Preach Whose Gospel? God is Our Loving Heavenly Father

“God is our Heavenly Father. We are His children. He has a body of flesh and bone that is glorified and perfected. He loves us. He weeps with us when we suffer and rejoices when we do what is right. He wants to communicate with us, and we can communicate with Him through sincere prayer.” (Preach my Gospel, pg. 31)

What exactly is being communicated in this paragraph? To the layman, one would agree that God is our loving Heavenly Father. At this point anyone who has grown up in America that has lived somewhat in a Christian culture will agree with that sentence or at least understand the common interpretation. However, no Christian or layman would understand “God is our Heavenly Father” in a literal context. To the LDS Missionary when they state that “God is our Heavenly Father” they mean this in a literal sense.

In LDS teaching, God the Father, whom they call Elohim was once a man, who prior to achieving exaltation, lived on another planet and followed the law of Eternal Progression who was then was exalted, glorified and perfected. He through his obedience to the Gospel Ordinances became a God of His own planet. In LDS teaching God is not a spirit, he literally has a body of flesh and bone for in order to be able to procreate in our pre-existence a physical body is needed. Remember the mindset of the LDS missionary is that they have been given a restored gospel and idea of truth that answers the questions –Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Before we go any further, let’s start with Where did I come from, from the LDS perspective.

Moses 1:6 “6 And I have a work for thee, Moses, my son; and thou art in the a similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.”

We can see that Moses was only one of the similitude of Elohim’s offspring according to Joseph Smith, furthermore:

“All people on earth are spirit children of God, our Heavenly Father. In a 1909 discourse titled “The Origin of Man,” the First Presidency wrote: “Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God” (Improvement Era, Nov. 1909, 81; see also Acts 17:27–28; Hebrews 12:9; Marion G. Romney, Learning for the Eternities, comp. George J. Romney [1977], 31–32).

The section above as well hints at the reason why Elohim in LDS doctrine has a physical body of flesh and bone, it is in order to procreate and create spirit offspring. Below is an excerpt of “The King Follet Sermon” this, by the way, is the most quoted sermon of Joseph Smith. The King Follet Sermon is constantly quoted by LDS leaders in conferences held twice a year:

“I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why He interferes with the affairs of man. 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, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, 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. In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. These ideas are incomprehensible to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.” (The King Follet Sermon, Joseph Smith April 7. 1844)

To further elaborate from their own sources Joseph Fielding Smith wrote:

“Some will gain celestial bodies with all the powers of exaltation and eternal increase” (Doctrines of Salvation 2:287).

The purpose of using their own sources is to elaborate on exactly why they believe that the Heavenly Father has a body of flesh and bone, now let’s dissect the Bible verses they use to support these concepts. The verses below are not an exhaustive set of verses the LDS use to proof text that Heavenly Father has a body of flesh and bones, this just a set of verses that we will use to show the error of proof-texting which will act as a safeguard when speaking with an LDS Missionary.

Genesis 32:30 - I have seen God face to face

Exodus 24:10 - they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet

Exodus 33:11 - Lord spake unto Moses face to face

Exodus 33:23 - thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen

The example of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32:30 can seem like a compelling argument to the LDS, however, when interpreting Scripture we need to take all of Scripture into account. In other words, we need to interpret Scripture with Scripture, not Scripture with traditions.

For example, Christ states in John 1:18 “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Again in Exodus 33:20, “But He said, You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me and live.”

In order to reconcile these alleged contradictions, we must understand that no one has seen God in his fullness and glory, even the Seraphim cover their faces with their wings at the throne of God (Isaiah 6:2). We must also understand that God is Spirit (John 4:24), but he is able to take on forms to His liking, and these forms happen in many times and places throughout the Old Testament, however, these forms are merely a shadow and type of the Christ who is to come (Genesis 12:7-9;18:1-33;32:22-30; Exodus3:2-4:17;24:9-11; Deuteronomy 31:14-15; Job 38-42). Therefore it is essential to rightly divide the Word of Truth, you need to compare all your traditions with Scripture - when using the Word to create falsehoods, God promises that you will be found out and made a liar of (Proverbs 30:6).

Other verses used as proof texts by the LDS are verses that are taking an anthropomorphism which is when God in His Word is using Human traits, actions, appearance, emotions and the like to express concepts of the nature and mind of God that would be otherwise incomprehensible to our three-pound human brains.

Unlike God, we have a limited understanding of our spatial terms of existence and then further limited through the nature of fallen man. Whereas God, who is not limited by body, time, space, or sin is infinitely greater than us in all things (Isaiah 55:8-9). We are even more limited in our understanding of God of who He is by how He reveals Himself to us in Scripture. The danger is when people take anthropomorphisms like Psalm 34:15 “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous” or Psalm 113:6 “He stoops down to look on the heavens and earth” to literally apply human appearance to God. If the LDS are to simply be consistent with their proof texts, take them to Psalm 91:4 which states “He will cover you with His feathers” and ask them, “Does God have feathers?”

One can see that when comparing the LDS view of the Heavenly Father, it does not comport with what God says in His Word. The LDS are talking about a different god, one that has not revealed Himself to us in Scripture. The LDS Missionary has already elevated the words of their prophet over God’s revealed Word and changed the nature and character of the Father to agree with their prophet.

The traditions of their prophet teach that God was once a spirit child of another god, and in order to receive a glorified body of flesh and bone, that spirit must receive a body and face the test of mortality. Therefore man was then given a free will to follow the teachings of their prophets. If the man follows the “Principles and Ordinances of the Gospel” that man after death then can become exalted - receiving a glorified body of flesh and bone in the Celestial heaven, who then now has the power to procreate spiritual offspring. Thus is the infinite progression of deities in the LDS religion. Let’s look at the initial paragraph again:

“God is our Heavenly Father. We are His children. He has a body of flesh and bone that is glorified and perfected. He loves us. He weeps with us when we suffer and rejoices when we do what is right. He wants to communicate with us, and we can communicate with Him through sincere prayer.” (Preach my Gospel, pg. 31)

The danger is that without the worldview behind the words in the initial lesson the Investigator become a frog in a pot, if you accept what they are saying without understanding the definitional distinctions, they will slowly turn up the heat and soon you’ll be a frog in boiling water, rendering yourself lost in a worldview where the words of Joseph Smith and the prophets have become elevated over the Word of God.

Why do they do this? How can one elevate the words of a mere man over Scripture? The next post will be about the LDS view on the “Great Apostasy” and Joseph’s supposed restoration of the gospel. There we will compare the tests of a Prophet in Deuteronomy 13, and 18 to Joseph and see if he passes or fails.