Eliza R. Snow Adam God

 

Eliza R. Snow was married to Joseph Smith, and then to Brigham Young as one of their many plural wives. Ten of her songs are featured in the current LDS Hymn book. I have been told that the teachings on Adam as our God are not in the "canonized scripture", and are not believed in the Church today.O My Father is one if Eliza's hymn found in today's hymn book. It is the only modern source for teachings about our Heavenly Mother. It's not "canonized scripture" yet every LDS today believes it is the gospel truth. 

Some claim that it's too hard to understand what was taught about Adam God. Sister Snow teaches it clearly and in prose. Let's examine what she thought was the doctrine of the LDS Church.

 

Women of Mormondom; [This book was written by permission of Brigham Young and was done by Eliza R. Snow, and Elder Edward Tullidge.  March 1877.

"Adam is our Father and God. He is the God of the earth." So says Brigham Young. Adam is the great archangel of this creation. He is Michael. He is the Ancient of Days. He is the father of our elder brother, Jesus Christ---the father of him who shall also come as Messiah to reign. He is the father of the spirits as well as the tabernacles of the sons and daughters of man. Adam! Michael is one of the grand mystical names in the works of creation, redemptions, and resurrections. Jehovah is the second and the higher name. Eloheim--signifying the Gods--is the first name of the celestial trinity. Michael was a celestial, resurrected being, of another world. "In the beginning" the Gods created the heavens and the earths. In their councils they said, let us make man in our own image. So, in the likeness of the Fathers, and the Mothers--the Gods--created they man--male and female. When this earth was prepared for mankind, Michael, as Adam, came down. He brought with him one of his wives, and he called her name Eve. Adam and Eve are the names of the fathers and mothers of worlds. Adam was not made out of a lump of clay, as we make a brick, nor was Eve taken as a rib--a bone--from his side. They came by generation. But woman, as the wife or mate of man, was a rib of man. She was taken from his side, in their glorified world, and brought by him to earth to be the mother of a race. These were father and mother of a world of spirits who had been born to them in heaven. These spirits had been waiting for the grand period of their probation, when they should have bodies or tabernacles, so that they might become, in the resurrection, like Gods. When this earth had become an abode for mankind, with its Garden of Eden, then it was that the morning stars sang together, and the sons and daughters of God shouted for joy. They were coming down to earth. The children of the sun, at least, knew what the grand scheme of the everlasting Fathers and the everlasting Mothers meant, and they, both sons and daughters, shouted for joy. The temple of the eternities shook with their hosannas, and trembled with divine emotions. The father and mother were at length in their Garden of Eden. They came on purpose to fall. They fell "that man might be; and man is, that he "might have joy." They ate of the tree of mortal life, partook of the elements of this earth that they might again become mortal for their children's sake. They fell that another world might have a probation, redemption and resurrection. (pp. 179-180)

God the Father and God the Mother stand, in the grand pre-existing view, as the origin and centre of the spirits of all the generations of mortals who had been tabernacled on this earth. First and noblest of this great family was Jesus Christ, who was the elder brother, in spirit, of the whole human race. These constituted a world-family of pre-existing souls. Brightest among these spirits, and nearest in the circle to our Father and Mother in heaven (the Father being Adam), were Seth, Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus Christ--indeed that glorious cohort of men and women, whose lives have left immortal records in the worlds's history. Among these the Mormon faith would rank Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and their compeers.

* * *

These are the sons and daughters of Adam--the Ancient of Days--the Father and God of the whole human family. These are the sons and daughters of Michael, who is Adam, the father of the spirits of all our race. These are the sons and daughters of Eve, the Mother of a world. What a practical Unitarianism is this! The Christ is not dragged from his heavenly estate, to be mere mortal, but mortals are lifted up to his celestial plane. He is still the God-Man; but he is one among many brethren who are also God-Men. Moreover, Jesus is one of a grand order of Saviours. Every world has its distinctive Saviour, and every dispensation its Christ. There is a glorious Masonic scheme among the Gods. The everlasting orders come down to us with their mystic and official names. The heavens and the earth have a grand leveling; not by pulling down celestial spheres, but by the lifting up of mortal spheres.

* * *

Woman is heiress of the Gods. She is joint heir with her elder brother, Jesus the Christ; but she inherits from her God-Father and her God-Mother. Jesus is the "beloved" of that Father and Mother--their well-tried Son, chosen to work out the salvation and exaltation of the whole human family. And shall it not be said then that the subject rises from the God-Father to the God- Mother? Surely it is a rising in the sense of the culmination of the divine idea. The God-Father is not robbed of his everlasting glory by this maternal completion of himself. It is an expansion both of deity and humanity. They twain are one God! The supreme Unitarian conception is here; the God-Father and the God-Mother! The grand unity of God is in them--in the divine Fatherhood and the divine Motherhood--the very beginning and consummation of creation. Not in the God-Father and the God-Son can the unity of the heavens and the earths be worked out; neither with any logic of facts nor of idealities. In them the Masonic trinities; in the everlasting Fathers and the everlasting Mothers the unities of creations. Our Mother in heaven is decidedly a new revelation, as beautiful and delicate to the masculine sense of the race as it is just and exalting to the feminine. (pp. 190-193)

 

"The Ultimatum of Human Life", from Poems Religious, Historical and Political, Vol. 2:8-9; Eliza R. Snow; 1877.

 

...'Tis not for you to pry

Into the secrets of the worlds on high--

To seek to know the first, the moving Cause,

Councils, decrees, organizations, laws--

Form'd by the Gods, pertaining to this earth,

Ere your great Father from their courts came forth,

The routine of his ancestors to tread--

Of this new world, to stand the royal head.

* * *

Adam, your God, like you on earth, has been

Subject to sorrow in a world of sin:

Through long gradation he arose to be

Cloth'd with the Godhead's might and majesty.

And what to him in his probative sphere,

Whether a Bishop, Deacon, Priest, or Seer?

Whate'er his offices and callings were,

He magnified them with assiduous care:

By his obedience he obtain'd the place

Of God and Father of this human race.

Obedience will the same bright garland weave,

As it has done for your great Mother, Eve,

For all her daughters on the earth, who will

All my requirements sacredly fulfill.

And what to Eve, though in her mortal life,

She'd been the first, the tenth, or fiftieth wife?

What did she care, when in her lowest state,

Whether by fools, consider'd small, or great?

'Twas all the same with her--she prov'd her worth--

She's now the Goddess and the Queen of Earth.

Life's ultimatum, unto those that live

As saints of God, and all my pow'rs receive;

Is still the onward, upward course to tread--

To stand as Adam and as Eve, the head

Of an inheritance, a new-form'd earth,

And to their spirit race, give mortal birth--

Give them experience in a world like this;

then lead them forth to everlasting bliss,

Crown'd with salvation and eternal joy

Where full perfection dwells, without alloy.

 

 

Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 11th Edition, revised in Liverpool, 1856, by Franklin D. Richards, Apostle; p. 375. See also the 25th edition, 1912. Written by Eliza R. Snow

WE BELIEVE IN OUR GOD

We believe in our God, the Prince of his race,

The archangel Michael, the Ancient of Days

Our own Father Adam, earth's Lord as is plain,

Who'll counsel and fight for His children again.

We believe in His Son, Jesus Christ who in love

To His brothers and sisters came down from above,

To die, to redeem them from death, and to teach

To mortals and spirits the gospel we preach.

 

Is this the Restored Gospel the Missionaries present? Why do you suppose that is?