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[Q] 14 years old. 16 years old.
[RT] He had a wife who was 14 years old, but remember, on the frontier in America,
women married young, often as young as 12 years of age because the life span of
people in those days wasn't what it is today. On the frontier, not as much in the rest of
America, but on the frontier, if you look at population studies, if you look at censuses
of people across the American frontier at the
time, they often married quite young . So marrying a 14 year old in those days was not
the same â it was like marrying a 21 year old today.
[Q] You can not compare that. In those days marriage was also their sex debut. You cannot
compare that. A 14 year old was like a 10 year old today!
[RT] My point is there was a different societal normalized age of marriage in those days.
Let's move on. This is a complicated one.
[Q] You think that's the most important question. Does the church recognize this practice
as being OK? Does the church officially endorse this? Polyandry. Or do they recognize
that it might actually have been an error? Do you have an opinion on that from the
Church?
[RT] I've never seen a formal statement about that.
[Q] The basic question here is of course then, was this a mistake done by Joseph Smith?
And if it was, how could he continue to be a prophet? And if it was not a mistake, it
must be endorsed by the church, I guess.
[RT] What the church does say on these questions about Joseph Smith in general is this:
either Joseph was a prophet of God or he wasn't. Correct? And the way in which you
decide that, not just intellectually, but spiritually, is the way that elder Jensen
talked about at the beginning. That's the official
church statement on the matter. I've never seen an official church statement that goes
into the details.
[Q] But why does my spirit talks to me and screams wrong, wrong, wrong, even if it's
a prophet of God? Do I have the devil in me
who's talking to me and says I should understand this 14 and 16-year-old girls marrying?
I can'tâ my spirit doesn't â I can't get it through my mind. Is it the devil speaks
to me? That I should accept that because Joseph smith is a prophet? So he did that
right, it was god told him to do that? Go behind Emma and take these wives.