top of page
Brethren%20in%20White%20Rome_edited.jpg
Spoken Word

PARAGRAPH 4

 

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife.
 

  • "Remember that the adversary sponsors a cunning plan of his own.  It invariably attacks God’s first commandment for husband and wife to beget children. It tempts with tactics that include infidelity, unchastity, and other abuses of procreative power. Satan’s band would trumpet choice, but mute accountability. Nevertheless, his capacity has long been limited, “for he knew not the mind of God” (Moses 4:6)."  President Russell M. Nelson, "Constancy Amid Change," Ensign, November 1993.

 

We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.
 

  • "There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty?--To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can." Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 197.

 

  • "There seems to be a growing trend against marriage from degenerate areas of the world and a very strong trend toward marriage without children. Naturally the next question is, “Why marry?” And the “anti-marriage revolution” comes into focus. Arguments are given that children are a burden, a tie, a responsibility. Many have convinced themselves that education, freedom from restraint and responsibility—that is the life. And unfortunately this benighted and destructive idea is taking hold of some of our own people."  President Spencer W. Kimball, "Fortify Your Homes Against Evil," Ensign, May 1979.

 

  • “Many people, some of them innocently caught up in the whirlpool of delusion errors, are worrying about the earth failing to provide for the oncoming generations. They take such means to influence the thinking of the people and repeat it so often that many of us were gullible and accepted it. We tend to believe what the world says. We often do not even ask what the Lord's program is.”  The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, pp. 324-333.

 

  • “Young mothers and fathers, with all my heart I counsel you not to postpone having your children, being co-creators with our Father in heaven. Do not use the reasoning of the world, such as, "We'll wait until we can better afford having children, until we are more secure, until John has completed his education, until he has a better paying job, until we have a larger home, until we've obtained a few of the material conveniences," and on and on.

 

This is the reasoning of the world and is not pleasing in the sight of God. Mothers who enjoy good  health, have your children and have them early. And, husbands, always be considerate of your wives in the bearing children.”  President Ezra Taft Benson, “To the Mothers in Zion,” Fireside for Parents, February 22, 1987.

 

  • “The enemy of human happiness as well as the cause of poverty and starvation is not the birth of children, it is the failure of people to do with the earth what God could teach them to do if only they would ask and then obey.”  President Henry B. Eyring, “The Family,”  Ensign, February 1998.

We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.
 

  • “'First, … that God created ‘male and female,’ and that this 'binary creation is essential to the plan of salvation.'   Second, modern revelation teaches that eternal life, the greatest gift of God to His children, is only possible through the creative powers inherent in the combination of male and female joined in an eternal marriage (see Doctrine and Covenants 132:19). That is why the law of chastity is so important.”  
    President Dallin H. Oaks, Church News, "General Conference Leadership Meetings Begin," October 2, 2019.)

 

  • "The voice of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in unmistakable terms warns '… sexual sin—the illicit sexual relations of men and women—stands, in its enormity, next to murder. The Lord has drawn no essential distinctions between fornication, adultery, and harlotry or prostitution. Each has fallen under his solemn and awful condemnation. … [Such cannot] … escape the punishments and the judgments which the Lord has declared against this sin. The day of reckoning will come just as certainly as night follows day.'


"They who would palliate this crime and say that such indulgence is but a sinless gratification of a normal desire, like appeasing hunger and thirst, speak filthiness with their lips. Their counsel leads to destruction; their wisdom comes from the father of lies.” Message of the First Presidency to the Church, Improvement Era, November 1942, page 686.) See also President Spencer W. Kimball, "Voices of the Past, of the Present, of the Future," Ensign, May 1971.

 

  • "As we have said on previous occasions, certainly our Heavenly Father is distressed with the increasing inroads among his children of such insidious sins as adultery and fornication and homosexuality, lesbianism, abortion, alcoholism, dishonesty, and crime generally, which threaten the total breakdown of the family and the home…"  President Spencer W. Kimball, "Fortify Your Homes Against Evil," Ensign (May 1979).

 

  • "There is a practice, now quite prevalent, for unmarried couples to live together, a counterfeit of marriage. They suppose that they shall have all that marriage can offer without the obligations connected with it. However much they hope to find in a relationship of that kind, they will lose more. Living together without marriage destroys something inside all who participate."   President Boyd K. Packer, "Marriage," Ensign, May 1981.
     

  • "God Himself decreed that the physical expression of love, that union of male and female which has power to generate life, is authorized only in marriage."   President Boyd K. Packer, "Marriage," Ensign, May 1981.
     

  • "Whether we like it or not, so many of the difficulties which beset the family today stem from the breaking of the seventh commandment (see Ex. 20:14). Total chastity before marriage and total fidelity after are still the standard from which there can be no deviation without sin, misery, and unhappiness. The breaking of the seventh commandment usually means the breaking of one or more homes."  President Spencer W. Kimball, "Families Can Be Eternal," Ensign, November 1980.
     

  • "Our purpose in mortality is to become like our heavenly parents. Our divine understanding and use of sexual intimacy are essential to that process of becoming...As with other commandments, the law is given by Heavenly Father to bless and help His children achieve their divine potential. Obeying the law of chastity includes abstaining from all sexual relations before marriage and remaining completely faithful and loyal after marriage. Sexual relations are to be limited to marriage between a man and a woman.

"As with all of God’s commandments, the law of chastity is best understood within the context of Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation and exaltation (see Alma 12:32). Obedience to the law of chastity will bring extraordinary blessings."  Elder Dale G. Renlund, "The Divine Purposes of Sexual Intimacy," Ensign, August 2020."

PREMARITAL SEXUAL RELATIONS FORBIDDEN
 

  • "Let every youth keep himself from the compromising approaches and then with great control save himself from the degrading and life-damaging experience of sexual impurity."  President Spencer W. Kimball, "God Will Not Be Mocked," Ensign, November 1974.
     

ADULTEROUS SEXUAL RELATIONS FORBIDDEN

 

  • "Now the lust of the heart and the lust of the eyes and the lust of the body bring us to the major sin. Let every man remain at home with his affections. Let every woman sustain her husband and keep her heart where it belongs—at home with her family."   President Spencer W. Kimball, "God Will Not Be Mocked," Ensign, November 1974.

  • "And now a word of warning. One who destroys a marriage takes upon himself a very great responsibility indeed. Marriage is sacred! To willfully destroy a marriage, either your own or that of another couple, is to offend our God. Such a thing will not be lightly considered in the judgments of the Almighty and in the eternal scheme of things will not easily be forgiven. Do not threaten nor break up a marriage. Do not translate some disenchantment with your own marriage partner or an attraction for someone else into justification for any conduct that would destroy a marriage."  President Boyd K. Packer, "Marriage," Ensign, May 1981

 

HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONS FORBIDDEN

  • “Every form of [acting on] homosexuality is sin. ...May we repeat: Sex perversions of men and women can never replenish the earth and are definitely sin without excuse, and rationalizations are very weak; God will not tolerate it.”   Spencer W. Kimball, "God Will Not Be Mocked," Ensign, November 1974.
     

  • "This walk requires us to seek divine inspiration on what to support and what to oppose and how to love and listen respectfully and teach in the process. Our walk demands that we not compromise on commandments but show forth a full measure of understanding and love. Our walk must be considerate of children who are uncertain about their sexual orientation, but it discourages premature labeling because, in most children, such uncertainty decreases significantly over time. Our walk opposes recruitment away from the covenant path, and it denies support to any who lead people away from the Lord. In all of this we remember that God promises hope and ultimate joy and blessings for all who keep His commandments. ...Mothers and fathers and all of us are responsible to teach both of the two great commandments." President Dallin H. Oaks, “Two Great Commandments,” Ensign, November 2019.

 

  • "I pray that wherever we are and whatever duties we have...we will be united ...and that we will encourage people we love to be cleansed from sin and to be happy with us in the kingdom of God."  President Henry B. Eyring, “We are One,” Ensign, May 2013.

 

  • "A modern prophet, President Spencer W. Kimball, has warned us: … when toleration for sin increases, the outlook is bleak and Sodom and Gomorrah days are certain to return." His predecessor, President Harold B. Lee, warned of the growing social acceptance of "that great sin of Sodom and Gomorrah... adultery: and beside this, the equally grievous sin of homosexuality, which seems to be gaining momentum with social acceptance in the Babylon of the world... " Many today are as indecisive about the evils emerging around us—are as reluctant to renounce fully a wrong way of life—as was Lot's wife. Perhaps in this respect, as well as in the indicators of corruption of which sexual immorality is but one indicator, our present parallels are most poignant and disturbing. It was Jesus himself who said, "Remember Lot's wife." Indeed we should—and remember too all that the Savior implied with those three powerful words."   Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Look Back At Sodom: A timely account from imaginary Sodom Scrolls (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1975).

 

  • "In this day of the 'new morality' as sex permissiveness is sometimes called, we should be made aware of the Lord’s concern about immorality and the seriousness of sex sins of all kinds.

 

"We have come far in material progress in this century, but the sins of the ancients increasingly afflict the hearts of men today. Can we not learn by the experiences of others? Must we also defile our bodies, corrupt our souls, and reap destruction as have peoples and nations before us?
 

"God will not be mocked. His laws are immutable. True repentance is rewarded by forgiveness, but sin brings the sting of death.

 

"We hear more and more each day about the sins of adultery, homosexuality, and lesbianism. Homosexuality is an ugly sin, but because of its prevalence, the need to warn the uninitiated, and the desire to help those who may already be involved with it, it must be brought into the open.

"It is the sin of the ages. It was present in Israel’s wandering as well as after and before. It was tolerated by the Greeks. It was prevalent in decaying Rome. The ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are symbols of wretched wickedness more especially related to this perversion, as the incident of Lot’s visitors indicates."  President Spencer W. Kimball, "The Foundations of Righteousness," Ensign, November 1977.

P4S1 SW Anchor
P4S2 SW Anchor
P4S3 SW Anchor
Further Commentary

Videos
Slide1.jpeg

The Family Proclamation Project is independent of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

bottom of page