"Supposing that I have a wife or a dozen of them, and she should say, "You cannot be exalted without me," and suppose they all should say so, what of that?...Suppose that I lose the whole of them before I go into the spirit world, but that I have been a good, faithful man all the days of my life, and lived my religion, and had favour with God, and was kind to them, do you think I will be destitute there. No, the Lord says there are more there than there are here. They have been increasing there; they increase there a great deal faster than we do here,...
In the spirit world there is an increase of males and females, there are millions of them, and if I am faithful all the time, and continue right along with brother Brigham, we will go to brother Joseph and say, 'Here we are brother Joseph; we are here ourselves are we not, with none of the property we possessed in our probationary state, not even the rings on our fingers: 'He will say to us, 'come along, my boys, we will give you a good suit of clothes. Where are your wives?' 'They are back yonder; they would not follow us.' 'Never mind,' says Joseph, 'Here are thousands, have all you want.'"
Brigham Young walked this back some by limiting a man to 999 wives.
"I met with the Quorum and Presidency in the temple....President Woodruff then spoke '...In searching out my genealogy I found about four hundred of my female kindred who were never married. I asked Pres. Young what I should do with them. He said for me to have them sealed to me unless there were more that 999 of them.' The doctrine startled me, but I had it done,..." Daily Journal of Abraham H. Cannon, April 5, 1894, Vol. 18, pp 66-67
Brigham Young stated, "We are complained of for having more wives than one. I don't begin to have a many as I shall have by and by, nor you either, if you are faithful." (Journal of discourses, vol. 8, page 222)
George Q. Cannon "...remarked that people wondered how many wives and children I had. He may inform them, that I shall have wives and children by the million, and glory, and riches and power and dominion, and kingdom after kingdom, and reign triumphantly." (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 8, page 178)
The great prophet Moses gave a commandment about kings, "Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away;..." (Deuteronomy 17:17)
King Solomon had a thousand women! Although he was the wisest man on earth, 1 Kings 11:3-4 tells us, "And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father." Because of this God promised to take the Israelite kingdom away from him and give it to one of his servants. (1 Kings 11:11)
The old Testament has a number of stories of disaster and heartache resulting from polygamy. Let us go back to the beginning. After God made Eve and presented her to Adam, he said, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24) He didn't say a thousand flesh but rather one flesh.
Brigham Young and his contemporaries were sexually obsessed individuals who justified sexual obsession by using the Biblical text as a reference to preach sexual obsession in the guise of polygamy.
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