Sons and Daughters of a Loving Father in Heaven

Continuing from yesterday, the new Proclamation to the World about the Restoration also says this about the Book of Mormon: “As a companion scripture to the Bible, the Book of Mormon testifies that all human beings are sons and daughters of a loving Father in Heaven.”  Though this truth is not as prominent as we might think in the Book of Mormon because the book’s central focus is on the Savior, it is there.  One place we see its witness that God is our Father is in the Savior’s teachings to the Nephites that parallel the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible.  The Savior repeatedly spoke of “your Father” to the Nephites (and surely to us as well): “Therefore let your light so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven…. I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect…. Do not your alms before men to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father who is in heaven…. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him…. How much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (3 Nephi 12:16,48; 13:1,8; 14:11)  He clearly indicated that God was their Father in heaven.  King Benjamin similarly testified to his people and to all of us: “Ye are eternally indebted to your heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are” (Mosiah 2:34).  Alma bore witness after his change of heart: “All mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters” (Mosiah 27:25).  Though this is speaking of the fact that we can be born again to truly become like God, as opposed to the fact that we are already His spirit children, still it testifies like the proclamation of the equality of all men and women in God’s eyes and love He has for all of us by allowing us to truly become like Him as sons and daughters. 

Other passages speak of the love that God has for His children, confirming this statement of the proclamation.  Of the Father’s love Nephi testified simply, “I know that he loveth his children” and spoke of “the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men” (1 Nephi 11:17,22).  Nephi also wrote of the universality of God’s goodness and love to all: “He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile” (2 Nephi 26:33).  The Savior taught of the Father’s love by teaching, “Your Father who is in heaven” will “give good things to them that ask him” (3 Nephi 14:11).  He furthered showed us of the Father’s concern and care for each of us with this promise: “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you” (3 Nephi 18:20). 

We can also see the love of Jesus as a manifestation of the love of the Father for the Savior taught that He and the Father were one: “Verily I say unto you, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one; and I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one” (3 Nephi 11:27).  So the great love and compassion the Savior showed the Nephites surely teaches us of the love of the Father as well.  Moroni summarized the Savior’s love this way: “And again, I remember that thou hast said that thou hast loved the world, even unto the laying down of thy life for the world, that thou mightest take it again to prepare a place for the children of men” (Ether 12:33).  That surely applies to the Father as well who has done all things to prepare a place for His children as He offered His Son for the salvation of all mankind.