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First, God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret....I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity....God himself; the Father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did....You have got to learn to be Gods yourselves....No man can learn you more that what I have told you.
Source: Ebenezer Robinson, ed. Times and Seasons: Commerce, Illinois, and Nauvoo, Illinois, 5 vols. 1839-1846. Vol. 5. 613 - 614.
The above source was a Mormon run newspaper.
"The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that man is an eternal being, made in the image and likeness of God. It also holds that man is a literal child of God and has the potential, if faithful to divine laws and ordinances, of becoming like his heavenly parent....God is an exalted Man who once lived on an earth and underwent experiences of mortality....The progression of our Father in heaven to godhood, or exaltation, was strictly in accordance with eternal principles,....His marriage partner is our mother in heaven."
We are their spirit children, born to them in the bonds of celestial marriage....
God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man,...
Source: Smith, Joseph Fielding, ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City: 1938. 345.
The Apostle Orson Pratt (early Apostle of Mormonism) taught:
The Mormon Church teaches that God the Father had a Father, and that God's Father also had a Father, and so on. Brigham Young, the second prophet of the church, declared: "He [God] is our Father -- the Father of our spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being....there never was a time when there were not Gods..."
Source: Richards, F. D. ed., Journal of Discourses. 1854-1886. Liverpool: 26 vols. Vol. 7, 333.
This belief is not one that occurred only during the early years of Mormonism, but is still taught today.