Quote From: ammon7I would like to address the flds debacle from a member of the real lds perspective. We are appalled by the flds polygamy scandal. In our church God's plan is filled with knowledge, agency, choice, all glory to God. According to our belief Satan's plan is without knowledge, no choice, Satan would have people forced to choose the right. Satan gets all the glory. And the people have no free agency. The FLDS is the complete antithesis to God's plan. It is Satan's plan. It is as far from God's plan as possibly could be. It is a cult. Also, The real Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints (of which I am a faithful member) states Polygamy is an abomination before God. The Book of MOrmon, which predates the practice of polygamy by the main church, condemns the practice (search lds.org scriptures jacob 2: 21-35) . Those of us in the real true lds church are not waiting for the day when polygamy is reinstated. polygamy is not a pre requisite to going to heaven. It is evil. It draws men away from the true principles of compassion, charity, and real love. It was never a wholesome practice. I believe it was taken from the real church over a 100 years ago because it was evil. Please do not believe that the real LDS church condones in anyway this terrible practice.
If the FLDS is satans plan, then so is Joseph Smith's original view of polygamy:
The LDS church, via Joseph Smith instigated polygamy as "the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth". This was in section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, a very important primary scriptural textbook in the Mormon church. Brigham Young, his successor, cheered over the polygamy that went on in Colorado Springs in his day, and stated that it would someday be the center of the LDS church.
"Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined,...
I defy the United States; I will obey God."
- John Taylor(on January 4, 1880), President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Quoted in Under The Banner of Heaven
John Krakauer, Doubleday (July 15, 2003)
The only reason why the LDS church discontiued polygamy is because the Fed's held their feet to the fire in 1856 under President James Buchanan.
"But even as the LDS leaders publicly claimed, in 1890, to have relinquished the practice, they quietly dispatched bands of Mormons to establish polygamous colonies in Mexico and Canada, and some of the highest-ranking LDS authorities secretly continued to take multiple wives and perform plural marriages well into the twentieth-century."
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/f/f39aa.html
The LDS church holds as much to blame for this as the FLDS does and if the truth be told they may have more to do with abusing state laws through loopholes and even funding this church than they are letting on. Meanwhile, pundits seek to disavow their association with them, and apparently their own history.
