 Origen, a third-century Christian philosopher, speculated that God, before he created our universe, had busied himself with the creation of an endless series of earlier worlds. His idea of an eternal cyclic universe was however condemned by the church and has since then generally been regarded as associated with atheism and materialism. Indeed, from about 1850 to 1920 the classical cyclic or recurrent universe was popular among many atheistic thinkers who found it to be incompatible with Christian doctrines. Nonetheless, some theists have endorsed such a universe, e.g., Joseph Smith’s claim that “as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come” (Mormon Book of Moses 1:38).