Joseph Smith on Eternal Progression

Joseph Smith

Here, then, is eternal life⁠—to know the only wise and true God; and 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.

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pages 346-347, Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976

Related Quotes

Orson Pratt

Our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father; He was begotten by a still more ancient Father; and so on from generation to generation, from one heavenly world to another.

Charles Sanders Peirce

The purpose of creation as it must appear to us in our highest approaches to an understanding of it . . . is God’s movement toward self-reproduction.

Sterling M. McMurrin

The primary task of theology is the reconciliation of the revelation to the culture, to make what is taken on faith as the word of God meaningful in light of accepted science and philosophy.

More from Joseph Smith

Salvation cannot come without revelation; it is in vain for anyone to minister without it. No man is a minister of Jesus Christ without being a Prophet. No man can be a minister of Jesus Christ except he has the testimony of Jesus; and this is the spirit of prophecy. Whenever salvation has been administered, it has been by testimony.

The first principles of man are self-existent with God. God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge.

After this instruction, you will be responsible for your own sins; it is a desirable honor that you should so walk before our heavenly Father as to save yourselves; we are all responsible to God for the manner we improve the light and wisdom given by our Lord to enable us to save ourselves.

One of the grand fundamental principles of “Mormonism” is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.

If tomorrow I shall be called to lie in yonder tomb, in the morning of the resurrection let me strike hands with my father, and cry, “My father,” and he will say, “My son, my son,” as soon as the rock rends and before we come out of our graves. And may we contemplate these thing so? Yes, if we learn how to live and how to die.