Sacred Light

         A random but typical polygamist family in the 1800's. No Man Knows My History, by Fawn M. Brodie is an excellent book about Joseph Smith’s history. Chapter twenty four explains the immense mess with Joseph, his multiple wives, John C. Bennett, and the ugly, disgusting truth behind polygamy. This was the first book I read when I started to question the church, and what I had been taught concerning church history. It blew my mind wide open! The fact that Emma Smith didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah after Joseph’s death was a huge problem for me for several reasons. You would think if Joseph had actually established ‘God’s one and only true church’ Emma would have stayed loyal to its teachings, the new prophet, and would have gone westward as well. Clearly, she feared being destroyed by ‘God’ if she didn’t give in to accepting the practice of polygamy, (‘God’ being Joseph in my humble opinion). In that disturbing revelation of D&C 132, she wa...

"The only men who become Gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy... Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so; I promise that you will be damned. " ~ Brigham Young I need to address polygamy before going on with my story. Polygamy is  the smelly, gigantic, disgusting ‘elephant in the room’ of Mormonism. If you have read my earlier posts concerning Mormonisms 'bat shit' crazy beliefs, then you are aware that  there is polygamy in the Celestial kingdom, (the highest level of the Mormon version of Heaven). Men can have multiple wives in that ‘climax’ level of Heaven. According to Mormonism, God has multiple wives, Jesus has multiple wives, and so can those men who reach this exalted state of being. In fact, some believe it is required to have multiple  wives to enter Heaven; my dad certainly believed that this was true. In October of 2015, I was shocked to learn of his many proposals to a woman in his ward ov...

Interestingly, Joseph Smith was not the first person during his lifetime to envision this idea of the three kingdoms of glory, or the three kingdoms of 'Heaven'.  “Emanuel Swedenborg was a world-renowned inventor and scientist in the 1700s. At age 53, Swedenborg began experiencing visions and dreams. He claimed to have been appointed by God to reform Christianity. (just like Joseph Smith!)  For the rest of his life, he published the information he received through his frequent visits to the spirit world.   Swedenborg taught there were three degrees of glory in heaven, comparable to the sun, the moon, and the stars, the highest being called the Celestial Kingdom.   A library near the Smith home carried the book,  Sibly’s Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences . Historian Michael Quinn has already demonstrated that this book is the likely source for the Smith family’s magic parchments.   This book also contains a 20-page summary of Swed...