Introduction

During the early ’90s (I think), my church ran some commercials under the catchphrase, ‘Family, it’s about time.’ One of them is below. I always thought the ads had a great play on the wording. The phrase could imply that it is about time that we focus on the family or that you can’t be family without investing time. It is from those commercials that I build the premise and title of this post. We can’t ignore Abraham 3 and D&C 130 in our understanding of God, time, and relationship.

Those that have followed my post will know that I have referenced D&C 130 multiple times¹. In this post, I connect Abraham 3 and spend more time on versus 7-11 of D&C 130.

The question of time

In D&C 130:4, we see the question that Joseph is responding to in verses 5-11.

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?

According to Dennis L. Largey and Larry E. Dahl², the question ‘probably arose from the fact that the year previous, beginning in March 1842, Joseph Smith started to publish his translation of the Book of Abraham in the Times and Seasons.’ Abrahm 3:3-4 gets very explicit about the time of God. It says,

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.

So Joseph was providing commentary on Abraham to reiterate that God lives within something similar to our planetary (read physical) time that is sequential. So we have two canonized verses that ‘answer, Yes’ to God living within time.

Putting those time verses together with D&C 130:22, where Joseph explicitly states that ‘The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s’ provides us with a radically different view of God from all other Christian denominations. We need to keep all of the previous verses near as we move through the next seven verses of D&C 130 to make sure we don’t create a truth that contradicts their foundational statements of a physical God that lives in time.

Commentary on the location of angels

In D&C 130:6-7, we are provided commentary on angels.

The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth; But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord.

These verses are often used as a timeless proof text on God. However, they are describing angels. We learn the following facts about angels,

• Angels reside on a planet different than earth
• Angels reside in the presence of God on a globe that is like a sea of glass and fire that is a different place than where God resides (see 8-10)
• All things for the Angels’ glory are manifest (past, present, and future)
• Angels are continually before the Lord (But they reside in the presence of God, and are continually before the Lord)

According to the Bible Dictionary on Angels there are embodied and spirit angels. The spirit angels can be pre-existent angel or spirit world angels. The embodied angels are resurrected beings. We know that the ‘angels’ that live in the spirit world reside on this earth³, so the angels referenced above are either pre-existent or embodied angels. If they are pre-existent angels, then the phrase ‘all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future’ can be shortened to the ‘plan of salvation was shown them’. Those glorious moments of the fall, the atonement, the resurrection, the second coming, and the earth’s celestialization were explained to them. They did not need to see each moment that you and I brushed our teeth.

Commentary on the location of God and exalted beings

Then in verses 8 and 9, we learn that this earth will become a residence of God when it is transformed into a Urim and Thummim. Some attributes of such a planet are described, and the phrase ‘all things’ is used in that description.

The place where God resides is a great Urim and Thummim. This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it; and this earth will be Christ’s.

Then we get to verses 10 & 11 where we are guided in the knowledge that exalted beings will have.

Then the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known; And a white stone is given to each of those who come into the celestial kingdom, whereon is a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it. The new name is the key word.

The full context of the above verses show that a timeless statement does not need to be inferred with the use of ‘all things.’ One possible understanding is that we have full knowledge of all the laws, privileges, and powers of the lesser kingdoms so that no being from those kingdoms could have an advantage over us. The latter verses talk about ’things’ in a higher realm (note that it doesn’t say ‘all things’), which seems to reiterate that the ’things’ are laws and powers not timeless acts of humanity.

Then, what is different about man’s time?

According to Joseph Smith, God lives in time. However, His experience with time is different than ours. We get some help understanding how our time is different from Lehi’s words to his son Jacob in 2 Nephi 2:21.

And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men.

Maybe if Lehi lived in 2020, he would say something about our life being a slofie.

Our time experience is confounded with probation, sin, and repentance while His is not. I believe that it is this confusing of concepts that makes people uncomfortable placing God in time. However, living in time and living in sin are not synonymous. God experiences time differently than us, but he does experience it. He must experience it for us to experience Him. I enjoyed this quote from R. L. Nelson of BYU⁴ that eloquently makes this point.

To assume that God is absolute, i.e., transcends all limitation, what is it but putting an eternal barrier between him and man? If he has no limitation, then he is inconceivable, and therefore cannot enter into the life of man. For how can man be influenced by that of which he can form no conception? To pretend that a formulary of doctrine and ritual comes from a Being whom you have just denied the power to enter into man’s conception is surely not more moral than to assume that He is pure negation.

From such a consideration, it becomes evident that man can have no God save as he is comprehensible; which means, in other words, that God must be in the same universe of time and space with man. Indeed, he is God little or much to man in proportion as he presents aspects that can be reflected in the soul of man.

I think Adam Miller is building on R.L Nelson in `An Early Resurrection; Life in Christ before you Die’. The entire book helps us understand how to live in time with Christ as Christ lives in time with us. Notice how Adam takes the time to explain Christ’s comprehensibility and how time is necessary for that comprehensibility.

If Christ can weep [Moses 7:28], then time must matter to him. To be vulnerable to loss, he must, in some way, be vulnerable to time. Rather than being untouched by time, it seems to me that Christ is divine because he has a particular way of handling time. He handles time with care. … If we confess that God is all-powerful, then traditional ideas about his omnipotence don’t go far enough. They limit that power. They allow for God to have only one kind of power, the power to act. But they deny him what Enoch’s vision reveals: that God also possesses the power to be acted upon.

…

In Christ, … I part with the past differently, I respond to the present differently. I look to the future differently. In Christ, I hold time itself in a very different way. … To live a different kind of life in Christ is to live time itself in a different way. Living in Christ, I discover a new way of being in time. In Christ, I repent. The past no longer owns me, the present isn’t held at arm’s length, and the future stops undermining me.

Relationships are built in time

As we ponder Christ and God the Father in time, maybe we can echo the same phrase of the commercial above, ‘Family, isn’t it about time.’ Dieter F. Uchtdorf in his October 2010 message titled, ‘Of Things that Matter Most connects time with love and relationship as well. He says;

In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time. Taking time for each other is the key for harmony at home. We talk with, rather than about, each other. We learn from each other, and we appreciate our differences as well as our commonalities.

It is by relationships in time that He and we can find eternal love in our grandest of familial relationships. ‘God must be in the same universe of time and space with man’ where He can show us how ‘He handles time with care’ so that we can move beyond our perception of time as only probationary to see time as part of eternity.⁵

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