By Sandra Tanner
Joseph Smith taught that God, angels and men are all of the same eternal class of beings. He also taught that man has the potential to become a God through the same process our Father God achieved Godhood. He stated:
First, God himself, who sits enthroned in younder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret . . . I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity . . . God himself; the Father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did, . . . You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves; to be kings and priests of God, the same as all Gods have done; by going from a small degree to another, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, . . . (Times and Seasons, vol. 5, pages 613-614)
Brigham Young, the second president of the Mormon Church, taught:
He is our Father—the Father of our spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being. . . . God has once been a finite being; . . . (Journal of Discourses, vol. 7 page 333)
. . . But I expect, if I am faithful with yourselves, that I shall see the time with yourselves that we shall know how to prepare to organize an earth like this—know how to people that earth, how to redeem it, how to sanctify it, and how to glorify it, with those who live upon it. . . . (Ibid., vol. 6, pages 274-275)
. . . Consequently every earth has its redeemer, and every earth has its tempter; . . . (Ibid., vol. 14, page 71)
The Mormon Church teaches that God is married and that there is a Heavenly Mother as well as a Heavenly Father. Milton R. Hunter writes:
The stupendous truth of the existence of a Heavenly Mother, as well as a Heavenly Father, became established facts in Mormon theology. . . . Man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of Heavenly Parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father prior to coming upon the earth in a temporal body . . . (The Gospel Through the Ages, pages 98-99)
Writing in 1853, the Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt tried to calculate the number of years it took God and His Wife to give birth to all the spirits that were to come to this earth:
. . . As soon as each God has begotten many millions of male and female spirits, . . . he, in connection with his sons, organizes a new world, after a similar order to the one which we now inhabit, where he sends both the male and female spirits to inherit tabernacles of flesh and bones. . . . The inhabitants of each world are required to reverence, adore, and worship their own personal father who dwells in the Heaven which they formerly inhabited . . . The number of the sons and daughters of God, born in Heaven before this earth was formed, is not known to us . . . Seventy thousand million, therefore, is a rough approximation to the number of inhabitants which the Lord destined to dwell in the flesh on this earth . . . Add to seventy thousand million, the third part which fell, namely, thirty-five thousand million, and the sum amounts to one hundred and five thousand million which was the approximate number of the sons and daughters of God in Heaven before the rebellion which broke out among them.
If we admit that one personage was the Father of all this great family, and that they were all born of the same Mother, the period of time intervening between the birth of the oldest and the youngest spirit must have been immense. If we suppose, as an average, that only one year intervened between each birth, then it would have required, over one hundred thousand million of years from the same Mother to have given birth to this vast family. (The Seer, pages 37-38)
The Mormon Church teaches that those who are married in a Mormon temple and obey the principles of the Mormon faith may eventually attain Godhood and start their own world. However, the Bible states:
. . . I am he: before me there was no God formed neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior. (Isaiah 43:10-11)
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: . . . (Numbers 25:19)
For I am the Lord, I change not; (Malachi 3:6)
The Bible and Mormon Doctrine also deals with such subjects as: do we need modern day revelation, what is the gospel, is salvation by grace or works, what is the true church, did we pre-exist, how many kingdoms in heaven, do we need temple work, what priesthood do we need, and the nature of God.
One church has already purchased 150 copies. Their treasurer wrote:
The booklet on “The Bible and Mormon Doctrine” is a needed tool. Praise the Lord for your fine work. How I wish your materials would make the national best sellers list.
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