Adam-God and Mysteries

Thanks for sharing, church. I also want to figure out my relationship with God, which is why I haven’t been able to let this theory go. I keep thinking “What if Adam really has become my Father?” The marvelous thing about that would be that I would then know who my Heavenly Mother is.

Brigham said that Joseph Smith taught the theory. We don’t have any words explicity teaching Adam is our father, but he taught the general principle in the King Follet discourse:

What did Jesus do? “Why, I do the things I saw my Father do when worlds came 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.

Does holding to the Adam-God Theory require a belief in a factual, historical person named Adam who was the father of the race? If so, then I’m necessarily excluded. The AGT kind of smacks of “6 thousand year old earth” Mormonism to me.

Consider this by Talmage:

To the thoughtful mind there can be no confusion of the beginning spoken of in the opening verse of genesis with the advent of man upon the changing earth; for by the scriptural record itself we learn of stage after stage, age after age of earth processes by which eventually this planet became capable of supporting life — vegetable, animal and human in due course…

In due course came the crowning work of this creative sequence, the advent of man! Concerning this all-important event we are told that scientists and theologians are at hopeless and irreconcilable variance. I regard the assumption or claim, whichever it be, as an exaggeration. Discrepancies that trouble us now will diminish as our knowledge of pertinent facts is extended. The creator has made record in the rocks for man to decipher; but He has also spoken directly regarding the main stages of progress by which the earth has been brought to be what it is. The accounts can not be fundamentally opposed; one can not contradict the other; though man’s interpretation of either may be seriously at fault…

In speaking of the origin of man we generally have reference to the creation of man’s body; and, of all the mistakes that man has made concerning himself, one of the greatest and the gravest is that of mistaking the body for the man. The body is no more truly the whole man than is the coat the body. The man, as an individual intelligence, existed before his earthly body was framed and shall exist after that body has suffered dissolution.

Let’s not turn this thread into a discussion of evolution, although I don’t think the Adam-God Theory mandates a young earth view.

Evolution is not rejected officially by the LDS Church, so let’s leave this thread with the AGT only.

Thanks for keeping us on track, Ray. I agree with what you said.

A recent Mormon Matters podcast set off my investigation into AGT, even though I only read the introduction and some of the comments there. Today I skipped work and went to one of my favorite spots in the mountains and listened to the podcast. It was interesting and I’m sorting out my thoughts now.