Polygamy and the Mormon Church: Abrahamic Test

Abrahamic Test

"We will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; and we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them." (Abr. 3:24-25.)

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." (Mosiah 3:19)

The Power from Abrahamic Tests
(Truman G. Madsen is professor emeritus of philosophy at Brigham Young University, where during his tenure he was named both professor of the year and honors professor of the year. He has B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Utah and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard. He has been a guest professor at Northeastern University, the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, and at Haifa University in Israel. Dr. Madsen's writings include Eternal Man, Four Essays on Love, Christ and the Inner Life, and Defender of the Faith, a Biography of B. H. Roberts. He has served as a bishop, president of the New England Mission, a counselor in the Israel District presidency, and as a stake president.)

The Abrahamic Test
(Larry E. Dahl, Brigham Young University, [Richard D. Draper, Witness of Jesus Christ: The 1989 Sperry Symposium on the Old Testament, 53-66.)

The Book of Abraham: A Most Remarkable Book
(by Andrew Skinner)

Abraham
(by E. Douglas Clark)

"The Saints did not accept into their faith and practice the plural-wife system with the idea that it increased the comfort, or added to the ease of anyone. From the first it was known to involve sacrifice, to make a large demand upon the faith, patience, hope and charity of all who should attempt to carry out its requirements. Its introduction was not a call to ease or pleasure, but to religious duty; it was not an invitation to self-indulgence, but to self-conquest; its purpose was not earth-happiness, but earth-life discipline, undertaken in the interest of special advantages for succeeding generations of men."..."It was indeed a principle of religion to them, a holy sacrament, and not at all designed to become a general practice under merely human laws. It is unfortunate that the world outside of the Church was not impressed with this phase of the subject; for then it would have been apparent that the things the world argued against and fought against--a general plural marriage system free for all to adopt, considered to be destructive of the monogamous system and the menace to the home itself--was not the thing upheld and contended for by the Latter-day Saints, who believed that the privilege of plural marriage is to be limited to persons of high character, approved lives, and living under the most sacred obligations to chastity, and granted this privilege of the marriage system only under the most carefully guarded permission amounting to divine sanction."
~~B.H. Roberts

"... I have constantly said no man shall have but one wife at a time, unless the Lord directs otherwise." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Page 324)

"Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none; For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts. Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes. For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things." (Jacob 2:27-30, emphasis added)

The Bible teaches that the Patriarchs of the Old Testament, who had multiple wives, were still admitted to Heaven:

And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 8:11)

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob[.] God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:32)

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you [yourselves] thrust out. (Luke 13:28)

"I have come to see polygamy as a vital, even indispensable, part of the Restoration, practiced at the behest of the Lord and ultimately discontinued through proper priesthood authorization."
"Polygamy, Prophets, and Prevarication: Frequently and Rarely Asked Questions About the Initiation, Practice, and Cessation of Plural Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,"
--Gregory L. Smith