Doctrinal Library

The Family--Words from God

...know that you are a child of heavenly parents, part of your Heavenly Father’s family.

Do Your Part with All Your Heart

You are a blessed being of light, the spirit child of an infinite God! And you bear within you a potential beyond your own capacity to imagine.

As poets have noted, you come to earth “trailing clouds of glory”!

Your origin story is divine, and so is your destiny. You left heaven to come here, but heaven has never left you!

Believe, Love, Do

Through the lens of pure love, we see immortal beings of infinite potential and worth and beloved sons and daughters of Almighty God.

General Conference: Strengthening Faith and Testimony

For example, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” was given long before we experienced the challenges now facing the family.

What Matters Most Is What Lasts Longest

But as your leaders, we call upon members of the Church everywhere to put family first and to identify specific ways to strengthen their individual families.

Our Efforts to Inform the World of Our Doctrines...

here is in that no crime at all, unless some law of God is violated, or somebody is injured in the matter. If this transaction that I have just named violates the law of God, or if it injures or infringes upon the rights of a brother or a sister, then there may be some ground for pronouncing it a crime, but belief in, and practice of, the eternity and plurality of the marriage covenant do not violate the law of God, because He has commanded His people to accept and obey it. Neither is it an infringement upon the rights of others, neither men nor women, but gives all women an opportunity to become honorable wives and mothers, and thus to shut out what is politely called the social evil, with all its horrid concomitants of seduction, feticide, infanticide and all the train of sexual monogamic evils which haunt and infest Christendom.

Conspicuous Position of the Saints...

We are not disposed to imitate these examples, nor to drink in the pernicious doctrine once uttered in Plymouth Church by the noted Henry Ward Beecher—that it was a positive evil to increase families in the land beyond a limited extent, and the ability of the parents to properly educate and maintain them, sustaining the idea of small families; in effect, justifying the mothers—the unnatural mothers—of New England, and their partners who sanction their efforts in destroying their own offspring, and in prevent–ing the fecundity of the race. Fancy such a doctrine justified by the noted orator of the nineteenth century, and reechoed by the smaller fry throughout the country! The Latter-day Saints are taught to reverence the words of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, concerning the multiplication of their species, and are called as His children to multiply and replenish the earth.

Oneness of the Priesthood—Impossibility of Obliterating Mormonism

I have known of lots of women calling for a doctor to destroy their children; and there are many of the women in this enlightened age and in the most popular towns and cities in the Union that take a course to get rid of their children. The whole nation is guilty of it. I am telling the truth. I won’t call it infanticide. You know I am famous for calling things by their names.
I have been taught it, and my wife was taught it in our young days, when she got into the family way, to send for a doctor and get rid of the child, so as to live with me to gratify lust. It is God’s truth, and I know the person that did it. This is depopulating the human species; and the curse of God will come upon that man, and upon that woman, and upon those cursed doctors. There is scarcely one of them that is free from the sin. It is just as common as it is for wheat to grow.
Do we take that course here? No. ...
I will tell you that some of the most noble spirits are waiting with the Father to this day to come forth through the right channel and the right kind of men and women. That is what has to be yet; for there are thousands and millions of spirits waiting to obtain bodies upon this earth.

The Marriage Question—Lawful Concubinage and Its Unlawful Counterfeit...

Today infanticide and feticide are popular. Modern doctors and doctresses have arisen, men and women who are skilled in what are called the diseases of women, whose special practice is preventing fecundity, thereby securing to husband and wife the pleasures of self-gratification without bearing the responsibilities of maternity, and the trouble and expense of rearing children. These doctors and doctresses and the American students who have learned to practice their hellish arts, are today engaged in undermining the constitutions of wives and mothers; yes, child murder, this damnable doctrine of devils has become popular throughout New England, and is fast spreading over the American continent. ... and I say, in the name of Israel’s God, the sooner the better unless they repent of their murders, their whoredoms and their abominations that ascend to the heavens and are a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty. And, yet, it is this New England element whose garments are stained with the blood of innocence, that has found its way through our western States, thus has worked heart and soul with the hireling priesthood in firing up the national heart, and that is urging on hostile legislation against the best and purest people that exist upon the American continent. ... Weed your garden first at home, and then let your virtues be directed to the crying evils and sins of your large cities; and let child murder cease, and hang those infernal doctors who by means of their hellish arts are destroying the life of your offspring, and thus preventing the fulfillment of the first great command that God gave to our first parents; first petition Congress to pass laws to deal with the murderers and murderesses of the nation, the adulterers and adulteresses and all those who deal in shame, through whose wickedness the seeds of decay and death are transmitted to posterity.

The Past and Future of the American Continent...

I say also, when the time comes that God sees in the midst of His people an increase of the female element, and the wicked ready to devour that element and appropriate it not in the way to “multiply and replenish the earth,” but for the gratification of fleshly lust, and will actually take and employ hellish means to prevent the increase of their species, and show that they are not only beneath the brute, but beneath the vegetable creation, by refusing to bear fruit, thereby placing themselves in the category of the trees that are dried up, fit only to be cast into the fire, he can take measures to counteract this evil. And I say before God, angels and men, that every man and woman who joins in unholy wedlock for the gratification of fleshly lust, and studiously plan to frustrate the command of God in the multiplication of their species, show that they are unworthy—what shall I say?—unworthy to be classed among the honorable of the earth. And we have reason to believe that many have done, and are today, in the great cities of Babylon, taking steps to destroy their own offspring, committing infanticide and feticide, all of whom, and their aiders and abettors, are but ripening for the damnation of hell. And when God sees this damnable doctrine taught, and taught by such men as Mr. Henry Ward Beecher and other modern divines falsely so-called, who teach the world that it is a positive evil to multiply and increase so greatly in the land—when such doctrine is taught by leading lights, and so readily accepted by the masses, the Lord says, the time has come for Him to take measures to counteract this great evil, by introducing laws in the midst of those who fear Him and work righteousness and live according to the principles of life; men who are upright, honest and faithful, men who are willing to assume the responsibility; to take the daughters of Eve to wife and multiply and replenish the earth, for those men are unworthy of them.