What do Latter-day Saints mean when they say that God was once a man?

Question

Joseph Smith taught in April 1844:

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. . . . . . 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."

Lorenzo Snow, fifth president of the LDS Church, summarized this doctrine in a couplet: "As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may be."

Answer 1

Wow. What potential this notion creates for the mankind and the possibilities it engenders. Mankind is not just a being to slump around thru life and hope for the best. Human beings have the potential to progress thru the eternities as glorified, exhalted beings and be creators of some much fantastic good.
As I watch the nature of things, and see how we meet a mate, create a family, and watch them grow and meet a mate and create their own little families, and they grow up...etc etc. It seems to just be following the same pattern and nature of things that already exist, but just on a more grander, more eternal scale. Awesome!

Answer 2

You have some excellent answers already. This is probably the best question and answer I have seen on this board. Let me add just one more simple statement. This whole subject encompasses what we know as the principle or doctrine of eternal progression. If you follow the logic far enough forward and backward, you realize that God had a God before Him and if we are faithful, we can achieve Godhood and govern worlds of our own as God is doing now. This truly extends from everlasting to everlasting. The reason God didn't tell us more about this concept because it wasn't necessary for us to know about it in order to get through this mortal probation. Let's face it, if we don't succeed here in mortality, we will not become like our Father in Heaven and will not achieve His status. The immediate goal is to become as He is, meaning that we need to learn how to live a Godly life, to be righteous in all our doings, to have our "eyes single to the glory of God". If we can discipline ourselves to develop Godly personality traits or characteristics, then we can have hope of returning to His presence and becoming like Him. Then we will be rewarded for our faithfulness by taking the next step in our own eternal progression. If we are not faithful, then our progress is literally damned. We can go no further.
What a glorious concept. He knows us because he has been there. He wants us to become like Him. We can become like Him and be with Him. We too can be glorified and Christ has shown us the way. All praise and honor be given where it is due. This makes mortality well worth while.

Answer 3

Mormons believe these things about God: that He has not always been the Supreme Being of the universe, but attained that status through righteous living and persistent effort. They believe God the Father has a “body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” Though abandoned by modern Mormon leaders, Brigham Young taught that Adam actually was God and the father of Jesus Christ.

Answer 4

Technically, this is not doctrine, because God has never really told anyone about Himself before "He was God".

However, it makes more sense to me that He was like us at one point, because how can He empathize with us if He has no perspective on what we are going thru?

Besides, most of the Christian world believes that "God was once a man like us" since they believe that Jesus is God, and He was once a man like us.

Answer 5

Wow!!! Could it be possible that God lived and became who He is so He can understand us better, and know what we go through? It is possible that maybe He had to learn everything just like all of us? Does that make him any less of a God? To me, NO!!! It makes Him more. It tells me that He went through some of the same stuff we do today, and that He also had to learn just like we do. It makes Him more to know that He sent His Son for us, because He KNEW what we would go through.

I usually explain it like this. See if it makes sense. You have an earthly father/mother right? They had to learn everything by experience and by the teachings of their parents before them. Does this make them less of a father/mother since they didn't know everything from the beginning? No, it makes them human. Well, when you become a father/mother, does that mean that your father/mother is any less of a father/mother to you? No. They are still who they are. Same with God. Just because He may have been a man once doesn't mean that diminishes what He is today. It just adds to it.

He wants to see us become more like HIM!! To do that, we had to come to earth, learn, grow, make mistakes, learn from them and move to a higher place mentally/spiritually then we were before.

As far as us believing we will become Gods ourselves, this does not mean that we won't be subject to God Himself. The modern Apostle Boyd K. Packer has clarified this issue:The Father is the one true God. This thing is certain: no one will ever ascend above Him; no one will ever replace Him. Nor will anything ever change the relationship that we, His literal offspring, have with Him. He is Eloheim, the Father. He is God. Of Him there is only one. We revere our Father and our God; we worship Him.

There is only one Christ, one Redeemer. We accept the divinity of the Only Begotten Son of God in the flesh. We accept the promise that we may become joint heirs with Him.
(Boyd K. Packer, "The Pattern of Our Parentage," Ensign, Nov. 1984, p. 69.)

I'm posting a link to a page that will explain this concept further. To us, it is the first major principle- that we know that God lived, learned, died, became immortal through resurrection and through His Son, we have the ability to become a glorified being, just as He and His Son are.

Answer 6

It means exactly what it said. We believe we are literally children of God, and God want us to be like him. Amongst all the creation of the eath, man is the direct descendant of God.It is a relationship express clearly in many scriptures.

17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
(New Testament | John 20:17)

Then Christ expect us to be like God.

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
(New Testament | Matthew 5:48)

48 Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.
(Book of Mormon | 3 Nephi 12:48)

22 ¶ And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.......
(Old Testament | Genesis 3:22)

28 And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten: Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and partake also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,
(Pearl of Great Price | Moses 4:28)

Answer 7

Ever hear of Jesus Christ? At some point
all of us will be back into our spiritual bodies,
and although I think this particular religion
teaches false doctrine, I do think that this
particular teaching was pretty benign, and
you are probably taking it a bit out of the context meant. I wouldn't react negatively to someone saying "God was once a man", He was the Living Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us.

Answer 8

James P. Sullivan- just wondering what religion are you?

Answer 9

It means they believe the teachings of a delusional and mentally ill Joseph Smith. Kind of like a child believing in Santa Clause, but in this case they (believers) have refused to grow up and face reality.

Answer 10

In proclaiming this doctrine, neither Joseph Smith nor his successors have in any way sought to limit or degrade the Almighty. In fact, both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants state emphatically that there is no knowledge or power or divine attribute that God does not possess in perfection. "O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it" (2 Nephi 9:20; see 2 Nephi 2:24; Moroni 7:22). He truly "has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding" (Alma 26:35). He who is "mightier than all the earth" (1 Nephi 4:1) "comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him" (D&C 88:41). Mormons accept the reality that "there is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them" (D&C 20:17).

Mortality
That God was once a mortal being is in no way inconsistent with the fact that he now has all power and all knowledge and possesses every virtue, grace, and godly attribute. He acquired perfection through long periods of growth, development, and progression, "by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation," as Joseph Smith explained. "When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the gospel-you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them. It is not all to be comprehended in this world; it will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave."25

From Everlasting to Everlasting
How, then, do Latter-day Saints reconcile the scriptural description of God as being "from everlasting to everlasting" with the idea that he has not always been God? For one thing, they believe that biblical passages that speak of God's eternality and of his being the same yesterday, today, and forever make reference to his divine attributes-his love, constancy, and willingness to bless his people (see, for example, Psalm 102:27; Hebrews 1:12; 13:8). Such passages are also found in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and, again, refer to God's divine nature (see 1 Nephi 10:18-19; 2 Nephi 27:23; Alma 7:20; Mormon 9:8-11, 19; Moroni 8:18; 10:7; D&C 3:2; 20:12, 17; 35:1).

Not much has been revealed about this concept beyond the fact that God was once a man and that over a long period of time he gained the knowledge, power, and divine attributes necessary to know all things and have all power. Because he has held his exalted status for a longer period than any of us can conceive, he is able to speak in terms of eternity and can state that he is from everlasting to everlasting. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained that "from eternity to eternity means from the spirit existence through the probation which we are in, and then back again to the eternal existence which will follow. Surely this is everlasting, for when we receive the resurrection, we will never die. We all existed in the first eternity. I think I can say of myself and others, we are from eternity; and we will be to eternity everlasting, if we receive the exaltation."26

Empathy
President Brigham Young taught that our Father in Heaven "has passed the ordeals we are now passing through; he has received an experience, has suffered and enjoyed, and knows all that we know regarding the toils, sufferings, life and death of this mortality, for he has passed through the whole of it, and has received his crown and exaltation."27 Men and women can thus relate to him as a father and pray to him with the perfect assurance that he understands our struggles. His experience contributes to his empathy as well as to his omniscient and all-loving capacity to judge his children. President Young observed that "it must be that God knows something about temporal things, and has had a body and been on an earth, were it not so He would not know how to judge men righteously, according to the temptations and sin they have had to contend with."28

For Latter-day Saints, God is far more than the ultimate cosmic force or primal cause; he is a personal being, an exalted Man of Holiness, literally our Father in Heaven (see Moses 6:57). He has a body, parts, and passions. He is approachable, knowable, and, like his Beloved Son, able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (see Hebrews 4:15). He has tender regard for his children and desires that we become as he is-not through our personal effort alone, but primarily through the mercy, grace, and transforming and glorifying power that come through the atonement of Jesus Christ.

These doctrines are not clearly stated in the Bible. Mormons believe, however, that this knowledge was once had among the ancients and that it has been restored through modern prophets. To those who sincerely seek an understanding of their true selves and destiny, latter-day prophets have affirmed that through truly coming to know God, men and women may come to understand their own eternal identities and divine possibilities. In the words of Joseph Smith, "If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves."