Plural marriage was taught as a revealed commandment required for exaltation, then ended under federal pressure in 1890 and 1904, while Doctrine and Covenants 132 stays canonized: a revelation reversed by revelation.

For much of the nineteenth century the church taught and practiced plural marriage as commanded by God, and Doctrine and Covenants 132 presents it as an eternal principle tied to the highest exaltation. In 1890, after the Edmunds-Tucker Act and under threat of losing the temples, the church president issued a declaration announcing the end of the practice, and sanctioned plural marriages nonetheless continued until a Second Manifesto in 1904, as the church’s own essay records. Here is the church’s view first: Latter-day Saints hold that both the start and the end came by revelation, so that God directed his church through real history. The concern is twofold. Section 132 is still canonized and still teaches the doctrine, so the practice ended and the doctrine did not. And the timing invites the question whether the revelation answered God or Washington, which the church’s essay addresses by calling the timing providential. Both accounts are below; weigh them.