The following quotes are from the LDS Church’s Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual published by the Church Educational System, copyright 1976.
—
In the relationships of husband and wife and parent and child we begin to approach the divine calling of godhood. Our Heavenly Father and mother live in an exalted state because they achieved a celestial marriage. As we achieve a like marriage we shall become as they are and begin the creation of worlds for our own spirit children. (page 1)
—
God Became God by Obedience to Law
It was late afternoon as we sat in my office, but I felt the time had been well spent. He sat silently now, obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we had been discussing…Finally he spoke…
[Student:] “Then what you are saying is that God became God by obedience to the gospel program, which culminates in eternal marriage.”
[Teacher:] “Yes. Do you realize the implications of this doctrine as far as you are concerned?”
[Student:] “I think so. If God became God by obedience to all of the gospel law with the crowning point being the celestial law of marriage, then that’s the only way I can become a god.”
[Teacher:] “Right.”
(page 4)
—
The Law Which Brings Eternal Life Is Temple Marriage
Law requires that certain objectives be accomplished if we are to become like God. Look at the chart at the bottom of this page.
Why is each step necessary in the acquisition of godlike attributes? Under each step list the thing gained which is necessary for godhood.
[The accompanying diagram is in the form of 8 steps: Birth, Faith in Jesus Christ, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost, Temple Marriage, Resurrection, Eternal Life.] (page 5)
—
…God is an exalted man who once lived on an earth and underwent experiences of mortality. The Prophet Joseph Smith refers to this as “the great secret.”…The progression of our Father in heaven to godhood, or exaltation, was strictly in accordance with eternal principles, ‘for he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory.” (page 129)
—
GOD WAS ONCE A MORTAL MAN
He Lived on an Earth like Our Own
God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. (page 129)
—
He Experienced Conditions Similar to Our Own and Advanced Step by Step
Remember that God, our heavenly Father, was perhaps once a child, and mortal like we ourselves, and rose step by step in the scale of progress, in the school of advancement; has moved forward and overcome, until He has arrived at the point where He now is. (page 129)
—
…even as the infant son of our earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages of aeons, of evolving into a God. (page 130)
—
So far as the stages of eternal progression and attainment have been made known through divine revelation, we are to understand that only resurrected and glorified beings can become parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached maturity in the appointed course of eternal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified parents have attained exaltation. (page 131)