Rosa Rubicondior: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness - Unless Thou Art A Mormon President

The LDS historical department just published an 1886 polygamy revelation

President John Taylor (1808 - 1887).

The (non-existent) 'revelation' permitting polygamy.

What Is Mormonism? Mormonism, officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), is a religious movement founded in the United States in the early 19th century. It was established by Joseph Smith in 1830, following his claim to have received divine revelations and discovered golden plates inscribed with sacred writings—later translated and published as the Book of Mormon.

Smith taught that his revelations restored the “true church” of Jesus Christ, lost after the early Christian era. The movement quickly attracted followers but also faced intense opposition due to its unconventional teachings, authoritarian leadership, and later, the adoption of polygamy (plural marriage), which Smith and his successors practised and defended as divinely mandated.

After Smith was killed by a mob in 1844, leadership passed to Brigham Young, who led the majority of followers westward to Utah, then outside U.S. jurisdiction. There they established a theocratic society and practised polygamy openly until growing federal pressure and legal crackdowns forced the official renunciation of the practice in 1890 (and again in 1904).

Today, the LDS Church claims over 17 million members worldwide, promotes conservative family values, and continues to regard modern revelation as a core part of its theology—although it now distances itself from its polygamous past, which is preserved only in certain fundamentalist offshoots.

One of the Bible's Ten Commandments that all believers — including Mormons, who profess to be Christians — are expected to follow is the prohibition against bearing false witness: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). The Hebrew word translated as “neighbour”—רֵעֶךָ (rēa‘ekā)—has an ambiguous scope, but is widely interpreted as referring not only to fellow Israelites but more generally to others within one's community. Across both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, this commandment has been expanded into a broader ethical principle against dishonesty in human relationships. Indeed, several passages reinforce this expectation:

Proverbs 6:16–19 includes “a lying tongue” and “a false witness that speaketh lies” among the seven things God hates.
Psalm 101:7 declares, “He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.”
Leviticus 19:11 instructs, “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.”

Taken together, these form a clear moral framework throughout the Torah and Christian Bible emphasising truthfulness and personal integrity.

However, this moral imperative appears to have been selectively applied — if at all — by a past Mormon Church Presidency. The recent revelation that a long-denied handwritten document by the third president of the LDS Church, John Taylor (1808–1887), does in fact exist, raises troubling questions.

This document records what Taylor claimed was a divine revelation permitting plural marriage — a practice that later became the defining controversy within Mormonism. That controversy culminated in a split: traditionalists continued the practice of polygamy, while the mainstream LDS Church renounced it and condemned it as adulterous.

Polygamy also became a major political issue when Utah sought to join the United States. In 1904, a second “revelation” conveniently reversed the earlier one, with God now forbidding polygamy — just in time for political expedience.

But the handwritten 1886 document remained a source of embarrassment because it explicitly claimed the directive was 'everlasting'. In an effort to suppress it, the LDS First Presidency issued a memo on June 17, 1933, reaffirming the threat of excommunication for those practising plural marriage. Crucially, the memo explicitly dismissed the document as a “pretended revelation” and denied its existence.

Yet according to a recent report by Religion News Service, the LDS Church has now quietly published the very same document on its official historical archive.

No apology. No explanation. Just silence.

Presumably, the reappearance of this (non-existent) document was as miraculous as the discovery by convicted confidence trickster, Joseph Smith of the golden tablets on which the Book Of Mormon was written, and which equally miraculously disappeared once they had been translated by Joseph Smith with divine guidance.

It seems to be a characteristic of the overtly pious that they feel their piety entitles them to self-licence an exemption from the rules they tell others they should live by. It's essentially the same syndrome that leads priests and nuns to sexually abuse children and vulnerable adults.

Religion provides excuse to people to people who need excuses.

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