Thanks to you all! I have a much better understanding now!
Cheers!!!Brad
The King Follet Sermon By President Joseph Smith, Sunday, April 7, 1844. History of the Church, Volume 6, page 302.
God An Exalted Man
I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! You have got to learn how to be gods yourselves. priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to anot! her, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation
A Council of the Gods
In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted [prepared] a plan to create the world and people it. the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos - chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had.
The Immortal Intelligence
All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation. I do not believe the doctrine; I know better. Hear it, all ye ends of the world; for God has told me so. The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is coequal [coeternal] with God himself. I know that my testimony is true. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are coequal [coeternal] with our Father in heaven. I might with boldness proclaim from the housetops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself…Knowledge saves a man; and in the world of spirits no man can be exalted but by knowledge
scsv.nevada.edu/~clarkj5/proph/kingfollet3.html
The Doctrine and Covenants states, “God is a glorified and perfected man, a personage of flesh and bones. Inside his tangible body is an eternal spirit.” (130:22)
Brigham Young wrote, “We cannot believe for a moment that God is destitute of body, parts, passions, or attributes.”
Brigham Young, the second president taught “That God the Father was once a man on another planet who ‘passed the ordeal we are now passing through. . .’”
Brigham Young, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1997)
probe.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=771
Joseph Smith’s Changing Doctrine of Deity
VIEWED IN SCRIPTURAL ORDER
The Mormon scriptures are not progressive. Viewed chronologically, beginning from the most ancient period, they move from teaching the plurality of Gods, to monotheism, then back to the plurality of Gods.
2000 B.C. Book of Abraham 4:3-7 Plurality of Gods
600 B.C. to A.D. 400 Book of Mormon Modalistic Alma 11:26-29 Monotheism
A.D. 1830 Early (April 1830) Doctrine & Covenants 20:17, 19, 28 Monotheism
A.D. 1830 - Joseph Smith Translation Modalistic Monotheism
A.D. 1834-1835 Lectures on Faith, 5th Lecture Binatarian Monotheism, or Bitheism
A.D. 1839 Later (March 1839) Doctrine & Covenants 121:26, 28, 32 Possibility of Plurality of gods
A.D. 1839-1843 Doctrine & Covenants 131:17-18; 132:20, 37 Plurality of gods (but unlike in the Book of Abraham)
A.D. 1844 [King Follet Discourse] Plurality of Gods
irr.org/mit/changod.html
