By Joseph Smith, The Prophet With Notes and References by B.H. Roberts: Magazine Printing Company 1963
This is the funeral address Joseph Smith delivered at the funeral of King Follett in April of 1844. There were about twenty thousand gathered for the funeral. This discourse was reported in Times and Season August 1, 1844. However it is not a stenographic copy, but the talk as reported by four brethren who took notes. There are some discrepencies.
Joseph Smith asks the congregation to ask themselves, “What kind of a being God is?” He then provides this important answer. “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 vail 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 of man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from ,and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another.”
It is from this statement that later Lorenzo Snow would summarize, “As man now is, God once was; as god now is, man may become.
Joseph Smith adds to his statement. “It is the first principle of the gospel to know for 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, that father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
That is some pretty powerful teaching. It is this philosophy that separates Mormonism from all other Christian religions. This philosophy of eternal progression; that we can become as god, and inherit all he has. This is life eternal. Joseph Smith continues: “When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascent 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 salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave.”
Joseph Smith was a true prophet. These are true concepts. At Liberty Jail he taught this concept, recorded in Doctrine and Covenants section 121:
45 Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.
46 The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.
The God Joseph Smith taught, was a God of great power, with the ability to give worthy gifts, which will flow unto us forever and ever. That is the God I worship, and strive to know better and better each day.
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