Page 94 of The Confidant
I frowned and continued reading.
Margaret refused Samuel at first because she was in love with someone else. But Samuel came back a few days later, saying that an angel had threatened to kill him if he refused to obey the Lord’s commandment. He also said that Margaret’s whole family would be in danger of God’s wrath if the partnership wasn’t consummated…
So to spare his life and to spare her family, Margaret accepted.
I frowned.That doesn’t seem right.
The Lord wouldn’t ask that of someone my own age, would he?
It would be like me being told to marry someone the same age as my mom’s boyfriend, Rodney.
Gross.I shivered with the thought.
The essay talked about the upheaval in the area during this time and how non-members didn’t accept or understand the peculiar practice, persecuting Samuel for taking so many young brides. Samuel had apparently written in his journals that he too had gone to the Lord in earnest, trying to understand why he was being asked to do this, and the Lord told him it was to continue his more spiritually pure bloodline and build the kingdom of God on Earth.
Just as Jehovah was born to a virgin, Samuel Williams was also told to have these spiritual partnerships with women who were virgins as well.
But hadn’t Xander said there was a woman who had already been married when Samuel Williams approached her? Had the commandment been changed for her?
I felt sick as I continued reading. None of this felt right. He was already married before any of this started happening. Why couldn’t he just continue his bloodline with Melissa, his first wife?
But then I remembered how Melissa had a hard time bearing children and having them live past infancy. They had a daughter at the time Samuel took his first spiritual partner, but five other children had died during infancy at that point. Having babies and keeping them alive was harder back then.
And since the priesthood could only be passed through men, and the High Priest had to be a man, Samuel needed more chances to produce male posterity to fulfill those roles.
Melissa was able to have two male children survive into adulthood. The oldest, Jethro, becoming his father’s predecessor after Samuel’s death in 1896, making the spiritual partnerships apparently not necessary.
But…even if it didn’t make sense, it was something that tested the faith of the early church members. And those involved had their eternal salvation ensured because of their willingness to sacrifice their will for the Lord.
The practice was discontinued in the early 1900’s when it was revealed that the need for the practice had been fulfilled.
I leaned back in my chair when I finished reading the essay, slightly stunned that this was an actual part of the church’s history. It was just so weird with how the church worked today. Having sexual relationships with multiple women was a major sin now. Grounds for excommunication from The Fold even.
But maybe it wasn’t as weird in the 1800’s as it was now? Maybe girls got married younger back then?
Ihadbeen raised knowing that it was important not to wait too long to get married. When the time was right and you found the right person who you could trust to stay strong in the church, you didn’t hesitate.
It wasn’t abnormal for girls from my congregation to get married a year or two after high school. Many of them having babies before they even graduated from college.
EvenIhad daydreamed of marrying Hunter right after high school. Which was only a couple of months away. I’d just celebrated my eighteenth birthday in January. I’d been seventeen just a short time ago…so maybe it was fine that Margaret had only been seventeen when she was commanded to become Samuel’s spiritual partner?
Sure…Samuel had been almost old enough to be her father…but the Lord worked in mysterious ways… And God’s ways were not our ways….
The sound of the organ started playing through my computer speakers, breaking me from my thoughts. I’d completely missed out on most of my dad’s sermon. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice if I just mentioned what I’d heard during the first few minutes.
The service ended, and about fifteen minutes later, my dad FaceTimed me from his office at the church.
He asked me how I’ve been, and after telling him that I’d had an interesting weekend, I said, “Actually, I heard about some interesting things that Samuel Williams did and got distracted by reading one of the essays about it on the church’s website.”
“What got you interested in that?” My dad’s graying eyebrows dipped together in concern. “Did Hunter mention something to you? Because that boy promised that he wouldn’t talk to you about anything he was reading.”
Wait, what?
My dad had made Hunter promise not to talk to me about the church’s history?
Was that why Hunter had never said anything about his change of beliefs until I came to him with the church gossip? Because my dad had forbidden him?
But I said, “Hunter’s not the one who brought it up. It was actually Xander. He mentioned some things about the early church when he was giving me my tour yesterday. He had this journal…”
