"I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it. I want you to pay particular attention to what I am saying. Jesus said that the Father wrought precisely in the same way as His Father had done before Him. As the Father had done before? He laid down His life, and took it up the same as His Father had done before. (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 373)“I will go back to the beginning, before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth; for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why he interferes with the affairs of man. God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret. (Joseph Smith, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6, p. 3, 1844)
As a Christian Pastor, you know this is heretical teaching on par with the greatest heretics in Christian Church History! It is a gnarl of lies designed to support the Mormonism blasphemy that gods in a troika over earth are merely one of many gods:
In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation. It is a great subject I am dwelling on. The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through--Gods. The heads of the Gods appointed ONE God for us... (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 372)
For those only vaguely familiar with Christianity, and Judaism, all of the universe and all variations of THE universe came forth from The One God Who is greater than and exists independent of time and space. In the beginning means at, and through the CREATION. There was no 'before' preceding Creation because Time is also a created dimension, as is space a created dimension. Without time events do not occur, without space things do not exist. Even Angels exist in a spatio-temporal realm but we were not made in such a way as to be able to perceive this other spatio-temporal realm in our present state. At the very start of John's Gospel, we find:
John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this one was in the beginning with God; all things through him did happen, and without him happened not even one thing that hath happened. Young‘s Literal Transalation from the original Greek
John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.KJV [THE WORD was God in the beginning, and the WORD was made flesh and dwelt among us. INSOFAR as the flesh can hold 'godness', Jesus, The Word through Whom and by Whom all things were created, was made flesh and dwelt among us! Jesus was and is God with us, the Hope of Glory.]
In the Hebrew scriptures (in The Torah) we read:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
And in the New Testament we read Jesus offering:
Mark 12:29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
And those who were trying to trip up Jesus fully understood this as they replied to Jesus regarding The One God Whose name is in Hebrew a plural form.
It is not surprising that people who believe such blasphemies as hallmark mormonism would not like to stand and debate the heresies at the heart of Joseph Smith, et al mormonism/LDS inc.
let me put it this way...PLEASE do NOT presume to tell me what I believe. 90% of the portrayals here of what the Saints believe is either an outright falsehood or a deliberate distortion.