What follows is an email I received from a Christian couple who wrote me informing how the articles on my site about God’s blessing and allowance for polygyny have helped confirm for this couple that the husband should try to implement polygyny .

Now some at first may find it strange that the email is written from the wife explaining the journey that she and her husband have taken.

But let me point out a couple of things. It is not uncommon for for a wife to better at writing and putting into words the things that her and her husband have gone through and there is nothing wrong with that as long she maintains respect for his position as her head.

Second – as you will read in the story, she was involved with encouraging her husband to choose a particular young woman. Again – there is no sin in this as the Bible actually shows a wife doing this.

When most people of think of a wife giving her husband another woman, they think of Sarah giving Hagar to Abraham and then try to talk about how badly that turned out. Let me just point out that nothing in the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar shows that it was a sin for Sarah to give Hagar to Abraham or for him to accept Hagar. The problem was in Sarah’s lack of faith that God would fulfill his promise to give Abraham an heir through her womb, not the womb of another woman.

However, most people are woefully ignorant of another woman who gave her husband another wife and was blessed by God for doing.

Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, had two wives – Leah and Rachel. And when Leah stopped having children, she gave her maid to her husband to continue having her children for him in her stead. And the Bible says this of her in Genesis 30:18:

“And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.”

My point is there is nothing wrong with a Christian wife not only coming to a fully acceptance of her husband’s right to practice polygyny – but also her actively encouraging him to do it and pointing out potential additional women that he might pursue for marriage.

With that said an introduction – below is the email I received from Robert and his wife Sarah and it is written by Sarah.

Robert and Sarah’s Story

Our names are Robert and Sarah, we are fellow followers of Christ from Ohio.  We have two baby boys, two years old and one year old. We have been following your work for 2 years now and have experienced much fruit in our marriage from applying BGR. We are writing to you today specifically about the subject of polygamy (more specifically polygyny) to seek some of your advice.

 We have also been studying this subject of polygamy as a couple for 2 years now by reading your articles, studying in God’s word for ourselves, and seeking His will in prayer. We became interested in the subject right around the time of the birth of our first daughter who is 2 years old now.

Rob has been saying that raising children just seems like more than a one-person job, and I have been deeply desiring but missing the companionship of another female relationship in my life. I have been hurt over and over again by other women who have just not been able to commit to a true and lasting friendship with me because of prioritizing their family life. However, I was initially totally closed minded to the idea of polygyny and was disgusted by the idea to the point of wanting to divorce Rob should he ever act on it because I was considering it a form of adultery and unfaithfulness to me.

And so, we wanted to foremost share our testimony with you of how God completely changed my heart 180 degrees to not only accepting polygamy as part of God’s design and not a sin to actually being open to it as a prospective for our life. It is something I truly wrestled with these past 2 years and it made me feel un-valued as a woman and un-loved by God; I was confused by why God even created woman and felt like God hated me because I am a woman. 

My relationship with God was strained and our relationship as a couple held a great deal of tension. Once I was able to actually take it to God in prayer with an open heart and willingness to accept His divine will over my own is when God worked.  And now I have a great sense of peace about polygamy, my barriers to my relationship with God have been torn down and our marriage has become stronger than ever now that we finally see eye to eye on this one subject. 

 I am in awe at how God has opened my eyes on this one subject and I can now see that women are very loved by God and are actually more honored when placed in our God -given roles of service to men and that by woman glorifying man, man can properly glorify God and instead of feeling un-valued because of it I now feel a joy to take part in God’s design. My understanding on the Old Testament has become so much clearer and I feel as though I can finally connect all the dots between the God of the OT and the God of the NT and realize that God is truly the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow; He is the same God, and He does not change with the culture.

            With this incredible testimony as the backdrop, we wanted to share with you how we acted on our new biblical view of polygyny. We believe God spoke to us simultaneously but separately from each other about a specific woman in our life as being a perfect wife for Robert and female companion for myself. This person came to our minds several times over the course of a couple months and we had multiple conversations about her as a couple where we felt God’s presence with us in a powerful way and experienced an incredible amount of peace and overwhelming excitement and joy. It became obvious that this was someone we should pursue but didn’t know how.

After another length of time, it became clear that the route to pursue this girl was for Robert to respectfully go and talk to her father and ask permission to seek her hand in marriage, and this decision was confirmed by another incredible sense of peace from the holy spirit for both of us. It took a great deal of courage for Robert but this is exactly what he did and it has led us to where we are now.  The girl’s father who is a Christian and a longtime friend of ours, was very offended by the idea and slammed the door in our faces. He initially agreed to sit down with both of us to hear us out as a couple on how we came to our belief on polygamy and why we thought of his daughter specifically, but he could not guarantee that his wife would do the same. She reached out to me separately and invited me over for tea to discuss the matter. She appeared to listen really well and calmly, we prayed together and talked for hours.

The conversation was left at again wanting to sit down with both couples to open God’s word together and continue the conversation before drawing a definitive yes or no. But after I talked to his wife about it, the father has now taken back his word to hear us together as a couple. They told us that they made up their mind that the answer is a dead no and now they are saying that they need to separate their family from us. And further more they decided to tell their daughter about Rob’s request as a way of explaining to her why our families need to be separated from each other. This has caused a great deal of hurt, feelings of betrayal and has left us shunned with no way to seek reconciliation.

To complicate things more, this has had a huge devastating effect on our church group. With the exception of one person who did actually come to us with love and patience to hear us out, no one else has and we have experienced an unprecedented amount of rejection, shaming, anger, and hatred. The news of what Robert did have been distorted and by way of gossip has spread around all of our circles of closest family and friends like wildfire. We are still receiving hate-filled phone calls on a regular basis from people who are eager to call Rob horrible names like “pervert” and “cult leader” and then proceed to shun us from their lives completely without allowing us to get one word in.

We don’t have anyone to seek advice from around here who we feel can be trusted and is safe to talk to. We also feel as though all the churches and pastors around here have been infiltrated by the world’s cultural view (which is why we started a home church in the first place) and have adapted an unbiblical lens on the subject of polygamy.

Is there anyone my husband can talk with that would be able to give us practical and real-world advice on how he can go about finding an additional wife?

Sincerely,

Robert and Sarah

My Response to Robert and Sarah

First – thank you for that powerful testimony of how accepting the truth of God’s Word on the subject of polygamy transformed your view of marriage and sexuality in marriage. 

A lot of people ask me why I teach in so much detail about polygamy (polygyny) with our culture being so harshly opposed to the idea – and I tell them first and foremost because it is the truth of God’s Word, his allowance for polygyny. 

And secondly even if a man chooses not to exercise it – it will help him and his wife to better understand his masculine nature as God designed it.

As to Rob’s attempt to exercise polygyny – I am not shocked at the response you got.  That is the normal response in 90 percent of cases.  Again, we have a HUGE cultural hatred of the concept polygyny.  And yes, our culture only associates polygamy with cults and that is why they wrongly called Rob a cult leader.

While I teach a great deal on the Biblical principles allowing for polygamy and how acceptance of a man’s polygynous sexual nature can bless even a monogamous marriage, I will admit I don’t have a lot of firsthand knowledge of how to implement polygamy since I do not practice it myself.  But I do know of a Christian website dedicated to helping men implement polygynous marriages. 

It is https://biblicalfamilies.org/

You may want to contact them and get on their forum to find out about meeting Christian women interested in polygynous marriage.