Dear Praying Friends,
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Doris Hanson, Director,
A Shield and Refuge Ministry |
As this Newsletter was about to be sent to the printer, a couple of interesting events took place.
The first is that two towns in Utah have practicing polygamists as candidates to be Mayor of those towns. We find it interesting and distressing that polygamy is against the law yet self-proclaimed lawbreakers challenge the rule of law by running for public office. One of the candidates is a woman who says that hers is just a lifestyle of convenience and no one can fault her for that. The other candidate is a male who has been very outspoken about challenging Utah laws against polygamy.
We wonder how the voters will react to their candidacy.
The second event was that the FLDS acting leader, Lyle Jeffs, who has been on the run for that past year, and was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, has been captured and arrested. He had been jailed last year during the food stamp fraud investigation and was released on an ankle bracelet in Salt Lake City. He slipped out of the ankle bracelet and fled—and until the day of capture, a year later, no one knew where he was. We await to see if justice will be at work as his case goes to trial. We don’t like to be cynical, but there is little hope that Utah’s prosecutors will do much, if anything to rightly address these two events as Utah’s history of dealing with polygamists clearly shows.
Proverbs 28:4 Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law resist them.
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Polygamy is real. These are only a few if the horrors of many in polygamy who experience these holy terrors every single day of their lives. And to make it all worse, they teach all their members that God is the one who requires the pain, the frugality and the polygamy.
Most who are born and raised in Mormon polygamy groups go to their graves believing that their loyalty to their polygamy group has indebted God to them. They look forward to waking up in heaven and rewarded with the promotion to godhood. They believe that since the beginning—God was a polygamist who begat millions of spirit babies each with the potential of becoming a god in their own right through righteous living and polygamy. They need the truth!!
Colossians 1:13-14 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
God has rescued us, may He use us as POWER TOOLS to help rescue them. We are available to speak to your group about Mormon
polygamy. Just call Doris at 801-649-3103
“This is all so shocking and sad. Thank you for your research and for shining the light where there is so much darkness."
“I sure do greatly appreciate you, my sister in Christ. You are doing a great work for our Lord! God Bless You!”
“All Mormon fundamentalist groups believe the same things the Utah church believes. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are their prophets. Joseph’s invented gospel is the same in every group.”
“It's making me sicker and sicker the more I hear about this: Joseph Smith's behavior makes Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods ... look benevolent and chaste in comparison. If [cases of] drugging [to have] sex with your date is coercion and rape - and it is - then how do we evaluate Smith's strategy of promising, or threatening to deny, a young woman's eternal salvation; yea, even her entire family's salvation? ... Yet the LDS Church hems and haws about Joseph Smith coercing and raping at least one 14 year old, probably more. When are the LDS people going to wake up and call a rapist a rapist and a pedophile a pedophile? Is this too much to expect from the "one true church?" Have these people learned nothing from the Sandusky-Penn State scandal? Mormons: Watch the documentary 'Happy Valley' about the Sandusky-Penn State criminal scandal to see how fast it can all come crumbling down. Do you really want your children looking up to the truly revolting Joseph Smith? This is my testimony to you!”
The Salt Lake Tribune recently ran an article explaining that the LDS Church, after having washed their hands of Mormon Fundamentalists, aka polygamists for over a Century, are now busy setting up shop as it were, to proselytize FLDS polygamists in Colorado City AZ and Hildale, Utah.
They have begun by holding young women’s groups and Boy Scout meetings and they are actively looking for a suitable Sunday meetinghouse. A Mormon bishop from a town close by is quoted as saying, "I'd love to see that at some point we have church out there," in Hildale or Colorado City.
The LDS church and the polygamy groups embrace the same doctrines, the same Mormon scriptures, and revere the same prophet, Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith is the one who claimed to have been commanded by God to begin what was called the Patriarchal Order of Marriage, or Celestial Marriage, which is plural marriage.
The Salt Lake Tribune writes that through the decades, leaders from both churches have disavowed the other... the late Short Creek prophet Leroy Johnson once said: "We are referred to as apostates. What did we apostatize from? From the rotten branch? Or did we cling to the main body of the tree?"
In reality it is the LDS who apostatized from Joseph Smith’s teachings. We wonder why, at this point in time, the LDS is interested in this polygamous community. Could it be because there are so many Christians who have plowed the ground, who have created opportunities to reach out to the polygamists there, so now they want to come in after the hard work has been done by others?
Please pray for this situation. It’s a tragedy when people get out of a polygamy group but then turn around and join the “mother” church. Same false doctrine, same false prophet, same result.
It has come to our attention that two of Utah’s small towns that are having mayoral elections this year, have candidates who are polygamists. The candidate for mayor of Herriman is a renowned polygamist who has written a book bragging about his three wives.
The candidate for Hildale, Utah, an FLDS polygamous town, is a woman whose husband has two wives. We are shocked because in order to be a public servant one must be law-abiding and take oaths to uphold state and national constitutions. Neither candidate would be able to honestly do that.
Finally, we quote 1 Corinthians 7:2,“Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” KJV
This verse couldn’t be more clear: every man is to have his own wife (not wives) and every woman is to have her own husband (not share her husband). Both are singular, there is no room given for plurality here. It is generally thought that Paul the apostle, who wrote First Corinthians, was an unmarried man. In 1 Corinthians 7:8 he recommends those who are not married to remain unmarried.
In 1 Corinthians 7:27-28, Paul continues:
Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But even if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Nevertheless such will have trouble in the flesh, but I would spare you. NKJV
1 Corinthians 7:32-33 But I want you to be without care. He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord — how he may please the Lord.
But he who is married cares about the things of the world — how he may please his wife. NKJV
Those who are involved in serving God, can remain unmarried in order to simplify their life and their ministry. This passage reminds us that marriage brings added difficulties and responsibilities into our lives. How much more is this true if a man has several wives?
If God condones not taking “a wife”, then how can the Mormon faith demand marriage in order to be exalted into celestial glory, and the
polygamists demand that man must have many wives in order to go to heaven? Notice that it is not wrong to marry a wife (singular), but it is better not to marry at all in some circumstances and for some people. Taking these into consideration, polygamy is neither a wise nor a valid option at any time for anyone.
God blesses sinners. Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon were polygamists, despite God’s revealed plan for marriage. These men were also guilty of all sorts of other sins. But God is merciful, good, kind and patient; He is the One who invites sinners to repent and seek forgiveness and salvation. When we do, He freely forgives our sins—and His blessings will multiply in our lives, as is evident in the blessings these biblical patriarchs of old received.
~ continued next month
“Let me ask the good brethren who read this, to act for once impartially, and try to put themselves in a woman's place; and let me... draw a little picture for them to contemplate.... his wife — the mother of his children — whom he dearly loves, rises from her seat beside the fire and retires to her own apartment. There she arranges her toilet with irreproachable care, sees that every straying curl is in its place, and gives every touch to her appearance which she thinks is likely to render her attractive in the eyes of a man. She now descends the stairs, ready to leave the home of this, her first husband, for she is going to see her second husband, or some young man to whom she has taken a fancy, and who she thinks would be suitable for a third. She kisses her children good-bye, and is about to take an affectionate farewell of their father when she suddenly discovers that he is not looking happy." What is the matter now? "she says; "Is not your home a pleasant one; have I not taken pains to train your children in a proper manner; and have I not remained an hour longer than usual with you? What folly it is for you to be moping in this way: this is not the way to live our religion, if we expect to get the blessing of God. You know very well it is very painful for me to leave you and my children; but we must be obedient to the commands of God, and I owe attentions to my other husband as well as to you!"
“Can any man ... for a moment endure such an outrage upon decency and common-sense — such a violation of all that is sacred in the human heart? And yet this is only reversing the case; and just as any Mormon man can suppose he would feel, if the wife he loved were to act in the way I have described, so do Mormon wives feel — only as much more acutely, as women are more sensitive in their affections than men. I remember painfully the bitterness of soul which I experienced when there was only one wife besides myself; and thousands of women in Utah could bear witness, if they would, to the hopeless misery which the [polygamous] system causes, and the desolate void which it creates in the heart of every thoughtful and affectionate wife.” ~ Fanny Stenhouse, Tell it All, pgs 472-475, Chapter XXXIIV
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Pray for “H.S” and her mother & siblings, they are no longer in polygamy, but need emotional, legal and economic help.
Continued prayer for CSC—the mother with 3 children who escaped her polygamist husband. Pray for safety, for
excellent legal help, a job for the mom and continued help and wisdom from the Christian community that has reached out to this family.
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We are available to speak to any group about Mormon polygamy. Just call Doris at 801-649-3103 to make arrangements. |
