Civil War Prophecy
 

We may have discussed this already; maybe we haven't. The teacher of my Civil War history class mentioned Section 87 today in class, naturally leading once more to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was clearly a prophet (when at BYU . . .). I'd like to hear what everybody here thinks of this section, here reproduced in full:

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls;
2 And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place.
3 For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations.
4 And it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshaled and disciplined for war.
5 And it shall come to pass also that the remnants who are left of the land will marshal themselves, and shall become exceedingly angry, and shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexation.
6 And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full fend of all nations;
7 That the cry of the saints, and of the blood of the saints, shall cease to come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, from the earth, to be avenged of their enemies.
8 Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen.

I taught an investigator, he was the American ex-pat manager of the apt. complex we lived at in Guam. He became very argumentative during the discussion and said if JS is a prophet where are his prophecies? So I turned to this. He was unimpressed.

A week later we were meeting with a different investigator in our apt. Through the front door we saw a covered body on a gurney being wheeled out. The argumentative investigator had hung himself. I later found out that his body was unclaimed in the morgue for months.

I felt bad for him. And as is common I think in such situations, I wondered if I might have contributed to it, in some small way.

So that is how the verses are colored for me.

Prophecy has very little to do with predicting the future, at least not in the sense usually considered.

Where's the original document? How do we know this wasn't dressed up or fabricated like what those monks sometimes did with the ancient writings? I'm betting there's no original.

Moreover, there is much in this prophesy that is over the top. Events didn't exactly unforld as described here, did they?

That's one of the reasons I brought this up. I wanted to see what people thought about the extent to which this was fulfilled or not.

And Joseph wrote this in the Church History in 1832 (History of the Church, 1:301). It was also published in 1851 in the original version of the Pearl of Great Price.

I believe one of the papers of the time picked up on his "prophecy" and just pawned it off as a "lucky guess".

I've never really used this as an evidence of JS as a prophet, but it is pretty interesting. Those that have made objections, please clarify, I'm not getting it.

--prophecy not a prediction of future events
--this prophecy wasn't accurate

I'm a natural skeptic and I probably would say the same thing. But JS didn't make it a habit to make specific prophecies of future events like this, did he? If this was one of a hundred vague prophecies where he missed on the rest and nailed this one (like uhh Nostradomus?), then I'd chalk it up that way. But I'd think you'd have to give him more credit based on the lack of the large body of unfulfilled vague sounding prophecy.

I think it is pretty accurate, which can be seen by SU's claim that it must have been dressed up (who would dress up something to be wrong?). The only that didn't fairly happen is that it didn't turn into a world war, although that claim is sort of ambiguous, and it could still be seen as having come to pass. Otherwsie, it looks pretty good, I think.

I think there is some historical context to suggest that SO Carolina was seen by many as the likley place of rebellion, and in fact they had threatened it before 1860. Even so, it is a pretty good call on his part.

Oops, blew the world war part. Close enough, though. Right?

If this is accepted as prophesy-and I'm certainly not saying that it isn't-then don't you have to also accept things prophets talked about that didn't happen as failed prophesies? I once pointed this out to an investigator, and after doing some research on his own came to the conclusion it was a lucky guess. He had a list of 30 or so "failed prophesies" from church history, only a couple of which I really remember. This, of course leads to the discussion of when a prophet is spiritually speaking or when he's just speculating. All I know is BY sure did speculate quite a bit.

Then what on earth made you say it was probabyl dressed up? Just your typical spew without thinking approach?

From what I know of history and JS, this prophecy was not far-fetched. In other words, a man who paid attention to current events in 1832 could read this prophecy and says "yeah, that could happen" (south carolina, war between states).

He did? I counted two of them.

I dunno about that. Maybe he could have called that it would have started in South Carolina, given the tariff issues around that time, but most people worried about sectionalism thought of it in terms of East v. West rather than North v. South. The tiff over the tariffs, if you will remember, was between Jackson, from Tennessee, and Calhoun, from South Carolina. Even when the war did come about, most thought it would be over quickly. The South calling upon Great Britain, well, that's like BYU beating UNLV; you expect that, but they still get at least a little credit for winning. That slaves should rise up against their masters wasn't a terribly novel thought, but that it would take many days for it to happen was somewhat more novel; most doomsday scenarios predicted that the war would be triggered by a slave revolt, such as John Brown's assault on Harpers Ferry. Is verse 5 talking about the Ku Klux Klan?

I think it's a little more substantial than what any old body in 1832 could have whipped out.

I think the fact that the avg. Mormon member might not be able to tell you about this prophecy tells you about its value and relevance in the church.

Oh, come now. Since when did we use what the average Mormon member might be able to tell us as a valid measuring stick for value and relevance?

Maybe be should have quit at #4, not even sure that happened.

There was a Civil War, due to animosities that had built up for decades, but it was not Armageddon as he seemed to believe.

Nice.

200,000 or so blacks fought for the Union during the Civil War. It was also interesting to learn the extent to which slaves pushed the emancipation issue. They forced Union armies to respond with policies by rushing to their camps. Union attitude slowly evolved from refusing to return them, to confiscating slaves used in the war effort, to confiscating slaves whose owners supported the war effort, to emancipation en masse; none of that would have happened if it were not for slaves leaving their masters behind in substantial numbers.

Seattle, I thought you were going to come up with a more sophisticated, logical, historically based argument why this propechy isn't a big deal but I guess American history is not your strength.

All that tells you is that the average member isn't reading their scriptures, I guess. It's not like you need to dig to find this prophecy.

It's just balancing out the Trivial Pursuit scales:

Joseph Smith's Polygamy on one side, Civil War Prophecies on the other.

That's easy. JS polygamy wins by a landslide.

Given the threefold mission of The Church, I think you are correct. Little value in that regard.

Given the threefold mission of the church...

Question for you, Indy. You keep insisting that historical evidence of JS not only engaging in polygamy, but polyandry, child-brides, etc. is "trivial" and not worthy of discussion by the church or official LDS historians. I understand your logic, but I am curious if there is anything that would give you pause or that you would consider "non-trivial".

Given the repeated spiritual witnesses I've had over many years, probably not.

I didn't say they weren't worthy of discussion, they just aren't worthy of being part of some standard church curriculum. IMO, one of the reasons (I didn't say the only reason) the church doesn't really go into detail about Joseph Smith's multiple relationships is simply because the details just aren't that good or reliable. There's too many "fill in the blanks" that aren't resolved and can unnecessarily be taken the worst way possible.

You are just kidding yourself here. There is a wealth of information written about the relationships by faithful members of the church, most significantly by the multiple wives themselves. One of which was my ancestor (Caroline Partridge). She and others gave plenty of detail.

Hey now, no need to go kicking around the sand in which Indy's head is firmly buried.

Or perhaps that's him in his avatar? :cool:

I'm glad you have the priesthood keys to be receiving revelation for me. How's the weather in Hildale?

It's the Adam-God Complex.

So the prediction about SC turned out to be right-- a plausible coincidence, I suppose, though he should get at least a little credit for the fact that he turned out to be right. But even then, why wouldn't he have predicted that it would have been a war between the eastern and western states, given that the fight was especially between Jackson and Calhoun? Or that it would be over the tariff issue, instead of slavery?

Even if these would have been easy guesses (and I don't know how easy such guesses would have been for those not benefited by over a hundred years of hindsight, but I won't labor this point for the sake of the argument), isn't it just a little bit remarkable that they all happened?

A team that wins 12 games in which they had a 80% chance of winning ought to be ranked in the top 10. Joseph Smith should at least be ranked if you insist on keeping him out of the BCS.

Not the Adam-God theory again . . . .

Yeah, and New York City will be underwater in nine more years because Greenland will melt.

Your contributions are only further evidence of how difficult the prophecy game really is. At least the gloom and doom global warming prophets have some science to back them up.

U.S foreign policy is geared to preventing the U.S. being drawn into any conflict due to some agressive action by Israel (when Israel acts, we do not follow; there are too many interests at stake). There simply is not a realistic scenario out there that would bring about the actions you prophesy.

Try again Mr. McLellan.