Mormon Quotes

Creation of Earth

Brigham Young
Adam and Eve were the names of the first man and woman of every earth that was ever organized and ... Adam and Eve were the natural father and mother of every spirit that comes to this planet, or that receives tabernacles on this planet, consequently we are brother and sisters, and ... Adam was God, our Eternal Father.
Brigham Young, Journal of Joseph Lee Robinson, October 6, 1854
Brigham Young
Here let me state to all philosophers of every class upon earth, When you tell me that father Adam was made as we make adobies from the earth, you tell me what I deem an idle tale. When you tell me that the beasts of the field were produced in that manner, you are speaking idle words devoid of meaning. There is no such thing in all the eternities where the Gods dwell.... Adam and Eve are the parents of all pertaining to the flesh, and I would not say that they are not also the parents of our spirits.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 7:285
Brigham Young
Though we have it in history that our father Adam was made of the dust of this earth, and that he knew nothing about his God previous to being made here, yet it is not so; and when we learn the truth we shall see and understand that he helped to make this world, and was the chief manager in that operation. He was the person who brought the animals and the seeds from other planets to this world, and brought a wife with him and stayed here. You may read and believe what you please as to what is found written in the Bible. Adam was made from the dust of an earth, but not from the dust of this earth. He was made as you and I are made, and no person was ever made upon any other principle.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 3:319
Brigham Young
Before me I see a house full of Eves. What a crowd of reflections the word Eve is calculated to bring up! Eve was the name or title conferred upon our first mother, because she was actually to be the mother of all human beings who should live upon this earth. I am looking upon a congregation designed to be just such beings.
Brigham Young, Millennial Star, v. 31, p. 267
Brigham Young
Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 13:271
Joseph Smith
We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. 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 the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible.
Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp.345‑346
Joseph Smith
He [Adam] is the father of the human family, and presides over the spirits of all men, and all that have had the keys must stand before him in this grand council. This may take place before some of us leave this stage of action. The Son of Man stands before him, and there is given him glory and dominion. Adam delivers up his stewardship to Christ, that which was delivered to him as holding the keys of the universe, but retains his standing as head of the human family.
Joseph Smith, Messages of the First Presidency, v. 1, p. 113, July 1839; History of the Church, v. 3, pp. 386‑387
Wilford Woodruff
I met with the Presidency and Twelve in the prayer‑circle after prayer... Brother G.A. Smith spoke in plainness his feelings concerning some problems of Elder [Orson] Pratt's wherein he differed from President Young concerning the creation of Adam out of the dust of the earth and the final consummation of knowledge and many other things.
Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Wilford Woodruff, April 20, 1856
Joseph F. Smith
It is held by some that Adam was not the first man upon this earth, and that the original human being was a development from lower orders of the animal creation. These, however, are the theories of men. The word of the Lord declares that Adam was 'the first man of all men' (Moses 1:34), and we are therefore in duty bound to regard him as the primal parent of our race. It was shown to the brother of Jared that all men were created in the beginning after the image of God; and whether we take this to mean the spirit or the body, or both, it commits us to the same conclusion: Man began life as a human being, in the likeness of our Heavenly Father.
Joseph F. Smith, Messages of the First Presidency, v. 4 p. 205
George Albert Smith
Adam was no gorilla, no squalid savage of doubtful humanity, but a perfect man in the image of God. When placed on the earth, he was immortal. Eve was no degraded loathsome creature, but a lovely admirable being ‑ a suitable partner for an immortal man.... The most perfect men and women on earth today are physically far beneath their great progenitors, Adam and Eve. We are not the offspring of monkeys, but are the children of God, and Jesus is our brother.
George Albert Smith, Juvenile Instructor, quoted in Bankhead, The Fall of Adam, p. 30
George Albert Smith
Doubt has been thrown upon the Mosaic account of the creation, the whole religious world has been agitated and in many instances faith in the scriptures has been destroyed by this theory of the eminent philosopher [not scientist], Charles Darwin.
George Albert Smith, Collected Discourses, p. 5
George Albert Smith
I am grateful that in the midst of the confusion of our Father's children there has been given to the members of this great organization a sure knowledge of the origin of man, that we came from the spirit world where our spirits were begotten by our Father in heaven, that he formed our first parents from the dust of the earth, and that their spirits were placed in their bodies, and that man came, not as some have believed, not as some have preferred to believe, from some of the lower walks of life, but our ancestors were those beings who lived in the courts of heaven. We came not from some menial order of life, but our ancestor is God our heavenly Father.
George Albert Smith, Conference Report, Oct. 1925, p. 33
Harold B. Lee
I somewhat sorrowed recently to hear someone, a sister who comes from a church family, ask, 'What about pre‑Adamic people?... Aren't there evidences that people preceded the Adamic period on the earth?' I said, 'Have you forgotten the scripture that says, 'And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also...' (Moses 3:7)... She wondered about the creation because she had read the theories of the scientists, and the question that she was really asking was: How do you reconcile science with religion? The answer must be, If science is not true, you cannot reconcile truth with error.
Harold B. Lee, First Presidency Message, Ensign, December 1972
Bruce R. McConkie
There were no pre‑Adamites. Any assumption to the contrary runs counter to the whole plan and scheme of the Almighty in creating and peopling this earth.
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 254
Bruce R. McConkie
There is no harmony between the truths of revealed religion and the theories of organic evolution.
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 256
Bruce R. McConkie
Adam and Eve and all forms of life, both animal and plant, were created in immortality; that is, when first placed on this earth, all forms of life were in a state of immortality. There was no death in the world; death entered after the fall.
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 252
Bruce R. McConkie
Evolutionary theories assume that hundreds of millions of years were involved, first in the creation of the earth as a habitable globe, and again in the evolution of spontaneously generated, single celled forms of life into the complex and multitudinous forms of life now found on its face. We have rather specific scriptural indications that the creative period was of relatively short duration.
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 255
Eliza Roxcy Snow
Adam and Eve are the names of the fathers and mothers of worlds.
Eliza Roxcy Snow, Women of Mormondom, p. 179
Eliza Roxcy Snow
Michael is one of the grand mystical names in the works of creations; redemptions and resurrections.
Eliza Roxcy Snow, Women of Mormondom, p. 179
Eliza Roxcy Snow
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.
Eliza Roxcy Snow, Women of Mormondom, p. 179
John A. Widtsoe
Any theory that leaves out God as a personal, purposeful Being, and accepts chance as a first cause, cannot be accepted by Latter‑day Saints ... That man and the whole of creation came by chance is unthinkable. It is equally unthinkable that if man came into being by the will and power of God, the divine creative power is limited to one process dimly sensed by mortal man.
John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, v. 1, p. 155
B. H. Roberts
Accepting this statement of Joseph Smith relative to our planet in its present state being created or formed from the fragments of a planet which previously existed, one may readily understand how the supposed differences between scientists and believers in revelation have arisen. Scientists have been talking of the earth's strata that were formed in a previously existing planet; they have considered the fossilized flora and fauna imbedded in those strata.... If scientists shall claim that the fossilized remains in the different strata of the earth's crust reveal the fact that in the earlier periods of the earth's existence only the simpler forms of vegetation and animal life are to be found, both forms of life becoming more complex and of a higher type as the earth becomes older, until it is crowned with the presence of man — all that may be allowed. But that this gradation of animal life owes its existence to the processes of evolution is denied.... The claims of evolution as explained by the philosophers [not scientists] of the Darwin school, are contrary to all experience so far as man's knowledge extends.
B. H. Roberts, LDS Historian B.H. Roberts, The Gospel and Man's Relationship to Deity, pp. 281‑282
Samuel H. Rodgers
[During] Conference President Brigham Young said that our spirits ware begotten before that Adam came to the Earth and that Adam helped to make the Earth, that he had a Celestial boddy when he came to the Earth and that he brought his wife or one of his wives with him, and that Eave was allso a Celestial being, that they eat of the fruit of the ground until they begat children from the Earth, he said that Adam was the onley God that we would have, and that Christ was not begotten of the Holy Gost, but of the Father Adam, that Christ, was our elder brother. The argument that he used to shoe that Christ was not begotten by the holy gost, was a caution to the Elders that when they should go to preach the Gospel, to be careful how they laid their hands on the sisters, for the reseption of the holy Gost, lest the holy Gost should get them with Child and that it would be laid to them.
Samuel H. Rodgers, Journal of Samuel H. Rodgers, v. 1, p. 179; BYU Special Collections
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