“The gift to teach with the Spirit is a gift worth praying for. A teacher can be inept, inadequate, perhaps even clumsy, but if the Spirit is powerful, messages of eternal importance can be taught.
“We can become teachers, very good ones, but we cannot teach moral and spiritual values with only an academic approach. There must be Spirit in it.” (Teach Ye Diligently, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1975, p. 276.)
“preach my gospel by the Spirit. … And if it be by some other way it is not of God.” (D&C 50:14, 18.)
At the conclusion of general conference President Harold B. Lee said: “I am not concerned about how much you remember in words of what has been said here. I am concerned about how it has made you feel. What are you going to take back with you when you go?” (Ensign, Jan. 1973, p. 134.)
Is President Lorenzo Snow’s oft-repeated statement—“As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be”—accepted as official doctrine by the Church?
The answer is no, it is not official doctrine therefore the following statements are completely my own testimony and doctrine.
Unfortunately starting in the late 1800's and all through the 1900's there seemed to be much contention and disbelief on the subject and hence it has caused more controversy and backlash from ("Christians of all sects and creeds") than any other doctrine revealed in this last dispensation. Personally I believe it is arguably the greatest doctrine ever revealed unto the children of men.
According to Elder Snow, “While attentively listening to his explanation, the Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon me—the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw as clear as the sun at noonday, with wonder and astonishment, the pathway of God and man. I formed the following couplet which expresses the revelation, as it was shown me, and explains Father Smith’s dark saying to me at a blessing meeting in the Kirtland Temple, prior to my baptism. …
“As man now is, God once was:”
“As God now is, man may be.”
“I felt this to be a sacred communication, which I related to no one except my sister Eliza, until I reached England, when in a confidential private conversation with President Brigham Young, in Manchester, I related to him this extraordinary manifestation.” (Eliza R. Snow, pp. 46–47; italics added. Brigham Young was President of the Quorum of the Twelve at the time.)
President Snow’s son LeRoi later told that the Prophet Joseph Smith confirmed the validity of the revelation Elder Snow had received: “Soon after his return from England, in January, 1843, Lorenzo Snow related to the Prophet Joseph Smith his experience in Elder Sherwood’s home. This was in a confidential interview in Nauvoo. The Prophet’s reply was: ‘Brother Snow, that is a true gospel doctrine, and it is a revelation from God to you.’” (LeRoi C. Snow, Improvement Era, June 1919, p. 656.)
The Prophet Joseph Smith himself publicly taught the doctrine the following year, 1844, during a funeral sermon of Elder King Follett: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! … 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.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938, pp. 345–46.)
Paul wrote unto the Philippian saints:
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery (or blasphemous) to be equal with God" (Philippians 2:5-6)
The boy, like to his father grown,
Has but attained unto his own;
To grow to sire from state of son,
Is not ’gainst Nature’s course to run.
A son of God, like God to be,
Would not be robbing Deity.
Painting by William Blake. Notice the sacred symbol depicted. This is not only a symbol sacred and found all over the world but it is specifically significant to Latter-Day Saints.
Michelangelo's interpretation of the creation of Man.
Below the doctrine is revealed in all plainness and beautiful simplicity. When man seeks answers with an open heart and real intent, our God will answer the pleas and supplications of his Children.
Numerous sources could be cited, but one should suffice to show that this doctrine is accepted and taught by the Brethren. In an address in 1971, President Joseph Fielding Smith, then serving as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said:
“I think I can pay no greater tribute to [President Lorenzo Snow and Elder Erastus Snow] than to preach again that glorious doctrine which they taught and which was one of the favorite themes, particularly of President Lorenzo Snow. …
“We have been promised by the Lord that if we know how to worship, and know what we worship, we may come unto the Father in his name, and in due time receive of his fulness. We have the promise that if we keep his commandments, we shall receive of his fulness and be glorified in him as he is in the Father.
“This is a doctrine which delighted President Snow, as it does all of us. Early in his ministry he received by direct, personal revelation the knowledge that (in the Prophet Joseph Smith’s language), ‘God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens,’ and that men ‘have got to learn how to be Gods … the same as all Gods have done before.’
“After this doctrine had been taught by the Prophet, President Snow felt free to teach it also, and he summarized it in one of the best known couplets in the Church. …"As man is, God once was; as God is, man may be."
“This same doctrine has of course been known to the prophets of all the ages, and President Snow wrote an excellent poetic summary of it.” (Address on Snow Day, given at Snow College, 14 May 1971, pp. 1, 3–4)
We can only hope that the Lord will reveal more upon the subject at some future date.
7 And behold the book shall be sealed and in the book shall be a revelation from God, from the beginning of the world to the ending thereof. (Ether 3:27)
9 And when they shall have received this, which is expedient that they should have first, to try their faith, and if it shall so be that they shall believe these things then shall the greater things be made manifest unto them.
10 And if it so be that they will not believe these things, then shall the greater things be withheld from them, unto their condemnation.
11 Behold, I was about to write them, all which were engraven upon the plates of Nephi, but the Lord forbade it, saying: I will try the faith of my people. (3 Nephi 26:9-11)
Below is engraved gold plate(s) found in a stone box in the Persian empire.
Moroni told us that the sealed part should not
go forth unto the Gentiles until they had repented
“of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord.”
He wrote further that when “they shall exercise faith
in me [the Lord], saith the Lord, even as the brother
of Jared did, that they may become sanctified in me,
then will I manifest unto them the things which the
brother of Jared saw, even to the unfolding unto
them all my revelations, saith Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, the Father of the heavens and of the earth,
and all things that in them are” (Ether 4:6–).
Nephi, through Isaiah, commented further on
when the sealed plates will be revealed. “And the day
cometh that the words of the book which were sealed
shall be read upon the house tops; and they shall be
read by the power of Christ; and all things shall be
revealed unto the children of men which ever have
been among the children of men, and which ever
will be even unto the end of the earth” (2 Nephi27:11)
