Splinter Groups Kingstons Part 1

Prepared to engage women missionaries when they knock on your door. Perhaps the book is 101 will help Mormonism 101 published at your favorite Christian bookstore .1 is examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a perspective view .1 Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism research ministry since 1979 Mormonism research ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism.

What is the Davis County Cooperative Society. Welcome to this edition of viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director Mormonism research ministry and with me today is Eric Johnson. My colleague at MRM the Davis County Cooperative Society. Those words probably don't mean a whole lot to most individuals, but if you've ever seen the reality show escaping polygamy you may not realize that that is who we are going to be talking about today escaping polygamy. As I said was a reality show through A&E. It premiered in 2014 and it highlighted three individual three individual women, Andrea Brewer, Jessica Christiansen and Chanel Devereux. These three grew up in the Davis County Cooperative Society left the organization and worked to get others out of this organization, mainly because of its connection with plural marriage. What is this group Eric and why should those of us in Utah be concerned about them and I think we should also mention that because they are based in Utah each and every one of us living in this state could very well rub shoulders with these individuals and not even know it because unlike some of the other groups that claim their founders being Joseph Smith the Kingston clan is they are also known as dress just like everyone else. They don't have any kind of unique clothing like let's say the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Warren Jeffs group they don't usually have the a unique hairstyle for the females. Either they look like us and therefore you could very well talk to somebody, let's say in a grocery store, who was a member of this group and not even know it is not a very big group estimated at 5000, although some have said as large as 10,000 but they are very many of them living in the Salt Lake City and Bountiful area in northern Utah. So yes if you live in northern Utah.

Maybe your next-door neighbor goes this church and you don't know it because they're not going to be as unique looking as perhaps the FL DS which we covered a couple weeks ago, so this group is known as the latter-day Church of Christ. As you mentioned.

It was originally named the Davis County Cooperative Society is also been called the United order. Some have called this group the Kingston clan or the Kingston cult and members of the group do not like those terms. They feel it's derogatory so if you're going to know somebody who is a part of this group.

You don't want to call them the Kingston cult that the latter-day Church of Christ that was given to them in 1977 we should mention that latter-day Church of Christ they spell latter day latter LAT TER admin day without a hyphen is a D a Y. It's probably important to note this because the groups themselves are pretty picky about this, even though I've come across many members of the LDS church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and they'll write me and they'll misspell latter-day build either not put the-enter the do a D even though that church has always use the small D with a hyphen. What's interesting Bill is that they claim that their church is not to be considered a fundamentalist Mormon organization and their very much a capitalist group. I call them a capitalist polygamist group, you don't find many groups that are very much into the business end of things is a very rich group has a lot of money with the leaders of course the Kingston's are the leaders. They do not want to be associated with the FL DS or other polygamist groups that you might hear about but yet the term fundamentalist of fundamentalist Mormon churches, that's usually the term that's used referring to a lot of the splinter groups that do believe in the practice of plural marriage that's kind of a title it's been given to them by outsiders.

They may not like that, but it tends to explain at least two those with whom you're trying to talk to about these groups. The category in which we see them falling in.

I find out a lot of these groups that were covering these and these weeks are fascinating. This might be one of the most fascinating groups you want to go to our website to learn more, go to MRM.org/Kingston's KIA in GST ONS that we need to talk about the leaders and how this religion got started. It started back in the 1930s.

In fact the man that is most responsible for starting this church is Charles W Kingston and he lived from 1884 to 1975, 90, was a member of the LDS church that he felt that the Utah church was in error because it had abandoned the teaching of plural marriage and with all the other fundamentalist groups. During that time there were other people who were disassociating themselves from Mormonism and he wrote a book in the book's title was lame and Manasseh victorious a message of salvation and redemption to his people Israel, first to Ephraim and Manasseh, and it talked about his beliefs and it got him excommunicated from the LDS church in 1929.

Then in 1935 his son Charles Eldon Kingston. He founded the Davis County Cooperative Society and he took the leadership reins on January 1, 1935, he claimed that he had been visited by six different spiritual personages, whom he said came to him at different times and in the early years, the followers were unique outer garments with no pockets causing others to call them blue coats and not having pockets was meant to signify that the members were not tied to worldly wealth. Ironically, though Charles Eldon Kingston was a businessman and he was the one who first pushed the churches business agenda. The members were not allowed to wear shoes or hats as well. It's interesting.

This is the guy that basically is responsible for this understanding that you're not supposed to be tied to worldly wealth to get the same individual is the one who tends to switch gears here and now they're going to be pushing as you say, a business agenda so they go from what seems to be like a vowel of poverty to now a vowel of list be making money here is fascinating to me that this group like some of the other groups that we have been looking at place a strong emphasis on visitations from spiritual beings asked this question of our listeners. If you're latter-day say how do you discern between the visitations of these alleged spiritual beings to Charles Eldon Kingston as opposed to Joseph Smith. You will believe readily that Joseph Smith was visited by a number of spiritual beings but why do you automatically throw out the visitations from these other individuals who claim that they were also visited by spiritual beings. I would think that that would cause some sort of a conflict among those who firmly believe that this is some kind of mark of authenticity that your calling is being confirmed, your beliefs are being confirmed by the appearance of the spiritual beings. The church is only had three different leaders. All of them are Kingston as well.

Charles Eldon Kingston dies at 39. In 1948. He dies of cancer and so his brother John or tell Kingston takes over and he leaves the church for a very long time. From 1948 to 1987 he's the one that came up with the name of the church latter-day Church of Christ in 1977 and he had an even better business sense than Eldon.

One of things that he did it. He has promoted incestuous marriages that continue in the church today because to be married to a Kingston is to be considered to be more pure. The bloodline is more pure, so he had 13 wives and he had dozens of children that it's hard to find out exactly how many wives and how many children so often times when were talking about numbers with this group we have to just gas. The current leader is Paul Eldon Kingston. He was born in 1959 and he was a son of John or tell Kingston he's known as the watchmen on the wall and he does claim to hear from God regularly and inherited the top leadership position in 1987. I try to find out how many wives he had. I saw some older statistics is that he had 25 wives.

But I did find one recent estimate that he has 34 wives and more than 500 children now do the math and think about how many children that is if you only have 34 wives are all having to have at least 10+ children, but we know that several of his wives have had as many as 16 children each, a he's a businessman he's an accountant he's an attorney. He's the trustee in trust of the Davis County Cooperative Society run by the church so very much a business minded family and a business minded church now this church like some of the other groups that claim Joseph Smith as the head of their church and again it doesn't mean that these organizations were founded during the lifetime of Joseph Smith. Many of them were not of course, but they do claim that Joseph Smith is the strong influence in their doctrinal position and even in their very existence they all seem to claim that they more closely represent the teachings that Joseph Smith and in this case Brigham Young the second president and John Taylor the third president. They more closely represent what those men were teaching at that time though. Naturally, when Wilford Woodruff becomes the president of the church.

He becomes president number four because he signs the manifesto in 1890 he really becomes anathema in the eyes of people who belong to these polygamist groups because they look at Wilford Woodruff as betraying the teachings of Joseph Smith Brigham Young and John Taylor. So in this particular case the Kingston group would see themselves as being the rightful church holding more closely to the teachings of Smith, Young and Taylor even though there are other groups that would also say the same thing. This is where it gets a little bit confusing folks.

But again, as I mentioned before, this is kind of what we call the legacy of Joseph Smith.

They all go back to Joseph Smith and they claim him as their their rightful authority. So the reason why we been talking about these groups when somebody comes to you and says which church you go to and you tell them whichever denominational church you go to NSA well there so many of your kinds of churches well when you latter-day St. may not realize that there are groups like the Davis County Cooperative Society, the Kingston group are talking about.

I think we have every right to say what about all of the groups that claim that they are the ones that are following Joseph Smith. I like a lot of latter-day sense of thought of that. I think it becomes more difficult for latter-day Saints to answer that question because so much of their truth claims are based in either with the Coley supernatural experience which only they by themselves seems to have ever had.

There were no witnesses to a lot of these experiences or it becomes more subjective. Where as in Christianity, we would say well we go back to the word of God. We go to the Bible and if her group seems to be teaching things that contradict what the Bible has to say. There's a lot of self policing within Christianity to call that out and to criticize those particular teachings tomorrow were going to continue looking at the Davis County Cooperative Society, otherwise known as the latter day church of Christ were going to be looking more closely into some of the unique doctrines and some of the other doctrines that even the LDS church still holds.

They do have similarities in some areas but working to be continuing our look at this group in tomorrow's broadcast.

Thank you for listening. If you would like more information we guarding him in his research ministry. We encourage you to visit our website www.mrm.org you can request a free newsletter Mormonism research. We hope you join us again as we look at another viewpoint is