The history of polygamy is old indeeed, stretching back to the dawn of time. Many great and noble men of the Bible, as well as some wicked ones, practiced it. Men such as Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon, who had many wives, particularly stand out. Abraham and David had such a close relationship with Yahweh that they are counted as the friends of Elohim (God), men with a shem tov or 'good name', a status few have acquired since. And Yahweh specifically attached His Name to three men, two of whom were polygamists, as the Elohim (God) of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The nation of Israel was founded on polygamy through Jacob's twelve sons through four wives and the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem are named after them. Polygamy is part and parcel of divine history.
On this website you will find numerous historical articles about polygamy both in the Bible and outside it. We also trace the turbulent history of the restoration of polygamy amongst Christian and Messianics, in particular, at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. My family and I lived through that exciting as well as disturbing period of time. Since I know my own history the best of all, it is that I shall share, again in outline (but covered in more depth elsewhere on this site), by way of introduction.
We'll start with my adopted family name, Królewiec, as some have asked about it. It literally means in the Polish, 'King's Hill' or a fortified hill occupied by the King. In our family we like to think of the King as our Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus) and the hill as Mount Zion, though this was almost certainly not the original meaning of the name. So to be a Królewiec means to be on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Yah'shua (Jesus).
For those who are interested in heraldry, the coat of arms (depicted at the top of this article) is that of the ancient city of Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia (Ostpreußen) which at one time briefly belonged to Poland and was known as Królewiec. Today the city belongs to Russia and was renamed Kaliningrad in 1947 and still retains the coat of arms of the Old Town or Altstadt consisting of a red crown on a white background and a white cross on a red background. This portion of the crest still survives on the coat of arms of the modern Russian City of Kaliningrad (1947) which was built on top of the ruins of Königsberg.
Why have I written this introductory article on names? Because biblically a Name is very important indeed. A name defines who you are - your personality, your code of conduct, what you represent. You are your name.
The tradition of using surnames is not, however, a biblical idea. In biblical times your last name was your father's name. Thus Yah'shua (Jesus) bore the name of his step-father, Joseph and was known as Yah'shua ben Yosef. But as He was the Son of Elohim (God) too, He bore His Father's literal Name - Yah(weh) - within His Name, namely, YAH'shua, meaning 'Yahweh saves'.
Strictly speaking, then, my name isn't Królewiec at all, since surnames often arose as a means to identify a profession. Thus the Anglo-Saxon surnames 'Thatcher' and 'Tanner' were originally chosen to designate a profession - William the tanner (tanner of skins and hides), or Joe the thatcher (maker of thatched roofs). Names like Johnson, though, are nearer to the original biblical concept, an ancestor once having had a father by the name of John (John's son).
In India they still follow the biblical practice. If my name is Raj and my father's is Matthew, my legal name would be Raj Matthew. My son Narayanan would then be called Narayanan Raj, taking on my first name as his last. Stictly speaking, then, my real name would be Stanisław Andrzej had my father's first name been Andrzej.
Why am I mentioning all of this on a polygamy page? Because for the woman her last name is particularly important. We read in Isaiah 4:1 that a woman who does not have a husband's name is in a state of disgrace: "In that day, seven women will take hold of one man and say, 'We will eat out own food and provide our own clothes; only LET US BE CALLED BY YOUR NAME. Take away our disgrace" (NIV).
A daughter takes on her father's name like a son does only it is not a permanent name. She is not defined by her father's name but by her husband's. So long as she is without a husband, she has has no last name, belongs to no one, and is in disgrace.
In our day and age such a thought may appear either incomprehensible or ridiculous, or both. In our unisexual feministic culture gender rôles have been redefined so that men and women don't know who they are any longer. The whole of our post-Christian civilisation (if that is the right word) is completely absorbed in defining SELF to the point that it has become a pathological obsession - an obsession that has found its fruitition and expression in the ultimate paganism called Pantheism or the New Age. Satanism is about the exaltation of self, and the way we treat our names reveals whether we are in Elohim's (God's) camp or the enemy's.
A man is defined by his father and a woman by her husband. That is why a son takes his father's name and a woman her husband's. That's also, incidentally, one of the things we mean by 'patriarchal'. But since our fathers-in-the-flesh are sinners like us, their name cannot take away from us the disgrace of being unsaved spiritual orphans. For this reason Elohim (God) has commanded us to turn to Him in repentance as our Heavenly Father through His Son Yah'shua (Jesus) to receive a new name - the Name of Yahweh, which is also in the Name of the Son (YAH'shua).
The Name of Yahweh gives us inheritance rights in the Kingdom of Heaven just as our father's name gives us inheritance rights in terms of worldly estates (what's left over after the state has stolen its ill-gotten share through property taxation). An unmarried woman belongs to her father as a ward and bears his (temporary) name. In order to obtain her, a prospective husband must purchase her by means of a dowry or môhar, commonly known as the marriage gift. Jacob, you will remember, purchased Leah and Rachel by working for Laban for 14 years. This dowry acted both to compensate for the loss of income and labour a father would suffer from marrying off a daughter as well as to purchase the right to CHANGE HER NAME TO HIS. The môhar should not be thought of as the price for purchasing a slave since in actual fact gifts were exchanged. Leah and Rachel received two handmaidens as gifts who later became Jacob's wives as well.
The purchase price that Yahweh our Heavenly Father paid for us was the blood of His Son, Yah'shua (Jesus). By accepting that purchase price, we receive His Name as ours. The woman, in order to receive that Name herself, MUST OBTAIN IT FROM HER HUSBAND since the purchase price is for ADAM, the first man containing the uncreated woman, Eve. Yah'shua (Jesus) is called the "second Adam". This explains why the single, unmarried (or widowed) women in Isaiah 4:1 were desperate for a husband's name. In the New Covenant, that name is the Name of Christ.
This does not mean that a wife is saved through her husband's salvation. Salvation - at least the Christ-Alpha (Alef) of salvation - is entirely personal. A woman must come to Christ on exactly the same terms as a man, since they are equal inheritors of salvation. The issue that I am discussing is not salvation but INHERITANCE RIGHTS in the Kingdom of Heaven.
As you will discover on this homepage, I, my wives, and others of our spiritual community are absolutely convinced that marriage is forever. It is not terminated at death, and that the Kingdom we inherit in the next life is not as individuals but as original 'Adams' before his rib was removed to make him a wife. This was confirmed in a prophetic dream my wife Isabel had in which I and my wives received our inheritance together. I also had a similar experience which revolutionised my thinking not only about polygamy but marriage in general. It was one of those 'missing pieces' which allowed a huge chunk of the Gospel Puzzle to fit into place.
This passage in Isaiah 4:1 is one of those numerous 'double prophecies' that has both been fulfilled and will yet be fulfilled, having a 'shadow' and a 'messianic' fulfilment. In the days of King Ahaz, Pekah the son of Remaliah slew 120,000 men in Judah in one day (2 Chronicles 18:6). The widows that were left were so numerous that the prophet said, "They are multiplied beyond the sands of the sea" (Jeremiah 15:8). The resulting shortage of men saw the women becoming the suitors of the men, instead of the more usual reverse. The situation was so desperate that they were more than content to share the rights of marriage in common with other women in a polygamous relationship. So desperate were they that they were willing to renounce the legal demands of the wife on her husband (Exodus 21:10). Their one consuming desire was to have the name and credit of marriage and to be freed from the reproaches of singleness (Isaiah 54:4-5).
The messianic fulfilment of this prophecy concerns our day and the future. Already good Christian/Messianic women are outnumbering good Christian/Messianic men by as many as four to one in some churches and even in nations as a whole like Canada. The situation will worsen as more and more men are metaphorically 'slaughtered' by the world system leaving women to outnumber the male sex by seven to one. It's already this way in the Afro-American community in the USA. Thus it is prophesied in Scripture.
Although Christian/Messianic polygamists are slowly gaining in number, godly Christian/Messianic women are, for the most part, still 'holding out' in the monogamy-only mindset. The result is a tragedy as more and more marry unbelievers and so often compromise with the Gospel and LOSE THEIR SALVATION. Thus polygamy is very much now a SALVATIONAL ISSUE for women. They waste their lives as old maids (unless they are thriving as missionaries) or - the worst scenario - become the sex toys of unredeemed men.
There are many who believe that Isaiah 4:1 represents an unnatural state of affairs - even many polygamists subscribe to this view, and see polygamy as only a temporary expedient. It is my view, and the view of my wives, that polygamy is the NATURAL condition in the Kingdom of Heaven because Yahweh foreknew that men would never be as numerically righteous as the women. The chances of a man being saved compared to a woman are 7 to 1 AGAINST. It is for this reason that polygamy may be said to be COMPLETELY EQUAL for men and woman - some of my wives actually claim that polgygamy balances out in the WOMEN'S FAVOUR.
The Christian/Messianic monogamy-only mindset, which you will read a lot about on this website, will change but like so many things, we as humans tend to hold out to the last until compelled to face the inevitable truth. This website aims not only explain what polygamy is and how it can be lived successfull and joyfully by husband, wives and children alike, but goes one stage further than any other Christian/Messianic polygamy website in showing how polygamy is completely natural to the heavens and how it has been built into the very fabric of creation. We will show that not only is there marriage after death but that all marriage in heaven is essentially polygamous.
My family, of course, considers these truths to be self-evident because we have been immersed in polygamy for so long, being the oldest and most experienced Christian/Messianic polygamous family in the West. Those of you coming to this site will have brought with you various theological paradigms and ideas which will be severely challenged ... if you decide to stick it out here. We believe, moreover, that we have been commanded to set up this website for honest souls who are willing to go on their knees and search out the scriptures like the Bereans and find out Yahweh's will before being compelled by circumstances to accept the inevitable. It is always better to come to a truth of one's own free will than by any form of compulsion. On this webpage we hope to persuade you in freedom and love.
Today Christian/Messianic women are cautiously beginning to open up to polygamy, but few have come knocking hard begging for admission. The first polygamous women are going to come out of their own free will because they have a burning love of the truth in their hearts. Such are my wives. And because they came in by this door, they have a powerful witness of Christian/Messianic polygamy to bear to the world. They want nothing else because they have caught a vision of the heavenly world and know what it is going to be like in the eternities. For this reason several women have taken upon themselves my name to take away the reproach of singleness or forbidden marriage to an unbeliever. But that is not their only reason. They have positive reasons too. They know, because they have tried it, that polygamy WORKS and that it WORKS WELL if there is proper self-suffender and crucifixion of the fleshy nature, as is required of all true overcoming disciples. And they know that it works better than monogamy, not because monogamy is in any way inferior, but because having several children in Yahweh is always more satisfying than just one. They know the blessedness of what it is to have sister-wives. And their blessedness has in turn become my blessedness.
Author: SBSK
