The King Follett Discourse

Originally delivered by Joseph Smith in General Conference 7 April 1844

"You have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you."
- Joseph Smith

Aaron Shafovaloff:
"Today we went to a reenactment of the King Follett Discourse. The King Follett Discourse is really controversial very well known because it teaches that we've got to learn how to become gods ourselves as all the gods did before us. Now it was not a big surprise to us but in the reenactment the actor actually omitted the most important parts of the entire discourse and he did not teach as the sermon taught that we have got to learn to become gods ourselves as all the gods did before us. I talked to a senior missionary to my right sitting down after the discourse was over and I said, 'It's disappointing that they omitted those couple key paragraphs and just went onto other things.' I think they assumed that I was Mormon and another lady next to her said, 'Well, you know, milk before meat. We want the message to not be offensive to other people like non-members who are there.' She knew exactly what section I was talking about and she knew exactly why it was not included. I got to talk to the actor who actually did the reenactment of Joseph Smith and his sermon. I asked him why what were the reasons that those key parts were taken out. He said, 'Well the leadership [whatever that means] had decided that they wanted reenactment of the sermon to be palatable and they didn't want to offend other Christians of other different traditions.' And he said that a lot of outsiders identify that kind of teaching that we can become gods as all the gods did before us as blasphemous. So he said, 'Milk before meat. Line upon line. Precept upon precept.' It was just really interesting to me because you think that a reenactment of the King Follett Discourse, of all things, would talk about us becoming gods did before us. But it's too embarrassing for the Mormon Church. The more I learn about Mormonism I realize that a lot of these things are still Mormon beliefs. They're still part of the oral tradition. The leadership though and the literature, they're not willing to be as explicit and as forthright as Christians are about their doctrine."

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