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.