Excerpt: Lorenzo Snow's Couplet: "As Man Now Is, God Once Was; As God Now Is, Man May Be": No Functioning Place in Present-Day Mormon Doctrine?

The title page of Ronald V. Huggins academic paper on the subject.

By Ronald V. Huggins / Excerpted by Greg Knight

During his appearance with Ravi Zacharias in the Mormon Tabernacle on November 14, 2004, Fuller Seminary President Richard Mouw apologized on behalf of evangelicals for "bearing false witness" against Mormons. When challenged about his remarks, Mouw sent out an e-mail identifying places where he felt evangelicals had misrepresented Mormon teaching. 

Among these was the claim that "Mormonism teaches that God was once a human being like us, and we can become gods just like God is now," a belief, Mouw goes on to assure us, that has "no functioning place in present-day Mormon doctrine."

THE ORIGINS OF SNOW'S COUPLET

In May 1836 Lorenzo Snow visited Kirtland, Ohio, where his sister Eliza R. Snow had moved the previous year after converting to Mormonism. At a blessing meeting in the Kirtland Temple, Snow met Joseph Smith Sr. (the father of the Mormon Prophet) who predicted that he would soon be converted to the LDS faith. Smith Sr. went on to make the astonishing prediction that afterward Snow would "become as great as you can possibly wish—EVEN AS GREAT AS GOD." Snow was baptized two weeks later.

Snow was unable to make anything of this remarkable prediction until shortly before embarking on a mission to England in the spring of 1840. He reports that one day as he sat listening to Elder H. G. Sherwood's explanation of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16), the Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon me—the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw as clear as the sun at noonday, with wonder and astonishment, the pathway of God and man. I formed the following couplet which expresses the revelation, as it was shown me, and explains Father Smiths dark saying to me at a blessing meeting in the Kirtland Temple, prior to my baptism, as previously mentioned in my first interview with the Patriarch.

As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.

At first Snow did not share his couplet with anyone besides his sister Eliza, and Brigham Young, with whom he served in England. But in January of 1843, after returning from his mission, Snow mentioned it to the Prophet Joseph Smith, who said to him: "Brother Snow, that is true gospel doctrine, and it is a revelation from God to you."

THE COUPLET AND THE PROPHET JOSEPH SMITH

1. The King Follett Discourse. On 7 April 1844 Joseph Smith provided public confirmation to the theology of Snow's couplet in the famous King Follett Discourse. This is clearly seen in the following excerpts:

"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! . . . 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.... 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. ... you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power."

2. Joseph Smith's last public discourse. In his last public sermon, given on 16 June 1844, Joseph Smith again turns to the subject of the history of God. This time he offers what he felt sure was biblical support for the idea that God the Father had a father. He found it in the language of the King James Version's translation of Rev 1:6: "And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father," in accordance with which, he says, there clearly exists "a God above the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Smith was incorrect in seeing this as the true implication of the passage, a better translation being "unto his [Jesus'] God and Father" (see, e.g., NIV). This he seemed to have recognized more than a decade earlier when he had, under the guidance of inspiration , corrected this same passage in his Inspired Version of the Bible. This version was produced in the early 1830s and rendered the phrase "unto God, his Father." In the present sermon, however, he declares the KJV rendering "altogether correct in the translation."

Thus we find the teaching of Lorenzo Snow's couplet being confirmed in final discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

To read the entire paper by Huggins, click here.

You can reach Greg at fundamentalistmag@gmail.com.