23. The celestial beings who dwell in the Heaven from which we came having been raised from the grave, in a former world, and having been filled with all the fulness of those eternal attributes, are called Gods, because the fulness of God dwells in each. Both the males and the females enjoy this fulness. The celestial vegetables and fruits which grow out of the soil of this redeemed Heaven, constitute the food of the Gods. This food differs from the food derived from the vegetables of a fallen world: the latter are converted into blood, which, circulating in the veins and arteries, produces flesh and bones of a mortal nature, having a constant tendency to decay: while the former, or celestial vegetables, are, when digested in the stomach, converted into a fluid, which, in its nature, is spiritual, and which, circulating in the veins and arteries of the celestial male and female, preserves their tabernacles from decay and death. Earthly vegetables form blood. and blood forms flesh and bones; celestial vegetables, when digested, form a spiritual fluid which gives immortality and eternal life to the organization in which it flows.

24. Fallen beings beget children whose bodies are constituted of flesh and bones, being formed out of the blood circulating in the veins of the parents. Celestial beings beget children, composed of the fluid which circulates in their veins, which is spiritual, therefore, their children must be spirits, and not flesh and bones. This is the origin of our spiritual organization in Heaven. The spirits of all mankind, destined for this earth. were begotten by a father, and born of a mother in Heaven. long anterior to the formation of this world. The personages of the father and mother of our spirits, had a beginning to their organization, but the fulness of truth (which is God) that dwells in them, had no be ginning; being "from everlasting to everlasting." (Psalm 90:2.)

25. In the Heaven where our spirits were born, there are many Gods, each one of whom has his own wife or wives which were given to him previous to his redemption, while yet in his mortal state. Each God, through his wife or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters; indeed, there will be no end to the increase of his own children: for each father and mother will be in a condition to multiply forever and ever. As soon as each God has begotten many millions of male and female spirits, and his Heavenly inheritance becomes too small, to comfortably accommodate his great family, he, in connection with his sons, organizes a new world, after a similar order to the one which we now inhabit, where he sends both the male and female spirits to inhabit tabernacles of flesh and bones. Thus each God forms a world for the accommodation of his own sons and daughters who are sent forth in their times and seasons, and generations to be born into the same. The inhabitants of each world are required to reverence, adore, and worship their own personal father who dwells in the Heaven which they formerly inhabited.

26. When a world is redeemed from its fallen state, and made into a Heaven, all the animal creation are raised from the dead, and become celestial and immortal. The food of these animals is derived from the vegetables, growing on a celestial soil; consequently, it is not converted into blood, but into spirit which circulates in the veins of these animals; therefore, their offspring will be spiritual bodies: instead of flesh and bones. Thus the spirits of beasts, of fowls, and of all living creatures, are the offspring of the beasts, fowls and creatures which have been redeemed or raised from the dead, and which will multiply spirits, according to their respective species, forever and ever.

27. As these spiritual bodies, in all their varieties and species, become numerous in Heaven, each God will send those under his jurisdiction to take bodies of flesh and bones on the same world to which he sends his own sons and daughters. As each God is "The God of the spirits of all flesh," pertaining to the world which he forms; and as he holds supreme dominion over them in Heaven, when he sends them into a temporal or terrestrial world he commits this dominion into the hands of his sons and daughters, which inhabit the same.