Who Atoned For Beings Prior to Adam’s Fall?

Question

Dear Gramps,

In his Doctrines of Salvation, President Joseph Fielding Smith makes it pretty clear that the ONLY way for death to enter the world is through a broken law—transgression:  “Is it true that millions of years before Adam came into this world death was here? If so, I want to know who brought it. Who was the transgressor? And who atoned for the beings who died before Adam’s fall?” Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.1, p.116 – p.117.  Given this position, is there any way to avoid the conclusion that the dinosaurs lived after Adam fell?

Robert

Answer

Dear Robert,

Your question contains several implications which you undoubtedly believe to be true. The question you ask is something like the well-known, “When did you stop beating your wife?” Implicit in that question is the assumption that person being asked had been beating his wife.

Implicit in your question is the concept that Adam was not the first person living on the earth, and so there must have been a pre-Adamic Savior for the pre-Adamic beings living on the earth.

Then you ask the apparently rhetorical question “was death on the earth millions of years before the advent of Adam?” That presupposes the proposition that life was present on the earth millions of years before the advent of Adam.

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