Lifting the Veil of Polygamy (**Abbreviated**)

[Music] I was born in Hilldale Utah which is the Utah side of Colorado City [Music] I was born a seventh-generation fundin Ilona every generation from Joseph Smith state to mine has lived polygamy I was born in a fundamentalist group I was born and raised in the Kingston group [Music] Jose Mendoza Smith Joseph Smith started it they give me girl marriage the principle true Mormonism the original Mormonism the highest principle of the gospel is plural celestial marriage it was essential to their salvation that's what we were taught [Music] the mainline Mormon Church officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints is led by a successor to Joseph Smith but mainline Mormons are not the only Mormons who celebrate Joseph Smith and lay claim to his spiritual lineage these are Mormon fundamentalists both fundamentalist Mormons and mainstream Mormons declare Joseph Smith as their founding prophet the fundamentalist Mormons practice polygamy today but mainline Mormons have given up polygamy nevertheless they still believe they will practice it in eternity mainline Mormons deny that the fundamentalists are true Mormons there are actually no Mormon fundamentalist likewise the Mormon fundamentalists deny that the mainline church is truly Mormon because it gave up the practice of polygamy in this life according to fundamentalists the mainline Mormon Church is in a state of apostasy [Music] but there are dozens of organized fundamentalist groups one of the largest of these is the fundamentalist latter-day saint church or FLDS as it is commonly called their leader is a man named Warren Jeffs whom they hold to be a modern-day prophet polygamous prophet Warren Jeffs Warren Jeffs Warren steed Jeff's are you Warren Jeffs I'm on Warren Jeffs hit list if you wanted to see what original Mormonism is look at Warren Jeffs it's extremely hypocritical to Rand rave about Warren Jeffs when their Mormon because Joseph Smith of Brigham Young did the same things I to a worse degree Warren Jeffs would be living closer to the Joseph Smith's teachings and Brigham Young's teachings most of the church leaders today are descendant from pioneer Mormons that all practice polygamy but that's embarrassing for the church I think they fear it will hurt their missionary endeavors and the church today wants it both ways they want to have Joseph Smith a prophet of God but they want the ability to reject any of his doctrines that don't fit comfortably in today's world it seems like an odd position to me either he was what he claimed to be or he isn't I don't see a middle ground here Hinckley even had an interview where he condemned polygamy you condemn it I condemn it yes as a practice because I think it is not dark enough when I hear statements like that I just I first of all I just have to wonder where they're coming from what they're doing is they're brainwashing the world just like they brainwash their membership they're brainwashing the world because polygamy started with them Joseph Smith their prophet said if you don't live polygamy you do not get exalted in heaven that Mormons need to own up to it it is not legal and this church takes the position that we will abide by the law it wasn't legal when Joseph Smith went into it so I can see how the polygamous rationalize going against the law now Joseph Smith went against the law so did Brigham Young so did John Taylor so Wilford Woodruff all the presidents of the church they had plural wives knew they were going against the laws of the land mainly Mormonism and very embarrassed by the by their polygamous roots really by their the beginnings of their religion they assumed it was just a social practice a sort of welfare system that supposedly there were so many women in the church that were widows that this was a means of taking care of them and as soon as the imbalance was corrected the church quit practicing it that is absolutely wrong we can prove that the census that was taken here in Utah Territory at the time shows there never was a time when there was more women than men in the territory so that was never the reason for polygamy its aim was a doctrinal issue of eternal life exaltation not some social reform to take care of needy women it was doctrinally driven that if any man was to reach godhood he had to practice polygamy the church today denying polygamy puts them in this funny position of denying what is really their doctrine but it's hit from the convert [Music] basically the fundamentalists and the Mormons aren't that different both being lying Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons believing the exact same doctrine that one day a faithful man is going to become a god yes man is God once was as God is man may become we were taught that God the Father is the husband of many wives in heaven and we were spirit children in heaven and we were sent to earth to get a body and we all understood that man's hope was to someday go on to godhood to run his own world the rationale for polygamy in the home Mormon scheme is that's the way it's lived in heaven in the first place the concept of polygamy came from a doctrinal idea that man is going to progress to godhood and someday he's going to go off to procreate all the spirits of the children that will go to his world [Music] back in the mainline Mormon Church I was teaching the gospel doctrine class that one day they would definitely have to live polygamy and the wife of one of the members of the bishopric came over and sat on my couch and she had bitter tears over the fact that she knew she could not share her husband with anybody else she was so madly in love with her husband and I mean she suffered suffered over this my own grandfather outlived my grandma went to the Mormon rest home married a spinster schoolteacher there a sweet old lady that never been married before married her in the Salt Lake Temple and my family all is assured the grandpas got both of those women in heaven as his plural wives to help him in his exaltation it is very much still a part of the doctrine of Mormonism it's just something that's kept in the background it was raised in Colonia LeBaron in Mexico my dad had two wives my mom and he married a Mexican lady named Maria and had a large family with her also there's a huge lack of fathering and in that community it's epidemic you know you know when you have 72 children like ruler Jeff's dead and you can't remember their names I mean my dad had 27 kids of his own and I suffered under striving and trying to get my dad's approval my dad would never own up but I was his my birth certificate says Roy maccarty is my father there's no such person Clyde McCourt is my father you know he would know me not hurts real deep if you live in a polygamy group you have to lie one way or another even if you don't live polygamy in a polygamy group there has to be a lie and deceit in your life there has to be because there's always a cover-up you're told to cover up you're told to lie you're taught how to lie you have to lie to protect the group all of the people in our group were warned you've got to be careful they're spying on us and make sure you don't say anything that kingdom of God is at risk here they will take us all and throw us in jail just be sure that you and your children do not say anything because anybody who reveals anything that goes on in this group will be doomed to eternity as the son of perdition in the deepest depths of hell and of course if the child that really affects your whole life it draws you in so you don't talk to other people because you might say something that would then throw your dad in jail so you're scared to talk about anything to anybody the abuse in a closed society will will always be propagated and the Kingston group and many of the other groups like the FLDS are extremely closed and so there since there is no accountability in that area either then there's going to be a lot of abuse of the women and children the sexual abuse thing I don't want to throw a blanket over in and say that all polygamous families have this in okay because that wouldn't be true it happened to me it's happened to other girls that I'd know and people who hear about this just are amazed that these men with all these wives would be sexual predators with their daughters and and and why I get that why and my only answer is that you know when old men start marrying women who are the ages of their daughters and having sexual relations with a girl who's as young as their daughters it starts to cloud the issue my father was preparing us for marriage doctrine and Covenants section 132 it was used heavily it was taught to us constantly it was shoved down our throats in fact the way they use it the way Joseph Smith used it in DNC with Emma threatening her with hell and damnation that she would be destroyed if she didn't live plural marriage was the same exactly the same way that they do that and teach the children as they grow up in in the Kingston group that they will be destroyed and they using the fear and the guilt that we need to live plural marriage or else we'll get destroyed [Music] Mary and I always had a great relationship when we were young she was always my favorite sister and we had a close relationship and then she just upped and vanished my wedding day was Bar None the saddest day of my life I tell people I've been to happier funerals I was leaving all that I knew and loved and going with a man that I barely knew and to what situation in his family how many wives I had a clue how many children where they lived I knew nothing there was a horrible thunderstorm that day and I remember sitting there in the car with my mother and my father and just praying Lord knock one of these trees over on us and kill us I'd rather die I'd rather die I begged God to take me car accident whining please from heaven instructing me hey I don't want to do this I was 17 17 years old and my husband was 50 he was older than my father I became the six out of seven wives to him and we weren't told where she who she was married to and she was tucked away in secrecy and it was probably three or four years before we figured out where she was I believe let secretiveness began with Joseph Smith the secretiveness is because of what society would do if they knew the old men are sleeping with little girls 14 15 16 year-old little girls when they're old enough to be their father I mean there are people who would just go on the warpath and so it's kept on hush I was pursued from the time I was 14 by several of the colony man and ended up marrying verlan LeBaron who was the the Prophet Joel younger brother and I became his sixth wife he was 38 and I was a week passed my 15th birthday [Music] while you take Mormon and put all the evidence before them you can show that the leaders said it was essential to exaltation and that's how they convinced people to switch over from the regular LDS Church into the different polygamist groups when I was in the Mormon Church I knew my doctrine backwards and forwards and I just felt I needed more and my my driving urge was that I wanted to become closer to God I ended up deciding to join this small fundamentalist group in Montana pretty soon I mean I was miserable and but there was no way I was going to leave because I felt like I had come in with God to go into this group and I loved to Joseph Smith with all my heart because that's what you told a lot you know it's it's all about him I had to to do everything that Joseph Smith said I had to do thorough marriage all of it or I couldn't be with God and my greatest fear is that I wouldn't be with God so I just felt like that that's what I had to do and then when I married that's what he wanted and so that began our search into finding a polygamous group to belong to well Joseph Smith and Brigham Young John Taylor Heber C Kimball Wilford Woodruff none of those men could be in the church today that was the big selling point to get you into fundamentalism that was the main selling point to get you in yeah the mainline Mormon Church we just kind of looked at him like those pours the Kingston's believe and teach that the Mormon Church is wrong they've they've pasta sized when they gave up the doctrine of polygamy there's been over a hundred different break off groups of Mormonism so there are many groups today that claim to be the true followers of Joseph Smith it isn't just one Church there are many different churches that claim Joseph Smith has their head and our church was the only true church on the face of the earth to me that's so amazing that the creator of the universe would say okay all the people in the world are going to go to hell except for this little group here when we they first told me because we were converted in Salt Lake and then the they said come down to the City of God they said it's a beautiful city of God so we went down there we hadn't been in too long oh my heart it's just I said the only celestial kingdom here is for the rats it was so bad trailers just flung in there any old way mud and dirt and no grass and I stood in the streets and I said father in heaven this is the City of God is it fear that holds women in polygamous marriages for fear of being destroyed like Joseph Smith said to Emma for me it was for me it was because I had to strive to the intellect lady and that was the only way I was getting there was to be submissive to my husband and if I wasn't and I didn't give him the wives that he wanted I would be destroyed and would be damned that's absolutely taught in fundamentalist groups absolutely [Music] when you're married in the principal every day of your life as a competition for his resources and every day you're having to do it better than somebody else you you really didn't have a good solid relationship with your husband because you knew that he wasn't just yours you couldn't build this this bond with him because if you did you would be disappointed he was gone he was with other wives there was the constant feeling of jealousy it's not a peaceful existence behind the scenes it's not happy bill and there's horrible trouble between the sister wives this is not a pleasant way to live it's horrible lying in my bed when in the very room next door he's making love to another woman it's torture it's torment for all you've given a wife to your husband and the first time that they go to hurt it kills I thought I was literally going to die I was begging for death I was just could hardly breathe to see him leave you leave you and your arms in your home and know that he's going to another wife or more than one other wife is beyond difficult it it's heart breaking and so those women with those big smiles on their faces who denied their true feelings they buried it and they've put on a plastic facade I'm not jealous of my sister wife I love oh really I just think you don't feel your feelings anymore denial was my drug of choice too before you feel like all those feelings and emotions that you have you're taught that they are wicked and evil and and that you need to repent you never know for sure that you have a home in heaven there's never a day that you know it's always work work work try try try hope hope hope pray pray pray [Music] what led me to start to question polygamy number one was the loneliness that I felt the loneliness that I saw in my husband's other wives plus I was angry at God and I wanted him to explain to me why it was okay for his daughters to be lonely and without a husband and yet how he could love his sons so much more than his daughters I started studying the scriptures and I decided that polygamy was my biggest issue that's where I would start I read in the Book of Mormon that God was very upset with them for living polygamy I started looking at the Bible and and the Doctrine and Covenants and each one of these things said something different the doctrine covenants revelations that were given to Joseph Smith commanded polygamy and how God could change from saying it was an abomination in the Book of Mormon to commanding Joseph Smith's church to live it saying that it was necessary this just didn't make sense to me from everything that I started to study with me was absolutely not commanded by God in the Bible and I asked if I could drive in my car up to Flathead Lake and they thought I wanted to go and pray and thank the Lord you know for the wonderful opportunity I've had joining this group and I just needed to get away way out in the middle of nowhere was this little Christian Church so I slipped inside that only because I was bored and didn't have anything else to do that Sunday I began to hear for the first time about what the biblical grace meant learned that I was a sinner and began to understand more what Jesus actually did for me on the cross so I was able to attend for about four Sundays and I was followed and they found out back on the farm and I was confronted when I came back have you been going to that little church all this rage broke loose didn't I know I was committing spiritual adultery and I was worshipping at the altar of bail like to this Christian Church so I was ordered to hand over the keys to my car which I dutifully did I on the back of the property was a a large building that was finished on the outside but unfinished on the inside except for one small 8 by 10 room and that's where I was put until I could repent of my sin they wanted me to come in to the meeting and tell this horrible sin I did by going to the Christian Church and to denounce the Christian Jesus and I wouldn't do that I knew I can never be good enough to go to heaven I can never be that good ok what was funny is that's the truth I couldn't requirements were too high and so I really started searching for the truth at that point I had been told did everything outside everyone outside my religious circle was a wicked and evil that they hated me my father had told us that if they knew who you were and what you believe they would chew you up and spit you out and I knew I'd been liked for not everyone out there [Music] and if they had lied to me about this what else have they lied to me about [Music] well the thing that keeps them in and makes them so I don't even question this because they've been taught since birth that their salvation is in that group and that's the only place of this that if they leave their go to hell just as simple as that I said Lord if these are your people send me to hell I don't want to be where they are and I chose I consciously chose to go to hell and stay in the group I remember that I remember that decision of making that choice I knew somebody who would help me and so we made the plans three days after I turned 18 in the middle of the night they were gonna meet me in front of the house and I was gonna be ready and that's what I did that's what I did I I remember getting in the car and driving away and I remember such a sense of freedom come over me and the polygamous group where they prearranged the marriages the girls got a weeks notice that they were going to get married so they could throw a dress together or our borrow one and and the guys found out the day before and they got married I got a phone call from the from Roy Johnson the leader of the group he says do you know so and so I said no I knew of her but I didn't know her and he says well I want you to go meet her this afternoon and get married tomorrow if I say no I'm out pack your bags you're out of the community you're out of the religion you're ostracized because you don't rebel against the Prophet so I marry that gal that I didn't really know who I was not attracted to in any way even the marriage was used as a way to control me and so after three and a half months almost four months I told her I said I'm sorry I don't love you I tried to I don't you know go home they'll give you to somebody who will you know girl through this then oh that's so mean and I'm like no it was desperation it was survival I just about got trapped in something that that I don't know that I would have escaped from I had to come to the point where where I just said oh well I guess I'm gonna go to hell but I got to get out of here and I remember finally when I left I mean emotionally I was still 1516 years old thank five children to be responsible for and then they wanted to give my husband an 18 year old girl and I said well if you take her for a wife she's not living here and I won't I won't be a party to it well then you know there's always the whippings and the beatings that go on and it was it went from bad to worse and that's when I decided I was out of there that's when I left but I just couldn't take it anymore and I left the only life that I'd ever known it was 57 years old when I left and it was still didn't know God didn't know the truth but I knew that that wasn't it Ervil LeBaron Joel's younger brother he wanted to be the leader of the church and so he had his brother Joel murdered we'd been taught from the time I was a little girl that job would be here to usher in Jesus Christ's second coming so when that didn't happen yeah my faith really was shaken at that point at the point that Berlin started to court his tenth wife I knew that I just couldn't hang around any longer I needed to get my children and myself and leave I was 23 and we left the colony and I knew that I wouldn't wouldn't go back but I was leaving for good of course I really didn't know what I was going to I was scared I felt very very lost I was locked in a small 8 by 10 room I was in that room for about nine months my health deteriorated terribly when I was in that room every day I prayed and I never prayed to for the Lord to get me out of there because I don't want to be looked upon by God as a cabinetmaker so come went may I would not try to escape and one day I was praying I was kneeling by the bed and I usually said my prayers aloud and right in the middle of a sentence I was totally interrupted with these words I shall deliver you and I remember sitting back on my knees and I thought wow that had to been God and then the light Don aha if he's gonna deliver me that must mean he he approves him by leaving and fortunately the the front door was unlocked and I knew where they kept the keys to my car on a nail up in the back part to the main farmhouse so I got in my car and I the sideview mirror I saw the leaders start to walk for the car and oh boy I just rammed that accelerator slid the car around Ramtha passenger side of the car into a big pile of red wood ties that were piled there and but I took off down that driveway and I was out of there when I left the group I was empty headed to the degree that I didn't have an opinion I wasn't allowed to have an opinion you are so nobody you are so nothing and you're so brainwashed you're not ready for the world a lot of women that leave a lot of men that leave will also go back because of that brainwashing I think is the main reason in here you're going to go to hell you're going to go to hell you're going to go to hell you're going to go to hell the only way is back the only way is back my biggest fear was what if I die and get on the other side and find out it was true after all and it scared me through all of those years after I left the group I didn't want any religion the only God I knew was the god of the polygamy group God hated me I'd been taught that all my life he hated me and so the best thing to do is be run away from him and which I did for years and years it always blew me away when if my brothers were sisters when they left polygamy and they joined the Mormon Church I'm like ah what are you doing if the tree of the roots bad the trees bad the branches are bad if polygamy is wrong and that's why you left then why are you going back to Mormonism I just dumbfounded me like it's the same thing boys you know it's just whitewashed a little bit let's just cleaned up a little more socially acceptable than the fundamentalist you know if you want to get free get free all the way my children were pushing at me to get back in the Mormon Church so being the pleaser that I've been through my life I went back to the Mormon Church but when I went to get rebaptised back into the Mormon Church I felt absolutely icky about it I didn't feel right in doing it but I did it to please my kids and that became a living hell also for me and so I just started to plead with God teach me the truth that the truth might set me free because I can't take this anymore and I told father and him and I said you've taken me home if you will please because I can't stand this anymore or get me out of it or show me the truth because I can't live this way anymore not there not here and I said father somewhere there's got to be some truth somewhere I gotta find it I told the Lord I said father in heaven I'll crawl back to the branch on my hands and knees if that's what you want if that's where you're at and that's what you want I'll go or I'll stay in the Mormon Church if that's what you want I will do anything you want me to do I just want to be where the truth is and serve you with all of my heart my mind and strength just take me there please I've begged him and it's just opening up you know it's by inch and it's still very hard for me because I'm fresh ended and I told God that I will do whatever you want you can have everything I'll go wherever you want me to go do whatever you want me to do don't let go with me yes because I love him and that's why I'm here because it feels so right to me at this point in my life and I just told him I said I can't spend this confusion anymore it's got to be cleared up for me I can't live in it anymore take me home if I have to cuz it's driving me crazy I'm gonna end up in the I been trying to find you you know [Music] Joseph Smith questioned the final authority got word Beatty's that the Bible is right in as much as it's been translated correctly which they claim it has not been one of the first things I started looking up was I need to find out where the Bible teaches that Jesus and Satan are brothers and I remember sitting down opening the Bible and searching for it and searching searching searching and it wasn't there to realize who Jesus really was was when I was when I was convicted it just seemed like he was playing in the things in the Bible made sense and that one of those most amazing things for me was to learn that Jesus Christ was God that just blew me away the Mormon Church and the fundamentalists including the Kingston clan there Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible there Jesus is somebody that they can become equal to and how can you worship a God if you can be as equal God says he doesn't change same yesterday today and forever I no idea that the Bible contradicted Mormonism so strongly and I began to study in the Bible and I began to see where God said I'm the same yesterday today and forever Isaiah 40 verse 8 you know that the grass withers the grass withers and the flowers fall but the word of our God will stand forever the Word of God endures forever if God said it isn't he's strong enough isn't he able to keep his word if he said it he can do it and it said God likes you and that was where God just took his arrow and pierced me and I started to cry because I had never heard that before never had always been God hated you it's so exciting when you've been racing the lie and you find the truth the beauty the the beauty of the truth and the the simplicity of it and yet the depths of it when I became a Christian and I realized the gospel means News and I look back at what I grete that wasn't good news at all I hadn't learned any good news when I was growing up everything that I learned as the gospel as a child was bad news that's why I ran away from because it was such bad news well the good news is focused on a person the gospel is a person salvation is a person first time I went to church after I was saved they were singing songs to Jesus I just stood there involved I just cried and cried the whole service I just all he did was cry I thought everybody thought I was really weird because that's all I did was cry because everything was Jesus centered in the group in the polygamy group everything is them centered it's not you centered you do die to yourself in one of those groups because you're not a person it's them centered so when you get out and you see that Jesus is the center of it it's just it's just it's just so awesome it's hard to really explain but it's a beauty that permeates your soul and it changes your life this awesome I was invited to go to Christian Church and it was really difficult for me to want to step into one of these churches that I've been taught my whole life was an abomination you know the Lord just really spoke to my heart in that church I felt like the pastor's message was directed right at me and I before I knew it I was just standing there as we were singing and I was crying just crying and I didn't know why and I accepted Jesus as my savior that day I could rest in and what Jesus did for me because how on earth could I earn my salvation since since I have finally understood the the sin nature just knowing that I don't have to perform that I'm saved by grace because no matter what I can do I could have never got there anyway not an anything I could do I couldn't have been good enough and that's that's the joke of it all that in the Mormon Church they're living by their never gonna be good enough and they're working their tail ends off bless their hearts and their that's not how they're gonna get there Christ already did it God says he's gonna deliver you he'll deliver you from everything it's not a pretty good job I'd say there's nothing that we can do because Jesus did it all because he's gone the only reason he could do it because he was God He is God and He shed his blood once for all it's the Holy Spirit convicted me all of a sudden everything made sense just like it's not going in total darkness in Jesus turn the light on it's see it all made sense and I got on my knees and confessed my sins and this asked him to come into my heart he did not disappoint me before that time I was so racially prejudiced that I was an embarrassment to my family I was really bad I know they that the leader or tell the one that I followed was very prejudiced and they taught that they believed that to this day I'm sure that was completely gone that night I couldn't have done that in a lifetime but Jesus took from you in an instant when I couldn't have done in a lifetime I have people from the group to shake their head at me how can you walk away from your heritage seven generations that have lived the principle and all I can say is that I have a heritage that it's not at this world I have a heritage that is in Christ as a it's eternal and no one can take it from me it's not of this world and I would trade my mormon heritage any day for what I have in Christ [Music] my mother had come by with a friend of hers and they were gonna win me back to the principal and in our discussions my youngest Giles overheard was talking about Joseph Smith and he said after they left mom who is this Joseph Smith and before I could say anything he says I know about Joseph with the coat of many colors but who is Joseph Smith and I picked him up and whirled him around the room and kissed him on the cheek and said hallelujah I have a child who doesn't know him who chooses me [Music]

Channel: Sacred Groves

Views: 496,164

Rating: 4.5590997 out of 5

Keywords: LVP, 42min, Final

Id: dBpTQmBo2Ik

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 18 2012