Community, Intimacy, and Connection

The Mormon Archetype of Zion:

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.

The ever-present archetype in Mormon culture of the “City of Enoch” – of that first city of Zion that was taken up into heaven:

Zion, in process of time, was taken up into heaven.

and that is promised to return at a point when there is another city of Zion on the earth to meet them:

And the Lord said unto Enoch: As I live, even so will I come in the last days, in the days of wickedness and vengeance, to fulfil the oath which I have made unto you concerning the children of Noah; And the day shall come that the earth shall rest, but before that day the heavens shall be darkened, and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth; and the heavens shall shake, and also the earth; and great tribulations shall be among the children of men, but my people will I preserve;

And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; […] and righteousness and truth will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood, to gather out mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, unto a place which I shall prepare, an Holy City, that my people may gird up their loins, and be looking forth for the time of my coming; for there shall be my tabernacle, and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem.

And the Lord said unto Enoch: Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other; And there shall be mine abode, and it shall be Zion, which shall come forth out of all the creations which I have made; and for the space of a thousand years the earth shall rest.

This romantic archetype is played out in various historical instances throughout the scriptural record.

After Alma fled into the wilderness, the community of believers that joined with him:

were called the church of God, or the church of Christ, from that time forward. And it came to pass that whosoever was baptized by the power and authority of God was added to his church.

And it came to pass that Alma, having authority from God, ordained priests; even one priest to every fifty of their number did he ordain to preach unto them, and to teach them concerning the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.  And he commanded them that they should teach nothing save it were the things which he had taught, and which had been spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets.  Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people.

And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.

And thus he commanded them to preach. And thus they became the children of God.

[…]

And the priests were not to depend upon the people for their support; but for their labor they were to receive the grace of God, that they might wax strong in the Spirit, having the knowledge of God, that they might teach with power and authority from God.

And again Alma commanded that the people of the church should impart of their substance, every one according to that which he had; if he have more abundantly he should impart more abundantly; and of him that had but little, but little should be required; and to him that had not should be given.  And thus they should impart of their substance of their own free will and good desires towards God, and to those priests that stood in need, yea, and to every needy, naked soul.

And this he said unto them, having been commanded of God; and they did walk uprightly before God, imparting to one another both temporally and spiritually according to their needs and their wants.

After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the community of believers in Judea:

continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.  And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.  And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

After Jesus’ visitation with Lehi’s descendents in the Americas, the disciples of Jesus there:

had formed a church of Christ in all the lands round about. And as many as did come unto them, and did truly repent of their sins, were baptized in the name of Jesus; and they did also receive the Holy Ghost.

And it came to pass […] the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another.  And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.

Joseph Smith’s Desire for Zion:

These “Zions” where there are no rich and no poor, where all impart of their substance freely with one another, having no contentions, and having all things common [not “in common”, I think there’s a difference] have been a big part of Mormon history and collective culture.

The passion for that kind of community is behind a lot of what Joseph Smith was doing while he was alive – trying to get a united order of unrelated believers in Christ bound together by covenant into a whole new people-group.  A tribal community bound by covenant, in an effort to get away from the traditional order of a “church” of unrelated believers in this-or-that set of creeds.

For verily I say unto you, the time has come, and is now at hand; and behold, and lo, it must needs be that there be an organization of my people, in regulating and establishing the affairs of the storehouse for the poor of my people, both in this place and in the land of Zion — For a permanent and everlasting establishment and order unto my church, to advance the cause, which ye have espoused, to the salvation of man, and to the glory of your Father who is in heaven;

That you may be equal in the bonds of heavenly things, yea, and earthly things also, for the obtaining of heavenly things.  For if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things;

For if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you.  And now, verily thus saith the Lord, it is expedient that all things be done unto my glory, by you who are joined together in this order;

[…]

Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, to prepare and organize yourselves by a bond or everlasting covenant that cannot be broken.  And he who breaketh it shall lose his office and standing in the church, and shall be delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until the day of redemption.

But history has shown the Gentile church of God to be a hard-hearted and faithless bunch.  They are content with having one man sit atop the power-pyramid and habitually obey what he says – they receive equal “experience quotient” from images and representations compared to what’s being imaged and represented.

They rejected this consecration and never really got around to plural marriage as a genuine priesthood order of joining groups of like-minded strangers into bona-fide tribes of Israel – but rather kept it only as a social convention.

Polygamy became required for polygamy’s sake alone.  Polyandry was also out-right rejected, without which polygamy does not build joint-stewardships – just enlarges any one man’s single stewardship.  And so:

behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them; And are not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom; And Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise I cannot receive her unto myself.

Failed Attempts to Recapture Zion:

Mormon history is full of examples of believers going off to form “United Orders” – communal groups where they attempt to live the “higher law” of consecration, meaning to share all that they have with everyone else in the community.  These endeavors have always met failure, and it’s because of one common feature that connects them all – they have always attempted to do so while keeping many small, separate families.

If they are monogamous LDS, then they’ll keep many small, separate monogamous families – and if Mormon fundamentalists, then it’ll be many, small separate polygynous ones.  But the separate-family feature is always the same.

However, without a covenant-based structure in which I may bind myself as a joint-steward with another to share our all commonly with each other according to the principle of charity – such a celestial, “Zion” community will never happen.  It’ll all go well so long as the circumstances go well, but by-and-by the end cometh.

For less-radical LDS, a common goal is to stay where they are and try to get their local ward to be the vehicle that produces a celestial community, or Zion.  One may see sacrament meeting talks and lessons on using fast offerings to “impart of our surplus”, on reminding us that there is no prohibition from leadership against using Welfare Services to live the “higher law” of consecration at a time when we’re only required to live the “lesser law” of tithing, and on trying to come up with way to make our church experience a more open place and have more of a “Zion-like” atmosphere.

Zion requires great intimacy and connection among the members.  The church lacks this intimacy and connection because we are all still strangers.  The only way to achieve Zion, or even a Zion-like atmosphere at church, is for members to all be connected to each other through covenants.  As it stands, the church only connects us to Christ through covenants, but not to each other.  As long as we remain unfettered by covenant relationships with each other, we will never achieve Zion and our words and deeds at church will never approach the level of intimacy and sharing required of that ideal.

So we may arrive at the point where we are no longer:

strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

People desire this sense of community, connection, and intimacy – yet we are all still strangers.  I received this as a revelation last week, and I’m willing to state it here as a prophecy – and it’s that:

nothing we are currently doing with church will ever produce the kind of Zion-like community we read about in the scriptures.

The gathered body of believers is supposed to be the result of these feelings of community – it can never be the means we use to achieve it.

Why does he always end-up talking about polygamy?

The level of intimacy and connection required to have the kind of community where what’s mine is yours [and yours, mine], where we all deal with each other based on the principle of charity, having no contention, imparting of our substance freely one with another, etc. – is something only arising out of kinship [or family-bonds].

For example, my entire paycheck goes into one bank account that my wife is free to spend on whatever she feels will satisfy her needs and the needs of our children.  Her and I already share all things common, I impart of my substance [and my time, my attention, my affection, etc.] freely with her and our children, etc.  In other words,

The family is the basic unit of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the most important social unit in time and eternity…

meaning, living in such a Zion-like community starts the moment a man marries a woman.  The two are gathered in Christ’s name, there He will be in the midst of them [Matthew 18:20] – and the twain shall be one flesh [D&C 49:16].

This connectivity is the key.  However, if such a community starts with the basic-unit of a man marrying a woman – then how can we expect to grow the community on any different sets of principles [other than men and women marrying]?

So that– if I had two wives, then the second wife would receive just as free of access to my time, talents, resources, and love as my current wife does.  If my wife receives a second husband, then I expect his entire paycheck to go into that same account – and for him to devote that same level of intimacy to my wife and her children, as I do.  Because this is the covenant-obligation we place ourselves under in marriage.

While I don’t think plural marriages need to be a “hill-to-die-on” for this whole idea [I’m all for anarchy, local solutions to local problems, letting people tailor their situation to particular circumstances, etc.] – I can state declaratively that any group that would out-right and from the get-go forbid plural marriages will always be limited — will always approach but never arrive.

Admittedly, one does not just generate a new spouse out of thin-air.  So I can agree that it’s good to start [perhaps] with a focus on getting people getting unplugged from wires and satellites, on getting outside more, on getting together with real human-beings more, etc.  That’s approaching a real kind of community with people in a positive way – people, who can then come to know each other well enough to begin to desire courting and joining together as plural spouses.

If the church actually wanted Zion, then I think most would be surprised over the number of both LDS and non-LDS who would be ready to sign on for it — if it meant living for a higher purpose.  But they don’t.  Marching orders are to get as much education as you can, so you can make as much income as you can, so you can pay more in tithes and offerings.  It’s to just stay where you are and live out as normal of a life as you can — but with just a bit of Mormon flare to it [e.g., serve a two-year mission, civilly marry in a temple, pay 10% of your paycheck to the church, do your home and visiting teaching, keep a current temple recommend, etc.]

Eternity is NOW, and we can make a heaven of it or we can make a hell of it:

The “idea of Zion” [just wanting to talk about Zion] is keeping us separate.  We see a paradisaical, Zion community as this pie-in-the-sky utopia that we can just sit around, occupy our time, and wait for Jesus to return and have it all fall in our laps.  We think our separateness is just fine to settle for here-and-now because one day we will have Zion in which to be together.  Just having the “idea” of it all is what’s keeping us apart and wasting all the life that we could be living, right now.

When I think Jesus has been the one just waiting –waiting on us to get a culture of heaven established here on earth – to have things “on earth” as they are “in heaven” – so He doesn’t end-up killing us with such a culture shock.  One should learn to swim before being plopped out in the ocean.  It would be best to know how to drive before getting behind the wheel of a car.

Instead of thinking, “Oh, we’ll just get it all figured out after we die [or after Jesus returns, etc.]” – we’re supposed to be doing it all here, all now – otherwise we’ll drown when we’re immersed in Zion in the future.

Next Article by Justin: The Adultery of Mary

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The Tribal Church

Rebecca [from the-exponent blog] once asked me:

In your ideal world, I’d assume there is no church outside of the family unit.  Is this the primary appeal of anarchy within the LDS context for you?

It is evidence of the “Catholic-ization” of the LDS church that members refer to the leadership in Salt Lake as “the Church” – as opposed to the group of believers that meet together.  Like the Catholics – I often hear LDS refer to “What the Church has said” about such-and-such or what “Our leaders haven’t taken a position” on such-and-such.  LDS will speak of “the Church” as if it is some entity completely removed and separate from the members.  Where was there ever a body without parts?  The church is the people who make it up.

The church is a tribe; your tribe is the church:

As LDSA outlined in the Wives, follow your husbands! – Patriarchy, androcracy and the egalitarian tribe post:

Because of the gospel’s tribal nature, the organization of the priesthood mimics that of the egalitarian tribe.  Bishops, bishoprics, counselors, common judges, higher judges, lower judges, high councils, presidencies, apostles, seventies, quorums, etc., all have their counterpart in egalitarian tribal organization.

The principle described here is entirely correct.  What most LDS understand as the church structure is actually a tribal structure.  Currently, the Gentile Mormon church uses the structure of wards and stakes with presiding bishops and presidents over congregations and quorums – however this is a mere copy [an incomplete/improper copy] of the tribal structure in which the gospel is designed to be lived — a structure of clans and tribes with presiding husbands and tribal elders.

This is seen as LDS refer to their local congregation as the “ward family”, their fellow-members as “brother” and “sister” so-and-so, etc.  This is also why even official Church™ policy is to acknowledge [in word at least – though not in deed], that the family is the central unit in the gospel of Jesus Christ, with the Church being only an appendage.

Therefore, the priesthood holder in the home is the central priesthood leader – and the church priesthood holders are appendage leaders – in other words they are secondary as compared to a woman’s husband.

Much of what is wrong in the LDS church originates with wives not considering their husbands to be their priesthood/church leader – which itself originates with the Church™.

In the eyes of the Church™, the husband is not a priesthood leader with keys – only a quorum member without keys.  Leaders have keys, and members do not.  Because, in the eyes of the Church™, husbands do not have keys – they could not leaders.  Quorum members report directly to quorum leaders, and as a quorum member, the husband is an agent of his quorum president.

This view is then passed on to the wife, so that when a wife thinks of a priesthood leader, she will think of someone who holds keys, such as a bishop or stake president.  Thus, it becomes that in the eyes of a wife, her husband is subordinate to the priesthood leaders found in the Church™.

This is why we find wives by-passing their husbands and going behind his back to a bishop or stake president [see comment #87 and #102 here].  Any LDS wife who does view her husband as her priesthood leader typically does so insofar as the husband is following the direction of the Church™ leaders.  An easy way to discern this is to have the husband do something different than what the church leaders council him to do [like baptize children or administer the sacrament without a bishop’s approval].  Then the wife’s true loyalties will manifest and she will likely side with the Church™ authority.  Only when there is conflict between a Church™ leader with “keys” and a husband without them can it be seen who a wife really believes her church leader to be.

The Church™ is actually a religion:

What most LDS refer to as “the Church” is, therefore, not actually a church at all [it not being bound by covenant bonds between members].  It is a religion.  When seen from the tribal point-of-view [where church = tribe], the church is an entirely new people-group, nation, or tribe separate from any of the nations or tribes of the earth – the church of Jesus Christ being the tribes of Israel.  A tribe is merely a form a human organization that is based on two features:   kinship and shared belief.  Where these two things exist, there exits a tribe.  Where one or both of these things lack, there is no tribe.

Currently, in the LDS church, we have shared beliefs, but not kinship.  We may call others in our “ward family” by the names “brother” or “sister” so-and-so, and we may tend to all be of the same tribe [that of Ephraim] – but most members will view their blood family [kinship] as distinct from other LDS.

The purpose of the restoration of the gospel in the latter-days was to convert a diverse assortment of people [from every nation, tribe, and people-group] into a new kind of people.  The vision is a tribe, united under the bonds of a new and everlasting covenant, and restored to the ancient Hebrew notion of a holy nation/separate people-group.  No matter what the former culture was, any converts are adopted into a new family – formed on the basis tribal covenant bonds and shared beliefs.  Status in this group is not determined be virtue of what you believe or how many people you could tell what to do – but instead by the covenants a person has assumed and how many people you serve.

Without both kinship bonds and shared beliefs, we are not fully organized as the Lord’s tribes of Israel.  Groups that are bound by only shared belief are referred to as “religions”.  When Adam was praying, after having been removed from the Garden of Eden, there entered the god of this world in answer to his prayer:

So, you want religion, do you?

Religion is what Satan has been offering as a substitute for tribal relationships with our Heavenly Parents, Jesus Christ, and our fellowman since the beginning.  It is religion and the associated creeds that have prevented humans from coming to Jesus and the Father individually – instead forcing people to jump thru hoops, observances, rituals, classes, advancements, programs, etc.  Satan will always give a people religion, and it will be largely based in the left-brain-mind, professing God with the mouth [the left-brain-mind words] but having [right-brain-] hearts is far from Him.

A religion is just a branded belief.  Two people can be of different religions – and still be of the same nationality, work for the same companies, belong to the same social groups, etc.  There is nothing really distinct between the two, other than what they are doing for a few hours on Sunday.

The LDS church has taken direct action to remove any of the original elements of being a separate tribe/people-group, which are an impediment to popular acceptance.  Distinctions are minimized to remove any conflict between LDS and the state they reside in.  Any commitment to public relations will cause any movement, idea, or product to become less distinct – to boil down further and further, trying to find a least common-denominator and mass appeal/acceptance.  This is the story of Correlation™ and it has been handled in detail elsewhere.

Joseph Smith said that he:

cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations [religions], because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to, though all of them have some truth.  I want to come up into the presence of God, and learn all things; but the creeds set up stakes, and say, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further’; which I cannot subscribe to.

Establishing an institution with orthodoxy and checklists – and then requiring uniformity of belief/thought in order to belong to the orthodox religion is the way of the Christians.  They are bound together not by tribal family bonds but instead by their confessions of faith and their creeds.

If we really want to come up “into the presence of God, and learn all things,” then we’d be wise to seek out and avoid the creeds of religions that “set up stakes” and demand that we “come no further.”

Within such an institution, one will find that if he/she:

wants to have the manifestations of the spirit in the place where I go to church, then I had better go to a church where we share all things in common… When you attend a church which spends $3 billion on building a shopping/commercial center right close to the temple and exactly $[zero] on implementing the law of consecration, I would hazard a guess that the odds are pretty close to 3 billion-to-zero that an abundance of the gifts of the spirit are [not] going to [be] in that church.

So now you may say well there isn’t any church or group that lives with all things in common.  How about forming your tribal organization and getting on with living that way?  That is what I am going to do.

I want to live the full gospel of Jesus Christ. I am going to start by having all things in common in my tribe so I can claim the blessings God has offered to those who obey the law given for that blessing.

Truly, one can not do this within the LDS church.  Such blessings are found only in communal worship that adheres to the word of God, the spirit of expediency, and the law of common consent.  Currently, this can only be achieved within tribal organizations.

Two ways to grow your tribe:

The discussion on plural marriage at Wheat and Tares taught me that most LDS will consider any discussion on organizing multihusband-multiwife tribes as “communes for unbridled secret sex at night.”

However, a tribe is merely a form a human organization based on two features:   kinship and shared belief.  This is the earliest form of human community – predating cities, states, churches, and even recorded history.  Tribal affiliations exist naturally among humans – when states don’t exist to break them up.  God does not look upon an individual as an isolated creation, all alone.  He sees people as they are connected to everyone else.  He sees all the tribal bonds and recognizes the tribal affiliations – even if we ourselves are not even aware of them or allow their functions to remain dormant.

God and the gospel are tribal in nature – always working to connect humans together into His tribe [which is composed of the tribes of Israel].  Our lineage is plainly manifest to Him and so when we begin to act tribally, He recognizes the tribal authority because it has been there all along, among the other conventional things we place upon it [e.g. political affiliations culture, religion].  All that is necessary for us to obtain tribal authority is to exercise it.  If we just need to assert it, God will recognize/validate it because it really is there and has been there all along.  We just haven’t been aware of it or acknowledged it.

The steward of a tribe is free to grow/enlarge his tribe or allow it to stay dormant.  While I intertwine multihusband-multiwife marriage systems together with my tribal understanding of the gospel, there are functions of tribalism that can be activated currently with a one-husband:one-wife tribe. Tribal plural marriage is simply the means whereby a tribe grows or is enlarged horizontally.  In like manner, having children is the means whereby a tribe grows or is enlarged vertically.

Growing horizontally:

Tribes are grown horizontally as new adult members are converted and desire to join.  As tribes must be bound by both kinship and shared belief, once conversion to the gospel takes place [shared belief], he/she must then be married into the tribe [kinship] as a part of the other entrance ordinances, e.g. baptism.

Growing horizontally is a function of tribal missionary work.  This has been discussed in the comments of dyc4557’s CHI #5 post.  Currently, LDS missionary work is comprised of sending never married, non-father elders into the mission field – following the pattern of the celibate, Catholic priesthood.  These celibate elders are sent by an “across the board” calling of all 19 year-old young men – instead of having any elder with the desire to travel, and calling of the Spirit to preach the gospel, approach their bishops to obtain license to do so by church vote.

In the comments on that post, LDSA touches on some principles for initiating the preaching of the gospel from a tribal point-of-view.  Briefly, they include:

• A married man with children having an advantage over a never-married, non-father young man with regards to relating to families [husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers].
• Distraction not being an issue when a person goes on a preaching mission only when he has a desire to go and feels called to do so by the Spirit.
• Leaving the length of a traveling mission open, instead of a fixed two-years, so that the Spirit can have flexibility in keeping a man in the mission field for short or long time periods.
• Utilizing all married men within a tribe [the priests, bishops, elders, seventy, apostles, high priests, and patriarchs], who are under the same commandment to travel and preach when their circumstances allow, to open up a larger pool from which to fill a mission field.
• Multihusband-multiwife tribes having less of a burden with traveling missionary work because when husbands leave to preach, wives and children will be taken care of by the tribe or other husbands.
• Not leaving converts [harvest] in the care of others who, hopefully, will take care of them – instead, either sending these people back to the tribe or, after the mission is complete, returning with them to the tribe, so that tribal integration can be complete.
• Marrying converts while still in the mission field so that, while there, a tribal missionary will have new tribal members to support him, giving him food, drink, clothing, shelter, and a family love and environment – fulfilling the commandment to travel with purse or scrip.  Also – retaining and building on the connection that a missionary makes with the converts he or she has taught.

Growing a tribe horizontally is essentially founded on multihusband-multiwife plural marriages.  It is this aspect that would likely make converting non-LDS into a tribe easier than converting LDS.  Many LDS come with cultural indoctrination [as both Americans and Mormons] that state-sanctioned monogamy is superior to any other form of marriage.  Polygyny is either valid insofar as it is state-sanctioned and First Presidency™-approved or was valid in the mid/late 19^th century but is now just a relic of a less-enlightened time gone by.  Polyandry is completely unheard of or considered and makes a mockery of God’s ordered system of paternity [which is why most LDS will always use “polygamy” when they really mean “polygyny” – polyandry not even being a consideration for them].

Monogamy is not sin.  If one spouse [or both] has emotional needs that necessitate him/her requiring a spouse to commit to not loving any other people, then [if the other spouse is willing to submit to that] they may take vows of exclusivity upon themselves. These vows are ordained of God, as long as both persons consent, and are in accordance with the new and everlasting covenant revealed in D&C 132.  As I stated previously, there are functions of tribalism that can be activated currently with a one-husband:one-wife tribe – however such a tribe will be limited horizontally.

Polygyny is not sin given that a woman gives her consent to the husband to take additional wives [releasing him from any vows of exclusivity he may have been under] – he is justified in taking on additional wives, for it is marriage with consent and thus a marriage ordained of God.

Polyandry is not sin.  In the new and everlasting covenant, there are two ways in which a woman get take an additional husband:

• One way is that she is simply sealed to a second [or third, etc.] husband.
• The other is that her husband breaks his marriage vows [commits adultery], whereby she is married to another man.  She remains married to the first husband because there is always the possibility of repentance and reconciliation.

Outside of the new and everlasting covenant, a woman [in the same manner as stated in the polygyny section] may obtain a second marriage thru the consent of her current husband or husbands.  This [like polygyny] is ordained of God insofar as all parties involved give consent.

Not giving consent to marry is the sin. When a man wishes to take an additional wife and his current wife or wives do not give their consent [which are the keys of this power], then they become sinners because they are forbidding him from marrying, making them not ordained of God.  Likewise, were a woman to desire an additional husband and her current husband or husbands do not give consent, then the husbands become sinners by virtue of forbidding her to marry.

This is the law of Sarah [in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage] and it is applicable to both men and women. “Wrongness” consists in forbidding marriage, which makes the person doing the forbidding not ordained of God – whether the forbidder is the state, the Church™, parents, or a spouse.

Growing vertically:

Tribes can also grow vertically.  This is done as married couples come together via sexual intercourse and provide physical life to children.  The two methods [horizontal and vertical] are related.  Just as parents are capable of loving more than one child with all of their heart – spouses are capable of loving more than one spouse with all of their heart.  Just as parents are commanded to have as many children as possible, not forbidding any spirits from entering their family – spouses ought to seek as many additionally spouses as possible, never forbidding one another from loving other people.

The Lord has commanded parents to be fruitful and multiply:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it:

The secret combinations of central planners all establish two children per woman as their goal.  They have achieved this goal in the countries referred to as “developed”, and they are approaching success on a global scale.  The reason being that two children [replacement reproduction] breaks the commandment to multiply and “fill” the earth with humans – only replacing the two parents with two children.  The scriptural minimum for the number of children per family would therefore be three, with there being no associated maximum.

They have used various tools to achieve their satanic goal.  One need only search [population control eugenics] in a search engine to find plenty of resources on the subject.  To be brief, they would include:  barrier and hormonal methods of birth control, drugged hospital birthing experiences, circumcision, bottle-feeding, abortion, vasectomies and elective hysterectomies, focusing on “equal” employment for women, reducing sperm counts thru administered chemicals and diet, and sterilants in food/vaccines/water/etc.

A tribe based on the gospel of Jesus Christ will never restrict themselves to a set number of children – utilizing hormonal, barrier, or surgical forms of birth control thereafter.  They will not plan their number of children around their desired lifestyle, but will plan a lifestyle around the number of children they have.  They shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord.  They will teach their children to read and write, having a language which is pure and undefiled.  They will teach their children diligently and freely to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands – before the age of eight [lest the sin be upon their heads and it be the cause of their affliction].  Then shall their children be baptized for the remission of sins when eight years old, and receive the laying on of the hands.  They will engage in continual tribal rituals to strengthen the common morphic field that exists among disciples of Jesus Christ.

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