Commenting on W.W. Phelps’ love for the esoteric doctrines contained in the Book of Abraham, Bruce Van Orden, in his excellent biography of Phelps, wrote:
Phelps forever kept close to his heart the doctrines he learned and cherished while he wrote down new truths Joseph Smith received from the Book of Abraham. No doubt Smith, Cowdery, and Phelps often reflected in conversation about these concepts. Perhaps they knew of additional insights that came through revelation but did not appear in published versions of the Book of Abraham. On the other hand, in his enthusiasm for new doctrine, Phelps may have come up with speculative doctrine on his own—ideas that may have been related to Joseph Smith’s revelations but did not actually originate with him. An example may be Phelps’s somewhat garbled statement in the Times and Seasons several months after the Prophet’s assassination: “Jesus Christ, whose goings forth, as the prophets said, have been from old, from eternity: and that eternity, agreeably to the records found in the catacombs of Egypt, has been going on in this system, (not this world) almost two thousand five hundred and fifty five millions of years . . . It almost tempts the flesh to fly to God, or muster faith like Enoch to be translated and see and how as we are seen and known! (“The Anwer,” T&S 5, no 1 [January 1, 1845]: 758) The 2,555,000,000 years that Phelps seems to be alluding to can be arrived at by multiplying 1,000 (referring to the number of years for Kolob to rotate on its axis) by 7 (referring to seven separate time periods for the earth’s creation) by 365 (the number of days in an earth year). The Creation and Kolob are concepts strongly discussed in present-day Abraham chapters 3-5. Kolob is the planet nearest to the throne of God. The number of years mentioned in this article appears to be Phelpsian doctrine, based on Phelps’s own musings, and not learned from Joseph Smith. (Bruce A. Van Orden, We’ll Sing and Shout: The Life and Times of W.W. Phelps [Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University and Deseret Book. 2018], 198-99)
Elsewhere Van Orden (Ibid., 477) presented Phelps’ translation of Dan 4:22 that appeared in “Nebuchadnezzar Still in Pasture” and published in the Deseret Almanac (1861), pp. 23-24:
They will drive thee from men, and thou must dwell with the beasts of the field: and thou shalt graze grass as an ox; and the rain of heaven shall fall upon thee, till two thousand, five hundred and twenty years shall have passed over thee, until thou hast learned that the Most High rules among the kingdoms of men, which are set up to be true.
Van Orden, in a footnote attached to “two thousand, five hundred and twenty years” wrote:
Phelps noted at the end of his translation, “Joseph Smith, the Prophet, said that the day of an angel was one year, a week, seven years, a month thirty years: a time, three hundred and sixty years . . . A day with the Lord God in Kolob is one thousand years.” (Ibid., 489 n. 57)
I present this information here, not to defend Phelps’ understanding of the age of the universe or use of the Book of Abraham to understand God’s time and its exact relationship to our measuring of time, etc, but to show that Phelps, a close friend and associate of Joseph Smith, did not believe that God existed in an “eternal now” or was “timeless”—instead, he existed in what I sometimes call “super time”—that is, God has a moment by moment existence and experience with time, but his experience and relationship to time is different than ours.
I like how one Roman Catholic apologist put it:
[Just] as Christ does, the Father and the Holy Spirit exist moment by moment, and in that sense there is no differentiation in the time-existence within the persons of the Godhead. There is no significance to postulating that God is an “Eternal Now,” or that there is “no time in eternity.” All that we can conclude is that in eternity time is not calibrated in the same way it is on earth. In the existence of each eternal being, none of them can go back to the previous moment or ahead to the next moment while in the present moment. Whether we say God sees all things in their immediacy, or that all things are known to Him simultaneously, does not negate that the Father, Son or Holy Spirit cannot exist in and/or go back to the past or ahead to the future, even though They thoroughly know the past and the future. They, as we, exist moment by moment, and thus God relates to us on earth and in heaven, moment by moment. (Robert A. Sungenis, Not by Bread Alone: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for the Eucharistic Sacrifice [2d ed.; Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2009], 372)
