This a follow up to The Expiation of Sectarian Dogma & The Seeding of The Mormon People.
The Book of Mormon describes Jews receiving Christian salvation before Christ is even born. It explains that the Mosaic Law and the Israelite temple rituals like animal sacrifices were merely "signs, and wonders, and types, and shadows." Hence we read:
Mosiah 3:13-16 (emphasis added):
And the Lord God has sent his holy prophets among all the children of men, to declare these things to every kindred, nation, and tongue, that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though he had already come among them.
Yet the Lord God saw that his people were a stiffnecked people, and he appointed unto them a law, even the law of Moses. And many signs, and wonders, and types, and shadows showed he unto them, concerning his coming; and also holy prophets spoke unto them concerning his coming; and yet they hardened their hearts, and understood not that the law of Moses avails nothing except it were through the atonement of his blood.
I would argue that we therefore have scriptural precedent for interpreting the Nauvoo temple ritual as "signs, and types, and shadows" that showed unto the Nineteenth century Mormons concerning the coming secret doctrine of God, soon to be fully revealed and known among God's People by 1900; and yet many hardened their hearts, and understood not that the law of Nauvoo [plural marriage law] avails nothing except it were a type and shadow, a method of expiating the abominable Creeds from the consciousness of the Saints, and revealing God's real body. In other words, just as the Law of Moses availed nothing, the Law of Plural Marriage (see D&C 132: 3, 5-7, 11, 17-18, 24) availed nothing except as a sign and type and shadow of God's bodily nature and sociality of the Gods, i.e. the true knowledge of God the Father having a body of flesh and bones and the same sociality that exists here, exists there. For that Law was about knowing God as an "eternal life" in bodily form. As we read in D&C 132: 24 (emphasis added):
This is eternal lives—to know the only wise and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent. I am he. Receive ye, therefore, my law.
Note that Joseph Smith renders the passage in the gospel of John as "eternal lives." Joseph Smith explains this in The King Follett Discourse (emphasis added):
Have any of you seen him, heard him, communed with him [God]? Here is the question, perhaps, that will from this time forth occupy your attention. The apostle [John] says, "This is life eternal"--to know God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. If any man, not knowing what kind of a being God is, inquires to know if the declaration of the apostle is true--and searches diligently his own heart--he will admit that he has not eternal life; for there can be no eternal life on any other principle.
My first object is to find out the character of the only wise and true God, and if I should be the man to comprehend him and to explain or convey his principles to your hearts so that the spirit seals it upon you, let every man and woman henceforth put his hand on his mouth and never say anything against the man of God again. But if I fail, it becomes my duty to renounce all my pretensions to revelations and inspirations. And if all [religious teachers] pretend to know God, they will be as bad off as I am, at any rate. … I want you all to know God, to be familiar with him. And if I can bring you to him, all persecutions against me will cease; you will know that I am his servant, for I speak as one having authority. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear all ye ends of the earth; for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and I am going to tell you the designs of God for the human race and why he interferes with the affairs of man.
First, God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heaven, is a man like one of you. That is the great secret.
… When we begin to learn in this way, we begin to learn the only true God and what kind of a being we have got to worship. When we know how to come to him, he begins to unfold the heavens to us and tell us all about it. When we are ready to come to him, he is ready to come to us.
Source: http://mldb.byu.edu/follett.htm
So D&C 132: 24 can be read thus with my words in brackets, and combining the teachings of the King Follet Discourse:
This is eternal lives [the lives of divine men and women with tangible bodies of flesh and bone (composed of spirit matter)]—to know the only wise and true God [who is a man in form just like us], and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent. I am he. Receive ye, therefore, my law [so you can learn the great secret that God the Father is a man who progressed in power in His bodily form; so that to know God is know a full life in the body rather than asceticism. Thus you "have got to learn to be Gods yourselves" through the type and shadow of this Law (plural marriage) in order to learn bodily affirmation as the way of the Gods].
In other words, the point of plural marriage was not for Heavenly Parents to birth heavenly children but instead the soul of man was always eternal and celestially unbirthed and uncreated. As The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents Volume 14, puts it:
[Joseph Smith] sought to comfort the survivors by teaching about the nature of God—specifically, that God had the form of a man and that God had once been a man and had incrementally advanced to godhood. [Joseph Smith] also stated that men and women must similarly learn to become gods. He argued that God had organized the world from existing eternal elements rather than creating it ex nihilo. Likewise, [Joseph Smith] declared that “intelligences”—or “the intelligent part” of the “mind of man”—are self-existent and have no beginning or end. Furthermore, God gave these intelligences laws to help them progress to become like him. (page 313).
As Joseph goes on to explain:
… The first principles of man are self-existent with God. God found himself in the midst of spirits and glory, and because he was greater, he saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have the privilege of advancing like himself--that they might have one glory upon another and all the knowledge, power, and glory necessary to save the world of spirits. I know that when I tell you these words of eternal life that are given to me, you taste them, and I know you believe them. You say honey is sweet, and so do I. I can also taste the spirit of eternal life; I know it is good.
The Creeds had rendered man docile and ascetic and engaged in "body despising" as Nietzche rightly condemns. When one reads Parley Pratt's An appeal to the inhabitants of the State of New York : letter to Queen Victoria, it's very clear that Pratt, under Smith's theo-philosophical guidance, is very critical of the puritanical mindset and shaming tactics of Protestantism, as well as the lack of vitality in the clergy and their docile unambitious nature. Thus, we can read the King Follet Discourse as basically saying that God "instituted the temporary law of plural marriage, whereby spirits could have the privilege of advancing like God himself--that they might have one glory upon another and all the knowledge, power, and glory." In other words, Smith was restoring the original Hebrew attitude of acsending Davidic Kings and Adam-and-Eve made in the royal image of the Royal Divine Council (see the Biblical scholarship of Michael Heiser for more details). As even Paul said Christians would judge angels or lower divine beings (1 Cor. 6:3). The spirits could not advance like God Himself toward exalted enthronement by believing in the sectarian Creed, that God was a mere vapor without body or parts and the ultimate aim of life was despising the body, lacking ambition and status, and discarding the body as the aim of life; and in the Protestant concept of heaven there was no expansion of love and kingly dominion but mere groveling before an invisible bodiless Nothing. So it was important to gain the secret knowledge of God's form as a man in order to affirm the body and advance in knowledge and power on earth in imitation of the powerfully royal Gods.
Thus Joseph says (emphasis added, with my words added in brackets):
… Knowledge saves a man, and in the world of spirits a man cannot be exalted except by knowledge. So long as a man will not give heed to the commandments [the main commandment then in 1844 was the Law of plural marriage], he must abide without salvation [he can't be "saved" by the secret knowledge of God's bodily form revealed in the plural marriage temple ritual]. A man is his own tormenter and his own condemner [when he believes in the sectarian Creeds and despises his body]. Hence the saying, "They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone." The torment of the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. So is the torment of [sectarian] man.
Source: http://mldb.byu.edu/follett.htm
Joseph was thus presenting the saving knowledge of God's true bodily nature and that God is "more liberal in his views" (as he explains to Nancy Rigdon) through the experiential knowledge gained through plural marriage. The Creeds caused man to torment himself and thus Joseph was seeking to liberate the Saints by temporarily having them practice the law of plural marriage as a type and shadow of the royal status of the liberated state of the embodied Gods that are not burdened by the body despising sectarian Creeds, which body-denying Creed the Gods consider an abomination.
We even find some support for this interpretation among traditional LDS apologists, as one writes:
The earliest justification mentioned by the Prophet for the reestablishment of Old Testament polygamy was as a part of the “restitution of all things” prophesied in Acts 3:19–21:
"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began" (italics added).
This need for a restoration is mentioned in [D&C] Section 132: “I am the Lord thy God. . . . I have conferred upon you the keys and power of the priesthood, wherein I restore all things” (v. 40; see also 45).
Another reason for the establishment of plural marriage is that it brought trials to practicing Saints that provided opportunities for spiritual growth, to be “proven” (D&C 132:51). …
…. Apostle John Taylor summarized:
"Where did this commandment come from in relation to polygamy?” and then he [Joseph Smith] answered: “It also came from God. It was a revelation given unto Joseph Smith from God, and was made binding upon His servants. When this system was first introduced among this people, it was one of the greatest crosses that ever was taken up by any set of men since the world stood."[8]
Source: https://debunking-cesletter.com/polygamy-polyandry-1/reasons-for-polygamy/
Note that the "cross" is a symbol of expiation and transformation; and the word proven means "Tried; evinced; experienced" in the 1828 Dictionary. In other words, plural marriage was a temporary "cross to bear" in order to be proven, that is experienced in the saving knowledge that God is "more liberal in his views" and God is in the "form of a man"; and thus the early Mormons were to be "changed within [transformed] by a new way of thinking [or changing the way you think; the renewing of your mind]" (Romans 12: 2 EXB); and thus the early Mormons in the 1800s changed their thinking to no longer see God as a bodiless, passionless, nothingness but instead as a sensual being of flesh and bone and status and power; and that the aim of life was not to discard the body and despise the body but to affirm the flesh and the earth as spirit matter; and that ambition, status, and strength are good in imitation of God Himself. As the 1835 Lectures on Faith, which was the original Doctrine portion of the Doctrine and Covenants, make clear (see below).
For God is the ultimate Source of Power-to-Dominion, of unfolding life and creativity, which divine power we are to embody and partake of to be holy and saved (delivered from death and cultural decay and conquer and prosper). The Lectures on Faith explain this below. Note emphasis added, and the words in brackets are my own:
Lecture 1:15:
… the principle of power, which existed in the bosom of God, by which the worlds were framed, was faith; and that it is by reason of this principle of power, existing in the Deity, that all created things exist—so that all things in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, exist by reason of faith, as it existed in HIM.
Lecture 2: 4, 34:
4 … we are sensible, that after a revelation of Jesus Christ, the works of creation, throughout their vast forms and varieties, clearly exhibit his eternal power …. Romans 1:20: For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: even his eternal power …
34 The reason why we have been thus particular on this part of our subject, is, that this class may see … what it was that stirred up the faith of multitudes to feel after him; to search after a knowledge of his character, perfections and attributes, until they became extensively acquainted with him; and not only commune with him, and behold his glory, but be partakers of his power, and stand in his presence.
Lecture 7: 2, 9:
2 As we have seen in our former lectures, that faith was the principle of action and of power [unfolding in effects] …
9 … if we should continue our interrogation, and ask how it is that he [Christ] is saved, the answer would be, because he is a just and holy [set-apart] being; and if he were any thing different from what he is he would not be saved; for his salvation depends on his being precisely what he is and nothing else; for if it were possible for him to change in the least degree, so sure he would fail of salvation and lose all his dominion, power, authority and glory, which constitutes salvation; for salvation consists in the glory, authority, majesty, power and dominion which Jehovah possesses, and in nothing else; and no being can possess it but himself or one like him …
10 … and if they are not holy [set-apart and lawful not lawless], as he is holy, and perfect [healed and whole] as he is perfect [healed and whole], they cannot be like him; for no being can enjoy his glory without possessing his perfections [wholeness/completeness] and holiness [set-apartness], no more than they could reign in his kingdom without his power.
18 … having power by faith [as a principle of action] to obtain the knowledge of God [his Design Laws], they could with it obtain all other things which pertain to life [growth/abundance, see John 10:10] and godliness.
