An early Latter-day Saint who was personally acquainted with Joseph
Smith, recounted the following, showing that he and other early LDS did not
believe God existed in an “eternal now” but instead, existed in some form of “divine
temporality”:
Edward Stevenson
(1820–97), an early Church member, pioneer, and member of the First Council of
the Seventy, wrote the following in his autobiography in the context of a
sermon by Joseph Smith about Adam and his priesthood. Adam “was within 6 month
of 1000 years old, which is one day with the Lord’s time thus fulfilling the
Lords decree in the day thou eatest of the fruit of that tree thou shalt
shurely die and he did 6 months before the day was out ( Edward Stevenson, The Life and History of Elder Edward
Stevenson, 155, photocopy, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee
Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; original manuscript in Church
Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City,
Utah; original spelling and punctuation retained). (Kent P. Jackson and Charles
Swift, "The Ages of the Patriarchs in the Joseph Smith
Translation," in Kent P. Jackson and Andrew C. Skinner, eds. A Witness for the Restoration: Essays in
Honor of Robert J. Matthews [Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham
Young University, 2007], 1-11)
