Thus it is shown that prior to the placing of man upon the earth, how long before we do not know, Christ and Satan, together with the hosts of the spirit-children of God, existed as intelligent individuals, possessing power and opportunity to choose the course they would pursue and the leaders whom they would follow and obey (James Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 8)

The appointment of Jesus to be the Savior of the world was contested by one of the other sons of God. He was called Lucifer, son of the morning. Haughty, ambitious, and covetous of power and glory, this spirit-brother of Jesus desparately tried to become the Savior of mankind (Milton R. Hunter, The Gospel Through the Ages, p. 15---this book was "written and published under the direction of the General Priesthood Committee of the Council of the Twelve of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints").

The devil...is a spirit son of God who was born in the morning of pre-existence (p. 192)....Christ is the Firstborn, meaning that he was the first Spirit Child born to God the Father in pre-existence (p. 281)....Christ, the Firstborn, was the mightiest of all the spirit children of the Father (p. 590).

On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some---especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers....But as the Firstborn of the Father, Jesus was Lucifer's older brother.

When he was a young man, Lorenzo Snow was promised by the Lord through the Patriarch to the Church that through obedience to the gospel he could become as great as God, and you cannot wish to be greater (Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, pp.9-10).
   President Lorenzo Snow recorded this experience that occurred when he was still a young elder: "The Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon methe eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw as clear as the sun at noon-day, with wonder and astonishment, the pathway of God and man." Elder Snow expressed this new found understanding in these words: "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be." Later the Prophet Joseph Smith assured him: "Brother Snow, that is true gospel doctrine, and it is a revelation from God to you" (quoted by LeRoi C. Snow, in Devotion to Divine Inspiration, Improvement Era, June 1919, pp. 651-56).

The Prophet Joseph Smith said:

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" (Teachings, pp. 345-46; italics in original).

President Brigham Young elaborated on this concept: "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 sins they have had to contend with" (as cited by Harold B. Lee, in Conference Report, Apr. 1969, p.130; or Improvement Era, June 1969, p.104).

President Joseph Fielding Smith said: Our Father in heaven, according to the Prophet, had a Father, and since there has been a condition of this kind through all eternity, each Father had a Father (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:47).

President Joseph F. Smith taught: I know that God is a being with body, parts and passions. . . . Man was born of woman; Christ, the Savior, was born of woman; and God, the Father was born of woman (Church News, 19 Sept.1936, p.2).

President Wilford Woodruff explained: [God] has had his endowments a great many years ago. He has ascended to his thrones, principalities and powers in the eternities. We are his children. . . . We are here to fill a probation and receive an education (Deseret News Weekly, 28 Sept. 1881, p.546).

How does it help us to know that the basic elements of God's life in a mortal world were the same as ours? President Brigham Young explained:
He is our Father--the Father of our spirits--and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are.
. . . There never was a time when there were not Gods and worlds and when men were not passing through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. . . .
It appears ridiculous to the world, under their darkened and erroneous traditions, that God has once been a finite being (Deseret News, 16 Nov. 1859, p.290).

My children all: You see in me
Exalted man, of flesh and bone
And spirit pure. One time, long
Long ago, I was as you, a spirit son
Of an exalted Father. [see HC 6:302-17]
You may become as now I have become
But you must do as I have done.

President Joseph F. Smith said: We are precisely in the same condition and under the same circumstances that God our heavenly Father was when he was passing through this, or a similar ordeal (Gospel Doctrine, p.64).

Brethren and sisters, as you sit here, you will hear the voices of three persons who represent Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. Elohim will command Jehovah and Michael to go down and organize a world. The work of the six creative periods will be represented. They will also organize man in their own likeness and image, male and female.

Elohim: Jehovah, Michael, see: yonder is matter unorganized. Go ye down and organize it into a world like unto the other worlds we have heretofore formed. Call your labors the First Day, and bring me word.

Jehovah: It shall be done Elohim. Come Michael, let us go down.

Michael: We will go down, Jehovah.

Jehovah: Michael, see: here is matter unorganized. We will organize it into a world like unto the other worlds we have heretofore formed. We will call our labors the First Day, and return and report.

Michael: We will return and report our labors of the First Day, Jehovah.

Jehovah: Elohim, we have done as thou hast commanded, and have called our labors the First Day.

Elohim: It is well.[2]

Lucifer: Good morning sir!

Sectarian Minister: Good morning!

(The Preacher turns and looks into the camera.)

Sectarian Minister: A fine congregation!

Lucifer: Yes, they are very good people. They are concerned about religion. Are you a preacher?

Sectarian Minister: I am.

Lucifer: Have you been to college and received training for the ministry?

Sectarian Minister: Certainly! A man cannot preach unless he has been trained for the ministry.

Lucifer: Do you preach the orthodox religion?

Sectarian Minister: Yes, that is what I preach.

Lucifer: If you will preach your orthodox religion to these people, and convert them, I will pay you well.

Sectarian Minister: I will do my best.

At this point Lucifer leads the minister to Adam and Eve, and a conversation ensues:

Sectarian Minister: I understand you are inquiring after religion.

Adam: I was calling upon Father.

Sectarian Minister: I am glad to know you were calling upon Father. Do you believe in a God who is without body, parts, and passions; who sits on the top of a topless throne; whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere; who fills the universe, and yet is so small that he can dwell in your heart; who is surrounded by myriads of beings who have been saved by grace, not for any act of theirs, but by His good pleasure? Do you believe in this great Being?

Adam: I do not. I cannot comprehend such a being.

Sectarian Minister: That is the beauty of it. Perhaps you do not believe in the devil, and in that great hell, the bottomless pit, where there is a lake of fire and brimstone into which the wicked are cast, and where they are continually burning, but arenever consumed?

Adam: I do not believe in any such place.

Sectarian Minister: My dear friend, I am sorry for you.[4]

There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments; hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.[5]

It is altogether correct in the translation. Now, you know that of late some malicious and corrupt men have sprung up and apostatized from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they declare that the Prophet believes in a plurality of Gods, and, lo and behold! we have discovered a very great secret, they cry--"The Prophet says there are many Gods, and this proves that he has fallen."

   I will preach on the plurality of Gods. I have selected this text for that express purpose. I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods. It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years.
   I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods. If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural; and who can contradict it?[3]

John was one of the men, and apostles declare they were made kings and priests unto God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It reads just so in the Revelation, Hence (sic) the doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine. It is all over the face of the Bible. It stands beyond the power of controversy. A wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein.

   Paul says there are Gods many and Lords many. I want to set it forth in a plain and simple manner; but to us there is but one God--that is pertaining to us; and he is in all and through all. But if Joseph Smith says there are Gods many and Lords many, they cry, "Away with him! Crucify him! Crucify him!"
   Mankind verily say that the Scriptures are with them. Search the Scriptures, for they testify of things that these apostates would gravely pronounce blasphemy. Paul, if Joseph Smith is a blasphemer, you are. I say there are Gods many and Lords many, but to us only one, and we are to be in subjection to that one, and no man can limit the bounds or the eternal existence of eternal time. Hath he beheld the eternal world, and is he authorized to say that there is only one God? He makes himself a fool if he thinks or says so, and there is an end of his career or progress in knowledge. He cannot obtain all knowledge, for he has sealed up the gate to it.
   Some say I do not interpret the Scripture the same as they do. They say it means the heathens gods. Paul says there are Gods many and Lords many; and that makes a plurality of Gods, in spite of the whims of all men. Without a revelation, I am not going to give them the knowledge of the God of heaven. You know and I testify that Paul had no allusion to the heathen gods.[4] I have it from God, and get over it if you can. I have a witness of the Holy Ghost, and a testimony that Paul had no allusion to the heathen gods in the text.[5]

Many men say there is one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are only one God. I say that is a strange God anyhow--three in one, and one in three! It is a curious organization. "Father, I pray not for the world, but I pray for them which thou hast given me." "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom thou has given me, that they may be one as we are." All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism. It would make the biggest God in all the world. He would be a wonderfully big God--he would be a giant or a monster.[6]

   The Father of Jesus is our Father also. Jesus Himself taught this truth, when He instructed His disciples how to pray: Our Father which art in heaven, etc. Jesus, however, is the firstborn among all the sons of God--the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother, and we, like Him, are in the image of God. All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity. . . . What more is needed to convince us that man, both in spirit and in body, is the image and likeness of God, and that God Himself is in the form of man?
   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, proclaims man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity. God Himself is an exalted man, perfected, enthroned, and supreme. By His almighty power He organized the earth, and all that it contains, from spirit and element, which exist co-eternally with Himself.
   Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God.[7]

Those who have been born unto God through obedience to the Gospel may by valiant devotion to righteousness obtain exaltation and even reach the status of godhood. Of such we read: Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God (D&C 76:58; compare 132:20, and contrast paragraph 17 in same section; see also paragraph 37). Yet, though they be gods they are still subject to Jesus Christ as their Father in this exalted relationship; and so we read in the paragraph following the above quotation: and they are Christ's, and Christ is God's (76:59).

Dear Dr. White, I would like to thank you for taking a bold, truthful stand in opposition to the ungospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am especially grateful that you rely of TRUTH to denounce what, in light of the truth, is so clearly wrong. You see, when I was 18, I was "saved into" a KJV-only Baptist Church. One of the first Christian books I read was "The God Makers" by Ed Decker and Dave Hunt. I lived in Boise, ID which had not shortage of Mormons, and I thought it would be good to know what they believed. Shortly afterwards, I was enlisted in the Navy and left to fend for myself amidst a new world of temptations. When I was 19 when I found myself debating the 30-something-year-old Mormon elder who bunked next to me. Armed with "The God Makers," I found myself fully unable to refute what this Mormon elder was so clearly able to prove were miss characterizations within that book. Before long, I found myself listening to this Mormon elder and believing his false gospel. I became a Mormon myself and was quickly baptized, ordained into the Aaronic Priesthood and later the Melchizedek Priesthood over the course of a year-and-a-half. When the Navy sent me to the Defense Information School to become a military journalist, I was taught some very good critical thinking skills. So, when I found another book on Mormonism while passing a Family Bookstore at a mall, I thought it would be fun to apply some of those critical thinking skills in proving that book's premise to be false. When I left the Defense Information School, I was no longer a Mormon. I would like to thank you for your books, "Debating Calvinism" and "Scripture Alone." I finished the former last winter and am about half way through the latter. Thanks for standing for the Truth and never lying for the Truth.

   Oh, ye lawyers, ye doctors, and ye priests, who have persecuted me, I want to let you know that the Holy Ghost knows something as well as you do. The head God called together the Gods and sat in grand council to bring forth the world. The grand councilors sat at the head in yonder heavens and contemplated the creation of the worlds which were created at the time.[2] . . . In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it. When we begin to learn this way, we begin to learn the only true God, and what kind of a being we have got to worship. Having a knowledge of God, we begin to know how to approach him, and how to ask so as to receive an answer. When we understand the character of God, and how to come to him, he begins to unfold the heavens to us, and to tell us all about it.

   Now, I ask all who hear me, why the learned men who are preaching salvation, say that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing? The reason is, that they are unlearned in the things of God, and have not the gift of the Holy Ghost; they account it blasphemy in any one to contradict their idea. If you tell them that God made the world out of something, they will call you a fool. But I am learned, and know more than all the world put together. The Holy Ghost does, anyhow, and He is within me, and comprehends more than all the world: and I will associate myself with Him.

   You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing; and they will answer, Doesnt the Bible say He created the world? And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came fromthe 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 chaoschaotic matter, which is element, and inwhich dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time he had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning, and can have no end.

   We say that God himself is a self-existent being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles. God made a tabernacle and put a spirit into it, and it became a living soul. (Refers to the old Bible.) How does it read in the Hebrew? It does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says God made man out of the earth and put into him Adams spirit, and so became a living body.
   The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal[3] with God himself. . . . I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it had a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had not beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven. . . . But if I amright, I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.

Besides, Mormon beliefs are not as un-evangelical as most evangelicals think. Unlike Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons hold firmly to the deity of Christ. For Latter-Day Saints, Jesus is not only the Son of God but also God the Son. Evangelical pollster George Barna found in 2001 that while only 33 percent of American Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists agreed that Jesus was "without sin," Mormons were among the "most likely" to say that Jesus was sinless.

Most evangelicals would also be surprised to learn that the Book of Mormon contains passages that teach salvation by the merits and grace of Christ ( "There is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah" 2 Nephi 2:8) and others that require personal trust in Christ for salvation, such as 1 Nephi 10:4-6: "All mankind were in a lost and in a fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer."

But evangelicals are reluctant to vote for a Mormon. Historically, evangelicals and Mormons have demonized each other. Evangelicals consider the Church of Latter-day Saints to be a cult and typically think Mormons are not real Christians.

Evangelicals accuse Mormons of adding new revelation (the Book of Mormon) to the Bible. They think Mormons teach that humans are saved by good works rather than by Jesus Christ, and that humans are of the same species as Jesus and can someday attain his status. In addition, evangelicals say, Mormons reject key Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and creatio ex nihilo (God creating the world out of nothing).

The Scriptures inform us that Jesus said, As the Father hath power in Himself, even so hath the Son power to do what? Why, what the Father did. The answer is obvious in a manner to lay down His body and take it up again. Jesus, what are you going to do? To lay down my life as my Father did, and take it up again. Do we believe it? If you do not believe it, you do not believe the Bible. The Scriptures say it, and I defy all the learning and wisdom and all the combined powers of earth and hell together to refute it.

Here, then, is eternal life--to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, 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, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power. And I want you to know that God, in the last days, while certain individuals are proclaiming his name, is not trifling with you or me.

. . . they shall rise again to dwell in everlasting burnings in immortal glory, not to sorrow, suffer, or die any more; but they shall be heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. What is it? To inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a God, and ascend the throne of eternal power, the same as those who have gone before. What did Jesus do? Why; I do the things I saw my Father do when worlds come rolling into existence. My Father worked out his kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must do the same; and when I get my kingdom, I shall present it to my Father, so that he may obtain kingdom upon kingdom, and it will exalt him in glory. He will then take a higher exaltation, and I will take his place, and thereby become exalted myself. So that Jesus treads in the tracks of his Father, and inherits what God did before; and God is thus glorified and exalted in the salvation and exaltation of all his children. It is plain beyond disputation, and you thus learn some of the first principles of the Gospel, about which so much hath been said.

He begins his discussion with a quotation from 1 Corinthians 8:5-6: There be gods many and lords many. But to us there is but one God the Father. Despite the context of this scripture--a discussion by Paul of belief in idols--Brigham Young, B. H. Roberts, Joseph Fielding Smith, and many others have used it as a brief explanation of how it is possible to be both a Christian polytheist (technically a henotheist) and a monotheist: how we can talk sometimes in an adventuresome mode about multiple orders of godhood, and how we can consider the advanced spheres that exist in the infinities, and yet at the same time, without contradiction, we can talk in a worshipful mode about our one God and his perfect knowledge and supreme redemptive power in the sphere of our world.

Mormonism is simultaneously monotheistic, tri-theistic, and polytheistic. There is but one God, yet there is a Godhead of three, and beyond them, gods many, and lords many (1 Cor. 8:5). But regardless of the multiplicity of personages bearing divine titles, they are one in that priesthood which governs throughout the eternities.