Concerning Heavenly Father…has He always been God, or did he become one by going though “tests” like we are to become Gods?

Dear Gramps,
Concerning Heavenly Father…has He always been God, or did he become one by going though “tests” like we are to become Gods? My Dad says he has always been and has no end or beginning. I am having a really hard time believing that. I believe he was once mortal and earned his Godhood. Please tell me your thoughts
Jessa

Dear Jessa,
The most frequent name used for God in the scriptures is Father. God is the father of the spirits of all mankind. Thus we are all brothers and sisters, children of the same Father in Heaven. But could there ever be a father without a mother? So there is no doubt that we also have a Mother in Heaven. My impression as to why our Mother in Heaven is never mentioned in the scriptures and is a concept unheard of in the sectarian world is that she is so sacred and so honored and loved by our Father that He would never permit her name to be taken in such blasphemy by the foul, wicked men who so grossly profane the name of our Father in Heaven. Better she be unknown than be subjected to such unspeakable abuse!
But the saints know that we have a Mother in Heaven as well as a Father. Otherwise there could be no existence. In fact She is lauded and praised in one of the hymns of the Mormon Church, entitled “Oh, My Father,”the second verse of which sings to the doctrine of a Mother in heaven—

In the heavens are parents single? No; the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.

The next question is, was there ever a father who was not first a son? The pattern of the eternities is followed in mortality.

The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us (D&C 130:22).

So the question is asked, where did this God, the Father, with a body of flesh and bones, come from? To think that He manufactured Himself, like some magical auto mechanic would put a car together out of nothing, is ludicrous. The only possible answer that would appeal to any rational being would be that if He had children, then He was also once a child. If God is our Father, then of necessity we must have a Grandfather. To think otherwise is again ludicrous. There is another Mormon hymn, by W.W. Phelps, that speaks to this very subject—

“If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye,

And then continue onward with that same speed to fly,

D’ye think that you could ever, through all eternity,

Find out the generation where Gods began to be?

“Or see the grand beginning, where space did not extend?

Or view the last creation, where Gods and matter end?

Methinks the Spirit whispers, No man has found ‘pure space,’

Nor seen the outside curtains, where nothing has a place.

The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression have one eternal round.

There is no end to matter; there is no end to space

There is no end to spirit; there is no end to race.”

The generation of the Gods continues without end. In this phase of our existence, we are given knowledge of our Father in Heaven only, and that is quite enough for us, as mortals, to absorb. But to invent vain figures to worship that conform to the limitations of our poor mortal perspective is akin to idol worship. We understand God as he is revealed from the heavens to us by the Holy Spirit, one of whose functions is to testify of the Father and of the Son. So only by the Spirit can we know God and His First-born in the spirit world, and only begotten in the flesh, our own Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world and the Savior of mankind.
Gramps