The Seventh Day and the Mystery of the Rib

By Greg Christiansen

About five years ago, I became convinced that the Creation narrative which we find in Genesis and elsewhere was an allegory for the seven thousand year history of man upon the earth, from the Fall of Adam to the end of the Millennium. It started with a suspicion, and I began studying the idea with the belief that there would be nothing to it. Yet soon the allegoric nature of the Creation became so obvious to me that I began to wonder why no one had noticed it before. I even wrote a very boring book on the topic, which was so boring that I removed it from Amazon. Then I happened upon a quotation from Orson Pratt while I was reading the Journal of Discourses, which was both comforting and validating. He said: “The events of this creation, the formation of the earth, the different day’s work, &c., and finally the great day of rest after the six days ended, were all typical, the latter especially, typifying what should take place in regard to the future existence of this creation” (JD 16:312).

So with his support, let me present to you some thoughts about the Creation and some of the symbolism I believe to be in it. I will try to avoid going too deep into it, so that this essay is not as mind numbing as the book on the same topic. Ultimately, when we recognize that the Creation narrative is a prophetic allegory, we will find even greater assurance in the truth that God knows the beginning from the end. He is a divine designer, and the work of creation is not something which began and ended thousands or even billions of years ago. Instead, it is an ongoing work. You and I are in the process of being created.

A Brief Guide

The six thousand years since the Fall have been a time of probation upon the earth, and a day of opposition. One thing that may help in understanding the symbolism of each day is recognizing the presence of opposing symbols. In other words, the contrast of light and darkness, or good versus evil, is something we see symbolically in each day of Creation. Day and night. Waters above and waters beneath. Grass and a tree. Light and darkness. Fish and fowl. Man and beast. The meanings I will attach to these symbols in this essay is determined primarily by how these things have been used symbolically throughout the scriptures. For example, the waters above, or the rain, typically represent the blessings which pour down from heaven and give life to the earth, while the waters beneath often carry the symbolism of death and burial in the grave.

Day One: Let There Be Light 

In day one of the Creation, the Lord said “let there be light,” and then He “divided the light from the darkness.” We see a pattern in this which is consistent throughout the Creation, where God at times makes invitations and at other times gives commands. Sometimes He is saying, let there be this, and let there be that. At other times, He causes things to happen. In other words, the Creation involves both the agency of living things and the agency of God. 

Just as the first day of Creation saw the separation of light and darkness, the separation of light and darkness was the primary theme of the first thousand years of the earth’s history. It began with the Fall, when Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden and it ended just after the City of Enoch was taken into heaven. Adam and Eve’s eyes opened, and then they were separated from the presence of the Lord. Cain beheld the Lord face to face, and yet darkness came upon him and he was separated from the Lord’s people. Then we have the story of Enoch, which the first day of Creation seems to symbolize almost perfectly. The easiest way to see those symbolic parallels might be to put them side by side in a table, so here they are:

Day One of Creation	Enoch’s Day
The Gods hold the powers of Creation.	Enoch is given the power to move mountains and change the course of rivers, and so forth (Moses 7:13).
The powers of Creation are attributed to the words of Christ (Moses 2:5).	Enoch’s power is attributed to the words of Christ (Moses 7:13).
The Gods formed the earth (Abr 4:2).	A new land was formed (Moses 7:14).
Darkness came up upon the face of the deep (Moses 2:2).	The wicked went upon the land that came up from the deep (Moses 7:14).
The Gods comprehended the light (Abr 4:4).	Enoch was made a seer and beheld the spirits that God had created (Moses 6:35-36).
Darkness reigned upon the deep (Abr 4:2).	Wickedness reigned upon the earth (Moses 7:48).
The Spirit of the Gods brooded upon the waters (Abr 4:2).	The God of heaven wept (Moses 7:28).
The Gods separated the light from the darkness, and called the light Day and the darkness Night (Abr 4:4).	The Lord separated the seed of Cain from the sons of Adam, and he called the city of Enoch Zion, and took them into heaven (Moses 7:18-22).

As you can see, nearly every detail of the first day of Creation was paralleled by some key part of Enoch’s story. It therefore might not be a coincidence that when John the Revelator was shown the opening of the first seal (which represented the events of the first thousand years) what he was shown was Enoch upon a white horse (Revelation 6:2), as Enoch’s story of ascension is the defining story of the first day.

Day Two: Let There Be a Firmament in the Midst of the Water

On the second day of Creation, the Gods separated the waters above from the waters beneath, and called the firmament Heaven. The most noteworthy event of the second day of man would be the story of Noah and the Flood, and Noah’s day would have looked just like the second day of Creation except for the presence of the Ark, because in day two of Creation and of man the earth was covered completely by water. The flood was recorded to have been caused because “all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Gen 7:11). In other words, the waters above and the waters beneath were the two contributors.

Just as this day of Creation was primarily about the creation of the firmament, we find the separation of heaven and earth to be a major theme of the second most prominent story of that time period of history, which was the story of the Tower of Babel. The great sin of the people of Babel was their attempt to trespass across the firmament which the Lord had established to divide the heavens above from the earth beneath. The descendants of Noah said, “Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.”

There is evidence that suggests that these people were not completely ignorant in their attempt to trespass the divide between heaven and earth, as some have speculated. It is recorded that Joseph Smith taught that Enoch’s city was still visible to the people below at the time of the Tower. They had an obtainable goal in their sights. This may inform us that it was during the second thousand years of man that the veil was formed between the fallen earth and the terrestrial realm above it, which is likely symbolized in the Creation narrative by the forming of a firmament. Consider the following entry from the Nauvoo journal of George Laub that quotes words spoken by Joseph Smith on April 13th, 1843: “Now I will tell the designs of building the tower of Bable. It was designed to goe to the city of Enoch, for the veil was not yet so thick that it hid it from their Sight. So they concluded to goe to the City of Enoch, for God gave him place above this impure Earth” (England, Eugene, BYU Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, George Laub Nauvoo Journal).

It is also quite possible that the second thousand years saw the separation of the spirit world into two divisions, which may be symbolized by the dividing of the waters above from the waters beneath. The baptism of the earth marked the end of a time of innocence upon the earth, and was the point where lifespans shrank from stretching near a thousand years to being about a hundred and twenty years. Perhaps from that time forward, the spirits of the dead would no longer all mingle together, but a gulf would divide them, just as the firmament would divide the city of Enoch from the earth beneath. The earth’s days of newborn innocence were over.

Day Three: Dry Land, Grass, and a Fruit Tree

In the third day of Creation, the waters were gathered into one place and the Gods caused the land to come up dry. The Gods then prepared the earth to bring forth grass and the fruit tree, which tree would yield seed after its own kind. These things have very solid symbolic connections to the happenings of the earth in the third thousand years. Those were the days of Abraham, and the coming forth of the house of Israel, and of Joseph of Egypt, and of Moses. One of the key symbols of day three was dry land, and interestingly this period of history was highly defined by famine, which is essentially dry land. There were significant famines in Abraham’s day (Abr 1:29; 2:1). In Joseph’s day there was a seven year famine that was “in all lands” (Genesis 41:57). When John the Revelator saw this day, he described the high price of food that would be caused by famine, saying, “a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny,” which was a full days wages and which meant the poor could only afford barley (Rev 6:5-6). In addition to these abundant dry land connections, perhaps the most important one to recognize is that the work of gathering the waters into one place and causing the dry land to appear could easily be considered a description of Moses parting the Red Sea, which was arguably the most famous and miraculous event of the third thousand years.

The creation of a fruit tree in this day is also symbolically relevant. It is worth noting that the tree is described in the singular in the Creation narratives (both in English and Hebrew), even though there would have been many trees created on this day. It likely represented the formation of the house of Israel, as the scriptures have commonly compared Israel to a fruit tree (Mark 11:13; Jacob 5). The Gods even set the condition that the seed of the tree “could only bring forth the same in itself, after his kind,” which mirrored the commandment given to Israel that they were not to intermarry with strangers (foreigners). The symbol of the tree is contrasted by the symbol of grass, which is commonly depicted in scripture as something which has shallow roots and so it burns up easily in the sun. Or as the Savior described, the grass is one day adorned with beautiful flowers, and the next day is cast into the fire (grass was fuel for the poor). It is a metaphor for the wicked, who wear fine clothing and seem to prosper, and yet their lives soon come to an end and they are cast into hell. To the contrary, while grass withers quickly beneath the sun, the tree can survive long if its roots go deep enough. This contrast of a tree and grass is mirrored by the contrast of Jew and Gentile, which also has its origin in the third day.

Lastly, we might look to the prevalence of the term seed in this day of Creation, which term the Abraham Creation narrative mentions an astonishing seven times in just two verses. Considering that it was in the third day of man when God made covenants to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their seed would be as the sands of the seashore, it is hard to overlook the pronounced emphasis of the word seed in the third day of Creation. 

Day Four: Signs in the Heavens

In the fourth day of Creation, the Gods organized the lights in the heavens, to include the sun, moon, and stars, in order to give light, to govern over the day and the night, to divide the light from the darkness, and to be for signs, and for seasons, and so forth. In the earth’s history, the fourth thousand years extended from David, the son of Jesse, to Christ, the Son of David. Just as governing bodies were established in the heavens, the focus of this period of history was an attempt to establish a divine kingdom upon the earth, with a royal king to govern Israel. It began with King Saul and King David, and ended with the birth of the King of the Jews.

While the establishment of a king to rule over Israel may be comparable to the organization of the sun and the moon in the heavens to govern over and give light to the earth, we might also compare the scattering of Israel which took place in this time period to the scattering of the stars across the night sky. Many branches of the house of Israel were planted all over the earth, in an attempt to preserve and spread their light. These were the days of Lehi and his family, of the Mulekites, of the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, and of the lost ten tribes.

It is also worth noting the prevalence of heavenly signs during this period of earth’s history, considering that the sun, moon and stars were organized to be for signs, and not just to govern and give light. Prior to this period of history, there seems to be only one time that a sign had been given involving heavenly bodies, which was when Joshua had caused the sun and moon to stand still (Joshua 10:13). Yet in the fourth thousand years, heavenly signs were suddenly abundant. We find them referenced in the books of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, for example.

Most important of all the signs that were given in this thousand year period were the signs of the birth of Christ. The wise men came and said, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.” This star “went before them,” leading them to the Savior (Matthew 2:2,9). There were similar astronomical signs which took place in America during this same period of time. As Samuel the Lamanite described, “And behold this is not all, there shall be many signs and wonders in heaven” (Helaman 14:3-6). It was also in this day that both Joel and Isaiah made many prophecies concerning the astronomical signs which would take place prior to the Second Coming of Christ, which later prophets would repeat.

Day Five: Fish and Fowls

On the fifth day of Creation, the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air were created. As I mentioned initially, in each day of Creation there is contrasting symbolism. Day contrasts with night. Water above contrasts with water beneath. A tree and its deep roots contrast with the grass and its propensity to dry out. Light contrasts with darkness. In day five, the fish contrast with the fowls. Fish are creatures which dwell beneath the water, which water is a symbolic line between life and death. We recognize this symbolism easiest when we think of baptism, where being buried in the water represents being buried in the grave and coming out of the water represents the resurrection and a rebirth.

With this in mind, we might easily recognize that fish likely represent those who are spiritually dead. To me, recognizing this symbolism makes the story of Christ walking upon the water all the more significant. He was the life of the world, and walking upon the water in a world where others like Peter would instead sink toward death is just one more evidence of who Christ was and who He is. This symbolism of death is also one reason why the fishing metaphor which the Savior used with His apostles was deeply meaningful. As He said to Peter and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 4:19). To pull fish out of the water would be akin to pulling sinners out of the sleep of death unto new life. Indeed, it is a strange coincidence that the movers and shakers of the fifth thousand years would be fishermen, considering that the fish were created on the fifth day.

While fish might represent the spiritually dead, fowls hold the opposite symbolism. Fowls are often used in scripture to represent those who have been exalted into the heavens, and have become angels unto God, or who have been loosed from the snare of the Devil so that they can ascend. For example, Joseph Smith compared the fowls in the parable of the mustard tree to angels, and Hosea compared the righteous saints to birds, when he prophesied that they that walk after the Lord “shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria,” after which they would be placed “in their houses” (Hosea 11:10-11). Birds are even buoyant, so that they float upon the water rather than sinking beneath.

With these things considered, it is not too hard to reason the connection that the creation of fowls on the fifth day has to the fifth thousand years. Just as the waters of the earth brought forth the “fowl, that they may fly above the earth in the open expanse of heaven” (Abr 4:20), the fifth thousand years brought forth the first resurrection. We might say that it was the first completed harvest of righteous souls, where those who had lain dead in the grave for thousands of years were brought forth from the grave (or from the water) to fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.

It is also of note that a whale is something which was specifically mentioned as being created on this day. Let me propose a possible interpretation of how the whale fits as a symbol in the fifth thousand years. Consider that the single whale story of the Bible is that of Jonah and the whale, which Christ told the Jews was the only sign that they would be given of His divinity. He said to them, “This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation” (Luke 11:29-30). Appropriately, Jonah’s story is one of the most significant types of Christ which we are given in scripture. Just as Jonah was willingly cast into the sea to save the men of the ship from its peril, and was swallowed by a whale, spending three days in darkness before being vomited upon the dry land, Jesus Christ would be a willing sacrifice to save the world from the peril of death, swallowed by the tomb for three days before coming forth again to life.

While fish might represent all those who are under the power of death, or the spiritually dead, we also might look at the coming forth of the greatest beast of the deep, the whale, as the manifestation of the greatest power of Satan in this Creation. This would be the day where the great beast of death would seek to overcome the Savior in Gethsemane, all the powers of hell being unleashed upon Him. In this thing the will of the Son would be “swallowed up in the will of the Father” (Mosiah 15:7), just as Jonah was willingly swallowed up by the whale and carried to Nineveh, even though he would rather not have endured such things.

Day Six: Man Given Dominion of the Earth

On the sixth day, God created cattle and beasts, and everything which creeps on the earth. He also created man in His own image, both male and female, and gave them dominion over the earth and over all life upon the land, in the seas, and in the air, and He blessed them, and commanded them to multiply and replenish the earth. We can easily see parallels to these things in the sixth thousand years, which we might refer to as the modern age. It has been an age where man has in many ways become enlightened, has received great blessings of prosperity, and has taken a godlike dominion over the earth. With unparalleled technological advancements, he has taken dominion of the air with aircraft, satellites, and even spacecraft. He has taken dominion of the seas with submersibles, powerful seacraft, and even island building technology. Transportation and telecommunications networks traverse the earth, and man even begins to dabble in sciences that give him the power to play god, by genetically modifying the things which God created.

It is a day where the Lord has given to man great agency, divinely establishing the constitutional republic of the United States of America, which would serve as a model for freedom to the world, so that mankind might peacefully dwell as the cattle or flock of the Lord if they chose to (The term cattle in scripture is used for all herd animals, including sometimes sheep). We might also look at the symbolism of beasts, which John the Revelator and others used scripturally to represent the wicked and degenerate kingdoms of the earth, and the kingdom of Satan, and the antichrist. It is a day of secret combinations, where man’s dominion of the earth has quickly and easily become an unrighteous dominion.

While the other days of Creation were called “good,” this day was called “very good.” It was the crowning day of Creation, and was meant to see the completion of the work so that God could rest for a season.

Day Seven: The Garden of Eden

If it is not evident enough at this point that the Creation narrative truly is a prophetic allegory, or a type, of the seven thousand year history of man upon the earth, there can at least be no doubt about the seventh day as a type. The Doctrine and Covenants tells us so, point blank. When Joseph Smith was asked about the meaning of the sounding of the trumpets in Revelation 8, he said, “We are to understand that as God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he finished his work, and sanctified it, and also formed man out of the dust of the earth, even so, in the beginning of the seventh thousand years will the Lord God sanctify the earth, and complete the salvation of man, and judge all things, and shall redeem all things, except that which he hath not put into his power, when he shall have sealed all things, unto the end of all things; and the sounding of the trumpets of the seven angels are the preparing and finishing of his work, in the beginning of the seventh thousand years—the preparing of the way before the time of his coming” (D&C 77:12). Here Joseph Smith teaches us plainly that the seventh day of Creation typifies the Millennial Day.

When we read the Creation narrative of Moses, we get to day seven and suddenly the Lord informs us that the creation that happened in days one through six was a spiritual creation only. On the seventh day the Lord rested, and He blessed and sanctified the seventh day. And then He said, “And I, the Lord God, had created all the children of men; and not yet a man to till the ground; for in heaven created I them; and there was not yet flesh upon the earth, neither in the water, neither in the air” (Moses 3:5). The earth had been created, but there were no inhabitants yet upon it, nor any creatures on the land, or in the water, or in the air. The Lord tells us that this was because He had not yet watered the earth.

For that reason, on the seventh day of Creation the Lord “formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also. The account then repeats, “nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word” (Moses 3:7). He then planted a garden eastward in Eden, and planted the Tree of Life, and caused a river with four heads to flow out of the Garden. He then placed the man in the Garden, and gave him commandments regarding what he could eat. The animals and the fowls were given flesh as well, and they came to Adam, and he named them all. Yet he was a lone man in the Garden of Eden, and so a woman was formed from his rib.

Many of these things have very obvious parallels which have been prophesied to take place in the Millennial day. Revelation from Joseph Smith teaches us that the site for the New Jerusalem is the same location where the Lord planted the Garden of Eden, and Isaiah compares the establishment of this city to the planting of trees, describing those who will dwell in Zion as “trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified” (Isaiah 41:3). There will also be “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,” which will flow out of it, which river will pass on either side of “the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2). Christ will come to the New Jerusalem from heaven, just as Adam was placed in the Garden from elsewhere. In other words, there is a perfect parallel between the planting of the Garden of Eden and the planting of the New Jerusalem.

Indeed, the tying together of the seventh day of Creation with the seventh day of man is much like the tying together of two ends of a string, because in many ways it seems that we are returning to our beginning, which is just what the word “restoration” implies. When we speak about the Restoration, we often refer to the priesthood or the Church. Yet when we look at the word restoration in the scriptures, the sense we get is that it is all about returning things to the state that they were in in the beginning. To speak exclusively of the priesthood or the Church in such a context is to oversimplify a great work. As Alma taught, “the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order” (Alma 41:2). According to Alma, the day of restoration is about the restoration of the body, or the resurrection, and that every “part of the body should be restored to itself.” And that it is also about justice, so that those with good works and good desires should be restored to that which is good, and vice versa.

Similarly, it is not just our bodies which are to be restored, but the body of the earth also. She is in need of restoration. Not only does she need to be restored from a fallen state to a paradisiacal one, be she too has parts and pieces which need to be restored to her, like the city of Enoch and the city of Salem, and anything else which has been removed from her in the past six thousand years. So when we look at the seventh day of Creation and the seventh day of man, and we notice that we are about to come full circle, we might consider that what is going on there is a restoration of things.

Indeed, in many ways the six thousand year history of man upon the earth has been very much like a spiritual creation, where every living thing has perhaps been designing its own blueprints through the many choices they have made in this conflict of good versus evil. And just as in the seventh day of creation where all living things were clothed in flesh, in the seventh thousand years we will see a great day of clothing by way of translation and resurrection. We will be clothed with immortality, and some with eternal life. We shall eventually receive a body which equates to the measure of our spirit (D&C 88:27-32). And just as Adam was the first to be clothed in flesh, Christ was the firstfruit of the resurrection. In other words, when things receive flesh in the seventh day of Creation it is symbolic of the resurrection which will take place in the seventh thousand years.

The Temporary End of All Opposition 

It is also of note that the prophesied events of the last days include the destruction or purification of all negative or opposing symbols which we find in days one through six of the Creation narratives. Night/Darkness: As the earth is glorified, darkness will be no more, and in the New Jerusalem there shall be no night (Revelation 21:23; 22:5). Waters Beneath: Founts of living water will spring up from the earth to heal the land and to cleanse the Dead Sea (Zechariah 14:8; Ezekiel 47:8). Grass: All green grass will be burned up (Revelation 8:7). Lesser Lights/Night/Darkness: The scattered stars will fall from heaven (D&C 88:87), there will be no night. Fish: The sea will become “as the blood of a dead man” and every living soul in it will die (Revelation 16:3). Beast: Finally, the beast and the antichrist will be taken and will be “cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Revelation 19:20).

The Tale of the Rib

Yet there is more to the tale of the seventh day, including most importantly the creation of a partner for Adam by taking a rib from his side. As for this mysterious tale of the rib, let me propose four possible interpretations. It may be that all four interpretations are true, or that none of them are. Let us each discern their truthfulness for ourselves. As you continue to read, keep in mind that Adam is quite plainly a type of Christ in very many ways.

The first interpretation I will put forward is that the tale of the rib typifies the Atonement and its role in giving life to the mother of all living. Just as Adam was put into a deep sleep, sacrificed his body to give life to the woman, and was awakened again, Christ suffered death, sacrificing His body upon the cross to give life to the world, and would then arise again. Both Adam and Christ would come out with a wound in their side. Without this atoning sacrifice, all the inhabitants of the earth would ultimately be destroyed in the day of judgment, and Christ would become a lone man in the New Jerusalem, just as Adam would have been a lone man in the Garden of Eden if he did not make the sacrifice of the rib.

A second interpretation is that the story of the rib is the tale of how the bride of Christ would be brought into the earth, in similitude of how Adam’s bride came to be. Just as a body has two sides, all people are born of two lineages. Just as the female partner for Adam would be brought forth from one of his ribs, it may be that the bride of Christ would be a literal descendant of Christ and Mary Magdalene, coming forth from Christ’s flesh by being born in the last days through a royal ancestral line. And just as the rib came from the middle of Adam, Christ’s ancestral line would have its origin in the meridian of time.

While both of those interpretations could potentially be accurate, neither of them fit perfectly in the seventh thousand years, but instead stretch across time. For that reason, let us consider a third interpretation that comes to mind. We might consider that the New Testament refers to the saints as the body of Christ. Recognizing Adam again as a type of Christ, we might consider the body of Adam to represent the saints of the last days. We might recognize that just as Adam was a lone man in the Garden of Eden before the creation of Eve, the body of Christ in the last days is a patriarchal body. The priesthood is recognized as male only. The men rule the Church and have all authority. Our only recognized Creator is Christ, who becomes our Father by spiritual adoption. There is no female deity recognized as a Mother that is on a level with Christ in our creation.

So just as the Lord said, “it was not good that the man should be alone,” so also should we recognize that something about this patriarchal condition of the last days is not good. We do not just need a Father, but we also need a Mother, and in order to complete the work of creating children in His image, the Bridegroom needs a Bride. So perhaps just as a deep sleep was placed upon Adam, it may be that the Lord has allowed or will allow a deep sleep to come upon the body of Christ (or the saints) in the last days, and will take from that body a small remnant, and from that remnant will bring forth the divine female upon the earth, so that when the saints awaken from their sleep they will see the Lord bringing the divine female to them, and there will be balance. The full partnership between male and female will finally be established, and there shall be a marriage of the Lord and His Bride in the New Jerusalem, as we carry in our lamps as invited guests.

Or lastly, perhaps that deep sleep is the half hour of silence in heaven at the beginning of the seventh thousand years (which equates to a twenty-one year period upon the earth) during which time the Bride is nurtured into full creation from the inherited portion given Her by the Lord. When the silence is over, and the Lord’s awakening is announced with thunder, with earthquake, and with a great noise, we shall see the Lord’s partner step forth to take Her place at His side.

Surely, it must be one of these things or something like unto them. After all, the tale of the rib is about the creation of the help meet for a man who typifies Christ. To assert that Christ does not have an equal partner would be like believing that Heavenly Mother is somehow inferior to Heavenly Father, or even that there is no such thing as a Heavenly Mother. Such a view would not be consistent with the theology given us through Joseph Smith, nor is it consistent with the Spirit of Truth, or the pattern shown us in the temple where men and women are placed side by side and hand in hand, making the same covenants and receiving the same promises. Ultimately, to assert that this earth’s celestial creation can be completed without the help of a Goddess or Goddesses, would be like saying that children should be born without women. The very thought is absurd.

With all this in mind, let me present to you an interpretation of the full section of scripture that gives the tale of Eve’s creation (Moses 3:19-25), viewing Adam as a type of Christ and Eve as a type of the Bride of Christ. First, the Lord said, “And out of the ground I, the Lord God, formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and commanded that they should come unto Adam.” The symbolism here may say to us, “And out of the ground I, the Lord God, formed man, both the low and the lofty, and commanded them to come unto Christ.”

The Lord went on, saying that He commanded them to come to Adam “to see what he would call them.” This role of Adam’s easily symbolizes Christ’s power of judgment, that He might give us a new name as new creations in Him. “And they were also living souls; for I, God, breathed into them the breath of life, and commanded that whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that should be the name thereof.” Here again we see plainly represented Christ’s power of redemption, that the Father has granted Him the power of judgment, and that His judgments will stand.

The Lord continued, saying, “And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; But as for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” Here, the symbolism would say to us, “And Christ judged all His sheep, and the angels of heaven, and He judged all the wicked also; but as for Christ there was not found an help meet for Him.” In other words, Christ had done His redemptive work, but there was a great work of Creation ahead of Him, to multiply and replenish the earth with a godlike posterity created in His own image, and yet He could not do that work of ascension and condescension alone. He required an equal partner. A help meet. A bride that could become the mother of all living.

“And I, the Lord God, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam; and he slept, and I took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in the stead thereof. And the rib which I, the Lord God, had taken from man, made I a woman, and brought her unto the man.” Here we have the riddle of the Bride’s coming forth upon the earth, which has puzzled our minds for thousands of years. The seventh day of man will see its fulfillment, as surely as the seventh day of Creation was a type.

Then the verse says, “And Adam said: This I know now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” This implies that in a coming day Christ will publicly recognize His Bride as being His own flesh, as the wedding takes place in the New Jerusalem, just as Adam and Eve were joined in the Garden of Eden. Christ will no longer be dependent upon His Father and Mother at this point, but will Himself become a Heavenly Father and will cling to His Bride, who will be a Heavenly Mother. In this pattern, we may recognize a future calling for each of us, that some day we are ultimately to do as Christ and His Bride have done. On multiple levels, Adam and Eve are a model for us, as children, as a father and a mother, as a Son and Daughter, as a Bride and Bridegroom, and as a Father and a Mother.

Lastly, the Lord said, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Symbolically, this may indicate a time of renewed innocence, and a removal of the veil so that all truth of this world is plainly visible. The full power of the Atonement will have removed all power the Devil has had to shame us, for our sins will no longer be remembered. The full light of Christ and His Bride will shine upon us, and there will be no darkness in it to give them cause for shame.

It also stands to reason that we may see a chiastic reversal in how this unfolds. While in the Creation, Adam was the first to be placed in the Garden of Eden and Eve came afterward, in the last days we may see that the Bride is the first to come to the New Jerusalem while Christ is placed after, and the first shall be last and the last shall be first. In this way, the design of Creation would show us that the man is not greater than the woman, and neither is the woman greater than the man, but all things have their perfect balance. I believe this is the purpose of chiastic patterns, to show that one thing is not greater than another. The Jew is not greater than the Gentile, and neither is the Gentile greater than the Jew. The greatest is the least, and the least is the greatest (D&C 50:26; D&C 122:8; Judges 6:15; 1 Samuel 9:21; Matthew 11:11; Luke 9:48; Luke 22:26). Indeed, we see this chiastic reversal of Adam and Eve depicted in the sign of the woman in Revelation 12, which the JST informs us is a likeness of things upon the earth. While in the seventh day of Creation, the man essentially gave birth to the woman in some kind of immaculate conception, in the seventh day of man the woman shall travail to give birth to a manchild.

I apologize if this essay has been difficult to follow, and to understand, as there are a lot of symbolic connections being made. Let no one take me at my word for what any of these things mean. Yet my studies of the Creation accounts has convinced me that the Creation is ongoing. We are in the process of being created, as creation has its many stages, including a time of proving and improving. Indeed, the Savior’s work as the Redeemer and the Creator are synonymous. Creation is a process that repeats again and again, and we have come around to the end of a six thousand year creative cycle.

The seventh thousand years will see many marvelous things as this work nears its end, and something new begins. Perhaps the most marvelous of those things will be the restoration of the balance between man and woman. Just as Eve came from Adam’s body, all life during these six thousand years has had its spiritual birth through Christ. Yet in a chiastic reversal, all life afterwards would come through Eve’s body, as she would become the mother of all living. Again, the first would be last and the last would be first. Could it be that the Savior’s greatest work of redemption was designed to bring forth the creation of His Bride, that all the children of the earth might then have life through Her? Surely, there is a revolving pattern there, just as Joseph first saved Aseneth and Egypt from death, and then Egypt saved the family of Jacob and the world from that same famine so that the land of Goshen could be filled with Israel’s posterity.

Ultimately, we might say that it is the role of the man to give life to the woman, and it is the role of the woman to give life to the man. Though I do not have a full understanding of all these things, or how they will come to be, my heart sings to me that this is the day for the completion of the work of Christ, and is the day for the coming forth of the Bride. Let us all rejoice in such a day!

P.S. It is worth noting that the temple narrative of Creation is different than the narratives we find in the scriptures, and it does not work as a type for the history of man upon the earth. It therefore stands to reason that the temple has its own symbolism and meanings. It may also be worth mentioning that while days one through six of the Genesis/Moses narratives are accounts of the spiritual creation, days one through six of the Abraham narrative seem to be an account of the earth being physically prepared to receive life. In both narratives, the seventh day is described as a natural creation, where all things receive flesh.