Lessons on the Plan of Salvation
Lesson No. Sixteen
Heavenly Mother
In the heavens are parents single? Joseph Smith spoke of the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother in 1839 while consoling Zina Huntington after the death of her mother. Joseph told her that once she had passed through the veil between life and death she would not only be reunited with her earthly mother, but she would also become acquainted with her “eternal Mother, the wife of…Father in Heaven.”
Eliza R. Snow also learned of a Heavenly Mother from the Prophet at about this same time. Several years later she included this doctrine in a poem. The doctrine taught in this poem has almost been canonized in the words of the hymn entitled “O My Father” (LDS Hymns # 292).
In the heavens are parents single? No the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason; truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.
When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high?
Then, at length, when I’ve completed All you sent me forth to do,
With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.
The Universal Father and Mother – The First Presidency explained that “all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity” (The Origin of Man, November 1909). More recently the First Presidency and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles published the Proclamation on the Family: “All Human Beings – male and female – are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”
The word God can mean both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother – The name Adam can be used in a context that means both Adam and Eve. (See Moses 6:9) This is similar to a context in which the word God can mean both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. In speaking of the creation of the physical bodies of Adam and Eve God says: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so” (Moses 2:26). Us and our can be understood to include Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:26-27). In Genesis 5:2 we again read that “God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; male and female created He them” (Genesis 5:2 emphasis added)
Conclusion - From the scriptures quoted above and from living prophets we learn that the “likeness of God” is both “male and female”. In the Church it is commonly understood that every person is a spirit child of Heavenly Parents who love and provide for all their sons and daughters.
When the genealogy of Jesus was listed it went back to Adam and concludes “Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38). Joseph Smith clarified this verse when he wrote: “…Adam who was formed of God, and the first man on the earth” (JST Luke 3:45). To be “formed of God” in this context means to begotten of God. Jesus alone was the Only Begotten Son of God in the flesh or in mortality. Adam and Eve were begotten by Heavenly Parents in immortality. Therefore, all the posterity of Adam and Eve inherit genetically their physical bodies from the same Heavenly Parents.
Truly our physical bodies are the temples of God. We are both spiritually and physically the off-spring of a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.