Our basic presupposition is that the bible is God’s infallible word and we believe God, believe that He says what He means and means what He says. All of creation is under His authority, and we are to orient our whole life, every aspect of it, along the biblical blueprint. The family is the central building block of a godly society, the large, multi-generational, patriarchal and polygamous family – think of Abraham’s household or Jacob’s family.

The purpose of each family is Kingdom Building:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  (Matthew 6:10).

Now if a biblical lifestyle encompasses every aspect of life, then the biblical family can be compared to a Utopian community that controls its economic, educational, social and spiritual life without intervention from society/ a government other than God’s infallible decrees. Biblical guidelines govern how the family business is run, how the children are taught and how the elderly are taken care of, how the family worships and praises God, how the world outside of the family is to be approached or dealt with.

There have been Utopian communities in the past, and there are a few today, who try to live outside of the system like this. The communities of days gone by all failed, and modern day communities are bound to fail too because the bond that ties the members together – be it creed, race, political ideals, ecological concerns – ultimately are not strong enough to keep the community together for longer than a few years. We believe that blood is the strongest bond, and that only a family can survive over generations as a multi-generational and self reliant community.

So the task of every family that works towards God’s Kingdom these days is to reclaim those areas of life that have been stolen from the family by the state or the church. The goal is independence from an ungodly financial system – you can see the necessity of this in every newspaper in the country every day -, freedom from an ungodly school system and a secular curriculum in order to educate our children properly, providing health and welfare for all ages within the multi-generational family, and a spiritual life free of the self proclaimed authority of modern day churches.

We need to grow, and we need to grow fast, in order to be able to survive outside the system and pursue these goals. We want every family member to have meaningful work within the family, and if you look at the task at hand, you can see that there is more than enough to do for everyone even in the largest household. Working towards the goal requires obedience to God’s word first and foremost, and then ingenuity, intelligence, willingness to work towards the goal.

The family is the business, and can you think of anyone better to work with than the people you love and care for most ? All time and strength is put into the godly life of the household, into self sustainability of the family and freedom from society and its secular, humanistic ideals and goals. Think – How much time is wasted making an employer rich and powerful, and how many men end up running off with their secretary ? It’s no big surprise that they do, after all, they spent more time with the secretary, share more goals and enthusiasm with her than they do with their wives anymore, unless the secretary, or call it help meet, is their wife in the first place. Men and women have God-appointed roles in the family, different roles that are complementary, and if lived according to God’s design they dovetail perfectly to turn the family life into the proverbial well-oiled machine, to make everyone prosper and live a happy and quiet life under God’s protective hand.

The series of articles this one is the introduction to deals with the different aspects of life that have been briefly mentioned here – educational, economic, social, spiritual, and any other aspect of life in the large, multi-generational, patriarchal and polygamous family. Thus, we elaborate on why we hold that polygamy is an ideal tool of dominion, instead of dwelling on the biblical foundations of polygamy as such, as those are a given to us and should be to everyone who reads Scripture rather than listening to mainstream Christian preachers.

Two fundamentalist Mormon leaders from Bountiful, B.C., are scheduled to appear in court Wednesday on polygamy charges.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler have yet to enter a plea.

Blackmore, 52, is the former bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful. Oler, 44, is the current bishop, who replaced Blackmore.

Blackmore’s indictment lists 19 women with whom he is said to have “practised a form of polygamy or practised a kind of conjugal union” between May 1, 2005 and Dec. 8, 2006.

Oler’s indictment lists only two names: Renae Oler, his legal wife, and Amelia Steed.

Blackmore and Oler each lead a faction within the Bountiful community of about 1,000, which has been bitterly divided since 2002.

Source/Full Story: vancouversun.com

What do you tell a person who has been living happily in a polygynous relationship as the second wife, has two small children, and now all of a sudden has to separate from her husband and sister wife because the hitherto happy family has realized, no doubt with the help of their Christian friends, that polygamy is wrong ?   The family wonders about moving to a place where wife #2 can live in a house or apartment of her own yet close to her former husband and sister wife so that the children still have both parents to grow up with and the poor second wife does not lose her husband’s and sister wife’s friendship because they are all really close.  But doing this of course would still pose a danger in their Christian friends’ opinion because who knows, they might be falling back into their terribly sinful polygamous lifestyle if the second wife does not take her children and move away and have her husband pay to support her and the kids from afar.

What would you tell wife #2 ?  What would you tell her husband ?  What would you tell the Christian “friends” who advise them ?

Well, I have advice for them all.

To the wife I would say:  Rejoice, there is nothing wrong with your marriage.  Return to your husband and sister wife and be happy and may Yahweh bless you with many more children.

To the husband I would say: Rejoice, take your two wives and be happy, and repent from the sinful idea of putting away your second wife.  Also, get rid of those so called friends who told you polygamy was wrong. They are of their father, the devil.

To the Christan friends I would say: Leave the poor family alone !  Your advice is wicked and ungodly, it creates pain rather than relieving it, it robs a wife of her rightful husband, and children of their father.  Keep your false teaching to yourselves and stop looking for biblical wisdom that helps you to argue against polygamy – there is no such thing because the bible tells you that polygamy is marriage, nothing more, nothing less.  Stay out of other people’s lives since you do not have biblical wisdom to offer, but only the adversary’s lies.

“Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors.   But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.”  (Gen 37:3-4)

You might wonder why in the world I am quoting this verse in connection to jealousy and polygamy.  And indeed, why in the world would I, since obviously, the jealousy of Joseph’s brothers that we are told about in Gen 37 has nothing to do with polygamy.  We are told specifically why Joseph’s brothers were jealous of their youngest sibling:  Their father favored him because he was the son of his old age.

There is, of course, a reason why I quote this in connection with polygamy.  It has been said by good Christian critics of polygamy that quite obviously, polygamy causes strife, not only between wives, but also between brothers, as we can see in the example of Joseph who gets sold to the Ishmaelites because his brothers are so jealous of him.  In order to blame this jealousy on the polygamous lifestyle the family led, one has to  assume that Israel loved Joseph more than his other children because he was the only (at that point) son of Rachel, the wife Israel favored. This assumption has its roots in the romantic ideas modern day Christians, just like the “rest” of society, have about love.

But Scripture clearly tells us that Israel loves Joseph “because he was the son of his old age”.  So we have another case here of people leaning unto their own understanding / assumptions rather than relying on the plain facts of Scripture.  It’s really a little ridiculous that something like this has to be pointed out, but experience has taught me that no argument is too silly for those good Christians who oppose polygamy that they would not use it.

No, we do not fight to decriminalize polygamy…  One reason for this position you can find here:

Ex Polygamy Cult Member Shares Tale of Sex Control

There are so many weirdos out there who think polygamy is a great idea, and who are completely ungodly people, wicked and evil…  Would you choose to fight a fight that such people profit from ?  They are God’s enemies.

Just incidentally:

We are not fighting to decriminalize polygamy.  God will see to that.  We are contending for the faith, showing Christians that the book they claim to rely on does not condemn polygamy, but portrays it instead as a valid and useful tool of dominion.

Not everything that man’s law calls criminal is sin…  and many things that are perfectly fine with courts today are abominable in the eyes of God.

When it comes to the biblical concept of love, here too, like always, we need to let God define His terms and not Noah Webster or any other dictionary author. To love God means to keep his commandments (Joh 14:15), to love the brethren means to follow God’s commandments concerning the community, and to put the evil away from among the brethren if necessary – again, a concept of responsibility, by the way.

Loving the brethren means not to murder and not to steal, not to covet and not to bear false witness, not to commit adultery and not to forget your parents (the concept of a multi-generational family, incidentally). Not to murder includes protecting the brethren from a potential murderer, not to steal means also protecting the community from a potential thief and so on and so forth, so the commandments point to the bigger picture of you not doing these things PLUS doing your bit to prevent these things from happening in the community.

Where is the romance in this ? The main aspect of love in the bible is loving God and keeping His commandments, which includes caring for the safety of the brethren, and mainly describes taking responsibility as God commands, both within a marriage and within the community.

In the bible you find plural marriage not only to be a common and accepted form of marriage, but also a protected one. The biblical definition of “marriage” is not “one man one women”, but “becoming one flesh” (Gen 2:24), and since according to Paul you can become one flesh with a whore (1 Co 6:16), it is by no means restricted to “one man one woman as such”, but to “one man one woman at a time”. The point about marriage in the bible is that it is a lifelong commitment, a lifelong responsibility, and it is formed by the act of becoming one flesh – no church, no state necessary. By sleeping with someone, you marry him or her. That’s the biblical concept of marriage, it is as simple as that.

If polygamy was sin, why would God tell David through the prophet Nathan that He has not only given him his predecessor’s wives into his arms, but would also have given him more if that was not enough? But David had to run off and sleep with a married woman (adultery = sleeping with a married woman, the marital status of the man does not figure into the definition), and then kill her husband by proxy (murder) – see 2 Sam 12:8.

If polygamy was sin, why would a man be required to take his widowed sister in law and produce offspring with her in order to provide an heir for his untimely deceased brother, no matter if he was married already or not (Deu 15:5-10) ? This, by the way, is also contrary to the common incest laws.

If polygamy was sin, why would the law of Moses specifically provide for the first wife and protect her from being cast aside for a ‘younger model’, as man in his fallen state is prone to do (Exo 21:10)?

If polygamy was sin, why would Jesus portray himself as the bridegroom to ten virgins, five of which proved themselves to be unprepared and therefore unworthy (Mat 25:1-13)?

And if polygamy was sin, why would God portray Himself as the husband of two wives to make His point about the idolatrous nature of His people (Eze 23)?

Marriage, according to Scripture, can be either polygamous or monogamous.  The important bit about marriage, however, is that it is a lifelong commitment, a covenant not to be broken by man – the only exception being the woman committing adultery (Deu 24:1, Mat 19:9). Adultery and whoremongery are sexual relationships outside this marriage relationship, not inside of it. You cannot commit adultery with you own wife, or be a whoremonger with your own wife. That’s why the marriage bed of a polygamist is undefiled (Heb 13:4).

Let’s continue where we left off last time we talked about marriage, and elaborate a little on what Scripture has to say about marriage.

Like we said, to read romantic notions of marriage, i.e. exclusivity between one man and one women into biblical marriage is to insert a secular, romanticized concept into the bible that is simply not there.

If you want to point to the “Song of Solomon” for notions of romantic love, please remember who Solomon was and how many wives he loved – and yes, he sinned in not listening to the commandment not to multiply wives to himself as the king (Deu 17:17), and in marrying foreign wives who turned out to be a snare to him with their foreign religions (1 Kings 11:1-6). And Jesus came through this line, came through people like Abraham and Jacob, through the union of Judah and Tamar, David and Bath Sheba, Uriah’s widow, all of whom were people who in some way or another lived in a polygamous relationship, or in the case of Judah and Tamar, had issues with the Levirate marriage commandment – check it out in Matthew 1 and the respective chapters in Genesis, 2 Samuel and 1 Kings.

If you want to point to Paul talking about letting every man have his own wife and every women her own husband (1 Cor 7:2) to prove that Paul advocates monogamy, please look at the two different Greek words translated as “own” here and you will find that they both pertain to the man, that both state possession from the man’s perspective – her “own” husband is her “proper” husband, the husband that properly possesses her, just as his “own” wife, “own” being a reflexive pronoun here, is the wife that he possesses, that belongs to him, that he is responsible for. If you look at the language, this verse is not a verse pointing to exclusivity with regards to how many wives a man can have, but rather to a woman belonging to one man alone, thus pointing to the responsibility on the part of the man, but doesn’t indicate quantity when it comes to wives.

Besides, the context in 1 Co 7:2 indicates the reason for marriage in the first place: to avoid fornication. Men have to take responsibility for every woman they sleep with for by sleeping with a woman, a man makes her his wife. Even in today’s world, by the way – a marriage that is not consummated is not a valid marriage in court, but could be dissolved based on the fact that it was never consummated, since it can legally be considered null and void. So the biblical standard is kept up here in this regard.

The bible uses no specific term for polygamous relationships, but simply calls having a wife or more than one wife “marriage” – and whenever “marriage” is mentioned in the bible, it refers to the biblical definition of marriage that includes both polygamy and monogamy, and not to a modern day definition of marriage that is based on a romantic concept and a social preference, in our small part of the world, for this romantic ideal.

Someone asks: polygamy is it godly?

Naturally, our position is that indeed a polygamous family is godly…always has been and always will be. In the Scriptures there is no differentiation between monogamy and polygyny. It’s all the same, ie. marriage, and we all know what God has to say about marriage.

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Mark 10:9 ESV

A while back we had a brief blog post on one of our sites (I cannot recall which) concerning Oprah’s broadcast about polygamy. A main feature of this broadcast was an investigative reporter by the name of Lisa Ling. Well, it seems as though this particular episode has been re-broadcast, because many people are showing up on our sites who are looking for more information.

If you know anything about us, or have read any of the materials on our sites, you know that we do not watch television, and haven’t done so in several years, so we have no information about Oprah, Lisa Ling, or their perspectives on plural marriage in the United States…we can only assume it’s not much different from the majority viewpoint.

However, since people are coming to the site seeking information, we would to say a few words, since we have your attention

First, stop watching television. The reasons are numerous, and well documented, and require no elaboration from us…either you will read this little tidbit of advice and heed it, or you will not. We hope that you do. For us, there is not enough time in the day to waste on garbage like the Oprah Winfrey Show, and would hope that you discover some better ways to utilize the gift of time that God has given you here, such as working together in a family business, reading aloud, long walks, or rolling around on the floor tickling the little ones.

Secondly, the world is filled with false teachers and false prophets (profits), and it is our position that Oprah Winfrey is one of them. She leads people astray in all directions (away from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob),  with New Age mumbo jumbo, and has for years. Ummm, stay away from such people.

Thanks for listening

A lot of verses in the bible talk about marriage (Heb 13:4, Psa 128:3, Pro 5:15-23, 1 Co 7:2-3), and they are very wonderful verses, stressing the beauty and responsibility of a lifelong commitment made before God and the beauty of people caring for each other in a godly fashion. God protects marriage indeed, it is a godly bond that secures the dominion covenant.

But the conclusion that theses quoted verses prove polygamy to be sinful, adulterous and whoremongery is wrong – here, presuppositions shape theology, and not the other way around. Polygamy, according to the presupposition, is not marriage, so the verses about marriage cannot apply to one man and many wives, but have to apply to one man one wife only. This presupposition is not a biblical, but a romantic concept.

Polygamy, viewed from a biblical perspective, is simply “marriage”. If you look up the word “marriage” and its verb in the Old and New Testament, you will find that the word is related to:

• a contract – “to marry: to give yourself in marriage, to take a wife, to get married” (H2992, G1060),
• a possession – “to possess, to rule over” (H1166),
• conjugal rights, literally, the flesh (H5772b), and
• a ceremony (G1062).

Nowhere is there mentioning of “star-crossed lovers”, a “soul mate”, or the “prince on the white horse”, so to read romantic notions of marriage, to read exclusivity between one man and one women into biblical marriage is to insert a secular, romanticized concept into the bible that is simply not there.

We have a dream of what our Christian plural marriage family will look like, and if you are potentially interested in joining us as a sisterwife, here is what would await you, what you would be a vital, active participant in.

We dream of a big family, up to seven wives and our husband, and a whole lot of children, as many as God might grant us. We hope that our Christian polygamous family will be multi-generational soon, either with old or left-alone parents of the sisterwives to join us, or when our children are old enough and take over what will be prepared for them, so that there can be progress both in Kingdom Building and in the raising of a God fearing, patriarchal, independent, self-sufficient, big polygamous family that

“shall speak with the enemy in the gate” (Ps 127:5).

Read more.