View source for Question: What possible modern lessons can we learn from Emma and Joseph's struggle with plural marriage?

{{FairMormon}}
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==Question: What possible modern lessons can we learn from Emma and Joseph's struggle with plural marriage?==
===Joseph Smith: "it is quite as necessary for you to be tried [even] as Abraham and other men of God"===

These observations provide perhaps the most useful lesson for the modern members, since Joseph Smith told the Twelve, soon before his death: "'You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried [even] as Abraham and other men of God, God will feel after you, and He will take hold of and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God.' ." (Cited by John Taylor, JD 24:197).

Harold B. Lee said of this statement:

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Now I want to bear testimony to you that every one of us [the Twelve] has had that kind of testing. Some of us have been tried and have been tested until our very heart strings would seem to break. I have heard of persons dying with a broken heart, and I thought that was just a sort of a poetic expression, but I learned that it could be a very real experience. I came near to that thing; but when I began to think of my own troubles, I thought of what the Apostle Paul said of the Master, "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him" ({{b||Hebrews|5|8-9}}).

Don't be afraid of the testing and trials of life. Sometimes when you are going through the most severe tests, you will be nearer to God than you have any idea, for like the experience of the Master Himself in the temptation on the mount, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on the cross at Calvary, the scriptures record, "And, behold, angels came and ministered unto him" ({{b||Matthew|4|11}}). Sometimes that may happen to you in the midst of your trials. <ref>{{Book:Lee:Teachings of Harold B. Lee|pages=192}}</ref>
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We should not, then, judge Joseph or Emma too harshly. Who says but what we would face similar trials with as much grace as they did? And, hopefully we won't face ours in a fishbowl, like they did.
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[[Category:John Dehlin's "Questions and Answers"]]
[[Category:The Changing World of Mormonism]]

[[es:Pregunta: ¿Qué lecciones modernas posibles podemos aprender de la lucha de Emma y José con el matrimonio plural?]]
[[pt:Pergunta: Que possíveis lições modernas podemos aprender com a luta de Emma e José com o casamento plural?]]