God(s) Once Moral. John Leland wrote that “in the mysteries some account was given of the history of their gods, which led the initiated to conclude, that the popular deities even the principal of them, had been of the human race . . . “ In six separate printings from 1823 to 1839 Jahn’s Biblical Archaeology (which Joseph Smith had read) also stated that in the ancient “Mysteries” taught “that the gods were formerly men” (emphasis in original).

This instruction is no longer part of the LDS temple endowment, but was the central feature of the “lecture at the veil” given by Brigham Young in the newly completed temple at St. George, Utah. Young’s Adam-God teachings (see ch. 7) were an expansion of Joseph Smith’s sermons in 1839-44: the Garden of Eden’s Adam was actually the Archangel Michael who “obtained the First Presidency . . . in the Creation before the world was formed”; Adam holds “the keys of the universe” and whenever the keys of the priesthood “are revealed form heaven, it is by Adam’s authority”; Adam is the one “through whom Christ has been revealed from heaven, and will continue to be revealed from henceforth,” and finally, “god himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man . . .”