Before the world was, the Son was chosen — the Word with God, the Lamb foreordained from the foundation.
The life of Christ does not begin in a manger. Before the world was, the Son stood with the Father; He was the Beloved, chosen and foreordained from the beginning to be the Redeemer. The scriptures the Restoration recovered open this earlier scene to view: the Son known to heaven, the plan accepted, the Lamb appointed before ever the foundation of the world was laid.
These passages are gathered to set the Gospels in their true frame. The One who came into the world in the meridian of time was not a new figure but the Word who was with God from the beginning — come, at last, to keep a promise older than the earth.
A reflection on the premortal Christ: the Son chosen from the beginning, the Word by whom the worlds were made, and the Lamb foreordained — and what Joseph’s translation restores of that earlier scene.
My Beloved Son, who was my beloved and chosen from the beginning, said unto me, Father, your will be done, and the glory be yours for ever.Read in the Restoration Edition ↗
…him who he declared should come in the meridian of time, who was prepared from before the foundation of the world. And thus the gospel began to be preached from the beginning, being declared by holy angels, and by his own voice, and by the gift of the holy ghost.Read in the Restoration Edition ↗
Passages are quoted verbatim from the Restoration Edition (Old Covenants) on scriptures.info; numbering is given traditional-first with the RE reference in parentheses.
From the early Christian and Jewish writings Nibley drew the same premortal council the Restoration describes — a plan debated by the hosts, settled by the Son’s free offering of himself, and greeted with the first of all hymns.
The discussion was a lively one — apart from those rebellious angels who rejected it entirely, there was a general protest that the plan would be too painful for some parties and too risky for all; it was the generous voluntary offering of the Son of God that settled the question.
When the plan was announced to the assembled hosts, and the full scope and magnanimity of it dawned upon them, they burst into spontaneous shouts of joy and joined in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving, the Morning-song of Creation, which remains to this day the archetype of hymns, the great acclamatio, the primordial nucleus of all liturgy.