Gramps,

I would like to know who the first Heavenly Father was. It’s so confusing. I want to know where everything started. Is there only one Heavenly Father? Is he the Heavenly Father for all the worlds?

Lauren, from Canada

Dear Lauren,

In mortality it appears that we have beginnings and endings. The future is yet to happen and the past is gone. If we burn up a piece of wood, it disappears. We make things that didn’t exist before. But those are only appearances. The burned wood only disappears from sight, it doesn’t really disappear. It only changes form. By the application of heat and oxygen the hydrocarbons of which wood is composed are changed to steam, carbon and other carbon compounds. If you could weigh the ashes from a burned piece of wood, and gaseous material that escapes during the combustion process, it would weigh exactly the same as the piece of wood before it was burned. Nothing was created or destroyed. Matter only changed form.

What cannot be imagined is that in a given isolated region of space where at one time nothing existed, at a later time something came into existence. We must always ask the question, “Where did it come from?” It had to come from somewhere. There is no such thing as the spontaneous generation of matter.

Now, there is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter (D&C 131:7-8).

 So likewise, there neither can there be any spontaneous generation of spirit. The generation of the Gods has gone on forever. There could never have been a first God, because no spirit could have been generated without being born of Eternal Parents, or Gods.

This concept is couched in a hymn in the Mormon hymn books with the following words, written by W.W. Phelps–

If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye,

And then continue onward with that same speed to fly, 

D’ye think that you could ever, through all eternity,

Find out the generation where Gods began to be?

Or see the grand beginning, where space did not extend?   Or view the last creation where Gods and matter end?

Methinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space,’ “ 

Nor seen the outside curtains, where nothing has a place.

The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression have one eternal round.

There is no end to matter; there is no end to space;

There is no end to spirit; there is no end to race.

Gramps