Close Topic Options

One Eternal Round?

What does "one eternal round" mean to you? I'm thinking of Joseph Smith's ring analogy. It's hard to imagine. Doesn't something circular however pass over the same spot or is it only refereing to doing the same thing over and over again? How does this really explain no beginning and no end? Who do you think it applies to? Only to exhalted beings? Or is it possible to one day in an eternal round to become mortal again?

Round Eternal One

"One eternal round" is the process where God Begets spirit children, which obtain bodies, which live, and die, and may if they are true and faithful in all things obtain Celestial Resurrected Bodies so that they too may beget spirit children. The process has never had a beginning and thankfully will never have an ending.

One Eternal Round? Studies Doctrine Mormon

Name: Warren

Comments: Yesterday (on the way to the temple, actually -- a two hour drive) I listened to a Stephen Hawking tape (the fellow most famous for his best seller, "A Brief History of Time"). He discussed how the mathematics of Einstein's general theory indicate that both time and space are simultaneously finite and unbounded. How can this be? In the same way that the surface of the Earth is both of finite area (510,072,000 km²), but unbounded (because you can walk forever without falling off... you just end up back where you started).

Hawking went on to explain that the mathematics indicate that both time and space, though boundless, return on themselves in a six-dimensional hypersphere -- which is basically technotalk for "one eternal round."

The doctrinal implications currently escape me, but it is interesting that you posted this just as I was cogitating on how eternal truths find their manifestations in various places. As Einstein allegedly said: "The more I learn about Science, the more I believe in God....

Round Eternal One

Name: Randy

Comments: About thirty years ago, my mind was flooded with the following thoughts:

If God knows everything, then it must be possible to know everything. That means that there are a finite number of things that can be learned. Put into an eternal perspective, this means that things must happen in cycles. I then was shown a picture of a water faucet and the randomness of the water stream. If time was limitless, I was sure at some point that the water would exit in the same pattern and that given enough time and an eternal faucet the same water molecules would exit the faucet in the same pattern. The thought was then placed in my head, that the faucet represented the big bang that the expansion and contraction of the universe was an eternity. And the next big bang was the water coming out of the faucet in a different pattern. After an inconceivable amount of time, the same molecules would come out of the big bang faucet in the same pattern meaning that everything that is happening has happened before and will happen again. Truth is things as they are, as they were, and as they will be. There is nothing new under the sun. The course of the Lord is one eternal round. The universe always brings things back to the same place in cycles. From eternity to eternity is the journey of our intelligences, our bodies, and our souls.

Round Eternal One

One eternal round is an interesting idea. I think that depending who you talk to you will get different ideas. I personally feel that what Joseph meant was as debackers describe. However I do not think that this means anything about God knowing everything. I personally do not think that God knows everything. That is a Protestant belief. God has maximal knowledge meaning he knows more then any being, but that does not mean he knows everything. Simply because God is still progressing thus he is still learning. Remember knowledge is more then intellectual understanding, but knowledge is also obtained through experiencing. This as God experiences more glory is his knowledge through that expereince is growing. Eternal round then has to do with this idea of progression and obtaining knowledge. I am not sure what it means to beget spirit children when we are told that spirit/intelligence is co-eternal with God with no beginning or end. Thus how do you beget what is already there? As the Joseph Smith lesson manual said in the lesson on the plan of salvation that Father found himself in a position over the other intelligences. Thus an eternal round has to do with this idea of progression of those intelligences into another glory, but the details are kind of sketchy in my opinion.

One Eternal Round?

Name: Randy

Comments: Joseph Smith said that if God did not know everything, He would not be God.