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The idea that this system has been in existence for 2,555,000,000 years did not originate with Phelps or Joseph Smith. They quoted Egyptian text

Please refer to comment #24 on this thread which debunks your claim above. Phelps was working with nothing more than we have in our current Book of Abraham and simply doing a calculation based on a literalistic reading of 2 Peter 3:8.

First death = death of mortal body (as seen from our mortal frame of reference)

second death = death of spirit (return to intelligence) or dissolution. This applies to the 1/3rd of the hosts of heaven who chose to not obtain mortality and sons of perdition. They return to that great pool of intelligence or intelligences. Not sure if intelligence exists individually or not. Seems like there is some form of individuality and agency.

Some intelligences choose to become sons and daughters of an exalted being. Some chose to become other forms of life – from elemental to animal. Are they doomed to exist in this form of life forever and ever? Hardly. The Lord’s course is one eternal round. Why should some intelligences not have a chance to pursue the road to exaltation? Perhaps, that rock was your friend when you were an intelligence. :) Perhaps, for an eternity, each intelligence pursues existence in a chosen form. Perhaps, some forms are not limited to the eternity boundary and can cycle more often.

The idea that this system has been in existence for 2,555,000,000 years did not originate with Phelps or Joseph Smith. They quoted Egyptian text:

… eternity, agreeably to the records found in the catacombs of Egypt, has been going on in this system (not the world) almost two thousand five hundred and fifty five millions of years… Times & Seasons 5 no. 24 (1 Jan. 1844), 758 (emphasis added).

Joseph Smith talked about his ring being a symbol of the eternal. Could we not think of it as an ‘eternal ring’? Meaning, could it not be a ring with a radius of infinity? The ring part could represent time, but if you plot one point on it and go forward, you’d never get back to where you started.

Is God therefore not at the center of the ring?

Also, saying that there is finite spirit or matter is irreconcilable with LDS doctrine. First of all, all infinite spirits or intelligences in existence don’t belong to our God… we’re supposed to organize some of them as our own spirit children, right? And wouldn’t it make sense that not all spirits are on the same level of progression, and therefore are not ready for mortality at the same time, just as not all are ready for Godhood at the same time?

They do not live in a state of time, so saying that they’re waiting for mortality and upset about it would be misleading. ‘Wait’ is an effect of experiencing time passing.

I think what Joseph Smith was saying that God didn’t create intelligences. It is a well-founded doctrine of the LDS Church that we are spirit children of God, therefore there must have been some kind of coming as spirits from intelligence (not that we know how that is done).

And here we are with mortal brains living in linear time. God does not live in linear time, (He is in the Great Now as C.S. Lewis called it). We do not comprehend all that God can comprehend.

Um, Lee (and Geoff and Matt I guess), try comment #24 on this very thread for more info.

If you do the math, it means that the preexistent age span of our Lord was 7000 Kolob or Celestial years.