Quotes About Heavenly Mother
A Beautiful Video Montage of official Quotes about Heavenly Mother/Parents
“To Mother Eve, to Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, to Mary of Nazareth, and to a Mother in Heaven, I say, ‘Thank you for your crucial role in fulfilling the purposes of eternity.’ ”
Jeffrey R. Holland, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “Behold Thy Mother,” October 2015 General Conference
“Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me.”
Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor, First Presidency, “Daughters of God,” October 1991 General Conference
“Women are endowed with special traits and attributes that come trailing down through eternity from a divine mother. Young women have special God-given feelings about charity, love, and obedience…Theirs is a sacred, God-given role, and the traits they received from heavenly mother are equally as important as those given to the young men.”
Vaughn J. Featherstone, Young Men General President, “A Champion of Youth,” October 1987 General Conference
“I share the view expressed by Orson F. Whitney in these words:
“ ‘No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven’ (as quoted in Faith Precedes the Miracle, p. 98).”
Howard W. Hunter, Acting President, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “The Opening and Closing of Doors,” October 1987 General Conference
“The Primary song says, ‘I am a child of God.’ Born with a noble birthright. God is your father. He loves you. He and your mother in heaven value you beyond any measure. They gave your eternal intelligence spirit form, just as your earthly mother and father have given you a mortal body.”
Spencer W. Kimball, President of the Church, “Privileges and Responsibilities of Sisters,” October 1978 General Conference
“When we return to our real home, it will be with the ‘mutual approbation’ of those who reign in the ‘royal courts on high.’ There we will find beauty such as mortal ‘eye hath not seen’; we will hear sounds of surpassing music which mortal ‘ear hath not heard.’ Could such a regal homecoming be possible without the anticipatory arrangements of a Heavenly Mother?”
Neal A. Maxwell, Presidency of the Seventy, “The Women of God,” April 1978 General Conference
“…when we sing that doctrinal hymn and anthem of affection, ‘O My Father,’ we get a sense of the ultimate in maternal modesty, of the restrained, queenly elegance of our Heavenly Mother, and knowing how profoundly our mortal mothers have shaped us here, do we suppose her influence on us as individuals to be less if we live so as to return there?”
Spencer W. Kimball, President of the Church, “The True Way of Life and Salvation,” April 1978 General Conference
“In the heavens, before the earth was formed, the plan of this earth life was explained to all of us. We were then but spirit offspring of our Father and Mother in heaven.”
Eldred G. Smith, Patriarch to the Church, “Opposition in Order to Strengthen Us,” October 1973 General Conference
We are the offspring of God. He is our Father, and we have a Mother in the other life as well.
– Lorenzo Snow, Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, 191.
Now, the sealing for eternity gives to you eternal leadership. The man will have the authority of the priesthood, and if he keeps his life in order he will become a god. Now, that’s hard to understand, isn’t it? But that’s the way it is. You see, we have a Father in Heaven and we have a mother in heaven. And so we have a spiritual father and mother as we have a material father and mother on the earth. The Lord created this earth for us and made it a beautiful place to live. He promised us that if we would live the right way we could come back to him and be like him.
– Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 52.
“An interesting sidelight is given to this time through a possible glimpse of the thought-kernel which grew into such fragrant bloom in the full-voiced poem of Sister Snow. It was told by Aunt Zina D. Young to the writer as to many others during her life. Father Huntington lost his wife under the most trying circumstances. Her children were left desolate. One day, when her daughter Zina was speaking with the Prophet Joseph Smith concerning the loss of her mother and her intense grief, she asked the question:
“`Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over on the Other Side?’
“`Certainly you will,’ was the instant reply of the Prophet. `More than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.’
“`And have I then a Mother in Heaven?’ exclaimed the astonished girl.
“`You assuredly have. How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?’
“It was about this time that Sister Snow learned the same glorious truth from the same inspired lips, and at once she was moved to express her own great joy and gratitude in the moving words of the hymn, `O my Father.’”
– Joseph Smith, secondhand account (Susa Young Gates, “History of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” from November 1869 to June 1910 (Salt Lake City: General Board of the Y.L.M.I.A., 1911), p. 16, footnote)
The belief of Latter-Day Saints that we are children of a Mother in Heaven as well as our Father in Heaven, Christ being our Elder Brother, deepens mortal understanding of divine oneness, fullness, perfect unity. Though no extant recorded sermon of Joseph Smith discusses the nature of a heavenly mother, Zina D. H. Young, for one, witnessed that the Prophet personally had taught her the doctrine as she mourned the death of her own mother. Certainly the concept comes as a logical extension of his teaching that godhood is eternal parenthood, “a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” Significantly, however, Eliza R. Snow’s Nauvoo poem known and sung for 150 years as “O My Father” is the earliest recorded expression of Latter-Day Saint belief in a heavenly mother.
–Derr, Cannon, & Beecher. (1992). Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society. Deseret Book Company. Salt Lake City, UT.
Finally, remember: When we return to our real home, it will be with the “mutual approbation” of those who reign in the “royal courts on high.” There we will find beauty such as mortal “eye hath not seen”; we will hear sounds of surpassing music which mortal “ear hath not heard.” Could such a regal homecoming be possible without the anticipatory arrangements of a Heavenly Mother?
–Elder Neal A. Maxwell, “The Women of God,” April 1978 General Conference
Now, it is not said in so many words in the Scriptures, that we have a Mother in heaven as well as a Father. It is left for us to infer this from what we see and know of all living things in the earth including man. The male and female principle is united and both necessary to the accomplishment of the object of their being, and if this be not the case with our Father in heaven after whose image we are created, then it is an anomaly in nature. But to our minds the idea of a Father suggests that of a Mother.
— Erastus Snow, Journal of Discourses, 1884.
Implicit in the Christian verity that all men are the spirit children of an Eternal Father is the usually unspoken truth that they are also the offspring of an Eternal Mother. An exalted and glorified Man of Holiness (Moses 6:57) could not be a Father unless a Woman of like glory, perfection, and holiness was associated with him as a Mother. The begetting of children makes a man a father and a woman a mother whether we are dealing with man in his mortal or immortal state….
[God] is our Eternal Father; we have also an Eternal Mother. There is no such thing as a father without a mother, nor can there be children without parents. We were born as the spirit children of Celestial Parents long before the foundations of this world were laid.
–Elder Bruce R. McConkie (Mormon Doctrine, p.516-517)
“Some have questioned our concept of a mother in heaven, but no home, no church, no heaven would be complete without a mother there.”
–Elder Hugh B. Brown
“When we sing that doctrinal hymn … ‘O My Father,’ we get a sense of the ultimate in maternal modesty, of the restrained, queenly elegance of our Heavenly Mother, and knowing how profoundly our mortal mothers have shaped us here, do we suppose her influence on us as individuals to be less?”
–President Spencer W. Kimball (Ensign, May 1978, p. 6.)
“What,” says one, “do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman?” Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself . . . I must believe that deity consists of man and woman . . . there can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way.”
(Erastus Snow, Journal of Discourses, 19:269–70, March 3, 1878.)
“The Church is bold enough to go so far as to declare that man has an Eternal Mother in the Heavens as well as an Eternal Father, and in the same sense ‘we look upon woman as a being, essential in every particular to the carrying out of God’s purposes in respect to mankind.’”
–James E. Talmage, Deseret News, 28 Apr. 1902
“Sisters, I testify that when you stand in front of your heavenly parents in those royal courts on high and you look into Her eyes and behold Her countenance, any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial air, because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny.”
(Glenn L. Pace, “The Divine Nature and Destiny of Women” (devotional address, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, March 9, 2010)
In 1910 Apostle Rudger Clawson pointed out that men as well as women and children crave a mother in heaven to worship and “yearn to adore her.” He said, “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mother in our affection”
–(Rudger Clawson, unsigned article, “Our Mother in Heaven,” Latter-day Saints’Millennial Star 72 [29 Sept. 1910]: 619-20).
“One day the Prophet Joseph asked him [Coltrin] and Sidney Rigdon to accompany him into the woods to pray. When they had reached a secluded spot Joseph laid down on his back and stretched out his arms. He told the brethren to lie one on each arm, and then shut their eyes. After they had prayed he told them to open their eyes. They did so and saw a brilliant light surrounding a pedestal which seemed to rest on the earth. They closed their eyes and again prayed. They then saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; [6] they prayed again and on looking saw the Mother also; after praying and looking the fourth time they saw the Savior added to the group.”
–Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 25 Aug. 1880, LDS archives
God is our father. He loves us. He and our mother in heaven value us beyond any measure. They gave our eternal intelligences spirit form, just as our earthly mothers and fathers have given us mortal bodies. Each of us is unique—one of a kind, made of the eternal intelligence that gives us claim upon eternal life.
– Spencer W. Kimball (My Beloved Sisters, p.25)
Now, the fact that you and I are here in mortal bodies is evidence that we were among those who were in that great concourse of organized intelligences; we knew God, our Father. He was our Heavenly Father; we were sired by Him. We had a Heavenly Mother—can you think of having a father without a mother? That great hymn “O My Father” puts it correctly when Eliza R. Snow wrote, “In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there.” Born of a Heavenly Mother, sired by a Heavenly Father, we knew Him, we were in His house, and we knew His illustrious Son, who was to come here and redeem mankind as a part of the plan of salvation.
– Harold B. Lee (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p.22)
I know that God lives.… I believe he is the Father of my spirit and the Father of your spirit. I believe we were born to him and to our mother in heaven. I do not know the process, but I do know how we are born to our fathers and mothers in this earth and that is the way I think about it.… I believe I was born to him as a spirit child in the spirit world before I was born here, and what I say about myself-and you will pardon the personal reference-I feel about every other human soul that lives in the earth. I believe we all lived with him before we came here.
– Marion G. Romney (Conference Report, April 1948, p.76-77)
All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.
– First Presidency (Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund; “Messages of the First Presidency,” 4:203)
God made man in his own image and certainly he made woman in the image of his wife-partner. You [women] are daughters of God. You are precious. You are made in the image of our heavenly Mother.
– Spencer W. Kimball (“The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball,” p.25)
You sisters, I suppose, have read that poem which my sister composed years ago, and which is sung quite frequently now in our meetings. It tells us that we not only have a Father in “that high and glorious place,” but that we have a Mother too; and you will become as great as your Mother, if you are faithful.
– Lorenzo Snow (Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, p.7)
My Heavenly Mother 