In the temple this morning I realized a possible mechanism for explaining the gap between the scientific age of the earth including discoveries of ancient humanity and the scriptural account of mankind which only stretches back a few thousand years.
It is conceivable that God could reuse the same terrestrial sphere for multiple cohorts of children. Each cohort could be placed independently and have independent (although structurally similar) histories of development and eternal reclamation. One family or cohort could be sent to the planet and live through their path of progression before they are removed, then the planet can be reset before another cohort is placed upon the earth. Scientifically we would see generic similarities but also generic distinctions which we might assume were due to evolution rather than separate starts.
This would seem to clash with the doctrine that this earth will be raised to become the celestial kingdom after the end of mankind but I’m confident that would be resolvable through more complete understanding.
Tonight we had a fun/crazy experience. We’ve had high winds for much of the day and late in the evening after going outside Ezra came in saying a tree had fallen. I thought he meant one of ours but it turned out to be one of Nancy Roylance’s aspens and it has landed in her mailbox and was hanging halfway across the street in the path of vehicles. I looked it over and talked to Nancy and then contacted Chris Hill (the Elder’s Quorum president) and within 20 minutes we had eight men (including me) coming to help out along with my younger kids hanging around and offering some help. Within half an hour of the first chainsaws on scene we had the tree off the road and stacked in pieces at the end of Nancy’s driveway.
The kids were very excited about the experience. Noah declared that this is what they should have done during FSY (which he returned from this morning).
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