While serving a mission to India, Chauncy W. West and his fellow missionaries encountered Protestants who were critiquing the Church due to the issue of polygamy. Their response, republished in the Deseret News, mirrors a common apologetic used by modern Latter-day Saints:
We took the liberty to bear our testimony to him of the
message which God had sent to man in this day and generation of the world, and
cautioned him to be sure and get in the right road, if he wanted to get into
the kingdom of God, for Jesus said they would come from the East and West, from
the North and South, and set down in the kingdom of God, with Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob' and they were the greatest Polygamists of whom we read. And moreover,
in John’s revelations there is an account of him having seen the Great City—New
Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, having its twelve gates on which
were inscribed the names of the twelve Patriarchs, the sons of the great
Polygamist, Jacob; and John says, “Blessed are they that do his commandments,
that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in thro’ the gates
of the city.” Now sir, said we, if ever you get into that city, you will have
to make friends with Polygamists. (Chauncy W. West, “The Indian Mission,”
August 11, 1855, Deseret News 5, no. 25 [August 28, 1855]: 198)
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