I am currently reading Dellas Lee’s 1,700
page book on Christ. While a lot of the book is poorly researched and argued,
there are some gems here and there (to be expected in a tome of that size). In
the following, Lee seems to reject God existing in an “eternal now” and that
God has "discursive knowledge" based on God's observation of people
and events (here, in the pre-existence):
Why was God confident Jehovah would succeed?
The Father had observed
his Firstborn honor the holy order of God over eons of time, and thus
knew of his unwavering capacity to honor covenants with exactness, and
this with “a glad heart and a cheerful countenance.” (D&C 59:15; Prov
8:30.) From the beginning, God had anticipated the need for a
Redeemer who could satisfy the demands of justice through an infinite atonement,
and in his omniscience he knew that his Firstborn would qualify.
President Lorenzo
Snow had pondered this question and made the following observation: “Thousands
of years before He came upon earth, the Father had watched His course and knew
that He could depend upon Him when the salvation of worlds should be at stake;
and He was not disappointed” (Lorenzo Snow, 24 August 1899, Millennial
Star, 61:532). Thus, eons back, upon Jehovah’s covenanting, “Father, why
will be done, and the glory be thine forever,” the Savior had given his word of
honor, which he would not break, because Gods do not break their covenants.
Henceforth the Father was able to describe him as, and thus he became, “the
Lamb . . . slain from the foundation of the world.” (Moses 7:47; 1 Pet 1:20;
Rev 13:8.) And so of the Savior, he was free to choose the path he would follow
at any moment in the many events leading up to and during his final
tribulation. His infinite suffering would cause himself, “even God, the
greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to
suffer both body and spirit—and would that [he] might not drink of the bitter
cup, and shrink—” Though he foresaw the depths of pain, knowing that worlds
without number depended upon him, or all was lost, he did not waver, he did not
shrink. Thus, the Great Jehovah, our Beloved Savior, midst unimaginable agony, “partook
and finished [his] preparations unto the children of men” (D&C 19:18). (Dellas
W. Lee, The Infinite Christ: The God of Israel and the God of the Whole
Earth [Lubbock, Tex.: Wordsworth Books, 2020], 50-51, emphasis added)
