The world has changed a great deal since my last article. Polish politics have changed in a radically new nationalistic, Catholic direction - for good and evil - good, because it is resisting Islam, abortion and the EU, evil because it is resisting everything that isn't catholic - and once again this country has become a frontline buffer between the Western nations and the alleged Russian menace in the East. Our south-eastern neighbour, Ukraine, is in the middle of the chaos caused by civil war, and our north-eastern neighbour, Belarus, which is closely tied to Russia, is run by a ruthless dictator. The Russian Kaliningrad exclave, stockpiled with nuclear missiles, lies to our north, and NATO troops are all over the country, along both our northern and eastern borders. NATO's presence is very much in evidence in Lublin. We could be in the middle of a Third World War at any moment.
The situation in Kenya isn't much better. There's a lot of political unrest, drought and disease stalking the land, the economy is shakey, and its eastern Muslim neighbour, Somalia, remains as unsettled and troublesome as ever. To the north-west there is a civil war in the young nation of South Sudan, with a constant stream of refugees into Kenya, Uganda and other neighbouring countries.
Our world has suddenly become a very dangerous place.
I have long said that unless the culture you live in accepts polygamy and can provide polygamous families with a support structure, the chances of a polygamous family surviving are probablly 10 per cent or less, unless, of course, you go and hide away from society, which is not a good thing. As Christians we must interact with the society around us, both to witness and to allow our children to socialise. In Poland, with its militant monogamy-only Catholicism, this is virtually impossible. In Kenya, it is different, but a polygamous white family in a black culture sticks out like a sore thumb and has its own problems, particularly in the midst of unrest.
So the pressures on a polygamous family are, even at the best of times, high, even when you do your best to keep your heads down and maintain a low profile, something we have managed to do reasonably well...until a wife concludes the lifestyle is not for her and, with the full backing of society and the militantly feminist state with its limitless resources garnered through taxation, decides to bolt back into the world. If she is at enmity with you, then you yourself are in the hostile public gaze and under constant threat, and all that that means for your family. Evangelism is virtually impossible, for virtually no Christian group will endorse or accept you, except in a polygamy-tolerating society like Kenya where really the only place you are accepted is amongst polygamous tribes like the Masaai. Your hands are very much tied once it is generally known who you are, what you believe, and the lifestyle you lead. And the secular government will be less than sympathetic to any needs you might have, and will work to break your family up and take the children away if it can.
In the West, at any rate, the only optional fellowship is with fellow polygamists who are likely from a diverse range of Christian denominations and traditions, and are therefore few in number and widely scattered. As I have noted on this websike, attempts to make polygamous communities are handicapped with their own problems, and all I have come across have failed. There has simply been too much diversity, a lack of unity, and - worse of all - far too much carnality. And the greatest problem of all for polygamous communities is that polygamy becomes the 'main thing' rather than Messiah and the core doctrines of salvation and holiness. Some Christian African polygamists have links to various polygamous groups in the USA but because of the distances involved, these links soon become tenuous and before long the groups are interacting with, and being changed by, the surrounding culture.
Authentic Christian polygamists in Poland are, to all intents and purposes, non-existent and most families in neighbouring countries like Germany are either in seclusion or have long since become broken up and scattered. The polygamists in East Africa, who are not otherwise in some of the traditional churches where they are barely tolerated, are for the most part eclectic and in their beliefs and practices, resemble cults in so many ways, or simply exist for themselves. Their 'church' is their family.
As the tentacles of the state dig ever deeper into and around society, and as totalitarian statism rapidly takes over the West and the rest of the world, the outlook for Christian polygamists looks bleak, to say the least. It would not surprise me if it disappears virtually altogether in the West, and certainly in Europe. The carnal forms of 'Christian' polygamly will definitely consume themselves and disappear or become perverse cults. I will not regret their passing for a moment because I believe - and have always believed - that the vast majority of Americans and Europeans (in particular) were never called into this lifestyle.
I myself have no desire to expand my family any more and I am not recommending my children enter this lifestyle until there has been an authentic anointing of the Holy Spirit, validating it uneqivocably in their own minds. And even then I would caution them not to make any hasty moves and be absolutely, 100 per cent sure Yahweh has called them if they ever start entertaining the possibility. I have taught them all to be very careful, circumspect and - I hope - wise, to regard monogamy as their default choice, to seek monogamous marriages, and forget about polygamous matters until Yahweh tells them otherwise.
As your children mature and become adults, as mine have, they inevitably look to their parents and their non-biological 'sister-mothers' (whom mine elected to call 'aunts' (if they are older) or 'sisters' (if they are around the same age as themselves)), for inspiration. Your greatest witness of any principle is what your children see with their own eyes. I don't blame my children for not being attracted to the lifestyle, not one bit, as they have watched the struggles and - the worst testimony of all - the unfaithfulness of wives. They have seen the traumatic effects on their father, mothers and 'aunts'. How can you expect them to overlook that?
We are brutally honest about our trials and they respect that more than anything else. We talk freely and openly about them. Indeed, only the other day, one of my daughters asked me what polygamy had been like for me personally. I replied, with jocularity: 'Why do you think I am half dead?!' and she screamed with laughter. We don't pretend polygamy to be anything than it really is - really, really tough, for husbands and wives alike, though I would like to think that all my children are maturer than most of today's children for the simple reason they have grown up with lots of experienced, adult counsellors and friends. Today, even - and especially - amongst Christians, monogamy presents more than enough issues for our children in a world where marriage itself is under the relentless attack of liberals and Marxists hell-bent on eradicating it altogether.
An email found its way to me the other day in which a starry-eyed hopeful ('poly wannabee'), who I believe was not of the usual baser sort and was genuinely seeking the kind of community and brotherhood we have dreamed of, asked if he could be a part of our community. Of course, he naïvely expected that we had a warehouse stocked with available wives - they all do. None of them know the cost in searching, teaching and holding onto polygamous wives. And amazingly, I think, they are astounded when there seem to be no virtuous women who want to live this lifestyle, and not many more who want to live Christian conservative monogamy either. They are even more shocked when I tell them, 'Why on earth would a woman be interested in this lifestyle?'
You can spend years searching for a woman to enter an extant marriage, totally hold your libido in check and spend many years training her up and preparing her gradually for the lifestyle until she reaches the point where she is genuinely attracted and earnestly wants to be a part of a family, only to have her later turn on her heels and run. There is absolutely no guarantee she will stay the course, however 'intelligent' or 'spiritual'. And the chances are, if you live in the United States, that she will leave with your children and you will find yourself paying allimony the rest of your life, reducing your already strained family to poverty and adding yet more stresses. This has not happened to me, I might add, since Europe is not like America, but there are plenty of other stresses and tribulations that I could mention.
No, I am absolutely certain that I am right - and I am adamant in saying so - that this is still not the time for polygamy in the Body of Christ generally. Indeed, I would say there are even fewer grounds today than fifteen years ago when our own public ministry was at its height. I am discouraging people even more from entering polygamy today than I ever was at the turn of the century. The Body absolutely does not need it yet, but it will, after the great shaking and purging.
This is not a confession on my part that this principle is false (of course not) nor am I denying that I was ever called into it, but I do believe that the pruning of what is left of the polygamy community will be severe, leaving only a handful worthy to actually live it for Christ's glory. This is my sincere conviction that daily grows stronger. Our people are finding it hard enough to establish monogamous marriages to be worrying about anything bigger and more challenging, and indeed the times of persecution may soon be upon us - as they already are in some nations - where being single may be the only practical possibility, especially if believers are going to be on the move in the face of mounting opposition. Thus my counsel very soon may well be the same or similar to Paul's who told the persecuted Corinthian saints:
"I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from Elohim (God); one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am" (1 Cor.7:7-8, NIV).
Having said of all, I absolutely do not believe this HEM ministry has been in vain. When society is turned on its head and people everywhere start re-evaluating their values and priorities, as the bankruptcy of militant feminism, hedonism, modern social Marxism and nihilism become glaringly obvious, and as the traditional churches break up and lose credibility because of the world's corrupting influences on them, then people will once again wonder about the patriarchal lifestyle and they will find a few families, here and there, and - in the case of this ministry - a mine of information and counsel. We have not wasted our time.
That said, and as the title of this essay suggests, it is time for us - my family, those few who have remained faithful - to move on, and for endings to take place. I am no longer satisfied or content with the way things have been, or are, and I am looking at a new horizon for myself and my family in Christ. We are leaving the past where it belongs - in the past - but we are standing firmly in the truths that the Father has taught us all these years. We certainly won't brook any nonsense or compromise in any area.
This website will still remain an archive and perhaps every one or two years I will write a report or update, like this one, as Yahweh leads. There haven't been many enquiries since I put this website back on the internet in 2016, though there have been quite a few online visitors, and I don't expect there to be until the Big Change. We have our treasure house and we are keeping it hidden until it's once again needed. It is not for the riffraff to trample on.
"May the grace shown by the Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), and the love that God has given us, and the sharing of life brought by the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Cor.13:14, NIRV).
Dobrze cię błogosławię! God bless you!
Author: SBSK
