Prophets are prophets, apostles are apostolic.  Here is Elder Boyd Packer, on the other side of a great gulf of destruction of the family, saying things that could be said today.

One cannot degrade marriage without tarnishing other words as well, such words as boy, girl, manhood, womanhood, husband, wife, father, mother, baby, children, family, home.

Such words as unselfishness and sacrifice will then be tossed aside. Then self-respect will fade and love itself will not want to stay.

God Himself decreed that the physical expression of love, that union of male and female which has power to generate life, is authorized only in marriage.

Marriage is the shelter where families are created. That society which puts low value on marriage sows the wind and, in time, will reap the whirlwind—and thereafter, unless they repent, bring upon themselves a holocaust!

from the Saturday morning session of the April 1981 General Conference.

OK, you say, all well and good, but you should see the mess me and my wife have made of our marriage.  Not so grand, this one.

No.  Even a tumble-down shack can be a home, if decent people live in it.

Even a rickety marriage will serve good purpose as long as two people struggle to keep it from falling down around them.

Some think that every marriage must expect to end in unhappiness and divorce, with the hopes and dreams predestined to end in a broken, sad wreck of things.

Some marriages do bend, and some will break, but we must not, because of this, lose faith in marriage nor become afraid of it.

Don’t give up.  Believe in marriage, believe in your spouse, believe in the God who has sanctified your bond.  I do.  I believe in the pain and the glory of it.

I’d go on quoting the whole talk if I dast.  Here’s one last excerpt.

And now a word of warning. One who destroys a marriage takes upon himself a very great responsibility indeed. Marriage is sacred!

To willfully destroy a marriage, either your own or that of another couple, is to offend our God. Such a thing will not be lightly considered in the judgments of the Almighty and in the eternal scheme of things will not easily be forgiven.

Do not threaten nor break up a marriage. Do not translate some disenchantment with your own marriage partner or an attraction for someone else into justification for any conduct that would destroy a marriage.

This monumental transgression frequently places heavy burdens upon little children. They do not understand the selfish yearnings of unhappy adults who are willing to buy their own satisfaction at the expense of the innocent.

Divorce, blech!


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