The following are excerpts from:
W. W. Phelps, Deseret Almanac,
for the Year of Our Lord, 1860 (Salt Lake City: J. McKnight, 1860)
TIME.
There
is a great mystery about time as recorded in the Bible. Authors differ as to
what length of time this world has occupied since it came into being. Add 4004
to 186- and we have 5864 years.
Again,
some authors allow, before the birth of the Savior, 5509 years, which added to
1860, give 7369 years since the beginning.
The
Book of Abraham as translated by Joseph Smith, gives seven thousand years for
the creation by the Gods; one day of the Lord being a thousand years of man’s
time, or a day in Kolob. This important revelation of 7000 years at first,
shows 5960 years since the transgression of Adam and eve; and 40 years to the
next “day of rest,” if the year 1900 commences the return of the “ten tribes,”
and the first resurrection; or 13000 years since the Gods said, “let there be
light and there was light,” so that the fourteenth thousandth years will be the
second Sabbath since creation.
A
day on the Moon is nearly thirty of our days, or more than “ten thousand” of
earth’s time. Verily, verily,
“Man knows but little,
Nor knows that little right.” (p. 22)
“THE TREASURES HID IN THE SAND.”
Deut. xxxiii: 19.
Five
hundred years of pleasure
Graced Noah’s precious life,
Before he chose a wife,
To strengthen mortal greatness--
In weal or woe:
And then the pure Na-amah,
Of Enoch’s holy race.
Was wed—(a sacred brace)
For she, (five hundred eighty)
Sweet girl, you know,--
Must mother every kindred
What was to fill the earth
With law, and love, and wroth,
With trade, and trash, and money,
Till time should cease:
In them were chits of nations
To range on land or sea,--
The king of kings to be:
The mighty in their glory
For war or peace.
Yea, Shem to hold the Priesthood,
The royal diadem--
The everlasting stem
Of truth and life eternal,
In worlds to be;
And Japheth, too, for pleasure,
For pomp, and pride, and pain,
And greatness, in his train;
Must sack the globe for riches--
A Gentile he.
And so at first was being
A round of joy and wealth,
Long life and ruddy health,
Wo win, and wed, and revel,
And never lack:
And then, alas! Ham’s Canaan,
So dark—must dig (ah me!)
The ”servant’s servant,” be
The under stock of ages--
Still cursed, and black.
An Ark was made by pattern
To save the seed of all,
That was, before the fall,
Brought down from Kolob,
When growth began
And now the great dilemma--
The waters were let in
To cure mankind of sin,
Their wickedness was ended;--
And where was man!
For his career of folly,
The righteous yet for cause,
Will heir the whole that was,
The age o gold and silver,
And human will:
That mighty flood of waters,
Prevailed o’er all the land,
“And treasures hid in sand,”
And gems that were “so precious,”
Are hidden still. (pp. 28-29; it is interesting that this is at least implicit
support for Shem being identified with Melchizedek, a common [though errant,
IMO] belief in some circles)