Friday, April 3, 2020

Edward Stevenson (1820-1897) vs. God being in an "Eternal Now"


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)‎