations in one the first one is about Celestial marriage which is monogamous the second part is about plural marriage to Emma and I just I feel like we've talked about this in previous episodes but um and we were going to cover this a lot in the happiness letter but Joseph Smith is very gifted at using flowerly a flowery language before dropping the threats to people and so this Revelation would not be very impactful to Emma if Joseph starts in the second half where he's threatening or non-stop he has to use biblical justification to explain why he's having all of these marriages uh all these marriages outside of his legal marriage and so of course Joseph is going to not really touch upon polygamy earlier because he needs to effectively recreate the marriage system as we talked about by creating the problem to sell you a solution but he has to do that before then he drops the Hammer with polygamy and I feel like this apologetic would be outright rejected by every single early member and leader of the church because they considered new and Everlasting Covenant to mean polygamy there's just no Lindsey Hansen Park talks about this in a lot of her podcasts there's no way to separate that anything not Alicia I I gotta think through that one that's yeah yeah all right well um so that takes us to we've got four slides left I think so those of you who are with us were we're probably gonna bump up to three hours so we appreciate your endurance but I think everything every slide has been meaningful to me at least so so the next slide is what the church cites from DNC 132 in the 2022 come follow me Manuel yeah so this is something we talked about this earlier about how the church does not teach members the whole DNC 132 and they cherry pick verses to make it sound like it's strictly about a Celestial marriage then they'll pick out one or two to try to justify plugman because of course we know about that and so um as a convert as we talked about earlier we never once looked at DNC 132 in any death beyond the a few verses to talk about ceilings and so we I looked at the 2012 it's actually the 2021 come follow me manual since last year was on the DNC here are the verses that are referred to in any way in the entire lesson verses one and two seven thirteen fifteen through 19 13-25 29 through 40 and number 50. and can I can I just ask you Mike do do any of those verses contain the word virgin I'm just curious I don't think do any of them contain the word destruction I don't I actually I don't think that yeah I don't think they do because I think all of that comes after 40. and um and that's what I was actually kind of curious because I saw verse 50 was referenced in the lesson I thought okay well that's getting into the the interesting part of it but uh when they cite verse 50 they use it to tell members um that those who participated in polygamy should Inspire us when we're asked to make our own sacrifices and obedience and so they're using um the horrific things that the women had to go through at that time to basically say if they could do it then you can clearly do what you're being asked to do for the church today and so um you know like I said the the cited verses that the church is going to use and it's come follow me manual and remember this is all about the DNC this is not this should include everything in the in the in the Revelation especially the fact that this is still Doctrine um but it ends right as Joseph Smith is about to begin the specifics on polygamy as well as like you said all the explicit threats of Destruction not just to Emma but to any woman um who does not accept polygamy for eternity and and it's almost as if the church doesn't want their members to see it I mean of course the church doesn't want their members to read it and in fact that's where we kind of began most members don't see it they're so you know there's so much Mormon scripture they just never get around to it especially because the manuals specifically divert people away from it yeah and you know putting all joking aside one of the core missions of Mormon stories podcasts in the open storage Foundation is around this idea of informed consent that people deserve to know what they're believing what they're committing their lives to what they're committing 10 of their income to what they're committing two years of missionary service to what they're getting you know what understandings they're getting married under when they make decisions about career and education and children uh they deserve to know what they're getting into and when the church and the Mormon church just objectively has 200 years of hiding information from its members from the general public and or whitewashing or or massaging its history so that people won't really understand what what it really believes and what it really teaches and it's just fundamentally coercive and dishonest Alicia what do you what do you have to say well I love that John and Mike I love that you worked in the come follow me approach because think about this if you are a Sunday school teacher and this is what you're teaching you know your primary goal is to keep it Faith promoting right so what are you going to do with these topics you're going to take um micro angle and you're going to create a tangent to get people sharing things that are Faith promoting so what are you going to talk about you're going to talk about eternal families you're going to talk about you know deceased loved ones you're going to put you know there's going to be a lot of elevation emotion conversation going on there so that you can walk away from 132 feeling like it was Faith promoting there's not a dissection of the text there aren't cross-references to past Revelations you know this kind of critical lens isn't used during a Sunday school lesson plain and simple and it and it just really should all right uh We've made this point uh but let's just uh let's make sure we list it as as we come to a close DNC 132 is still the doctrine of the church and actually if you're okay I want to do uh two things really quick one is you had mentioned earlier about um Gordon B Hinckley calling polygamy a little uh Fleck of History yeah and I wanted to look it up because I remember he had to talk about polygamy there and it was controversial so actually what he said about the flicks of History was he was being asked about why the church uh banned members with black skin from the priesthood into that he said quit worrying about those little flicks of History okay so that I took that out of context and that's almost worse to be honest to say that banning people black skin is a little flick of history but for polygamy during that same interview he said I condemn it yes as a practice because I think it is not doctrinal it is not legal and this church takes the position that we will abide by the law and so he's doing that thing where he says one thing to Larry King and then you know obviously to the church you give a little wink and a nod to say yeah you know academics it's not doctrinal but it's in DNC 132 so that is uh Gordon B Hinckley kind of doing that kind of double speak where he's trying to carefully say we don't practice it to Larry King while in reality it's absolutely doctrinal it's in it's in the DNC as we've talked about this whole episode yeah how can he condemn it like that make makes no sense to condemn it yeah and so any and you know any means condemns the current practice of it but he doesn't say that it's just it's deceptive it's very dishonest Alicia I think it was John Larson that said it's like one of the greatest um examples of propaganda watching how the church has reframed the term new and Everlasting Covenant or Celestial marriage um that it's like still there and now members of the church just only think of that as meaning like Temple marriage an eternal family a Celestial marriage and not realizing that for decades these terms were specifically plurality that is explicitly what they referred to so I loved that quote that it's just been like this amazing work of propaganda that the church has reworked those terms so that members can read it and just think we're talking about Temple marriage yeah it's 100 true and that's why we've talked in a lot of these episodes about how the church redefines their own scriptures that are done at face value we talked about with the curse of dark skin and in this case they have reworked the new and Everlasting Covenant to be monogamous marriage Celestial marriage and but they're the same thing in and so um you know again for Gordon to say it's not doctrinal is an outright lie because if that were true DNC 132 would not be canonized so yeah um I think that's almost worse than what John said because it's it's very dishonest um but yeah as we talked about you know the reality is that this is still the doctrine of the church and so the church claims they no longer practice polygamy and that is just not true so both Russell Nelson and down Oaks are Eternal polygamous they both chose to marry women that were not previously sealed which means they will have both lives for eternity and I can't look into Nelson and oaks's heads to say did they purposefully pick out a woman that wasn't sealed but I would say if you're a man in the church and your first wife dies you're going to probably want to look for a woman who is not previously sealed because then she's yours for eternity and I think that's a real really also kind of a damaging practice within the church too because as you could see Russell Nelson down Oaks both took a woman and as they were already pretty old um who would be able to be sealed to them and be you know given unto them for eternity and so um you know as we've been talking about if you're wondering why this bothers so many women today it's because this is Doctrine and if you're wondering why the church doesn't cite the verses in DNC 132 that are horrific to many people it's because it's still a doctrine of the church and and it that's really what it comes down to yeah absolutely and this takes us to uh the next slide which is uh polygamist honestly polygamist down H Oaks uh joking about polygamy and I'm gonna I want to make sure we give Alicia the first chance to respond to this video but Mike what do you want to say to set it up two or three years ago and it's down Oaks he's addressing a woman who had sent him a letter because she's afraid of what the Eternal implications are for polygamy and remember that Dallin Oaks is someone who is already an eternal polygamous he's already married to a second wife so he knows exactly what this situation is and now listen to how not only how he's going to kind of respond to her worry but listen to how the members of the church laugh at her fears and this is Dominic speaking at a at an LDS General Conference which Mormons take is is being equivalent to God speaking yes to them a letter I received some time ago introduces the subject of my talk the writer was contemplating a temple marriage to a man whose Eternal companion had died she would be a second wife she asked this question would she be able to have her own house in the next life or would she have to live with her husband and his first wife [Laughter] I just told her to trust the Lord all right Alicia we want to let you have first uh first reaction to that I mean is he's trying to be funny a little bit right he's trying to be winning just incredibly dismissive and belittling to this idea which is just so incredibly damaging to the sisters of the church to the women of the church um I take this Doctrine from 132 as having long-term consequences this is not just a joke about property or kitchens or sharing household duties these are serious serious implications here that we see in 132 and I would argue that they are still threaded throughout our culture um I would argue that this position of um God you know positioning Emma into uh submission to her husband's servitude you could say to her husband I would say that this has serious consequences and we don't know what goes on in the walls of people's homes but I would guess that this has consequences that maybe none of us here are even aware of people who take this Doctrine really seriously so just making light of it and then to hear the audience just kind of humored by it I think is really sad and it's really dismissive and I think that anyone who is an active member of the church should give consideration to this Doctrine and really ask yourself what this means and what are the consequences and what what are the implications of this on us today and if you believe in the next life what are the implications for the next life and do you really think that that's what God has intended for you as a woman or as a guy yeah and I uh I am going to reference again Carolyn Pearson's amazing book The Ghost of Eternal polygamy along with my interview with her which is also very very good in terms of just how amazing she is she's a real gift to Mormons and she's still a faithful believing Mormon by the way but it's easy for someone raised in the Mormon Church in the 80s and 90s and 2000s and Beyond to just kind of really think that polygamy is a thing of the past well look Carolyn Pearson shares his letters and correspondence and experiences of how polygamy to this day in 2022 continues to torment women and men within the Mormon Church in very real and meaningful and significant and traumatic way ways and I'm not going to be able to do it justice at the end of this episode but I am going to refer everyone to that episode so Mike bring us home what is what are the conclusions we have about DNC 132 and you're muted Mike so you have to unmute yourself yeah so this is our second episode in kind of the the mini series of polygamy episodes and in the greater series that we're doing and we're trying to set the stage now for how Joseph Smith the timeline of how it got implemented and then how the Revelation um impacts what Joseph Smith is going to do within this kind of new plural marriage system and so um the next episodes will kind of take this so I hopefully if you've watched these two it'll make the next ones a lot more helpful to those who are trying to figure all this stuff out and we've highlighted this over and over again but the problems with DNC 132 are are vast and they go beyond just this ethical issue sometimes we get so focused on what Joseph Smith um how he acted with regards to DNC 132 but the thing I just want to point out once more is that he uses this idea that Abraham was commanded into polygamist justification and that is flat out not in the Bible so he is using an incorrect uh Biblical reference to justify a revelation and that is really problematic once you realize that he is using in the voice of God something that didn't happen in order to justify his actions and um this text is written in 1843 uh but a year later in 1842 Joseph Smith is going to write a letter to Nancy Rigdon that's going to follow very similar patterns to DNC 132 with very similar justifications we're going to cover that in the happiness letter episode so these two episodes are almost going to be like a like Sister episodes to each other and just to you know to finish say it's going to get worse from here um as far as you know Comfort level but we needed to establish the timeline we needed to establish the text of DNC 132 so that you can understand as we get into the accounts of Joseph Smith proposing to these women who are if you Revere him as a prophet of God that we could see how coercive and manipulative it can be and how it contradicts his own Revelation from God in DNC 132 so you know like I said we've got three more to go it's going to be a lot more uncomfortable but hopefully by doing these first two episodes we've laid the groundwork so you can better understand as we go forward um kind of what's going on and and what the implications are as Alicia said for the eternity so that people can make those decisions as to do you believe that a loving God would would condone this um or not and and like Alicia said you could do with it what you want but everyone should know this wait did you just say it gets more uncomfortable in future episodes yeah yeah it gets a lot more uncomfortable in future episodes okay well that's interesting yeah yeah it's gonna get worse Alicia you are a lovely brilliant and wise um panelist on this podcast I am so delighted that you joined us you are just like a bright Sunshine of wisdom and truth will you please tell everyone how to find you and your Tick Tock Channel and the good work that you do oh sure okay so faith unraveled is my Tick Tock Channel I actually just started a new tick tock Channel called Soul unravel where I'm talking about my reconstruction process kind of like climbing out of the deconstruction climbing out of the darkness trying to rebuild trying to reconfigure some semblance of spirituality in my life and um doing a lot of things like talking about meditation and basically I'm not really teaching anything as much as I am just sharing my experiment I'm doing right now the artist's way just really trying to get in touch with you know creativity the inner voice and that's kind of the staple of that new platform is just trying to reclaim my inner voice after 41 years of devout believing Mormonism but faith unraveled is probably where most people would be interested to follow me because that's where I talk about deconstruction and I talked about about church history I do talk a lot about polygamy and um yeah it's just a great Community there so I love I love um the ex Mormon community on Tick Tock it's been a really great place healing place for me to connect with people so I love it so much and I'm just going to say I've been I've been working on your Alicia to come on Mormon stories podcast at some point when you're ready when the time is right to tell your story so I'll just put that out as a teaser maybe someday we'll have Alicia in studio if if and when that works for you Alicia yeah it feels like a big move getting up and like telling your whole story but I feel like I'm getting closer so maybe maybe sometime maybe sometime this next year all right well Alicia you're delightful and I hope you'll will you come back will you come back you know what you have been such a huge Monumental part of our family's deconstruction John and I we just appreciate you and the show so much and we're actually donors to the show we just it has been a huge Lifeline for us so I just want to say thank you for that and Mike you are doing incredible work when I saw all of your work that you do for this show I was just blown away so anyway thank you to you both all right thank you so much yeah I may have to drag you back on the show again so we'll see okay okay this was fun no thank you so much yeah that's right in there Frank thanks to everyone who who's watching or listening who made it through three hours thank you so much it's hard to do it we wanted to make sure we covered it in a way that did it justice and hopefully we did in a way that gives a lot more context and hopefully it'll help for the next few episodes as well it was great and Mike again the website's LDS discussions.com the essay for this episode is ldsdiscussions.com polygamy but um Mike you do great work this series is really changing hearts and Minds it's it's educating enlightening people um and uh I just can't thank you so much for your amazing work you you've done more studying and reading and learning and teaching as a convert than than 99.99 of anyone who's ever with Pioneer ancestry who's ever born and born and raised in the church you've you've done amazing work Mike so thank you thanks everybody yep thank you guys so much all right you guys take care uh and uh thanks again to everyone who uh is joined us today on Mormon stories podcast um we want to remind you that the LDS discussion series and I think this is something like episode 25-ish in the series so we've got at least 24 more episodes previously recorded and maybe even 25 or more episodes to come we've put them all in isolated uh you know offerings you can find us on Spotify you can listen to us on Spotify at LDS discussions or on Mormon stories on Spotify or you can watch these videos on LDS discussions on Spotify so that's super cool you can also listen to LDS discussions on the podcast more on the LDS on the Apple podcast app under LDS discussions or under Mormon stories on the Apple podcast app and of course all these videos are available in the Mormon stories podcast of Facebook um YouTube channel and on Facebook the more storage podcast Facebook Channel and there's a playlist on the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel where you can watch uh these episodes there in order as well if you've got a really really really long trip where you want uh to have that time go by really fast so please spread the word please subscribe to us on YouTube uh follow us on all the apps like us uh thumbs up this share it with as many people as you can and then I'll just end by saying that we can only do this with the financial support of you our viewers and listeners many of you uh donate thanks to those who do we lose donors every month for a number of reasons including people just fall on financial hard times or lose interest or whatever so we always need every month new donors to sign up to be able to uh maintain our our services through Mormon stories in the open stories foundation so if you have have it within your heart to give either for yourself or for future Generations you can go to mormasteries.org click on the Donate button at the top of the page sign up to become a monthly donor or a one-time donor all your donations are tax deductible in the U.S we're transparent in our finances and we spend every dollar that we can uh going towards uh the mission of the Open Storage Foundation which is informed consent for Mormons and non-mormons and investigators and for promoting healing and growth for people who are questioning the church supporting transition for those who are questioning the Mormon church and uh providing healing and growth in community for Progressive and post-mormons everywhere so that's what we're doing thanks for the support be kind to each other be loved to each other but be kind to each other love each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stores podcast take care everybody