The Book of 3rd Nephi

DIVORCE

31. It hath been written, that whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement.

32 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whoso shall marry her who is divorced committeth adultery. (3 Nephi 12:31-32)

The following is from a round table discussion on the Book of Mormon, given in the year 2000, that included Andrew Skinner (AS), Joseph McConkie (JM), Dan Judd (DJ) and Brent Top (BT):

" (AS) This counsel on divorce seems pretty stiff to me.  Help me out here.  That seems to be a difficult doctrine to bump up against, particularly if you're divorced…(JM) The text is difficult and a good explanation of it may be so involved that most people are not going to remember it.  However, one thing that everyone can remember is that we have a true and living Church and a prophet at the head of the Church who holds all the keys of the kingdom.

Everybody knows somebody that got divorced and that the man who stands at the head of the Church, holding the keys of the kingdom, has given permission to go back to the temple to be sealed once more.  As far as we're concerned, the practice of the Church is the interpretation of the scriptures.

One of the great messages of this chapter is that they've got this living voice with them that supersedes all that had been said, prior to that.  We kind of miss that as we worry about how that applies to our day.  One of the key issues again is to whom was He speaking.

He was speaking to the people (of 3rd Nephi) when he said it.  In our day, we have this living prophet who holds those keys and we know how they work.  We know in our time that nobody in the Church would be considered to have committed adultery with the proper channels and the proper clearance to go back to the temple and marry again.  People worry about something here that properly they should not.

It would be helpful if we knew all that was taking place when this law was given anciently but before we worry about that, let's get a handle about what's happening today…The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not have a provision for divorce in the sense of a higher law.  Since the days of Moses, nobody had ever talked about divorce, nobody even considered it.  It was a new idea that grew out of wickedness, so we had to accommodate that in some form."