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Don't know if this the official Church position, but it has been said the Jesus' atonement took care of the salvation needs of all the Universe. Here is a semi-responsible counter position:

Well, from watching PBS (as shown on KBYU none the less!!!) we are told the the universe began 14.5 Billion years ago. The Earth itself is newer than many planets since we have been around 4.5 Billion years. During that ten billion year time lag, many other planets sprung into existence.

Should we base our atonement speculations off of a variation of the geo-centric model, with Earth as the center of everything? The Catholic Church once put astronomers and theoreticians to death for arguing against this model. They have long since let go of it when newer and more accurate understanding became widespread.

Wouldn't the natural order and progression of things point to the older worlds getting on with their business rather than regard our planet as the center of things? Even the Book of Abraham facsimiles talk about Kolob as the starting point and mention the planets Enish-go-on-Dosh and Obliblish as being connected to the fifteen planet Stargate system powered by Kaukobeams. Why would they stall their progression for us to catch up?

A. There is reality (what really happened) and there is our thoughts and wishes of what really happened.

B. God has always existed and always will exist. This means that time is infinite.

C. It would be logical to assume that either the universe is infinite or that there are a very large number of universes. Which is true has no bearing on the discussion.

D. The age of the universe is irrelevant. The age of the material in the planet Earth is irrelevant. Both could have been re-organized millions of times.

E. A known fact (given the basics) is that Father has organized a family and we are part of it.

F. Because He has always existed it would be logical to assume that He has organized many families. In fact, He says that He has.

G. There is no reason to think that the first family waited possibly millions of earth years for this particular family and this particular Savior.

H. The scripture that I can locate easily indicate that Jesus died for our Father's current family. Possibly you can direct me to others.

I. What really happened in the distant past (over 10,000 years ago) is in no way related to our salvation. We live in a 100 or so year period completely isolated from all other time and space.

Your thoughts please.

Good questions. Given that there are at least hundreds of billions of galaxies averaging hundreds of billions of stars apiece, it would be absolutely geocentric and absurd to believe that a once-for-all divine incarnation or atonement happened to occur here. Wouldn't the inhabitants of every planet who had the notions of incarnation and atonement believe it happened on their world (particularly since they would long be unaware that there was any other)? What would be the chances that we would just happen to be the ones for whom this belief was right?

Even if we assume that only one in every 10 million stars would nourish a planet with intelligent life, there would still be about ten trillion such worlds out there. So it would probably be fair to say the unique-incarnation / unique-atonement idea has about a one-in-ten-trillion chance of being right. Anyone want to engage in a wager on those odds?

Plus, as has been mentioned, our universe has been going for some 13 billion years, and this would be rather long for the inhabitants of the earliest worlds to wait for their redemption!

Of course, one could assert that ours is the only inhabited world and that the whole universe that has been going for 13 billion years before our arrival exists solely for us. There wouldn't be anything geocentric about that!

So, no matter you slice it, once-for-all atonement and incarnation ideas belong to the tiny fantasy world of Ptolemaic astronomy, not the post-Copernican universe in which we actually live.

To the extent that traditional Christianity stakes its claim on a unique divine incarnation, it must almost certainly be false.

Don

Where or what is the evidence for these pre-earth inhabitants of other planets/worlds?

I am not aware of any evidence. This topic is purely speculation as far as I know. But "always" seems to me to be a very long time and it is interesting to wonder if families organized many billions of earth years ago waited for our family. A similar question is "How did Heavenly Father become Heavenly Father if there was no Christ for Him?" based on Joseph Smith's statement "As man is God once was...". The scriptures state that Jehova was a god before passing through the mortal experience and I have no problem with that (i.e, there is no "Mormon Dilemma"). Elohim did, however, pass through the mortal experience from what I can tell and He did not have to wait for our family.

Here is an interesting idea:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kolob+theorem&aq=2&oq=Kolob&aqi=g10

Most importantly, this topic has nothing to do with personal salvation. The only important topic is that Christ died for me and for you.

I've heard the notion but I can't say if it's doctrine or not. One way to think about it though is that Christ's atonement is for all peoples on this earth both before and after his advent. So it is not unreasonable to me to think that it could be expanded billions of years in either direction.

bcspace wrote:I've heard the notion but I can't say if it's doctrine or not.

I am distressed. The only one stable point of the world has crashed.

msnobody wrote:Where or what is the evidence for these pre-earth inhabitants of other planets/worlds?

This is like asking what evidence there is that you are not uniquely special in the entire cosmos.

What possible reason--other than species narcissism--would there be to believe that the universe was just sitting there for 12 billion years waiting for inhabitants until we showed up?

If the universe was made just for us, most of this 12 billion years, and virtually all of the other trillions of trillions of stars that have existed in it during that time, were a waste.

What are the odds--that this whole colossal set up was, pointlessly, waiting for us, or that the universe really doesn't revolve this particularly planetary speck--and us?

Don

I've never seen/heard it stated as "all the Universe" Even in Mormon doctrine, this would not make sense. Now a given corner/part of the universe (covering 1000's of earths) that I've seen/heard

Big question here. Does his atonement apply to the folk living on the moon, dressing like Quakers and standing about 6 feet tall?