The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in 1830. In 1820 14-year-old Joseph Smith declared that in search of the truth about God, he prayed in a secluded grove. He testified in an article describing his experience in 1832 that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in answer to that prayer. Since that day additional claims of visitations from angels, including one that showed him where an ancient record was stored and that he would translate.
The Book of Mormon came forth as another testament of Jesus Christ. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in 1830. For the next fourteen years until 1844, he revealed doctrines that had been lost to Christendom after the death of Jesus and his apostles. He was God's prophet to restore authority to act in God's name and reestablish the Savior's church in preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
On April 7, 1844, a few months before he was murdered he spoke in conjunction with a conference of the Church and gave a sermon speaking about the nature of God and the destiny of man that became known as the King Follett discourse. This is a message delivered by the prophet Joseph Smith where he spoke at the request of a family of a member of the church named King Follett who had recently died in an accident.
There are scholarly papers that treat this discourse with much depth and delve into how theology and understanding develop over time in the church. For my purposes here I am considering philosophical and theological implications compared to what had been taught in Mainstream or Evangelical Christianity for centuries. This essay is my own opinion and in no way represents the doctrinal position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In this sermon, new information that had not been taught previously in public was mentioned by the prophet. King Follett had been killed a month earlier in an accident and the prophet mentioned his name as he spoke about death and the dead.
Some of the prophet's sermons covered topics that had been spoken of in the 14-year-old church. The idea that God had been a human being and been through a similar mortal experience as what we are going through now was a new doctrine to most members.
Elder Lorenzo Snow explained the concept with a couplet he had already mentioned to the prophet. Joseph told him a was a revelation of his personal insight.
"As man now is, God once was: As God now is man may be."
Traditional Christianity had a similar couplet "God became man, so that man could become God."
My purpose here is to consider how these ideas revealed by the prophet Joseph Smith compare to the concept of creation ex nihilo and the nature of a triune sovereign as taught by traditional Christian scholars.
The concept of God as being an exalted being by living as a mortal at one period in his eternal existence shocks biblical students and scholars. They have been led to believe that God is a solitary eternal being, having been always in existence but saving no souls other than its own.
Beliefs held by the majority of traditional Christianity speak of a triune, incorporeal, genderless God who has existed with no beginning and no end. This being or godly force is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present. These characteristics are often mentioned as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. The hard fact of the traditional evangelical concept of God is that there is no father or son, except as metaphorical representations. The biblical references to their male identities are not pertinent to their actual mysterious lifestyle as an eternal triune genderless being.
These extra-biblical philosophies describing God's power and nature are assumed to somehow encompass everything that there is, was, and will be. The "god being" the modern Christian Trinity represents is described as living outside of space and time as the creator of space and time.
This assumption by theological scholars is used to explain why God never did anything until 6000 years ago according to the written history starting in the Book of Genesis. One fact to note regarding time is that the Bible tells us that a day to God is 1000 years.
According to Latter-day teachings, at the time of the creation of this earth, our Heavenly Father, had all power and knowledge. He had presided over the creation of worlds without numbers. His glory is beyond our capacity as mortals to comprehend. By the power of his spirit, eternal light, and truth, he is omnipresent and knows all things pertaining to the creation of worlds and the salvation of souls. He will forever create worlds and increase in glory as he brings souls into existence and offers them the opportunity for eternal increase patterned after his life. This is the gospel of "eternal lives". It is an eternal pattern of creation, salvation, and exaltation.
The traditional doctrines also hold to these powers and godly attributes of an omnipotent and omniscient being, however, God, ie the Trinity just appeared from nowhere and for no apparent reason to create the world 6000 years ago according to the way we measure time.
From this, we get the reference to the 6 days of creation and a day of rest on the 7th. What they do not consider is that God did not enter into a state of eternal rest on the 7th day. It was just one day. The Bible scholars of Christendom assume that creation is a "one and done" type of event and all of creation is finalized with some heavenly existence with God as he reigns over a never increasing body of static individuals.
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