Many Christians have adopted the Boethian view of a timeless God and then read all scripture to confirm that belief. Many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have unwittingly adopted this timeless philosophy when they read scripture. Joseph Smith has a quote about God’s eternal ’now’ that seems to be a prime example of reading with Boethian glasses. This post pulls together references to many other posts to provide my most detailed explanation of latter-day scriptures’ view on God and time to provide a time-based view of the eternal ’now'.

The misquoted quotes

I have written multiple posts on this subject, and I am at risk of sounding like a broken record. I have over 30 posts with the tag time. However, this timelessness topic seems to be an underlying assumption in almost every conversation I have on God being the Most Moved Mover. When I say, ‘The future of agents with libertarian freedom is partly unknown to God’ then one of the following quotes to support a timeless God comes in response;

• God knows ’the end from the beginning’ (my response)
• The past, present, and future are before the Lord ( my response)
• He knows the end from the beginning (my response)
• Joseph said God lives in the eternal ’now’ (one response)
• The Lord knows all things which are to come (my response)
• But God knows the exact time of the second coming (my response)
• God showed Nephi and Enoch the future (my response)
• God revealed Joseph Smith’s name to Nephi (my response)

The explicit latter-day scripture

Boethius and Aristotle could create fanciful ideas of a timeless God that was persuasive because the Bible is not very explicit about God living in time.¹ However, latter-day scripture is explicit. I have written two posts about these three verses which directly state that God lives in time (Is there time in the Celestial Kingdom (Abraham Figure 1)?, It’s about time (Abraham 3 and D&C 130)).

D&C 130:5-6 In answer to the question—Is not the reckoning of God’s time, angel’s time, prophet’s time, and man’s time, according to the planet on which they reside? I answer, Yes.

Abraham 3:3-4 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest. And the Lord said unto me, by the Urim and Thummim, that Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of the Lord’s time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.

Abraham Fig. 1 Kolob, signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God. First in government, the last pertaining to the measurement of time. The measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit. One day in Kolob is equal to a thousand years according to the measurement of this earth, which is called by the Egyptians Jah-oh-eh.

What about one eternal ’now’?

I believe that the Lord does the future through his supreme faith and as the most moved mover. The future is partially open to all agents that have faith. We are not planets or bullets that can have our lives defined by one equation. We have authentic freedom to choose our path in the future. God has this same freedom.

What is beautiful about God is that he did the past as well. He has lived as the most moved mover in all time. He can imagine and plan for any future contingency and can remember the expanse of experience to the utmost past. I believe that Joseph Smith was praising God’s ability to be eternally in time in the following reference.

The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence, or ever ’the morning stars sang together’ for joy; the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal ’now;’ He knew of the fall of Adam, the iniquities of the antediluvians, of the depth of iniquity that would be connected with the human family, their weakness and strength, their power and glory, apostasies, their crimes, their righteousness and iniquity; He comprehended the fall of man, and his redemption; He knew the plan of salvation and pointed it out; He was acquainted with the situation of all nations and with their destiny; He ordered all things according to the council of His own will; He knows the situation of both the living and the dead, and has made ample provision for their redemption, according to their several circumstances, and the laws of the kingdom of God, whether in this world, or in the world to come (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 220; History of the Church, 4:597).

God is intimately involved in relationships with all of His children in every epoch (or time), as Alma describes. The following diagram is how I depict Joseph’s quote.

Relationships in all time

Because our time is perceptually bound up with mortality, we can’t have authentic relationships with those that came before or come after our mortal probation. We can read about our ancestors and partially connect with them, but we don’t get authentic relationships with them. We can imagine our great, great, great-grandchildren, and even write a message to them, but the relationship is not as genuine as our lived relationships in our ’now’. Living in time as mortals gives us a different experience with the past, present, and future. We can get close to a relationship with the knowable past and the imaginable future.

We need immortality for all possible relationships to be in the ’now’. God’s eternal immortality allows him to have complete relationships from the infinite past through our joint ’now’ into the far distant future. He lives and loves with every one of His creations in our ’nows’. His perfected memory provides full detail of all history’s relationships. His perfected love allows him to create new memories in time, and his perfected power and wisdom enables him to imagine the potential associations of His future in full detail.

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