Quotempole Logo
Share Your Intelligence! Collect your own quotes, create custom quotelists and more.
What is Quotempole?down

Quote

quote icon The scriptural accounts of the creation deal only with the organization of the earth in preparation for the time when Adam, Eve, and the lower forms of life were placed upon it. Prior to that time, the elements of which the earth was composed had an eternal existence. In a letter dated Christmas day, 1844, William W. Phelps wrote to William Smith, the Prophet’s brother, “that Jesus Christ, whose goings forth, as the prophets said, have been from of old, from eternity; and that eternity, agreeable to the records found in the catacombs of Egypt [i.e., an unpublished portion of the ancient records from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham], has been going on in this system (not this world), almost two thousand five hundred and fifty five millions of years.” The importance of this statement is that it seems to have its basis in something Joseph Smith may have translated but did not publish in the writings of Abraham or the patriarch Joseph. If eternity has been going on in the “system” with which the earth is now associated for 2,555,000,000 years, the materials from which the earth was created at a much more recent date may bear evidence of at least this degree of antiquity. But even then it should be remembered that the elements are eternal in their duration.
Share

Sign In to comment on this quote

Extra Quote Detail

comment
Comments
reference
Reference
tag icon
Tags
url
URL
quoteList icon
Quotelists