The King Follett Discourse and Its Connection to Lorenzo Snow’s Couplet

The King Follett Discourse of April 7, 1844, is frequently presented as the public confirmation of Lorenzo Snow’s couplet: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.” Snow reported receiving the couplet as a personal revelation in 1840. He shared it with Joseph Smith in January 1843 and recorded the Prophet’s affirmation that it was true gospel doctrine. The discourse followed fifteen months later. Snow later marked the relevant passages in his Times and Seasons with particular care and continued to present the couplet as a direct revelation throughout his life, including as Church president. The chronological link is real. Yet the documentary character of the discourse and the consistent witness of the standard works require that both the couplet and its alleged public confirmation be weighed with care rather than elevated beyond their actual status.

Thorough Evaluation of the Challenges of the King Follett Discourse

No complete or verbatim record of the April 7, 1844 sermon exists. The official Church History Topics entry states plainly: “There is no complete or verbatim record of what Joseph said, but several individuals took notes, making this one of Joseph’s best-recorded sermons.” Four individuals present took contemporaneous notes of differing completeness and method: Thomas Bullock and William Clayton as official clerks, Willard Richards in brief minute form, and Wilford Woodruff from the audience. Woodruff’s original notes have not survived; the journal version includes later expansions from memory. Scholarly estimates indicate that the combined notes capture roughly thirty percent of the words of a sermon lasting more than two hours.

Bullock soon combined his notes with Clayton’s. A version based primarily on that amalgamation appeared in the Times and Seasons on August 15, 1844, after Joseph’s death. A fuller composite was prepared around 1855 by Jonathan Grimshaw, drawing on all four accounts and receiving subsequent review by George A. Smith, Thomas Bullock, and Brigham Young. That later amalgamation became the basis for the text long printed in the History of the Church and in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith never reviewed, edited, or approved any published version.

Differences appear among the notes in phrasing, sequence, emphasis, and the inclusion of particular clauses. Some elements surface in only one account. The 1855 process introduced expansions and smoothing not present in any single primary source. Stan Larson, then serving as a translation coordinator for the Church, observed in BYU Studies that the Grimshaw amalgamation, made over eleven years after the discourse, raises legitimate concern about “the questionable process of expanding or ‘fleshing out’ the text, as well as the propriety of eliminating material from the original manuscript accounts.” Larson preferred primary sources and produced a new amalgamation that stayed closer to the contemporary notes, treating the Woodruff account with particular caution for exact wording.

Authoritative Latter-day Saint sources have themselves registered reservations about the report’s reliability. In the early twentieth century the discourse was omitted from B. H. Roberts’s History of the Church. In a 1912 letter, George Albert Smith (then an Apostle, later Church President) explained the decision: “I have thought that the report of that sermon might not be authentic and I have feared that it contained some things that might be contrary to the truth.” He added that “some of the brethren felt as I did and thought that greater publicity should not be given to that particular sermon.” Joseph F. Smith, sixth President of the Church, expressed doubt about specific reported teachings, stating that he never believed Joseph had been correctly reported on the point that those who die in infancy remain as little children after the resurrection. B. H. Roberts, while defending much of the discourse, acknowledged in footnotes that certain transcriptions appeared inaccurate and required correction. These are not external criticisms; they are internal, authoritative expressions of caution about the precision and completeness of the reconstructed text.

The discourse therefore remains a valuable window into the atmosphere of Nauvoo teaching, yet it cannot be treated as a precise, prophet-controlled record comparable to documents Joseph himself wrote, dictated under his oversight, or explicitly approved. Its secondary and composite character places firm limits on the weight that can be assigned to any particular phrasing, especially on matters as fundamental as the nature of God the Father.

Minimization of Snow’s Couplet

Snow’s couplet is a memorable poetic summary, not a formal revelation sustained by the Church in general conference or canonized in the standard works. It rests on Snow’s personal experience and a private affirmation recorded by him. The public discourse often cited as its confirmation is itself a reconstructed secondary source. Modern prophetic language has treated the first half of the couplet with notable reserve. President Gordon B. Hinckley, when asked whether God the Father was once a man, replied that he did not know that the Church taught it, that he had not heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse, and that the couplet expressed “some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much about.” He consistently redirected attention to the second half, the promise of eternal progression through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Correlated Church materials have likewise tended to emphasize human potential to become like God while softening or omitting detailed claims about the Father’s prior mortality. The couplet has never received an official First Presidency declaration elevating it to the status of core, well-defined doctrine. It functions more as a traditional formulation accepted by many than as a binding, detailed exposition. When the documentary foundation of its chief public confirmation is examined carefully, the couplet’s first half is properly minimized: it is interesting historical teaching, not a pillar that must control interpretation of the clear scriptural witness.

The Hunger for New Revelation and the Danger of Attachment to Incomplete Claims

A recurring pattern among the early Saints, and one that continues among many members today, is a strong appetite for something new. From the earliest months of the Restoration, individuals frequently approached Joseph Smith seeking personal or group revelations on specific questions of business, location, Church order, or future events. This desire was understandable in a people newly awakened to the reality of continuing revelation. Yet it quickly developed into something nearly compulsive: a restless hunger for the next word, the next insight, the next confirming manifestation. When the next official revelation did not arrive on the expected timetable, some filled the vacuum with their own claims or with eager attachment to secondary reports.

The most instructive early illustration is the episode involving Hiram Page in September 1830. Page, one of the Eight Witnesses, obtained a stone through which he claimed to receive revelations concerning the location of Zion and the governing order of the Church. He produced a substantial roll of papers. Many members, including Oliver Cowdery and members of the Whitmer family, accepted these writings as genuine. Joseph Smith arrived in Fayette to find the Church in distress over the matter. The Lord responded with the revelation now recorded as Doctrine and Covenants 28, declaring that no one but the appointed prophet was authorized to receive commandments and revelations for the Church, and directing that Page be privately corrected because “those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me and that Satan deceiveth him.” Page and the others renounced the stone and the writings. The incident revealed how readily even faithful early members could attach themselves to a new claim that appeared spiritual yet stood at variance with the order already established.

This pattern intensified after Joseph’s assassination in June 1844. The sudden vacuum of his living prophetic voice left many Saints hungry for any supposed word that might continue or complete what he had begun. Members and others hung upon every reported conversation, every reminiscence, every claimed private teaching. In that atmosphere, some, whether consciously or through the natural workings of memory and desire, attempted to give greater credibility to their own ideas, interpretations, or preferred doctrines by ascribing them to Joseph. The dynamic closely parallels the ancient practice of pseudepigrapha, in which devout writers composed texts in the names of revered figures such as Adam, Moses, or the apostles in order to teach new principles, honor tradition, or fill perceived gaps. Those works often contained genuine echoes of authentic tradition, yet they layered on later expansions and dialogues that the original figures never spoke. In the same way, polished and theologically convenient statements attributed to Joseph appear in later records, sometimes decades after the events, precisely because attaching them to his name dramatically increased their perceived authority among a people still grieving and seeking direction.

The same behavioral tendency can appear today. A constant hunger for some new thing can lead to disproportionate attachment to secondary sources, reconstructed sermons, traditional couplets, or speculative interpretations that go beyond the clear, repeated witness of the standard works and the living prophets. When such material is treated as if it carries equal or greater weight than the canon, the result is the same risk that faced the early Saints: sincere people can be drawn after incomplete or unauthoritative claims and thereby lose their moorings.

The Eternal and Unchangeable Nature of God in the Standard Works

The standard works repeatedly and emphatically present God the Father as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable from everlasting to everlasting. Doctrine and Covenants 20:17 states: “By these things we know that there is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them.” Doctrine and Covenants 76:4 adds, “From eternity to eternity he is the same, and his years never fail.” Moses 1:3 records the Lord’s own declaration: “I am the Beginning and the End, the Almighty God... Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years.”

The Book of Mormon is equally direct. Moroni 8:18 teaches, “For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.” Mosiah 3:5 and Alma 13:7 describe the Lord as infinite and eternal. The first Article of Faith simply affirms belief in “God, the Eternal Father.” Psalm 90:2 declares, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” Malachi 3:6 states, “For I am the Lord, I change not.” Hebrews 13:8 applies the same language of unchanging character to the Lord Jesus Christ, reinforcing the continuity of the Godhead.

These passages leave no conceptual space for a period in which God the Father existed as a mortal man subject to the conditions of a fallen world, progressing from a lesser state to His present exaltation. The scriptures present Him as the unchanging source of the path of progression offered to His children, not as one who Himself once walked that path under mortal conditions. The Inspired Version of the Bible, produced under Joseph’s direct prophetic labor, further reinforces this portrait by clarifying passages that later secondary notes attempted to read in a contrary direction.

Canonized Scripture Must Have the Final Word

In all matters of doctrine, the canonized standard works must hold the final and governing authority. This is not a secondary preference or a matter of personal taste; it is a foundational principle of the Restoration itself. The Lord has repeatedly directed His people to the scriptures as the measuring rod against which all other claims are to be tested. Doctrine and Covenants 42:56–60 instructs that the scriptures are to be taught to all, that they contain the law, and that those who receive them are to walk according to the light they contain. The process by which revelations become binding upon the Church, presentation, common consent, and formal addition to the standard works, exists precisely to protect the Saints from elevating incomplete, private, or reconstructed material to the level of canon.

Joseph Smith himself treated the scriptures with this priority. His Inspired Version of the Bible stands as an extended demonstration that the written word, carefully revised under inspiration, takes precedence over traditional renderings or later interpretive expansions. When secondary notes of a sermon appear to introduce or emphasize ideas not clearly present in, or seemingly in tension with, the repeated language of the standard works, the scriptures govern. Personal revelations, however sincere (including Snow’s couplet), private affirmations, or reconstructed public discourses remain subordinate. They may illuminate, illustrate, or encourage, but they do not override.

Living prophets interpret, apply, and expand upon the canon under the direction of the Holy Ghost, yet they do not set it aside. The consistent pattern of modern prophetic teaching has been to return the Saints to the clear, repeated witness of the standard works concerning the eternal and unchangeable nature of God the Father. When reconstructed sources or traditional couplets appear to press beyond that witness, the proper response is not to force harmony by speculative elaboration, but to allow the canon its rightful place as the final word. This discipline protects the purity of doctrine, honors the process the Lord has established for binding revelation, and keeps the foundation of faith upon the Rock of the revealed word rather than upon the shifting ground of secondary attribution.

The hunger for new revelation is a real and recurring human tendency. When it is not disciplined by the measuring rod of the standard works and the order the Lord has established, it leads people to attach themselves to incomplete claims and, in too many cases, to be led astray. The safer and more mature course is to rest upon the clear scriptural witness of God’s eternal nature and to hold secondary reconstructions with the same discerning care we properly apply to any ancient or modern attribution that lacks the original speaker’s review. In that path, knowledge is received in the Lord’s own time and manner, and the foundation remains secure upon the Rock of the revealed word.