7. Given 24 Hours to Decide
September 27, 20244. Oliver Cowdery is Excommunicated
September 29, 2024
Some of the marriages to these women included promises by Joseph of eternal life to the girls and their families, if they agreed to be his plural wife. It was insinuated that the women wouldn’t get into heaven if they refused or Joseph could no longer be the prophet (or in other words it would be on their heads that God could no longer work with the prophet).
Table of contents
- Some of the marriages to these women included promises by Joseph of eternal life to the girls and their families, if they agreed to be his plural wife. It was insinuated that the women wouldn’t get into heaven if they refused or Joseph could no longer be the prophet (or in other words it would be on their heads that God could no longer work with the prophet).
- A1) Joseph Smith promised salvation to Lucy Walker and her family if she entered polygamy with him.
- A2) Joseph Smith promised salvation to Helen Mar Kimball and her family if she entered polygamy with him.
- A3) Historians have suggested that Joseph Smith promised salvation to Husbands and Wives if the husband allowed the wife to marry Joseph Smith.
- A4) Joseph Smith promised salvation to Mary Elizabeth Rollins if she entered polygamy with him.
- A5) Joseph Smith recorded a revelation from God to Newel K. Whitney with promised salvation to his family and Sarah Ann Whitney if she entered polygamy with Joseph.
- A6) Joseph often tied a reward to those who would enter plural marriage, including guaranteeing salvation.
- Issues these Facts Raise
- Questions these Facts Raise
A1) Joseph Smith promised salvation to Lucy Walker and her family if she entered polygamy with him.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
Lucy Walker was a 15 year old girl whose family shortly before moving had a mother that died and a father who was very ill and not sure what to do. The father went to Joseph for help as there were 10 kids in the family and no real parent that could take care of them.
Joseph told Lucy’s father to send the four oldest to live with him and he would look after them like they were his own children. Lucy was the youngest of the oldest four. The 6 youngest would go to women of the church who would help out.
Joseph receives revelation that the sick father was to go on a mission. Once the father is away, Joseph goes in to Lucy’s room one night and tells her God has commanded him to enter polygamy and Lucy is to be his wife. She’s just turned 16. Joseph tells her she has until morning to decide.
While living in the Smith home, Lucy remembers: “In the year 1842 President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said, ‘I have a message for you, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman.’’ My astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me...He asked me if I believed him to be a Prophet of God. ‘Most assuredly I do I replied.’...He fully Explained to me the principle of plural or celestial marriage. Said this principle was again to be restored for the benefit of the human family. That it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father’s house.”
“What do you have to Say?” Joseph asked. “Nothing” Lucy replied, “How could I speak, or what would I say?” Joseph encouraged her to pray: “tempted and tortured beyond endureance until life was not desirable. Oh that the grave would kindly receive me that I might find rest on the bosom of my dear mother...Why – Why Should I be chosen from among thy daughters, Father I am only a child in years and experience. No mother to council; no father near to tell me what to do, in this trying hour. Oh let this bitter cup pass. And thus I prayed in the agony of my soul.””
Lucy comes back to Joseph in the morning and says she can’t do it. Joseph told Lucy that the marriage would have to be secret, but that he would acknowledge her as his wife, “beyond the Rocky Mountains”. He then gave Lucy an ultimatum, ““It is a command of God to you. I will give you untill to-morrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you.” Lucy said, “This arroused every drop of scotch in my veins...I felt at this moment that I was called to place myself upon the altar a liveing Sacrafice, perhaps to brook the world in disgrace and incur the displeasure and contempt of my youthful companions; all my dreams of happiness blown to the four winds, this was too much, the thought was unbearable.”
Now, bearing the burden of her own eternal salvation and that of her family, and with a deadline approaching, Lucy prayed more fervently for an answer. She couldn’t sleep the entire night, which was the second full night of not sleeping. Just before dawn, and Joseph’s deadline, she “received a powerful and irristable testimony of the truth of the mariage covenant called 'Celestial or plural mariage'” and "I afterwards married Joseph as a plural wife and lived and cohabitated with him as such." Lucy married Joseph on May 1, 1843. At the time, Emma was in St. Louis buying supplies for the Nauvoo hotel. Lucy remembers, “Emma Smith was not present and she did not consent to the marriage; she did not know anything about it at all.” Of the relationship, Lucy said, ““It was not a love matter, so to speak, in our affairs, -at least on my part it was not, but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice to establish that grand and glorious principle that God had revealed to the world.”
Source: Lucy Walker, “Brief Biographical Sketch,” pp. 5-6
Also quoted here: User-Friendly Book of Mormon, Quotes also came from: http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/23-LucyWalker.htm
“At this point Smith proposed to fifteen- or sixteen-year-old Lucy, demanding that she marry him. In her extraordinary autobiography she wrote, “In the year 1842 President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said, ‘I have a message for you, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman.’ My astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me.” Helen Mar Kimball used almost the same language in describing her shock at learning of polygamy and receiving Smith’s proposal. As often, Smith phrased the proposal as a direct commandment from God.
He next emphasized his authority as a prophet: “He asked me if I beleived him to be a Prophet of God. ‘Most assuredly I do I replied.’” Smith then continued to explain how celestial marriage could link families together in eternity: “He fully Explained to me the principle of plural or celestial marriage. Said this principle was again to be restored for the benefit of the human family. That it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father’s house. And form a chain that could never be broken, worlds without End.” Again, as in the case of Helen Mar and Sarah Ann Whitney, Smith put the burden of a family’s salvation on a teenager’s willingness to accept him as a plural husband. Unlike those cases, however, here the prophet did not work through the father but approached the girl directly, after sending the father on a mission.”
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
A2) Joseph Smith promised salvation to Helen Mar Kimball and her family if she entered polygamy with him.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
I will pass over the temptations which I had during the twenty four hours after my father introduced to me this principle & asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph, who came next morning & with my parents I heard him teach & explain the principle of Celestial marrage-after which he said to me, “If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.
This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God & his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart—when Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied “If Helen is willing I have nothing more to say.”
“The mention of twenty-four hours shows that time pressures were being placed on the prospective bride, just as Smith had applied a time limit to Lucy Walker.
The next morning Joseph himself appeared in the Kimball home and personally explained “the principle of Celestial marrage” to Helen. In her memoir Helen wrote, “After which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.[’] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward.” As in the case of Sarah Whitney, Joseph gave the teenage daughter responsibility not only for her own salvation but for that of her whole family. Thus Helen’s acceptance of a union that was not intrinsically attractive to her was an act of youthful sacrifice and heroism.
The only person still reluctant to see the marriage performed, after Helen had accepted the proposal, was Vilate. Helen wrote, “None but God & his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart–when Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied ‘If Helen is willing I have nothing more to say.’” This is far from a glowingly positive bestowal of permission. Helen conjectured that Vilate was thinking of her own trials as a plural wife: “She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older & who better understood the step they were taking, & to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth [sic] summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come as the sun was to rise and set; but it was all hidden from me.”
Despite Vilate’s obvious deep reluctance to see her daughter enter plurality, the ceremony took place. In May 1843, when Helen was two or three months away from fifteen years of age, she was married to Joseph.”
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
A3) Historians have suggested that Joseph Smith promised salvation to Husbands and Wives if the husband allowed the wife to marry Joseph Smith.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“Finally, one wonders why these “first husbands” apparently acquiesced to their wives’ marriages to Smith. One possibility would be that they were promised spiritual rewards as a result of the marriages, as was the case with the families of three “single” plural wives. When Fanny Alger married Joseph, her family was proud of the sealing, according to Ann Eliza Webb. In the same way, when Sarah Whitney was sealed to the prophet, he rebaptized her parents and gave special blessings to her father, Newel Whitney. Heber C. Kimball greatly desired that his daughter Helen should be married to the prophet so that there would be an eternal connection between the two families; Joseph himself told Helen that her marriage to him would ensure her family’s salvation.
If this held true for the polyandrous families as well, including the husbands, it would explain some of the psychological dynamics of these unusual marriages. The husbands may have been promised that Smith’s marriage to their wives would contribute to their own higher exaltation after this life. “Buckeye’s Lament,” an attack on Smith published shortly before his death, supports this interpretation: “But if you yield willingly,/ Your daughters and your wives,/ In spiritual marriage to our POPE,/ He’ll bless you all your lives;/ He’ll seal you up, be damned you can’t, No matter what you do–If that you only stick to him,/ He swears HE’LL take you through.” The phrase “your daughters and your wives” clearly suggests that Joseph offered salvation to “first husbands” as well as to the fathers of his brides.
It should also be borne in mind that the men and women involved in Nauvoo polygamy and polyandry did not understand it thoroughly. It was new doctrine, preached only in great secrecy, and though Smith taught polygamy to his inner circle, practical experience often differed from didactic religious doctrine. So a husband giving his wife to Joseph may not have understood fully what the marriage would entail. Helen Mar Kimball, a non-polyandrous wife, found her marriage to mean much more, on an earthly plane, than she had expected; possibly the husbands and wives in polyandrous triangles had the same experience. In Nauvoo-period theological terminology, there was some ambiguity in the terms “sealing” and “marriage,” and it is possible that some men and women did not grasp that “sealing” also meant “marriage” and therefore sexual relations. It is unfortunate that we do not have a full, frank memoir from even one of the polyandrous “first husbands,” although two polyandrous wives, Mary Elizabeth Lightner and Zina Huntington Jacobs, left autobiographies.”
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
A4) Joseph Smith promised salvation to Mary Elizabeth Rollins if she entered polygamy with him.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“Smith also told Mary, “I know that I shall be saved in the Kingdom of God. I have the oath of God upon it and God cannot lie. All that he gives me I shall take with me for I have that authority and that power conferred upon me.” In other words, Smith linked plural marriage with salvation, as he did in later marriages. If Mary accepted him as her husband, her place in heaven would be assured.
She did not agree to the marriage at first–she was married to and presumably in love with another man, and was skeptical of Smith’s doctrine. She asked why, if an angel came to him, it had not appeared to her? She asked pointedly, wasn’t it possible that the angel was from the devil? Smith assured her that it had come from God. She replied that she would never be sealed to him until she had a direct witness from God. He told her to pray earnestly, for the angel had told him that she would have a witness. As the conversation ended, he asked her if she would turn traitor and speak of this to anyone. She replied, “I shall never tell a mortal I had such a talk from a married man!””
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
A5) Joseph Smith recorded a revelation from God to Newel K. Whitney with promised salvation to his family and Sarah Ann Whitney if she entered polygamy with Joseph.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“This revelation has since been published. It promises the Whitneys great blessings as a result of the marriage:
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto my servant N.K. Whitney, the thing that my servant Joseph Smith has made known unto you and your family and which you have agreed upon is right in mine eyes and shall be rewarded upon your heads with honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house, both old and young because of the lineage of my Priesthood, saith the Lord, it shall be upon you and upon your children after you from generation to generation, by virtue of the holy promise which I now make unto you, saith the Lord.
The atmosphere of dynastic linking with eschatological implications is clear. As a result of Sarah’s marriage to Smith, the father is told that he will be “rewarded” “with honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house.” By being linked to the prophet, the Whitneys’ salvation was assured.”
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
“In December Sarah attended Eliza R. Snow’s school. Joseph Smith wrote his teenage wife a letter on March 23, 1843, and, once again, he emphasized the salvation that her marriage to him would bring to her and her family. If Sarah remained within the “new and everlasting covenant” of marriage until the end, she and her father’s house “shall be saved in the same eternal glory,” and even if they should wander from the fold they could still repent and “be crowned with a fulness of glory.” This is the same doctrine that is taught in Doctrine and Covenants 132: salvation, even despite “wandering from the fold.””
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
A6) Joseph often tied a reward to those who would enter plural marriage, including guaranteeing salvation.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“Again, Nauvoo plural marriages would show a similar pattern of “rewards” for those who helped solemnize Smith’s marriages. Joseph Bates Noble and Brigham Young were granted plural wives, and others, such as Cornelius Lott and Newel Whitney, were sealed to their existing spouses in eternal marriage. Such relationships also provided powerful stimuli to keep the secret. Noble, by taking a plural wife after marrying Smith to his sister-in-law, became part of polygamy’s inner circle, committed to its goals but vulnerable to its consequences if discovered. In addition, the promise of salvation, which was often linked to plural marriage, was further motivation.”
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
“In her autobiography, Presendia wrote, “In 1841 I entered into the New and Everlasting Covenant–was sealed to Joseph Smith the Prophet and Seer, and to the best of my ability I have honored Plural Marriage, never speaking one word against the principle.” The ordinance was performed by her brother, Dimick, Smith’s close friend, while Dimick’s wife Fanny stood as a witness. “Soon after Dimick had given our sisters Zina & Prescinda to Joseph as wives for eternity,” wrote Oliver Huntington, Smith offered Dimick any reward he wanted. Dimick merely requested “that where you and your fathers family are, there I and my fathers family may also be.” Relatives of Smith’s plural wives were often awarded increased salvation after helping arrange the marriage. Through Zina’s and Presendia’s marriages, Dimick and Joseph created an eternal bond with each other and Dimick felt that his chances for complete salvation had been increased. So this was a dynastic marriage, an example of male bonding through polygamy.”
- Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
Issues these Facts Raise
If this is true, God is the type of God that allows his prophet to attach promises of guaranteed salvation to adopting polygamy. Also, if God were the type to remove Joseph from being prophet, as Joseph’s words seem to suggest in my opinion, than he is the type of God that attaches spiritual connection and leadership to others' choices.
Questions these Facts Raise
Joseph told several of these women that getting married to him would guarantee their and their entire family’s eternal salvation and that an angel with a drawn sword would slay him if he didn’t marry him. Is this how God works? Doesn’t this violate that we must work out our own salvation?
Mormon 9:27: O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need. Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him.
Phillipians 2:12: Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
How can Joseph Smith guarantee an entire family exaltation for their daughter becoming a polygamous wife?
