From the book ‘The Essential Nibley’, Dr. Hugh Nibley wrote:
The official definition of creation accepted by conventional Christianity and Judaism and by their scientific opponents alike requires a creation that . . . must be (1) instantaneous and (2) simultaneous—everything was created, and that in a single flash. (AZ, 122)
The Latter-day Saints are the only Bible oriented-people who have always been taught that things were happening long, long before Adam appeared on the scene. They have never appreciated just how revolutionary that idea is. . . .
Then {this earth} is water-covered beneath a dense envelope of cloud—“darkness reigned upon the face of the deep.” But things were already being prepared for what was to follow, for “the Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters.” (Abraham 4:2) Dictionaries define brooding as “to sit or incubate (eggs) for the purpose of hatching.” . . . Something was to come out of the water, incubating, waiting—a long, long time. . . . The creation process as described in the Pearl of Great Price is open ended and ongoing. (OTRS, 49,68-69)
{The creators} worked through agents: “The Gods ordered, saying: Let [such and such happen] . . . ; and it was so even as they ordered” (Abraham 4:9,11)
What they ordered was not the complete product, but the process to bring it about, providing a scheme under which life might expand; “Let us prepare the earth to bring forth grass” (Abraham 4:11); italics added) not “Let us create grass.”
Let us prepare the waters to bring forth abundantly. . . . And the Gods prepared the waters that they might bring forth great whales, and every living creature that moveth” (Abraham 4:20). Note the future tense: the waters are so treated that they will have the capacity. The Gods did not make whales on the spot but arranged it so that in time they might appear. They created the potential. . . . “And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed” (Abraham 4:18″. . . .
The important word “until” tells us. . . that they took all the time that was necessary, no matter how long it might have been, measuring the period in terms not of a terminal date but in terms of the requirement of the task. (OYRS,70, 74). . . . From ‘The Essential Nibley’. 12-13
