A century ago this month following the Armistice of 11 November 1918 the Second Polish Republic was born. For 123 years Poland was wiped off the face of the map as an independent country by Russia, Austria and Prussia. And though independence was sweet it was but the start of many traumas. The boundaries were unstable, wars and uprisings followed, conflicts with communist Ukraine, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and Germany took place as Poland tried to make itself as large as possible, absorbing many ethnic groups who did not want to be in the new Republic. Then Soviet Russia invaded and the country was almost wiped out and might have become a Soviet Socialist Republic but for the 'miracle of the Vistula'. The interwar period was unstable, Poland became a dictatorship, was invaded by Hitler in 1939, occupied until 1945, and was then subject to communist occupation until 1989. It has been a turbulent century, just as life is turbulent.
I often liken polygamous families to the history of the Polish nation. The Królewiec family has had plenty of turbulence and though there have been lulls it's been more or less continuous. Our monogamy-only society hates our lifestyle and once you poke your head out of the trenches it will immediately start taking pot-shots at you and then, if you annoy it by being visibile long enough, start making full-frontal attacks. Our enemies are not only the fanatically feministic and anti-patriarchal secular society but also those who ought to have been our allies, fellow Christians. But then this story you know well because I have written about it often enough in the past and I don't want to rehash old material.
2018 has been another year of trauma for the Królewiecs, not so much sudden but gradual and sustained when my youngest and most recent wife, Zyta, decided to change her religion. A lifestyle such as the one we live requires solidarity and unity if it is to survive and prosper, and whilst there will naturally always be disagreements in any family, and of greater variety in such a large and complex family like our own, plural marriage really does need a solid spiritual underpinning to both survive and prosper. Without it there is always the possibility of civil war.
Whatever 2018 has meant for Poland, Germany and other countries, all of whom have been observing 11 November this year differently - some celebrating and some mourning - it has meant something entirely different for our own family.
One of the enormous problems having a multinational polygamous family is securing residence permits for those who are not Polish-born and particulary for those coming from outside the European Union. Three of my wives have had major problems in this area. Świętosława was its first victim and though visas and residence permits weren't the only problem in her story, the separation occasioned by these was enough to sink our marriage.
As Zyta is from the Ukraine, which is outside the EU, this has created considerable difficulties for us. With a civil war raging in the east in Don Bas, a collapsing economy, and an unstable totalitarian government in Kiev, Zyta was forced to return to her homeland while we fixed up a residence permit. She had already had to wait for years to visit us and get married in the first place. Red tape forced her to return to Źytomierz after being with us for barely a year to once again be with relatives hostile to our family, way of life, and faith. The repeat separation was in itself heart-breaking for both of us.
Long absences are potentially damaging and even fatal for any marriage because people can change and grow apart in different directions. Initially finding fellowship in the Greek Catholic Church, she starved spiritually and in searching for something more substantial, Zyta converted to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church where she felt more at home, something we only learned about very recently. We were shocked, dismayed, for that precious unity we had enjoyed was suddenly shattered. For the Christ of Eastern Orthodoxy is different in many respects from the One which we in our family serve.
So now there is not only a geographical divide between us but also a spiritual one. And though she is for now still clinging on to plural marriage and one or two of our other shared beliefs which the Orthodox don't hold to, and while she wants to return to Poland at some point, the theology of her Eastern Orthodoxy has compelled her to now view us as heretics and spiritually lost. She has officially resigned her membership from our fellowship and will not cooperate in any way with our missions or help out the way she used to. That has been a very, very hard pill to take, like losing half your wife, because we grew close together in serving the Kingdom. It was our relationship together in Christ that made us bloom as a couple.
Knowing what the Orthodox, like the Catholic, Church thinks about us, it feels like she has gone over to the enemy camp. I don't know what the polity is in Ukraine right now, but in Russia all churches but the Orthodox are effectively outlawed. Orthodoxy has never been very tolerant of other Christians in part because it is so tied into the culture, in part because it believes that it alone is the true church with the true sacraments. Sadly, they seem not to have learned from the tyranny of communist exclusivism they so recently broke away from.
We are both deeply committed Christians but what do you do when one of the parties believes that one or more of your beliefs constitute a salvational issue? We all draw our spiritual boundaries a little differently - some are more conservative, some more liberal - but when these lines cut through the heart of a marriage, it is very painful indeed. Your helpmeet then becomes a companion with one hand in yours whilst holding the hand of an Adversary with the other. Of course, her Church - which is strictly monogamy-only - if its priest ever hears she is a polygamist, as he must do one day, will force her to make a choice, so right now she is between a rock and a hard place.
As previously mentioned, I have had doctrinal issues with wives in the past. Świętosława had major issues with male authority because of abuse growing up and in a previous marriage so her submission was merely outward so as not to cause family division even though inside she resented it. But she was always hand-in-hand when it came to evangelism until she finally flipped and went her own way completely, disappearing out of our life altogether.
In some ways, then, the situation with Zyta is much more difficult, in other ways easier. Kasia eventually became an atheist and an open persecutor, the worst that can happen, turning son against his own father in the process. These and many others are some of the griefs that must be carried if you risk living this lifestyle because society will be against you no matter how good are are. Plus it becomes harder and harder the older and more infirm you become.
I said last time in the early summer that my family and I were preparing to move on and that an ending of sorts had taken place. By that I mostly meant our work in East Africa was over but there was also the beginning of a sense that that God had much more in mind. That original 'sense' is now twice as strong as it was last June following the troubles with Zyta. Angelka and Kryztina also feel this strongly in their respective ways too and we have talked of moving country. We have thought long and hard about the years that have gone by and what it is Yahweh now wants us to do.
Whatever it is we have been doing these last decades it seems like it is well and truly over. We have given our witness of this sacred principle, however imperfectly we have lived it, we have shared everything we know about it as it really is, and not withheld the truth. Above all, we have wanted to dissuade those not called into this lifestyle and to warn those who are of all the pitfalls and challenges. I think we have done that reasonably well even though I know most - especially the men - get too reckless to weigh matters carefully since it's often hormones driving them, not common sense or the Spirit.
If I had known in advance how things for my own family would turn out, I am pretty sure I would never have entered this lifestyle but preferred to wait until the Millennium, though I would have defended its biblical truthfulness, of course. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's knocked 10-20 years off my life. It's been tough for everyone involved, as I knew it would be, and as I warned every prospective wife thinking of entering the lifestyle.
It's a lifestyle that can only be lived happily supernaturally - in Christ - because it is not natural. Trying to live it in the flesh is a bit like building a house starting with the roof and building downwards. Since it is a supernatural lifestyle - like the authentic Christian life - you have to be united on a common spiritual foundation. Without that, you might as well kit yourself out with armour from day #1 or pack your bags.
My only consolation is that you, the reader, have this biographical and theological record, which I believe will bless you for sure if you have been authentically called by God to live this way for His glory and not for any other reason. If you're pursuing this lifestye for personal advantage - and believe me, both genders can enter polygamy for personal advantage, not just the men - then you'll probably drop this website like a hot cake and go elsewhere...which is what I intended all along. It's no 'poly Woodstock'.
In this life you can never predict how things are going to turn out when it comes to personal relationships. Ever. People are fickle. If monogamy is a risky business - and it is - then the risk increases exponentially with every new wife you add. It is an enormous challenge and responsibility to live in this kind of family arrangement. The dynamics of this lifestyle are complicated - very complicated indeed. And even if you carefully select potential wives for their faithfulness to the Gospel, you just never know how they are going to turn out. They can be angels one minute and devils the next. There's no guarantee they will remain Christian. And the men are no different. I have known all sorts of scoundrels who built polygamous families who seemed very spiritual at first but who abused and abandoned wives and children (just as in monogamous marriages) and (in one case) even ended up murdering a wife because she was about to leave him. These were so-called 'Christians'! So you just never know. Nothing outside of Christ, it seems, is permanent.
All marriage - monogamous and polygamous - is like Russian roulette. I have known men utterly burned out by this lifestyle, with one in the grave before his time, and women who were utterly miserable. Again, it's no different in the monogamy-only world, because the issues are nearly always relational. Sometimes people don't turn out to be what they pretended to be, sometimes people come to polygamy for all the wrong reasons. Just as in monogamy, many enter polygamy thinking it will fix emotional, mental or spiritual issues. But marriage is not a mall - you don't enter it to 'get' something but to give. It's not a hospital either. Marriage does not cure your illness, it merely spreads the infection. Only Christ can heal. Marriage was instituted by God to be used in the way He intended, to raise families and as a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church. It's a commitment for life, 'for better, for worse', and He holds those to account who simply walk away because it no longer suits them.
Zyta might come back, we might become spiritually reconciled, but there's no guarantee, because religion can be a killer. Long and hard experience has taught me not to be optimistic. We all prefer to choose the route of least resistance and that is always the flesh. You do have to be a realist for your own peace of mind. Religion too can be a blessing or a curse, like everything else - a blessing when it's lived the way Christ taught, a curse when man tweeks it to suit himself and his own preferences.
I truly understand why atheists arise and with some of them I genuinely sympathise. But atheism is not the answer because it does not deal with reality. It's just one of many illusions. Neither are man-made religions. And I have met polygamists who were atheists and polygamists from other religions (Muslim, New Age, Buddhist) with whom you would have thought we would have had something in common because of a shared marriage lifestyle. We were friends with a Muslim polygamist family in Syria years ago but we had practically nothing in common and so the contact didn't last long. The 'birds of a feather' that count are those with a shared spirituality, which is why we have had monogamist Christian friends over the years, and still do. We never were into polygamy for polygamy's own sake.
We are all caught in a particular web of history about which we can do little or nothing. Without a doubt, Christian or Messianic polygamy does not fit at all into our 'bit' of history; it is totally disjunctive with it, unless you happen to be living another version of the lifestyle in the polygamy-accepting parts of Christian or animist sub-Saharan Africa, or in the Islamic world of the Middle East and North Africa, but it really doesn't fit into those either. The world which Holy Echad Marriage is looking at hasn't even arrived yet, though it does connect to faint echoes from the remote past at which it looks back longingly while knowing it can never actually go there. That makes it a very lonely prospective. And as a pioneer of this form of polygamy, the vision of which I freely and ashamedly admit I haven't remotely approached in the flesh and probably never will do, I have to accept the loneliness as anyone announcing something new must. John the Baptist surely knew what it was like to be an unreceived herald. He departed this world as full of doubts as I am sure I will, because I will never see this realised in my time. I know that, I am reconciled - reluctantly - to that. The last opportunity has passed.
Perhaps the likes of Judith, Haguth, Sabea, and Kannah never existed and never will, but I would like to think they did, or will, along with the 'New Covenant Abraham'. And it looks, now, as if the 12th volume will never now be written. Like the unfinished musical scores of Beethoven's 10th Symphony, Mozart's final Requiem Mass and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, it looks as though this work must remain unfinished too. Likewise, just as fire has destroyed so many irreplacable priceless cultural artifacts - such as the Library of Alexandria destroyed by the Muslims, Hayden's countless operas destroyed in an estate in Hungary, a large part of Bach's output - so sometimes, like Brahms who burned nearly all his string quartets, we must take a lot of what we produced with us to the grave. As things are, I shall certainly be doing that because I don't want to leave behind any score I have not myself performed.
None of us knows when death will intervene to cut off our life and creativity; I am only writing in this vein now because I have had enough brushes with death in recent times to make sure I get this testimonial completed at least and to make sure what remains is what actually remains. Yet that is no guarantee of survival. It all depends whether it's forgotten or not. And there I am truly in my family's hands. Maybe they'll want to forget polygamy when I have gone. I wouldn't blame them - we all want to fit into our 'bit' of history if we can...the world as it is...until we hopefully realise it will never remember us and what matters is what is recorded in Heaven. And frankly not everyone is attracted to this lifestyle, nor should they be, and they must definitely never be compelled into it. Hopefully, then, the next generation of my family will understand that even if it isn't for them that it might be for somebody else, and that I wish them to pass on this legacy to them.
I have a mind, having just written what amounts to a 'Last Will and Testament', to end this website, meaning, to add to it no more. Save to less than a handful of souls who were true friends, supporting me, my family and this ministry, I owe no other thanks other than to those of my family who remained faithful and loyal. There is nothing more precious than that. So unless Yahweh reactivates this work and puts fresh marrow into my bones, this will be my final article for this website. I have finished. May Yahweh bless you all in our Saviour Yah'shua the Messiah's (Jesus Christ's) Name. I look forward to seeing many of you on the other side of the veil at the Feet of the One whom we love and serve. Amen.
Click here for the family story
POSTSCRIPT
27 August 2019
Zyta decided to end our marriage. The news came today. It has devastated me, like a heavy blow to the gut, but it was not unexpected. I saw the signs early on - they are so predictable. The well-worn monogamy-only excuses had been offered, which I have no intention of covering again here, unfolded stage by stage over the months as the flesh wrestled with the Spirit for ascendancy. This was the raison d'être, fatally flawed as it is from a biblical perspective.
There are hundreds of articles on this website that establish the truth of patriarchal marriage and I would be a liar if I denied them in the way those seeking justification for their actions would wish me to. This is part of the end-time "restoration of all things" (Is.4:1-2; 13:9; 2 Thes.1:8-9; Mt.3:12; Rev.19:20), of that I have not the slightest doubt, nor do I doubt for one moment my calling to be a part of its restoration, and in particular this principle, however flawed my practical executiton of it has been. So I am not going to make excuses here.
A minister once said that "couples don't fall out of love so much as they fall out of repentance". In every relationship, there is either a philosophy (if you're unreligious) or there's a theology that underpins it. If you convince yourself that it's unscriptural, then one of the two legs of your relationship is kicked out from under you. But once you allow your heart to be closed down, it's fatal, and the other leg is gone too. Marital love is the deepest kind of love there is between two human beings and to let that die - or more accurately, to attempt to kill it - is one of the most devastating things you can do to the soul aside from denying Christ. You never recover from it, not if you're honest with yourself. There is always a monstrous hole there, and its very deep, unless your love was a pretense all along.
If the relationship was sinful (which true plural marriage is not - ever), then Yahweh will heal the wound over time though there will always be a memorial to that folly as a reminder, like the scars in the hands and feet of the Saviour. The sting may be taken but not the object lesson we are supposed to take from it. But if the relationship was not a sin but it was deliberately ended anyway, for whatever reason, by one or both of the parties, the only way to hide the pain is through demonic means, though it will masquerade as something else, obviously. It means that lies have to be believed and a deal secured with the Enemy of our souls to maintain the artificial shielding so the conscience is no longer pricked and the pain of separation no longer felt. That will mean, in practice, cultivating anger and hate, and quite possibily persecuting the innocent party (in order to find an illusiory self-justification). But the Spirit will keep on nudging the guilty spouse unless the Spirit is finally rebuffed, with the ongoing insistant denials leading to a departure of the Spirit leaving only flawed human rationalisations and a desensitised heart incapable of responding in a healthy way. An appeal to secular psychology, which is committed to adjusting to whatever is regarded as 'normal' at any one particular time, then becomes the last resort of justification.
Five wives of mine have walked away from this lifestyle. Two that I know of have committed adultery multiple times. Both have lost their faith, one adopting another religion and having two illegitimate children and the other abandoning religion altogether for atheism (and taking our son into atheism too) and never really settling down. So each views the subject from different angles. Another has remained true to covenant and stayed chaste, as far as I know, and has remained on good (though distant) terms but the light of her faith has dimmed to the point of being only nominal or 'private'. Our son is an atheist as a result. So the casualities are distressingly high.
Zyta is very active in Eastern Orthodoxy and has a lot of religion to hide behind now, the more so as that Church has been uncompromisingly hostile to plural marriage since its beginning. Mercifully we have no children to complicate things even further.
The position of most 'orthodox' (non-Messianic) Christians is that upon converting, polygamist men must abandon all but one wife, usually the first one, though there is no agreement on how to do it and which wife with her children should be kicked out. Indeed, some argue that the oldest one with children at home should be married (for example). There is no concensus, nor can there ever be, since Yahweh makes no provision for divorce except in the case of sexual immorality, and plural marriage is never classified as a sin or sexually immoral in the Scriptures as evidenced by the fact that there are no given penalties in the Law for 'comitting' it.
An Eastern Orthodox 'saint', St.Vladimir, was a polygamist when he converted to that church long ago. One of his wives (not the first) converted but he divorced all of them and 'married' an (Orthodox) Christian woman whom he had not been married to previously! The wife who converted, whose fiancée Vladimir had murdered as a pagan, became a nun instead, a very convenient way to get rid of her. I mention this simply to illustrate as typical the chaos that results when you invent non-biblical marriage rules of your own. I heard stories of this kind of problem in East Africa amongst Protestants who are even more inconsistent than the Eastern Orthodox. Yet Valentinian I practiced plural marriage in the 4th century as attested by the texts of Socrates Scholasticus. When it suited them, the Byzantine Church ignored its own canons which passed into Eastern Orthodoxy after the split with Rome.
But then western and eastern orthodoxy are full of hypocrisy. Simply calling plural marriage 'fornication', 'adultery' or (a new invented category designed to minimise the implications of the first two) 'dishonouring to God', as they do, does not make it so. Nor do governments have the last say as far as sexual morality is concerned (God forbid), or who can cohabit with who, which is usually the last recourse of those who admit the practice is at least permissive but only if secular governments give the green light. Good luck with that one at the Judgment Bar.
I am now fully convinced this lifestyle cannot survive in a world that hates and persecutes it unless it is practiced by those who are morally upright, strong spiritually and have an undoubted calling from Yahweh to do so. I've said it so many times already, and I'll say it again one last time, there is no backup in society anywhere except amongst fellow polygamists and most of them, in my experience, are of a low spiritual calliber, living the lifestyle for less than spiritual motives. There are few I know who have Christ first in their lives. Ironically, the best support I have had has been from monogamists sympathetic to the biblical truth and the occasional secular liberal who believes in 'live and let live'. So you have to know who you are going to count on as your friends, which won't usually be many. So if you're the gregarious type, this might not be the lifestyle for you...yet, until more embrace it.
But I've said this all before. I'm not sure why I am saying it all again other than because I am so hurt and deeply disappointed and because I don't want others to needlessly suffer. Unless you have come into this lifestyle the Isaiah 4:1 way (with the women independently initiating, not the men) you have probably no more than a 5 per cent chance of making it. But even if you get a revelation like that - and one of my wives did - she had a direct audible revelation from Yahweh before I was practicing it or even looking - people can, and do, rebell against the witness of the Ruach (Spirit) that they are given. That's just reality. It's a fruit of the awful fallen condition of humanity. You need a community of like-minded people. The trouble is, if you build one, or once you find one, it'll likely be accused of being a 'cult' (for being 'different') and you'll be persecuted anyway. So unless you enjoy persecution (which you'll get anyway if you're a true believer - so unless you want lots more persecution) STAY AWAY FROM POLYGAMY. It will come into its own by the by when the world as we know it falls apart and people once more will have to survive the old-fashioned way without being dependent on a nanny state...the ones who don't want to be chattels in the feudalistic system that's coming.
Please pray for Zyta. Please pray for all my family. Please pray that the light of truth may flood everyone and the fountain of Christ's love be opened wide!
So with a heavy heart, yet still strong in faith, I once again have to say, until a happier day comes:
Trzymaj się!
Farewell!
Auf Wiedersehen!
Author: SBSK
