Was God once a man? From “the great secret” to “little is taught”
In 1844 Joseph Smith told a general conference that God “is a man like unto one of yourselves” and that “God himself, the Father of us all dwelt on an earth.” He called it “the great secret” and “the first principles of the gospel.” Church magazines and manuals printed the teaching for more than a century. In 1997 the Church’s president said it was theology “we don’t know very much about,” and the Church’s 2014 essay says “little is taught.”
The short answer
Did Joseph Smith teach that God was once a man?
Yes. In his April 7, 1844 King Follett sermon, Joseph Smith said God “is a man like unto one of yourselves” and called it “the great secret.” William Clayton’s same-day notes record that God “was once as one of us and was on a planet as Jesus was in the flesh.” Church manuals still print the teaching as Joseph Smith’s.
The defining contrast
“The great secret.” “Little is taught.”
Both quotations come from the Church’s own publications. The first is its manual on Joseph Smith’s teachings; the second is its essay on the same doctrine.
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.”Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (2007), chapter 2 ↗
Of “As man now is, God once was”: “Little has been revealed about the first half of this couplet, and consequently little is taught.”Official essay ↗
The wordingNo verbatim record of the sermon exists. The wording above is the amalgamated text prepared in the 1850s for the Church’s manuscript history, which the Church reprinted in its 1971 Ensign and 2007 manual. The 1844 Times and Seasons text and the same-day notes below record the same claim in their own words.
The 1844 record
“I am going to tell you how God came to be God”
Joseph Smith spoke at a general conference in Nauvoo less than three months before his death. The Church’s newspaper published the sermon in August 1844, and four men recorded notes as he spoke. The newspaper text and all four sets of notes record the claim.
“A man like unto one of yourselves”
“What sort of a being was God in the beginning? … First, God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret.”Joseph Smith Papers transcription and image ↗
“We have imagined that God was God from all eternity”
“I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are the simple and first principles of the gospel, … that God himself; the Father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible.”
“You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves; … the same as all Gods have done; by going from a small degree to another.”
The listeners wrote it down
- William Clayton: “God that sets enthroned is a man like one of yourselves— that is the great secret,” and “he was once as one of us and was on a planet as Jesus was in the flesh.”
- Thomas Bullock: “God himself the father of us all dwelt on a Earth same as J C himself did.”
- Wilford Woodruff: “We suppose that God was God from eternity, I will refute that Idea,” and “he once was man like us and the Father was once on an earth like us.”
- Willard Richards: God “Is a man like one of yourselves,” and Smith would “refute the Idea that God was God from all eternity.”
The notes are partial and unedited; quotations keep their original spelling. The Times and Seasons text combines Bullock’s and Clayton’s reports. The Church’s own history topic quotes Clayton: God “was once as one of us.”
How the Church taught it
A couplet, a magazine classic, and current manuals
The teaching did not stay in one sermon. Church presidents repeated it, Church magazines reprinted it, and Church manuals still present it in lessons on exaltation.
- Lorenzo Snow · later Church president
“As man now is, God once was”
“As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.”
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow (2011), chapter 5Snow described the couplet as expressing a revelation he received in 1840. The Church’s 2011 manual says that once he knew Joseph Smith had taught the doctrine publicly, “he testified of it frequently” and made it “the theme for his life.”
- Ensign · “Classics in Mormon Thought”
Reprinted under the heading “God an Exalted Man”
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.”
“The King Follett Sermon,” Ensign, April 1971The Church’s official magazine introduced the sermon as “one of the classics of Church literature” and printed this passage under its own subheading.
- Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society manual
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith
“That is the great secret.”
Chapter 2, “God the Eternal Father”The Church’s adult curriculum manual quoted the sermon’s passage on God as “an exalted man,” citing History of the Church 6:305.
- Gospel Principles · chapter 47, “Exaltation”
“He was once a man like us”
“It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God. … He was once a man like us; … God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
Gospel Principles (2009), chapter 47The same chapter says exalted Saints “will become gods” and that Heavenly Father “wants us to succeed even as He did.” The manual remains on the Church’s website.
1997
The Church’s president to the press: “we don’t know very much about”
In 1997 Church President Gordon B. Hinckley gave interviews to national publications. Asked whether God had been a man, he did not affirm Joseph Smith’s teaching.
“Pretty deep theology”
“That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much about.”
The Church’s own essay quotes this answer, citing Don Lattin, “Musings of the Main Mormon,” as President Hinckley’s response when “asked about this topic.” The essay then quotes him affirming the second half of the couplet: “Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal progression. Very strongly.”
“Becoming Like God,” with citation ↗“I don’t know that we teach it”
Q: “Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?”
A: “I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it. I haven’t heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse.”
Time printed a shorter form of this answer; the Church’s essay cites the Time article as a further source on the topic. When a critic asked about it, a September 3, 1997 letter from the Secretary to the First Presidency said the quotation “was taken out of context” and answered a question about the funeral sermon’s circumstances. A Time reporter then released the question-and-answer excerpt above. Both letters and the excerpt were published by the Institute for Religious Research, a ministry critical of the Church; no Church-hosted copy was located.
“Misquoted and misunderstood”
“I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances misquoted and misunderstood. … You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine. I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear.”
The address did not identify which statements were misreported and did not restate that God was once a man. Seventeen years later, the Church’s essay quoted the Chronicle answer as President Hinckley’s own.
“Drawing Nearer to the Lord,” October 1997 ↗The institutional explanation
“Not canonized,” “never been canonized,” “little is taught”
The Church’s 2014 essay “Becoming Like God” affirms that humans can progress toward exaltation and godliness. On the first half of Lorenzo Snow’s couplet, it says only that “little has been revealed” and “consequently little is taught.”
It also reclassifies the sources. The King Follett sermon “is not canonized and should not be treated as a doctrinal standard in and of itself,” and the couplet “has never been canonized.” The essay supports the second half of the couplet by quoting early Christian writers on deification.
What changed
Status, authority, and emphasis
The Church has not declared the teaching false. It has moved it from the center of Joseph Smith’s gospel to the margins of what it says it knows.
Importance
From “the great secret” and “the first principles of the gospel” to a subject about which “little is taught.”
Authority
From a prophet’s conference sermon reprinted in Church magazines and manuals to a text that “should not be treated as a doctrinal standard.”
Public answer
From Lorenzo Snow testifying of it “frequently” to a Church president telling the national press “we don’t know very much about” it.
What remains
The second half stands: of the exalted, Doctrine and Covenants 132:20 says “Then shall they be gods,” and Gospel Principles still says they “will become gods.”
Biblical context
“From everlasting to everlasting you are God”
Joseph Smith said he would “show it from the Bible.” The Bible presents God as eternally God, immortal, and unlike man, with no god before Him and none after. Quotations below use the English Standard Version.
Psalm 90:2; 1 Timothy 1:17
Eternally God, never mortal
“From everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
The psalmist places God before the mountains and the world. Paul praises “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.” Joseph Smith’s sermon said, “We have imagined that God was God from all eternity,” and set out to refute it.
Read the passages in the ESV ↗Numbers 23:19; Hosea 11:9
“I am God and not a man”
“God is not man, that he should lie.”
Numbers contrasts God’s word with human inconstancy, and Hosea grounds God’s mercy in the difference: “I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst.” The sermon’s claim was that God “is a man like unto one of yourselves.”
Read the passages in the ESV ↗Isaiah 43:10; 46:9
No god before, none after, none like Him
“Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.”
Isaiah answers both halves of the couplet. No god preceded the Lord and none will follow, and “I am God, and there is none like me.” The sermon spoke of “all Gods” before and told hearers they must “learn how to be Gods yourselves.”
Read the passages in the ESV ↗John 5:19–26
The text Joseph Smith cited
“The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.”
Smith argued from this passage that the Son lays down his body because the Father once did. In context Jesus is answering critics of a Sabbath healing: the Father is working now, and has “granted the Son also to have life in himself.” The passage describes the Son’s authority to give life and to judge; it says nothing of the Father having lived and died on an earth.
Read the passages in the ESV ↗The essay quotes early Christian writers on “deification,” and Eastern Orthodox teaching speaks of believers becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, as the essay quotes them, speak of the Word of God becoming man so that humans might become what he is. Neither they nor any historic Christian creed teaches that God the Father was once a man or that God “came to be God.”
Finding
Taught as the gospel’s first principle, now “little is taught”
Joseph Smith publicly taught that God was once a man who dwelt on an earth, called it “the great secret” and “the first principles of the gospel,” and told his hearers they must learn to become Gods. The 1844 publication and all four eyewitness accounts record the claim. Lorenzo Snow made it the theme of his life, and Church magazines and manuals reprinted it for more than a century.
In 1997 the Church’s president told the press it was theology “we don’t know very much about.” In 2014 the Church said little has been revealed about it, little is taught, and the sermon should not be treated as a doctrinal standard. The Church has not called the teaching false; its manuals still print it.
Sources and limitations
Read the record
The sermon wording was checked against Joseph Smith Papers transcriptions of the 1844 publication and the eyewitness notes. Church manuals, the 1971 Ensign, the essay, and the 1997 conference address were checked on the Church’s website on October 8, 2026.
No one recorded the sermon verbatim. The 1844 Times and Seasons text combines Thomas Bullock’s and William Clayton’s notes, and none of the four reporters wrote stenographically; the best-known wording comes from an 1850s amalgamation prepared for the Church’s manuscript history and later printed in History of the Church. The Church itself says the sermon is not canonized. This case quotes the teaching from the contemporaneous notes, the 1844 publication, and the Church’s own later reprints. The San Francisco Chronicle interview was not located online; its wording is taken from the Church’s essay. The Time transcript excerpt and the 1997 letters are available only through a critical ministry’s publication.