The “God-was-once-a-man” doctrine is taught clearly and explicitly in the current New Testament manual for Institute classes. This manual is used in Institutes throughout the USA and has also been translated into Spanish; it is taught in most stakes throughout Latin America.

You can see the relevant chapter here: http://www.ldsces.org/inst_manuals/NTInstStdnt_32474000/Chapters/NTInstStdnt32474000_12.pdf

Sure the Proclamation mentions “heavenly parents” but that’s not very clear about MIH, and not even close to offering us any real information about Her. I think Jeff wants to know things like if she has the priesthood, if she makes creative decisions like the Father does, etc.

I don’t know if I buy that Brigham Young quote (if you could find the real quote, that would be great). I don’t like the idea of reading into the prophets’ words (more than what they have said). Here’s what happens: prophets are agianst abortion; Republicans are against abortion; George Bush is a Republican; the prophets want us to vote for George Bush; if you don’t vote for Bush you aren’t following the prophets.

2) “Prophets don’t have to say “Thus saith the Lord…..”"

They do if they want us to know that what they are saying comes from God. I don’t think anybody should be willing to say that everything they say is revelation. Such makes God look very stupid. This is only begging Don’s original question.

3) I’m not sure what that has to do with revelation at all. Are you saying that we should do everything that we might possibly interpret GA’s to be saying. Again, this makes a lot of people look very stupid.

4) Great, she exists. But that isn’t what I meant be more revelation being needed. Who is she? Is she the only wife? Why can’t we pray to her? and so on. There issues are very important to a number of people. Declaring her mere existence brings up more questions than it answers.

Yes. We _believe_ it based on past utterances of past prophets. Many of us _talk_ about it in private and amongst ourselves. And we have to logically _deduce_ it based on the things the church does teach. But the _church_ does not currently _teach_ or promulgate (in any current official material) that God was once a man.

I haven’t found it in any of the Sunday School manuals, and I can’t remember it in the Institute manuals, though I have not done an exhaustive search of those.

2. Jeff, recent prophets and apostles have made statements on all the points you wanted revelation about. Prophets don’t have to say “Thus saith the Lord…..” They just say it in their own words.

I remember GBH saying “We urge parents in the strongest terms possible to keep Monday night sacred.” He didn’t say “command” or “the Lord commands you.” But when a prophet, speaking as THE Prophet” at Gen Conf say “We urge … in the strongest terms possible” what more do we need?

What can be stronger than a prophet’s “strongest terms possible” ?

3. Brigham Young is quoted in a recent Priesthood/RS manual “Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young”. “Blessed are they who obey a direct commandent. But more blessed are they who obey without a direct commandment.” (I’m going from memory, that may be a paraphrase.)

4. The church has finally issued an official statement on a Heavenly Mother. (Though one might conclude the “correlated” hymn “Oh My Father” was a semi-official statement.) The proclamation on the family uses “heavenly parents” – plural. That’s the first official statement on the issue that I’ve seen.

Now we ask the temple president what it mean and he whips out his binder of “official” response which usually amount to “we don’t know.”

This isn’t all that unusual. Take ever instance in the church were the answer is “we don’t have an official position” or “we don’t know yet” (and there are lots of such instances), and there is where we need revelation. Thus we won’t have to finish ever blog-thread with agreeing to disagree. We won’t have to act like there is far more unity in sunday school classes than there actually is. The fact that we all disagree so much (and I disagree with Mormons an awful lot) shows that more information is clearly needed.

The lack of “revelation” coming from the prophet in the case of new or clearly defining existing doctrine puts us more in line with mainstream christian churches. I get the feeling that we don’t want to be too different.

Some of the changes in the endowment seem to me to have the same effect…trying not offend someone. Are we that afraid of persecution? Or are we just interested in getting more members and things will straighten out later.

I can also think of quite a few issues which I consider the counsel to be not very wise at all, where revelation would be dearly appreciated:

Same sex marriage
Evolution
BoM historicity
Spirit birth/self-existent intelligences
Mother in Heaven
interpretation of the endowment
Word of wisdom interpretations
and so on.

Of course it isn’t meet that the Lord command in all things, but surely He should command in SOME things. In all of these issues we could really use some more revelation and a little less tradition.

Pres Hinckley’s response to Larry King was neither of those. It was demurring for PR purposes. I believe he’s like to have a redo on that one if he had a chance.