Biblical Reasons Ministry
"I don't know that we teach it. I
don't know that we emphasize it." -Former LDS president, Gordon B. Hinckley
- Served March 12, 1995 to January 27, 2008
by Russ Bales
"Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?"
"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it and I don't know that others know a lot about it." - Gordon B. Hinckley, Time Magazine, Aug 4, 1997
"Don't Mormons believe that God was once a man?"
"I wouldn't say that. There was a little couplet coined, 'As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.' Now that's more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don't know very much about." - Gordon B. Hinckley, San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997, p 3/Z1
"I don't think others know a lot about it?"
"I wouldn't say that?"
"That's more of a couplet than anything else?"
On the contrary, LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley is also on record as saying:
"On the other hand, the whole design of the gospel is to lead us onward and upward to greater achievement, even, eventually, to godhood. This great possibility was enunciated by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the King Follet sermon (see Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 342-62); and emphasized by President Lorenzo Snow. It is this grand and incomparable concept: As God now is, man may become!" - Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, General Conference, October 1994
Spencer Kimball is on record as saying:
"We remember the numerous scriptures which, concentrated in a single line, were said by a former prophet, Lorenzo Snow: 'As man is, God once was; and as God is, man may become.' This is a power available to us as we reach perfection and receive the experience and power to create, to organize, to control native elements. How limited we are now! We have no power to force the grass to grow, the plants to emerge, the seeds to develop." - Spencer W. Kimball, General Conference, April 1977
The concept of God being an exalted man has been taught in the LDS Church as recently as 2005 in an official LDS Church publication:
"Many religions teach that human beings are children of God, but often their conception of Him precludes any kind of bond resembling a parent-child relationship. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught of a much simpler and more sensible relationship: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit … was to make himself visible … , you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another." - Strengthening the Family: Created in the Image of God, Male and Female, The Ensign, Jan. 2005, pg. 48
The LDS Church has taught consistently from the mid-1800s:
"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know...that he was once a man like us. Here, then, is eternal life--to know that only wise and true God, and you have got to learn how to become Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you. .. God himself, the father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ." - The Prophet Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 342-345. See also: Gospel Principles, Chapter 47, the official publication of the LDS Church.
"The idea that the Lord our God is not a personage of tabernacle is entirely a mistaken notion. He was once a man. Brother Kimball quoted a saying of Joseph the Prophet, that he would not worship a God who had not a Father; and I do not know that he would if be had not a mother; the one would be as absurd as the other. If he had a Father, he was made in his likeness. And if he is our Father we are made after his image and likeness. He once possessed a body, as we now do; and our bodies are as much to us, as his body to him. Every iota of this organization is necessary to secure for us an exaltation with the Gods." - Prophet Brigham Young, True Character of God, Salt Lake Tabernacle, February 23, 1862, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 9, p.286
"What, is it possible that the Father of Heights, the Father of our spirits, could reduce himself and come forth like a man? Yes, he was once a man like you and I are and was once on an earth like this, passed through the ordeal you and I pass through. He had his father and his mother and he has been exalted through his faithfulness, and he is become Lord of all. He is the God pertaining to this earth. He is our Father. He begot our spirits in the spirit world. They have come forth and our earthly parents have organized tabernacles for our spirits and here we are today. That is the way we came." -Prophet Brigham Young, 14 July 1861, Recorded in "The Essential Brigham Young", p.138
"So the Prophet Joseph Smith, in this age, has added to this truth by the assertion that "As man is God once was, and that as He is man may became," because He is our Father, and like begets like, and inherent within us are the attributes of divinity that shall lead us into perfection, which Christ intended His Saints to attain unto." - Elder Joseph E. Robinson, General Conference, April 1912
"We are His children in Very deed, having been born of Him in the spirit, and we have inherited the very attributes which he possesses. They are in us, and they make us God's embryo, We believe that as we are now God once was, and by the practice of virtue and righteousness, by obedience unto law and authority, He has become what He is, and as He is, man may become, on the same principle." - Elder Goege F. Richards, General Conference, April 1913
In light of quotes provided herein, it seems unfathomable that such Mormon Doctrine can be discarded so easily with a comment: "I don't think others know a lot about it." It seems odd that Hinckley would say: "Now that's more of a couplet than anything else."
Are we actually supposed to believe that an LDS president (a prophet of God in LDS eyes) past or present knows little of God once being a man who rose to exaltation through obedience to those principles Mormons hold dear?
A better answer on Hinckley's part would have been to just say: Yes, it's been a core doctrine of the LDS Church for a great long time. And here's what we believe.
Instead, he chose to hedge and equivocate; which only begs questions from those that know what Mormonism teaches. Even a marginal Mormon (one that's not a regular church attendee) will likely acknowledge that God is an exalted man of flesh and bone from another planet near a star LDS call Kolob.
What's going on here? The informed LDS critic knows the answer to that question. It's obviously a game of semantics on part of the LDS president. It's called "milk before the meat." The LDS church, to be sure, doesn't immediately bring its core doctrines out in the open.
Nowhere in the current LDS missionary training manual, Teach My Gospel (which is currently the manual used by all LDS missionaries during their mission), does it state that an LDS missionary should say right up front:
"Hi. We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Did you know that God is an exalted human being that resides on a planet near the star Kolob? And did you know that you too can become an exalted being just like God?"
Could it be that the LDS Church knows that if they were to reveal such information right up front that less people will accept the gospel according to Mormonism? Could it be that they know convert stats would drop faster than a blue chip in October 1929?
Perhaps the famous couplet should be changed into a phrase to better fit the times as to benefit future LDS presidents:
It is a true, unwavering, long-held belief and LDS gospel certainty: As man is God once was; as God is man may become - but I'm not sure that we teach it.
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