The Character of God
In the first place, I wish to go back to the beginning--to the morn of creation. There is the starting point
for us to look to, in order to understand and be fully acquainted with the mind, purposes and decrees of
the Great Elohim, who sits in yonder heavens as he did at the creation of this world. It is necessary for
us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is easy to go right all the
time; but if we start wrong, we may go wrong, and it be a hard matter to get right.
There are but a very few beings in the world who understand rightly the character of God. The great majority of mankind do not comprehend anything, either that which is past, or that which is to come, as it respects their relationship to God. They do not know, neither do they understand the nature of that relationship; and consequently they know but little above the brute beast, or more than to eat, drink and sleep. This is all man knows about God or his existence, unless it is given by the inspiration of the Almighty.
If a man learns nothing more than to eat, drink and sleep, and does not comprehend any of the designs of God, the beast comprehends the same things. It eats, drinks, sleeps, and knows nothing more about God; yet it knows as much as we, unless we are able to comprehend by the inspiration of Almighty God. If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves. I want to go back to the beginning, and so lift your minds into a more lofty sphere and a more exalted understanding than what the human mind generally aspires to.
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God an Exalted Man
I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of being God is. What sort of a
being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to
prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why
He interferes with the affairs of man.
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 veil 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 as a 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.
In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.
These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. 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, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.
Power of the Father and the Son
I wish I was in a suitable place to tell it, and that I had the trump of an archangel, so that I could tell the
story in such a manner that persecution would cease for ever. What did Jesus say? (Mark it, Elder
Rigdon!) 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.