PLURAL MARRIAGE, Part 2 of Chapter 12 of The Church and The Gospel

PLURAL MARRIAGE, Part 2 of Chapter 12 of The Church and The Gospel 

Pages 179 to 186

Because the revelation was received in 1843, the command to live that principle also came with it. Many men such as Brigham Young, John Taylor, Orson Pratt, William Clayton, Heber C. Kimball, and many others were commanded to obey it. Some men, however, such as William Law (Joseph’s second counselor), Stake President William Marks, and High Councilmen Leonard Soby and Austin Cowles, rejected the revelation. This division began a split in the Church which has continued ever since. Men who opposed the revelation set up a printing establishment in Nauvoo with the intent to expose the plural marriage doctrine. The first and only edition was published as The Nauvoo Expositor on May 10, 1844, and it referred to the revelation on the “plurality of wives, for time and eternity.”

Before the Prophet Joseph was killed, he predicted that his death would not end the persecutions that would come from the Saints living plural marriage:

It is thought by some that our enemies would be satisfied with my destruction; but I tell you that as soon as they have shed my blood, they will thirst for the blood of every man in whose heart dwells a single spark of the spirit of the fulness of the gospel . . . . It is not only to destroy me but every man and woman who dares believe the doctrines that God hath inspired me to teach to this generation. (“Plural Marriages as Taught by Joseph Smith,” Helen Mar Whitney, p. 19; as Lundwall quoted in Fate of the Persecutors. . . , p. 144)