The following is a collection of quotes compiled with permission from the author, abridged from three articles. The full-length articles on each of the points we will look at can be found here, here, and here.
By Blake Giunta| Most of us have been visited at our door by the young bicycle-riding Mormons, with their white dress shirt, tie, and “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” name-badge. They are Christian-sounding enough, so why are they under the cult section of every Christian bookstore? What do they teach? You might be surprised.
1. God the Father reproduced with His wife (our Goddess Mother) in Heaven.
As summarized by Milton R. Hunter (Leading ‘Council of the Seventy’ member): “The stupendous truth of the existence of a Heavenly Mother, as well as a Heavenly Father, became established facts in Mormon theology.” [The Gospel Through the Ages (1958), 98.]
Official Curriculum Material
• “WE, THE FIRST PRESIDENCY and the Council… proclaim… Each [person] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.” [The Family: A Proclamation to the World (1995)]
• “For as we have a Father in heaven, so also we have a Mother there, a glorified, exalted, ennobled Mother.” [Achieving A Celestial Marriage, LDS Student Manual, 129.]
• “You are made in the image of our heavenly mother.” [The Latter-day Saint Woman: Basic Manual for Women, Part A: Lesson 9: Chastity and Modesty (2000), 65.]
• “We know, for example, that we were sons and daughters of heavenly parents—males and females.” [Gospel Principles, Chapter 2: Our Heavenly Family (2011).]
Official Mormon Hymns
• “heavenly parents” [“Oh, What Songs of the Heart” (hymn #286)]
• “heav’nly parents” [“We Meet Again As Sisters” (hymn #311)]
• “…I’ve a mother there. .. Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high?” [“O My Father” (hymn #292)]
Mormon Authorities
• Joseph Fielding Smith (Mormonism’s 6th president-prophet): “God revealed that principle that we have a mother as well as a father in heaven to Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith revealed it to Eliza Snow Smith, his wife; and Eliza Snow was inspired, being a poet, to put it into verse.” “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 [physical] body.” [Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith (1998), 335.]
• Orson Pratt (Original ‘Quorum of the Twelve’ member): “In the Heaven where our spirits were born, there are many gods, each one of whom has his own wife or wives… Each God, through his wife or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters;… As soon as each god has begotten many millions of male and female spirits …he sends both the male and female spirits to inhabit 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 Seer, 1853 (1990 ed.), vol. 1, 37.]
• Spencer W. Kimball (Mormonism’s 12th president-prophet): “queenly elegance of our Heavenly Mother, and knowing how profoundly our mortal mothers have shaped us here.” [“The True Way of Life and Salvation,” Ensign (May 1978), 4.]
• Brigham Young (Mormonism’s 2nd president-prophet): [In articulating the controversial Adam-God doctrine] “I tell you more, Adam is the father of our spirits …our spirits and the spirits of all the heavenly family were begotten by Adam, and born of Eve. …I tell you, when you see your Father in the Heavens, you will see Adam; when you see your Mother that bore your spirit, you will see Mother Eve.” [Manuscript Address of Brigham Young, Oct 8, 1854.”]
• Bruce R. McConkie (LDS ‘General Authority’): “Implicit in the Christian verity that all men are the spirit children of an Eternal Father is the usually unspoken truth that they are also the offspring of an Eternal Mother. …This doctrine that there is a Mother in Heaven was affirmed in plainness by the First Presidency of the Church… they said that ‘man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father,’ that man is the ‘offspring of celestial parentage,’ and that ‘all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.’” [Mormon Doctrine (1979), 516.]
2. God had physical sex in Heaven
In Mormon theology, God is made of flesh and bone, and has a goddess wife/wives. Together, they produce ethereal children in heaven. Although most contemporary Mormons make no claims about how God’s children are produced, earlier Mormon leaders taught that it was by sex between God and his goddess wife/wives.
• Brigham Young (Mormonism’s 2nd president-prophet): “He [God] created man, as we create our children; for there is no other process of creation in heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in all the eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be.” [Journal of Discourses 11:122]
• Joseph Fielding Smith (Mormonism’s 10th president-prophet): “Man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of Heavenly Parents.” [Improvement Era 13:80]
• Orson Pratt (Original ‘Quorum of the Twelve’ member): “In the heaven where are spirits were born, there are many Gods, each of whom has his own wife or wives, which were given to him… while yet in this mortal state.” [The Seer, 37.]
• Carfred Broderick (Mormon Writer): “God is a procreating personage of flesh and bone.” [Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (Autumn, 1967), 100-101.]
3. God the Father and our Heavenly Mother produced spirit-children
Mormonism teaches that God has a wife in heaven, and produces spirit children with her—us.
Official Curriculum Material
• “All men and women are literally the sons and daughters of God … Every person who was ever born on earth is our spirit brother or sister. Because we are the spirit children of God, we have inherited the potential to develop His divine qualities.” [Gospel Principles, Chapter 2: Our Heavenly Family (2011)]
• “Elohim is literally the Father of the spirit of Jesus Christ and also of the body in which Jesus Christ performed His mission in the flesh…” [First Presidency and Council of the Twelve, “God the Father,” compiled by Gordon Allred, (1916), 150.]
Mormon authorities
• Joseph Fielding Smith (Mormonism’s 6th president-prophet): “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 [physical] body.” [Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith(1998), 335.]
Bruce R. McConkie (LDS ‘General Authority’): “The Father begets; the Son is begotten; they are Parent and Child.” [Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, Vol. 3, 138.]
• Orson Pratt (A ‘Quorum of Twelve Apostles’ original member): “If none but gods will be permitted to multiply immortal children, it follows that each God must have one or more wives. God, the Father of our spirits, became the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.” [The Seer, 158.]
4) Jesus & Satan are our brothers (same Father and Mother)
Mormonism teaches that you, me, Satan, and Jesus are thereby spirit siblings who were born to them. In this way, Jesus and Satan are literally brothers.
Mormonism scripture
“The difference between Jesus and other offspring of Elohim [Mormonism’s personal name for “God”] is one of degree not of kind.” [Doctrine and Covenants 93:21]
Mormonism’s Official Curriculum Material
• “The first spirit born to our heavenly parents was Jesus Christ …, so he is literally our elder brother (see Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 26). Because we are the spiritual children of our heavenly parents,…” [Gospel Principles (1997), 11]
Mormon authorities
• Bruce R. McConkie (LDS ‘General Authority’): —“A plan of salvation was needed for the people of earth so Jesus offered a plan to the Father and Satan offered a plan to the father but Jesus’ plan was accepted. In effect the Devil wanted to be the Savior of all Mankind and to ‘deny men their agency and to dethrone god,’” … “Jesus Christ, Lucifer, and all of us were spirit children of God in the pre-mortal world.” [Mormon Doctrine (1958), 193, 278.]
• James Talmage (Quorum of the Twelve Apostles member): “[A]mong the spirit-children of Elohim, the firstborn was and is Jehovah or Jesus Christ to whom all others are juniors … Human beings generally were similarly existent in spirit state prior to their embodiment in the flesh. …There is no impropriety, therefore, in speaking of Jesus Christ as the Elder Brother of the rest of mankind.” [Articles of Faith, 425-4266.]
• Bruce R. McConkie (LDS ‘General Authority’): “Christ, the Firstborn, was the mightiest of all the spirit children of the Father.” [Mormon Doctrine, 590.]
• Spencer W. Kimball (Mormonism’s 12th president-prophet): “The importance of not accommodating temptation in the least degree is underlined by the Savior’s example. Did not he recognize the danger when he was on the mountain with his fallen brother, Lucifer, being sorely tempted by that master tempter?”[The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 163.]
• Bruce R. McConkie (LDS ‘General Authority’): “The appointment of Jesus to be the Savior of the worlds was contested by one of the other sons of God. He was called Lucifer, son of the morning. Haughty, ambitious, and covetous of power and glory, this spirit-brother of Jesus desperately tried to become the savior of mankind.” [Mormon Doctrine, 193.]
• Bruce R. McConkie (LDS ‘General Authority’): “He is our Father in heaven—the literal and personal Father of the spirits of all men. He begat us; we are the offspring of Heavenly Parents: we have an Eternal Father and an Eternal Mother. … Christ was the Firstborn of all the heavenly host; Lucifer was a son of the morning: each of us came into being as conscious identities in our appointed order; and Christ is our Elder Brother.” [The Mortal Messiah, vol. 1, 21]
This article was curated from content from BeliefMap and was republished with permission from the author.
