"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!...........It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God....yea, 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.... [Joseph Smith, quoted by Joseph Fielding Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, page 345-346.]
"He is our Father – the Father of our spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted Being…. It appears ridiculous to the world, under their darkened and erroneous traditions, that God has once been a finite being;…[Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7, p. 333-334]
"The Gods who dwell in the Heaven from which our spirits came, are beings who have been redeemed from the grave in a world which existed before the foundations of this earth were laid. They and the Heavenly body which they now inhabit were once in a fallen state. [Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, 1853-1854, 20.]
"The Gods who dwell in the Heaven from which our spirits came, are beings who have been redeemed...PLURAL gods?
"You and I--what helpless creatures are we! Such limited power we have, and how little can we control the wind and the waves and the storms! We remember the numerous scriptures which, concentrated in a single line, were stated by a former prophet, Lorenzo Snow: "As man is, God once was; and as God is, man may become." [President Spencer W. Kimball, Our Great Potential, Ensign, May 1977, page 49.]