She was born into polygamy. Her family followed the teachings of Joseph Smith, including plural marriage.
Like many young girls, she had been promised to a man who was her father's age.
But she ran away. She chose hell over the life of polygamy.
That girl was me. I was lost, alone, desolate.
Then Jesus Christ found me and rescued me. In His love, I found real freedom.
He is a shield to all who will take refuge in Him. This is why I can look back and ask,
Polygamy, what love is this?
Welcome to Polygamy, What Love is This? I'm your host, Doris Hanson, and we talk about Mormon Polygamy here.
And this show will complete our series of discussions about the equality of male and female,
according to God's original design, which He has never changed or revoked.
But first, for information, for you or anyone that you may know, if they're escaping a polygamy,
want to get out and need some help, you can go to our website, shieldandrefuge.org,
for information on our organization and how we can help you.
Or you can call the toll-free number 877-425-9993 and discuss your situation,
and everything we talk about, of course, will be held in strict confidence.
We can find a safe place for you to go.
If you have questions about our program or any of our shows, or would like to be a guest on our show
and tell your story, we would love to talk to you about that.
You can email us at email at whatloversis.tv, or you can call 385-240-2888.
And now I would like to welcome back our co-host, Earl Erskine.
Thanks for having me again, Doris. Appreciate it.
Thanks for coming.
Yeah.
As I mentioned, as we talked last time, we thought we could get this done in three parts.
Yeah, and it's turned out to be five.
It's been five.
I even thought maybe I could hone it down to four, but there was too much information.
Good information.
And there's even more that we could be bringing to the table.
But we just, I had to stop it somewhere, and so I decided to stop it at this one.
And I'd also like to remind our viewers that a lot of the information that we have used in this discussion
has been taken from Kerry Miles' publication, New Man, New Woman, New Life.
You can go to her website in powerinternational.org for more information about what she's doing.
And also, you can purchase that study guide on amazon.com.
Very good information.
They're written very well and understandable.
You know, Mormonism and Mormon polygamy are patriarchal and creed.
Mormonism disposes of gender equality, and they place the blame on God, which is too bad.
Tragically, many females in the Mormon faith have been and are its strongest voice for their own humiliation.
They willingly accept less than what God has for them because they listen to and they believe men instead of what God said.
In part one of this series, we discussed that God created both male and female in his image.
He equally gave dominion to Adam and Eve over the earth and over his creation, but he did not give dominion one over the other.
We discussed that Jesus treated all the females on an equal basis, and he treated them with utmost respect and equal with others.
He defended them and communicated that our value does not depend upon our gender, but on our relationship with God.
We discussed that the headship of the man was defined and modeled by Jesus' watchful care of his church and as being the total giving of himself for her sake.
That the word head in the original language is not ruler or ultimate authority, but to hold everything together in unity, in peace, and in strength,
like the head cornerstone of a building or a soldier going into battle first.
But for our discussion, if head of wife did mean the man assumes the role of ruler or leader or authority over,
there are some important questions that need to be addressed and should be answered.
So we're going to bring a few of them to the table here.
These are interesting.
There's a few or something to think about.
If the husband is the ruler who regulates him, who determines if the use of his rulership is done in a Christ-like way,
is the husband alone the judge of how the biblical standard should be accomplished in his home?
Does he have someone he is accountable to to be sure he isn't abusing his authority?
Good question.
Yeah.
The second question we have is, are there classes for males who are growing up into this authority?
Who trains them on how to rule a wife?
Next question, are there classes for the young females that prepares them for abject submission as a wife?
But what about when they're not a wife, do they then have equality with male counterparts?
Do they have equality during the dating or during an engagement?
Good question.
Good question.
The fourth question, does their rulership allow the husband to physically prevent his wife from doing whatever he deems she shouldn't do,
like talk to the neighbors or on the telephone or leave the house and go to the grocery store and so on?
I've actually heard of that.
Next one, does it mean that he has autocratic control over finances that she has no access to?
Does it allow him to take privileges away from her or to make decisions without her knowledge or consent?
Who is the head when the husband suffers dementia or is otherwise incapacitated?
Good question.
If head did mean ruler or authority, who is head when a woman is not married?
When she lives alone, she's either divorced or widowed.
If she's capable or allowed to make her own decisions and choices while being single,
why does being married incapacitate or render her useless to make decisions alongside her husband?
That's so good.
There are many unanswered questions that relate directly to women's abuse by patriarchal authority,
and there is no evidence that women are being delivered from patriarchal domestic violence
or that they are getting decent counseling or that the male is also counseled on how to be a biblically godly husband.
They use the Bible to condone their polygamy, but they don't use it to regulate their marriages.
And I have to ask the question, why? And it might shock many of our viewers to know that most polygamous marriages
are ruled by authoritarian, abusive patriarchal men with little or no mercy accompanying their rigid control.
In the past week alone, I have listened or read three different people who were teaching on the man being the head,
and none of them used the word head properly.
They all defined it as the ruling authority by the male, and that is not what it means.
Now we're going to look at some other examples in the New Testament as we present to polygamous women
that females are not to be subjugated or required to be subservient to the male.
She was created by God as an equal with the man in every respect.
The next two scriptures we're going to tackle are some difficult ones,
but those who want truth and are willing to give up false ideas will listen, learn, and maybe even check it out for themselves.
These are from 1 Corinthians 14, 34 and 35.
Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak,
but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home,
for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
And from 1 Timothy,
but I suffer not a woman to teach, nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Those are toughies.
These are toughies.
And they're often used as proof texts to promote exactly the opposite point that the apostle Paul is really teaching.
Some verses in the Bible are instructive, some are corrective, and some are descriptive,
and we all need to know the differences.
And we all need to know the differences before we dare to quote the Bible to support our favorite beliefs.
Now these verses are and have been used to suppress and control women.
We are supposed to use scriptures to build each other up,
never to demean someone else or to suppress or enslave or rule over others.
We cannot read our culture and experiences into the Bible.
Instead, we must allow the Bible to define our beliefs and our behavior.
We have a quote from this...
Understanding the corrective verses, page two from Wayne Pelley.
Biblical authority on any matter is the result of allowing the entire Bible to speak.
Thus, we need to listen to each relevant text interpreted in its own context,
and each in relation to the others.
We can't just grab a verse and pull it out and put a doctrine, build a doctrine on that.
That's one of the things that I just felt so strongly about, and I'm sure in polygamy and in Mormonism,
current Mormonism is the way they just pull out, pluck scriptures out and don't consider context at all.
Or the rest of the Bible?
Yeah, the rest of the Bible.
So, question, can women speak or teach in a church setting?
You know, these passages are addressing behavior attitudes that the apostle Paul was writing to correct.
Paul said women are to be silent and obedient, quote, as the law says.
Okay, first of all, there is no biblical law in all of the Bible that commands women to keep silent.
So, verse 34 is not referring to any law of God.
That's interesting.
That's important.
Through the New Testament, Paul explains that we are not under the law, but under grace.
So, why would he be put under the law here?
He wouldn't be.
He cannot be insisting on obedience to a biblical law, so it has to be some other law.
Now, there were Jewish traditions that forced women into subservience, and Roman laws never allowed equality with women.
So, this law is referring to us from some religious idea, and men, or to a government law, or maybe both, but not from God.
Already, we know that Paul is not commanding silence because he has discussed and supported women speaking, praying, and prophesying in the church setting in 1 Corinthians.
In context, Paul is giving corrective instructions to the church in Corinth.
Verse 36 says this.
What?
Came the Word of God out from you, or came it unto you only?
If you could read Greek, the impact would be astounding.
The word what, when it says what, came the Word of God from you.
The word what in present day exclamation would be no way, or nonsense, or that's bunk.
In context, Paul is saying no way does God's law forbid women to speak.
That is total nonsense. The Word of God did not originate with you Corinthians, so stop thinking that you have it all right.
In fact, many times in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is in strong disagreement with what they were teaching and how they were behaving, and this is one of them.
Actually, it's important to notice that there are pronoun changes in verses 34 and 35. They refers to the women, and then verse 36 changes it to you, and it is used in the masculine voice.
We have a good explanatory quote.
Verse 36 has traditionally been understood to be a rebuke to the noise women.
The noisy women.
But if that is the case, Paul would not shift pronouns. Instead, he's addressing a different group.
Paul is correcting not the women who are speaking, praying and prophesying, but the men who dare propose this new regulation.
With the pronoun changes, that changes the impact of the verse.
So it seems to be the men that Paul is correcting, not the women.
In the context of this passage about praying and prophesying and speaking in tongues, being silent and so on, Paul encourages everyone to use their spiritual gift in the church according to God's design, but to do so in peace with a quiet spirit and in an orderly manner.
God doesn't tell women to be eager to prophesy and then forbid women to speak. Studying context, the audience and the rest of the Bible is necessary to get accurate Bible interpretation.
Women can speak in the congregational setting. They can pray, they can prophesy, they can teach, but it must be done in an orderly fashion and not as a self-appointed leader.
And of course, it must be done with sound, biblical doctrine. So let's look at 1 Timothy.
Okay, but I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
So apparently these verses seem to deny women the right to teach or hold authority over a man.
And usurping authority, of course, is important there. Now, again, we cannot allow our own prejudices to get in the way of God's intended message.
The major problem with this verse is the word authority, because normally the word used for authority in the Greek word is exuja, E-X-O-U-S-I-A.
But that's not the word used in this verse. Apparently the word didn't even carry the word authority until almost 200 years after it was written.
So this is another good reason to use a contemporary Bible translation that doesn't use antiquated words.
The Greek word used for usurp authority in the King James Version has a root meaning of self.
It relates to words that mean self-willed or proud willfulness. In other words, a woman cannot take that authority upon herself.
Well, neither can a man. That's what Paul writes in another place.
Now, we know that Jesus taught that no one is to willfully exert authority over others.
The greatest leader is the greatest servant, whether you're male or female. Again, we quote from the study guide.
Suppose that Paul did mean that he did not want women to have authority over men. Who did Paul allow to hold authority over other people? No one.
No one. That's the whole point.
And when we started, I think in part four, we talked about keeping in mind that God wants peace and order in the home, in the family, in the workplace, and in church.
So peace and order is the main point here.
The Christian attitude that we've already discussed in detail is that we don't exert authority over others.
Instead, we consider others as better than ourselves. This is equally applicable to both male and female.
Jesus taught it to men. Paul teaches it also to women.
When we read in the context of 1 Timothy, we discover that the men were told to worship without anger or argument, and the women were told to stop dressing extravagantly.
And so it appears that both the men and the women were trying to be the dominant ones within their own groups.
And Paul says, knock it off. Don't do that. Then he tells the women to learn quietly.
Now, the word that is translated into silent does not mean shut up and zip your lips. It doesn't mean that kind of quiet.
It means to learn with a quiet spirit in submission to God's word.
That's what the word means. Check it out for yourself. And that's what we should all do.
Remember, submission is not suppression or oppression or forced. It is willingly taking the humble position.
An accurate understanding of the verse goes like this.
This Wayne Pelley continues with this. Look at this in context of verses two to ten.
Paul has said, I want the men to stop trying to have their own teachings adopted.
I want the women to stop trying to top each other, and I am not permitting the women to scramble for power the way the men were.
In other words, Paul is trying to get the congregation to stop trying to be self-defined authorities.
The men have been scuffling among the men, and the women, for the most part, have been competing among the women.
But it appears that some of the women have crossed over from female power struggle to arguing with the men as well.
A woman is not to do this any more than the men are, but is to learn quietly in submission to correct teachings.
And so we just have the sense here that God wants to bring peace into the congregation.
Not one over the other, no scrambling for anything. More unity.
Exactly. Which is what the head means for the man head over the woman.
And that fits more with the entire Bible, what it teaches about unity, and is the best interpretation as far as context.
And in verse two of the same chapter, we are taught that God wants us to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holy with us.
And that includes both male and female.
We read in other places in the New Testament where women taught men in the spiritual gifts.
A woman can have the gift of teaching, prophesying, evangelism, and so on.
And that takes words. We've got to speak.
If God gives females those special gifts, then we're told he expects us to use them.
And then we have an Ephesus, a man named Apollos, and he was taught the way of the Lord by both Priscilla and Aquila, the husband and the wife.
So she taught a man there with her husband.
In 1 Corinthians 11-5, instructions are given for a woman who prays or prophesies in the church setting.
So obviously she's able to speak in the church setting.
So the women don't just sit there and twiddle to their thumbs and never say anything in the church setting.
It just must be done in peace and order.
And just because a woman does teach in church does not indicate she's a usurping authority over anyone.
If the church congregation has asked her to teach, if God calls her to teach, she hasn't usurped any authority at all.
So it's interesting. We need to take the words that are used.
And I've dug a lot of word studies in this and scratched my head a lot of times.
With the Greek and in context.
And in the context.
And what the whole Bible says.
I think what I found most interesting that was between Jesus and Paul, over and over again, they taught,
don't lord it over the other one.
Whether you're male or female, don't lord it.
Don't usurp authority. Don't fight over things.
And that's what, just because Paul focuses on the women in a few voices, doesn't mean that the women are supposed to be squashed away.
So we mentioned verses last time in Romans and Galatians.
And we're going, they're worth repeating.
So we're going to repeat them here.
Romans 211, for God does not show favoritism.
In Galatians 328, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
If the polygamist would just.
If they would see, there's no room for prejudice.
Yeah.
There just isn't room.
Whether it's the polygamist or Mormonism, you know, we can even preach to ourselves on this.
God just does not the author of favoritism or any kind of prejudicial attitudes of people to people in that, because gender prejudices as well.
And if there seems to be confusion in reading certain verses or there seems to be a contradiction, the problem isn't with the Bible.
It's with the reader.
And when we draw a doctrine, like we mentioned before, from only one or two verses, which Mormonism does, we only see part of the picture and it will be twisted.
All Bible readers should be as noble as the Bereans were, we quote.
You know, we read from Acts 17.
Now the Bereans were a more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
They checked it out.
They did.
They went through the Bible every day.
They went through it and examined it and read it.
And as an example of how people can take things and just really twist it around, the flat earth, you know, people they said, people believed in the flat earth and so on.
The Bible twice tells us that the earth was hanging as a sphere in nothing.
So, you know, and that's as old as Job.
But somebody quoted to me one verse in the Bible where it talks about the four corners of the earth, which means that God was teaching false doctrine that the earth was square and flat.
Well, now come on that, you know, and that might be ridiculous.
It might be too far-fetched, but it's true.
They'll take those verses and apply it incorrectly, not use the rest of the Bible and just make it into something that it's not even four corners of the earth.
So the entire Bible must be included when determining correct doctrine.
Mormon culture uses many of these verses to hold women in subservience.
But some of these verses are saying you're doing it this way.
Stop it and do it the way God has already said you should be doing it.
We have another quote from Wayne Pelley.
So the next step is to look for texts that would have encouraged women to function in the ways that are found in the descriptive texts and have encouraged men to accept and even welcome such activities.
And that's what we kind of have done here.
When we first started, we brought out Deborah in the Old Testament.
She was the leader.
Maryam was a prophetess, and Isaiah's wife was a prophetess.
Philip had four daughters who were prophetess.
So we look for other verses, like he says, that agrees with the information that we're trying to bring out in the text.
Again, we're not making this up.
We've done a lot of study and digging to get this information.
And Jesus did not treat women on the basis of children or food or sex or any other way.
And neither should polygamists.
We quote from Luke chapter 11.
Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed.
Jesus replies, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.
So she was applying motherhood.
The mother is blessed that bore Jesus.
And Jesus instead is saying the most important is your relationship with God.
Your relationship with God.
Hear God and obey.
You betcha.
Jesus refused to define or allow motherhood to be the core definition of being a real woman.
And that's what polygamists do.
Motherhood.
You must have this many children.
You've got to have all these children.
And of course, it proves the virility of the husband.
Like, yes, I don't know.
But then they get them in the eternities to be God.
But the value is really in our relationship with God and nothing else.
Rather than having children.
Rather than having how many women in the Bible were barren.
Godly women were barren.
We already talked about the woman at the well in John 4 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8.
And Mary wanting to learn from Jesus rather than banging around in the kitchen during her domestic duties with Martha.
And Jesus sustained all those women.
He did not speak against them or treat them unequally.
He defined what it meant to be a Godly man.
Their worth is based upon their relationship with God.
Not patriarchy.
Not how many women they could have babies with or have sex with or how many sons they could father.
The least of the servants was and is the greatest in God's eyes.
Men are not to struggle to dominate or control or to be honored by other men.
Religions and governments dominate but Jesus said if we belong to him we will submit and we won't be domineering.
Spouses will not strive to be greater or rule over the other one.
And there's much much more that we could be said about this.
But I'm going to end with a description in Proverbs 31.
Where we find that 3,000 years ago in the domineering patriarchal culture of that time.
This woman in Proverbs 31 was everything inside and outside the home that any career oriented woman today could hope for.
And her husband called her blessed and she supported and respected him.
And that is how God created a marriage to function.
She was a liberated woman and she loved and respected her husband.
And he loved and respected her and they both loved and honored God.
That was 3,000 years ago in a patriarchal culture.
And just very quickly in 1 Peter 2 9 it talks about the authority, the priesthood authority that women share in with male the royal priesthood.
The other priesthoods don't exist like the Mormons like to bring it out that the royal priest women and male are equally in that position.
So we have finished part five.
Sounds good. It was wonderful.
There's again a lot more that we could go through but we won't do it.
I think we've given enough information for anyone to be able to start, you know, launch their own study if they wanted or if you want to have questions.
You can always email us or call us on the telephone that we gave you at the beginning of it.
So thanks again Errol for sharing this.
Pleasure to be here.
You know we did this story or this series not to cause rebellion among the females of this culture but to inform polygamist women and men.
That women are of equal value to God.
They don't have lesser or greater authority but equal status with any man on this planet.
And hopefully someone's perspective will have been changed from the idea of power over others to power alongside others.
Jesus alone is Lord. Your man isn't.
Neither is your prophet or your priesthood holder or bishop or pastor or any other male in your neighborhood.
Only Jesus is Lord and abject submission should be to him only.
Just to Jesus.
Jesus taught monogamy. He never taught polygamy, not from his lips.
He also forgives everyone who will turn away from what they're doing now and do it his way.
We want to thank you for watching and God bless.
you
