John Taylor's statements regarding polygamy

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John Taylor's statements regarding polygamy

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• Question: Did John Taylor receive a revelation on September 27, 1886 that promised that polygamy would never be abandoned by the Church?
• Question: Is there any evidence for important meetings on September 27, 1886, when President John Taylor reportedly received a revelation and gave men priesthood power to continue polygamy outside of the Church?

John Taylor's 1886 revelation

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• Question: Did John Taylor receive a revelation on September 27, 1886 that promised that polygamy would never be abandoned by the Church?
• The revelation does not say that the practice of plural marriage will never be abandoned, but that the law of the new and everlasting covenant (which includes monogamous and polygamous marriage) would not be altered or revoked
• A document that is apparently in John Taylor's handwriting was found among his papers after his death
• John Taylor, so far as is known, did not discuss this revelation with anyone, and it was never canonized as binding upon the Church
• The document concerns the new and everlasting covenant, not the practice of plural marriage
• The Doctrine and Covenants frequently refers to the covenant, and it is clear that the reference is generally to the Gospel covenant, not to plural marriage
• The new and everlasting covenant of marriage
• It was common for nineteenth century members of the Church to focus on the plural marriage aspect of this covenant
• Applying the analysis to the 1886 document

Question: Is there any evidence for important meetings on September 27, 1886, when President John Taylor reportedly received a revelation and gave men priesthood power to continue polygamy outside of the Church?

Jump to details:

• Question: Is there any evidence for important meetings on September 27, 1886, when President John Taylor reportedly received a revelation and gave men priesthood power to continue polygamy outside of the Church?
• There is no contemporaneous evidence for such meetings
• The meetings were not mentioned by anyone until thirty-five years later in the early 1920s
• Only Lorin Woolley left a record concerning the ordinations in the second meeting
• According to Woolley, the revelation was recorded in the first meeting
• None of the five copies referred to have ever been found
• Woolley recalled that during the meeting, John Taylor “put each person under covenant that he or she would defend the principle of Celestial or Plural Marriage"
• The five men who reportedly received a priesthood ordination were reportedly put under an additional covenant to "see to it that no year passed by without children being born in the principle of plural marriage"
• The documented behavior of the thirteen individuals attending the eight hour meeting in 1886 does not seem to support that they sought to keep the two covenants Lorin Woolley described

Notes