My Rant on The Comments I Have Been Hearing

Do we make all marriages bad? Because that's what I am hearing. I can tell you that marriage is good for me. Plural marriage for me may be good too. Why restrict it? Some of the finest of God's servants had more wives than one. The Bible is full of references. Stop with the, I am better than you mask, and leave people to their religious lives. Especially when they are doing fine. I lived in the FLDS community. I don't now, so I can be objective about it. I will say, I prefer the way they do marriages over the way it is done anywhere else. The respect exhibited by the men toward the women is not as objects as some are misinformed, through propaganda, may conclude. No. Respect toward women there is admired by the youth, and that is why most children stay when they grow older. Young marriages are not common there. They are not forbidden, but are rather minuscule in number. Yet you would think that it is common, by the accounts of the media. It is not considered evil or wrong to marry young there. Because when girls think they are ready to marry, they have to have their parents agree, which is many times unlikely for the parents to agree. But when they do, they will present her to the prophet who will have her come back for multiple appointment sessions with the parents in tow. I will have you know that this is not unlike how the young men are treated. It is no laughing matter to the parents nor to the young people. The vows are taken seriously. Abuse is unlikely in case you are wondering. If a man is found to be abusive there, he will be sent out, and all he earned in his life will be given to a finer gentler more righteous man. Jeffs is being wrongfully targeted. It is due to the religious prejudices of those who hold authority in government. The laws that are being used to convict him are unconstitutional. Yet he has been hated by the media, the government and the LDS neighbors who just hate Warren Jeffs on the outset. There is no truth in their criticism except in their own paradigms.

Are you saved? Part 2

Descend from the busy, wealth-seeking middle classes, to the humbler
grade of society, and follow them in their various occupations and
pursuits, and each one of them is seeking earnestly that which he
imagines to be salvation. The poor, ragged, trembling mendicant, who
is forced by hunger and cold to drag his feeble body from under some
temporary shelter, to seek a bit of bread, or a coin from his more
fortunate fellow-mortal, if he can only obtain a few crusts of bread
to satisfy the hunger-worm that gnaws his vitals, and a few coppers to
pay his lodgings, he has attained to the summit of his expectations,
to what he sought for salvation, and he is comparatively happy, but
his happiness vanishes with the shades of night, and his misery comes
with the morning light. From the match-maker up to the tradesman, all
have an end in view, which they suppose will bring to them salvation.
King, courtier, commanders, officers, and common soldiers, the
commodore, and sailor before the mast, the fair-skinned Christian, and
the dark-skinned savage, [p.2] all, in their respective grades and
spheres of action, have a certain point in view, which, if they can
obtain, they suppose will put them in possession of salvation.

Are you saved?

The plan of salvation, or, in other words, the redemption of fallen
beings, is a subject that should occupy the attention of all
intelligence that pertains to fallen beings. I do not like the term
fallen beings, but I will say, subjected intelligence, which term
suits me better—subjected to law, order, rule, and government. All
intelligences are deeply engaged in this grand object; not, however,
having a correct understanding of the true principle thereof, they
wander to and fro, some to the right, and some to the left. There is
not a person in this world, who is endowed with a common share of
intellect, but is laboring with all his power for salvation. Men vary
in their efforts to obtain that object, still their individual
conclusions are, that they will ultimately secure it. The merchant,
for instance, seeks with unwearied diligence, by night and by day,
facing misfortunes with a determined and persevering resistance,
enduring losses by sea and by land, with an unshaken patience, to
amass a sufficient amount of wealth to enable him to settle calmly
down in the midst of plenty in some opulent city, walk in the higher
classes of society, and perchance receive a worldly title, or worldly
honor, and enjoy. a freedom from all anxiety of business, and
constraint by poverty, throughout  the remainder of his life. He then
supposes he has obtained salvation.


Brigham Young,
In the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, January 16, 1853.
Found in the Journal of Discourses Vol. 1