ABRAHAM 3, PEARL OF GREAT PRICE
Carl Sagan, the famous atheistic scientist, stated, “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge (Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011) “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.71).
Well, Carl needed to read Abraham 3.
THE RELATIVITY OF TIME
As Abraham was using the Urim and Thummim to study the stars in the night sky, God spoke to him and taught him a bit about the relativity of time in the cosmos. Abraham noticed that there were some huge stars near God’s throne.
v. 3 “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.” Whether great or small, all the celestial bodies stand in a relationship to each other, an order. The greater ones govern the lesser ones.
v. 6-8 “And the Lord said unto me: Now Abraham, these two facts exist, behold thine eyes see it; it is given unto thee to know the times of reckoning, and the set time, yea, the set time of the earth…and of the [sun]…and of the [moon].” Each planet’s time is different, but is relative to other celestial bodies’ times. They are connected in a system.
God teaches Abraham that the sun’s time is longer than the moon’s, which is longer than the earth’s time. Today’s science bears this out: Earth completes a rotation in about 24 hours, while the Moon takes roughly 27.3 days to rotate once. The moon’s speed is perfectly synchronized with its orbit around Earth due to tidal locking, which is why we always see the same side of the moon. The Sun is spinning faster on its own axis than the Moon is on its axis (Google A.I.). He also teaches him the times of all the stars between earth and Kolob.
v. 12 “And he said unto me: My son, my son (and his hand was stretched out), behold I will show you all these.” Following the same pattern as He used with Moses (Moses 1:4), God impressed upon Abraham how powerful He was; then immediately emphasized that Abraham was His son. What an empowering message!
v. 15 “And the Lord said unto me: Abraham, I show these things unto thee before ye go into Egypt, that ye may declare all these words.” Because of famine, Abraham and his family had to flee to Egypt (Genesis 12). The Egyptians were amazing students of the stars and planets. They knew the earth was round and had accurately calculated its size! Google A.I. tells me, “Ancient Egyptians were meticulous astronomers, using star observations for their 365-day calendar, religious festivals, temple alignment (like pyramids), and predicting the Nile's flood, developing concepts like Decans (star groups for timekeeping) and tracking planets, linking the cosmos to deities like Nut (sky goddess) and Sirius (Sopdet). They created star charts (diagonal star tables) for navigation and the afterlife, mapping constellations and even noting the variability of stars like Algol millennia before Western science.”
God loves seekers! Perhaps He wanted His prophet to give more to the seeking Egyptian scientists. Likely He wanted them to know Him as the Constructor of the cosmos and give up their worship of Nut and Sirius. And maybe He wanted Abraham to be recognized as a source of knowledge, so He could teach them of the one true God. We have little information about his sojourn in Egypt, but we do know about the nature of God and prophets.
v. 16 “If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them; therefore Kolob is the greatest of all the [stars] that thou hast seen, because it is nearest unto me.”
So there is an ascendancy of stars, each with relatively slower time. Kolob is the greatest, its time is the slowest, and it is the closest to God. Why do we need to know whether time slows as you get closer to God? So that we can know that “there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will [or can] do it” (v. 17).
THE RELATIVITY OF INTELLIGENCES
God then teaches Abraham that people are like stars. Their spirits are of different intelligences. They are eternal. And again, one will be more intelligent than another. “I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all” (v. 19). For example, He was so powerful that he could rescue Abraham from a deadly situation (v. 20).
v. 21 “I dwell in the midst of them all…my wisdom excelleth them all, for I rule in the heavens…and in the earth…in all wisdom and prudence over all the intelligences…”
v. 22-23 “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones. And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said, These I will make my rulers…” As the stars relate to and govern each other in a system, so do the spirits.
v. 24-26 “And there stood one among them that was like unto God…” and He had a plan to make an earth and let the spirits become humans and use their agency to grow and learn and gain glory (great knowledge and joy).
v. 27 “And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man [Man is capitalized; it’s one of the names of Christ]: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first.” If we read on into the next chapter, we will see that this question seems to be about who is willing to create the earth. (Remember that Abraham didn’t divide the book into chapters.) No Atonement is mentioned here!
In the corresponding story in Moses’ writings (Moses 4:1-3) we find out “That Satan…came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.”
And God’s Beloved Son offered, “Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.”
Jesus is closest to the Father, just as Kolob is closest to His throne. Jesus “understood the assignment” because He shared the Father’s vision for us. Does Beloved Son mean Favorite Son? Well, maybe, but also godly love is unity with the Father. Jesus was the Son who was filled with Love.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ORBITING
I love how S. Michael Wilcox taught about this great vision of Abraham. I’m paraphrasing him here. To teach us about the stars and their light and their relationship to Kolob and Kolob’s relationship to God is to teach us about ourselves and our intelligence and our relationship to God’s prophets, our leaders, who have greater light, and who orbit Christ, who is a twin star with Heavenly Father. Each time we look at the light of the stars in the heavens, it will be a reminder that we also are beings of light. (Remember light = intelligence.) We have our place, we should stay close to our leaders, who will stay close to Christ. By following the stars of God, our apostles, we will be able to “hie to Kolob” or come unto Christ.
The sun offers clarifying light, the moon offers gentle light, the stars offer guiding light. God sends all these types of light out to His children in the world, literally and metaphorically. That’s why many of our temples have these depicted on their walls, doors, and furnishings.
“Lucifer’s great mistake,” Brother Wilcox taught, “was that he could not orbit” (“The Great Visions of the Pearl of Great Price,” BYU Education Week lecture, August 2015, personal notes).
Images of sun, moon, and stars on doors of Washington, D.C. Temple
SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OF GOD’S SYSTEMS
No one understands the physics of our world and universe. Nor do we understand time. No one has been able to explain gravity. No one really understands how the theory of relativity actually works. Quantum mechanics baffles everyone. (Look up quantum entanglement, just for fun!) Everything Einstein discovered left him with even more questions. There are even experiments that show time seeming to loop or fold where measurements in the present seem to effect the past of an entangled particle! Clearly there is a lot about the cosmos that we don’t know. Yet God found it was important to show Abraham (and us) that time is relative and slows down the closer it gets to Him.
You may have watched or read science fiction where the relativity of time is shown. Someone goes to Mars and ages at a much slower rate because the time is slower, while their friends and family age at the earth rate and will be dead when they return. Time is not the same everywhere and if you travel at the speed of light, it disappears altogether.
Light traveling from the sun to the earth takes 8 minutes according to earth’s time. But the light itself would experience it differently, like the man on Mars only more so. It would arrive on the earth at the exact same time it “left” the sun. It would be in both places at the same time.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE GOSPEL?
God is a Being filled with Light. This makes Him Omnipresent (present everywhere at once). And being Omnipresent makes Him also Omniscient (all-knowing). This also gives us a tiny clue about how the great Atonement may have been wrought.
Surprisingly, the first time that an Atonement is mentioned in the Creation stories in scripture is in Moses 5:6-9, after Adam and Eve have left the Garden of Eden. Adam follows God’s directive to offer animal sacrifices and an angel comes to explain that they are symbolic of “the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.” The angel tells Adam he must act in the name of the Son of God and repent and pray in His name. Then the Holy Ghost fell upon Adam and told him that, “as thou hast fallen thou mayest be redeemed, and all mankind, even as many as will.”
The damage experienced in our “time” on earth by the mistakes of ourselves and others can be repaired by an infinite experience of healing and reunification performed for each one—an Atonement suffered by a Being so full of Light that He could experience extremely slow or even nonexistent time!
Knowing about Jesus’ time and His intelligence in relation to our time and our intelligence (or lack of it) helps us understand His great power and helps us trust in Him and His ability to save.
As C.S. Lewis said, “God is not hurried along in the time stream of this universe…He has infinite time to spend with each one of us…When Christ died for you he died just as much as if you had been the only person in the world” (from his book, Mere Christianity).
