Extract of a conversation with an American Attorney (blue text):
A case in point is the matter of plural marriages which you are
apparently intending to address. The hate campaign conducted against
the Mormons has not died in over 100 years. Yet the Bible is full of
examples of men who were chosen by the Almighty for special purposes in
His relationship with mankind, which men had several wives, and in the
case of David the prophet attributes this to a gift of The Almighty. I
would seek specific guidance in the manner of handling such questions.
It is better to declare a revelation, as in the Mormon situation, or
would it be better to point out that condemning this practice in effect
condemns these righteous men who followed the practice, and then go on to
note the recent widespread increase in this practice among believers in
all parts of the world, and to conclude that you are unable to condemn
the practice and unable to find any Biblical grounds for excluding the
from fellowship the men and women who follow this practice.
Stanisław's Responses (red text):
I'm afraid you have got the wrong end of the stick here! We acknowledge
the validity of plural marriage and teach that it will be the normative
practice of the elect in the Millennium (Isaiah 4). We receive into fellowship
monogamous, polygamous and celibate Christians/Messianics, and are one of the few
churches (assemblies) based in the West which does so. We do, however, have high
spiritual standards and question the motives of many who wish to enter
into polygamous relationships, especially in cultures where the practice
is not normative and where sexual/moral values generally are low. We would
question seriously the motives of anyone in the West (ar anywhere else,
for that matter) practicing this principle for whom the Lord Yah'shua (Jesus) is not first
in their lives. One of the major tasks of our movement is to encourage
Christians/Messianics to fully allign their marriages into the sphere of the Holy
Spirit and make the Lord Yah'shua (Jesus) the first party thereof. We have found enormous
joy in this though we would have to add that a lot of sacrifice is
required.
This is obviously but one issue, a small a part of the preparation that
needs to be made for the milenniuum. I will be tuning in to see what you
are posting.
Again, thanks for the notice.
Pleased you liked it. If there is anything in the publications lists
which interest you which are not up on the site, feel free to ask and I
will do my best to get them up.
I appreciate your mild spirit and sense your nearness to Yahweh. It is
good to see such in the midst of so many red-eyed fanatics whose zeal
often tends to exceed their wisdom. But then we are warned of such in
the New Testament and know they will characterise the last days -- sadly.
9 May 97:
I thank you for responding to me so fully, and apologize for not
writing again sooner. Life gets hectic.
I know the feeling...
I should tell you that I am not in the business of promoting polygamy,
but I have a close friend that was raised in a polygamous family.
Neither are we. We simply accept that Yahweh accepts it and get on with life. To those who are called, and to whose who are not, we simply wish
them well.
He is now an adult, in psychological counseling, in large measure the result
of childhood experiences which resulted from the structure of his
childhood family. It was not the family that caused the problems, but
the treatment the children received from the outside world due to their
parents' choice of family structure.
I have heard of the terrible things that happen to 'pligs' [polygamists], as they are derogatively called, in the LDS community. The children suffer enormously from the blind hatred of their peers' parents. As parent, my heart goes out to all children who are bullied or persecuted
because of their parents' beliefs and prejudices. They are innocents who
deserve better. I meet similar problems here with 'war
children', the sons and daughters of German soldiers during the 1939-45
occupation. The vast majority of them have psychological problems,
having been treated as 'nazis' or 'criminals'. It's outrageous in our
supposedly 'enlightened' age. I only know that those who psychologically
(and sometimes physically) abuse children in such a way will wish they
had never been born before the judgment bar if they do not repent.
His mother is now advancing in age
and is floating from one friend's home to another. The family was
repeatedly separated, forced to move from place to place, and in time
finally was unable to stay together, because of the persecution they
received, from 'Christians' acting in most unloving ways. I find no
justification for this in the scriptures.
Neither can we.
I have only heard one sermon on the subject, and that minister referred to the
'adulterous practices' of Abraham and Moses, as a means of discrediting the law of Moses.
Well, there's one minister who will not be sitting at the Marriage Table of the Lamb...
I am look forward to seeing how you handle this subject, and hope that you
will try again to send me your materials in an e-mail attachment. I
have been receiving attachments successfully, and expect that it will go
through. Something just went amiss this one time.
Will try. Hope you enjoy it. Do share something of yourself -- your beliefs, etc. -- if you feel so inclined next time.
23 May 1997
Dear R,
Good to hear from you again.
I came home this afternoon and found your response. Thank you. What
you have to say seems much more in tune with what I read in the Word
than what I have heard otherwise.
Where have you heard "otherwise"? I guess we have our critics on the Web but so far only one person has come out hostile. (By the time we closed ministry in 2003 there were droves of them!) Mostly people are
suspicious because we don't fit the protestant paradigm but we are
adding more and more friends as time goes on.
I will be sharing it with the man I mentioned to you.
Your views seem balanced to me: accept what the Word
says, if God does not condemn, neither should we.
You asked about my background. I am a semi-retired attorney. The
practice of law was always a struggle for me. I felt I was forever
being placed in situations that pushed me toward compromising my own
personal values.
At present I am concluding a 14 year effort, based on research into the
causes of divorce, to publish a premarital test that will show men and
women intending to marry where they have conflicts in their values and
beliefs that could later push them toward divorce. Over 1,000 divorced
men and women were interviewed by me and/or under my supervision to define
what the problems were that could never be resolved. The test is based on
those problems. My hope is to also use the test for 'marriage' introductions,
on the order of a dating service, but for the express purpose of helping
serious minded adults find someone to marry where the two can support each
other in the values and beliefs they have, rather than constantly pushing
against each other with conflicting values and beliefs. This has been a long
and arduous and expensive project, and I earnestly desire to have it come
to an end and begin to the do the job is has been built to do.
I wish you well in it.
My research into the conflicts in marriage took me back into the
First Century, trying to discover the roots of the conflicting beliefs
we have (culturally and individually) concerning the nature of the
marriage relationship. That was my first in depth exposure to plural
family structures, which I could see from reading the Jewish Mishnah
were still very much a part of the Jewish cultural at the time of
Messiah's ministry here on earth in human form.
The Mishnah is full of cases, legal cases if you will,
detailing the problems of plural marriages in that society. I would not say
that they were worse than those of monogamous marriages, but different, and
clearly there were problems a plenty. The same can be said for monogamous
marriages, which is the reason I began working on this subject 14 years ago.
There are some misconceptions concerning the state of women in
the Jewish society of the First Century, which misconceptions appear to
me to have been intentionally spread abroad by some very respected Ph.D.-
type Christian scholars, who have obviously read every word in the
Mishnah, but speak only of those parts that agree with their earlier
teachings, or can be used to discredit the Jews. As an example,
I have often heard ministers preach that the wives of that time
had no more rights than animals. I wish the minsters who say these
things would read the Mishnah, and quit listening to their seminary
professors.
The wives at that time in the Jewish culture had many legal rights that
would be the envy of women in our Western societies. A man could sell his
children and himself into slavery, but he could not sell his wives into
slavery, even if he had originally purchased them as slaves. Every wife
also had a lien on all of her husband's property. That lien is stated in
the Mishnah as extending to the 'shirt on his back' but apparently did not
extend to his pants. Every wife had such a lien. In the Mishnah you
can find cases where a man was prevented from selling property because
his third wife refused to sign. This was property he had inherited from
his father. To say that these women had no more rights than animals is
grossly incorrect, yet this teaching seems to persist and persist. The
part of the Mishnah dealing with marriage is fascinating, and some of it
is hilariously funny. Men owed their wives certain duties, and could be
fined for not meeting their duties to their wives. The type of
employment a man had, or his status as a man of leisure, affected those
duties. When you read them all together they can get pretty strange.
[snipped]
Author: SBSK
