Many Heavenly Fathers

LDS leaders have taught about the existence of many Heavenly Fathers.

The Prophet says: "If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that he had a Father also." Then he asks: "Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son?"

The Prophet taught that our Father had a Father and so on. Is not this a reasonable thought, especially when we remember that the promises are made to us that we may become like him?

Evidently his Father passed through a period of mortality even as he passed through mortality, and as we all are doing. 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, until we come to a stop where we cannot go further, because of our limited capacity to understand (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation).

"We were begotten by our Father in heaven; the person of our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father, and again He was begotten by a still more ancient father and so on from generation to generation" (Orson Pratt, The Seer).

"He came here, was born, had a father and mother like you have. Well, who was his father? Why God was His father; and who was God's father? Why God had a father like you and I have.

Now, with this information children can begin to understand something about their Heavenly Father. They can see that if Jesus is His Son, and we are His sons and daughters, that He must be the Son of some other personage, for He could not beget Himself, but must have a father even as He is our Father" (Gospel Truths, volume 1, George Q. Cannon).

"Long before our God began his creations, he dwelt on a mortal world like ours, one of the creations that his Father had created for him and his brethren. He, with many of his brethren, was obedient to the principles of the eternal gospel. One among these, it is presumed, was a savior for them, and through him they obtained a resurrection and an exaltation on an eternal, celestial world.8 Then they gained the power and godhood of their Father and were made heirs of all that he had, continuing his works and creating worlds of their own for their own posterity—the same as their Father had done before, and his Father, and his Father, and on and on" (April 1971 New Era, People on other Worlds).

[8] Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, vol. 14, p. 71.