No one who is converted to the teachings of Jesus will deny the importance of the Father and the knowledge of God. As Jesus himself expressed it:

And this is life eternal, That they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3)

To be certain, it is clear from Jesus' own sayings that no man can obtain Eternal Life without the knowledge of God. And yet, notwithstanding this, according to Jesus, the knowledge and identity of God the Father was a well kept secret which only he could reveal. Again, as Jesus expressed himself:

no man knoweth . . . who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom The Son will reveal Him. (Luke 10:22; Matt 11:27).

The identity of God the Father remained a well kept secret throughout the ministry of Jesus, and continued as such with his worthy disciples, who ultimately took it with them to the grave. Thus the secret doctrine of the Father was taken from the Earth and lost to the world for nearly 2000 years — until the nineteenth century, when, through "the restoration of all things", it was again revealed from Heaven to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Commencing early in the Nauvoo period, the Prophet began to lay the essential foundation, in order to prepare the minds of the Saints for the revelation of the whole doctrine of God. These efforts culminated at the General Conference of the Church, which was held less than three months before the Prophet's death, on April 7th, 1844, when he delivered his now famous "King Follett Sermon". "What kind of a being was God in the beginning, before the world was", the Prophet asked. And then in responding to his own question, he stated:

I will tell you, [so] open your ears and eyes and hear it all ye ends of the Earth, and I am going to prove it to you with the Bible. . . .

First [of all], God Himself, who sits enthroned in yonder Heavens is a man like unto one of yourselves. That is the great secret. If the veil was srent today and the Great God who holds this world in its sphere or its orbit and {who} upholds the planets {and} all things by His power — if you were to see Him today, you would see Him in all the person [and] very image like a man, in fashion and in form — [just] like yourselves . . . . . .

It is the First Principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, {and} to know that we may converse with Him [just the] same as one man {converses} with another — and that He once was a man like us — {Yea that} God Himself, the Father of us all, was once as one of us, and dwelt on an earth like us. The Father once [lived] on a planet with [a body of] flesh and blood, [the] same as Jesus himself did, [when he came on Earth] in the flesh — and I will show it from the Bible. (The King Follett Discourse Given By The Prophet Joseph Smith — A New Amalgamation and Doctrinal Commentary, by Fred C. Collier, to be published in: Doctrine of the Priesthood Vol 11: <April 1994> No 4)

Due to an untimely death, the Prophet never lived to proclaim the identity of God — he had revealed to the world that God was an exalted man with a body of flesh and bone, and that He was indeed our Father, but he never lived to proclaim who that Father was. Thus the knowledge of God remained a secret until the administration of President Young, who had received private instruction from the Prophet.

It was not until April 9th, 1852, at the General Priesthood Conference of the Church, that President Young was finally lead to reveal to the world the identity of God the Father: "One thing has remained a mystery in this kingdom up to this day", he said:

It is in regard to the character of the well beloved Son of God, upon which subject the Elders of Israel have conflicting views. Our God and Father in heaven, is a being of tabernacle, or, in other words, He has a body, with parts the same as you and I have . . . . His son Jesus Christ has become a personage of tabernacle, and has a body like his father. . . . The question has been, and is often, asked, who it was that begat the Son of the Virgin Mary. The infidel world have concluded that if what the Apostles wrote about his father and mother be true, and the present marriage discipline acknowledged by Christendom be correct, then Christians must believe that God is the father of an illegitimate son, in the person of Jesus Christ! The infidel fraternity teach that to their disciples. I will tell you how it is. . . . .