Trying to understand Mormonism/Christianity by one or two phrases just can't be done anymore than understanding the Trinity by reading a single line out of a book.
*Mormon's reject the idea of something from nothing, it just does not happen and the Bible does not teach it.
1,The word create in Gen 1 is bara' and it means 'to make fat'; God made fat the earth. What that means is the rock we call earth was already here and it had water on it. What it lacked was light to make the naturally occurring chemical reactions need to make life. And God said 'let there be light'. He opened up the system and added what was needed to start the chain reaction.
2, The word 'things' found in John 1 does not appear in the original Greek, it's one of those added things we object to. You are suppose to read the whole passage to understand what Jesus created.
3 All were made by him; and without him was not any made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Jesus/Yahweh is the God who created the physical body of Adam from the dust of the earth, that does not mean he made the dust from nothing.
3, There are examples of the mortal Jesus creating things and every time he uses matter which is already there. He multiplies the bread and fishes and he turns water into wine. Talking to the Jews he says "...for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" he didn't claim God could create something from nothing.
We see God our Heavenly Father more as a master physicist than a magician. He uses the materials of the universe to create. He also has the power to command the elements, Jesus commanded the waves to be still and they obeyed him. And please note, Jesus' mortal body did not in anyway inhibit his ability to act as God. We believe the body is the tabernacle of God, it does in fact enhance his power. Jesus said 'on the third day I shall be perfected', his resurrection put him in a total state of perfection.
* Space what is it but room for God to create in, what is time but a sequence of events. There is a hymn we Mormons almost consider scripture called
If you could hie to Kolob, there is this concept in it.
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 also in Mormonism the idea of a spirit world which lies just out of our eyesight, beyond the veil. How this fits into space and time we don't fully understand. We believe God can see all time, all is before him. Peter wrote "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day". Joseph Smith taught that one thousand of our years is one day to God. God seems to be able to manipulate time yet he lives within it.
There is an argument which contemplates how God knows all. Does he have a crystal ball which shows him what is to be or does he stand on a pinnacle looking down as happen.
OR is it that He plans and carries out. We understand that God plans and causes things to happen that is why he knows the end from the beginning but at the same time we have agency. The apostle Neal Maxwell said 'God knows the end from the beginning and all the possibilities in between'. When we come to a fork in the road God knows what lies at the end of both but he does not shove us down one path or the other. He knows what lies at the end because he knows the law of consequence, as a man sows so shell he reap.
You have to understand these men who first joined the church were raised on the Trinity, everything was new to them as it is to you.
According to Elder Snow he was sitting in a class discussing the gospel when he received a personal revelation.
“While attentively listening to his explanation, the Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon me—the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw as clear as the sun at noonday, with wonder and astonishment, the pathway of God and man. I formed the following couplet which expresses the revelation, ....
“As man now is, God once was:”
“As God now is, man may be.”
I felt this to be a sacred communication, which I related to no one except my sister Eliza...",
Sometime later Joseph expanded on our understanding and confirming Lorenzo's Revelation.
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! … 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 as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth,
the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
We believe Jesus was the spirit Yahweh, he left the presence of God the Father to become the mortal man Jesus. He lived here on this earth being God with all that means yet mortal at the same time. He died and was resurrected to sit on the right hand of his God and Father. Joseph Smith is teaching that Jesus fallowed in his Father's footsteps. That on a planet somewhere in the universe God the Father did exactly the same thing. He was born on an earth of a mortal mother yet retained the power of God. He too paid for the sins of his earth, he was crucified and resurrected. He too sat down at the right hand of his Father. Biblically he based this on John 5 where the Jews accuse him of making himself equal to God because he called God his Father but he says no, no
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.
For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.... For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;.."
