The following are excerpts from:
Digest of the minutes of the meeting of
the Patriarchs of the Church with the General Authorities held in Barratt Hall,
Salt Lake City, Utah, Saturday, October 11, 1958, at 8:00 A.M.
On the topic of the children of children
in marriages where (1) a woman, sealed to her dead husband, has kids with her
new (civilly married) husband and (2) the exaltation of faithful family members
if a parent apostasies:
A question came from
one of our patriarchs a few days ago concerning temple marriage where children
are involved. If a woman marries in the temple for the first time, has several
children and her husband dies and she remarries and has more children, who
would the second set of children belong to? They would belong to the mother and
her dead husband. She was married under the covenant and when married the
second time for time only, the father of these children has no claim on them.
This comes out of the law given anciently that if a woman married and the
husband died without leaving a son to carry on the name it was the law that the
nearest male member of the family would take the widow and the issue of such
marriage would belong to the dead husband. Of course, that did not permit a man
from having a wife of his own in that day. We cannot do those things today.
In a case where a man
and a woman are married in the temple for time and eternity and the man become
immoral and forfeits his rights by violation of his covenants, that is another problem.
The woman should first get a cancellation of her sealing, which must be done by
the President of the Church, and then a second man can take that woman for time
and eternity. (H. Michael Marquardt, comp., Later Patriarchal Blessings of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [Salt Lake City: The
Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2012], 560)
On black members of the Church (reading this will result in whiplash: they are said, prior to 1978, to be heirs to exaltation [which is great], and
then, the “less valiant in the pre-existence” nonsense is repeated):
Now here is a problem
which to me is serious. A patriarch gave a blessing to an individual who had
Negro blood in his veins and said you are of the House of Israel and entitled
to all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A Negro cannot hold the
priesthood and not holding the priesthood they cannot, until the Lord removes
the restriction, enter into the exaltation of the kingdom of God and that would
not entitle them to all of the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is a
very serious matter and we should be extremely careful to know the Lord is
speaking to us because Negroes cannot receive of the fullness. A negro may come
into the church and we can do more for him than any other church on the face of
the earth. If he is baptized and is faithful and true, he can enter the
celestial kingdom, but he does not get exaltation, but as I understand it, the
Lord will, in due time, remove the restrictions. Not in this world but the time
will come, if the Negro receives the gospel and is true to the end, he may go
to the celestial kingdom and when the right time comes the restriction will be
removed and he may receive all the blessings. Now the reason as stated by
President Brigham Young and some of the other brethren that the Negro cannot
receive the priesthood is two fold. One if their own fault because of their attitude
in the spirit world. They were not valiant for some cause which the Lord does
not explain, and they were barred from receiving the priesthood but they were
not barred from birth into this world, and were not denied the right to have a
body. If he is faithful in his second estate, the time will come when these
restrictions will be removed. (Ibid.)
Gospel Topics Essay: Race and the Priesthood
Russell W. Stevenson, For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013
