Sunday 2 September 2018

150 years ago: Future Mormon President delivers false prophecy

But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?
When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
Deuteronomy 18:20-22

Today--September 2, 2018--marks 120 years since the death of Wilford Woodruff at the age of 91. Mr. Woodruff joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1833 and worked his way up the ladder, as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1839-1889, serving as President of the Quorum from 1880-1889, and then as President of the church from 1889 until his death. He practiced plural marriage, with at least 9 wives and 34 children by them, but officially banned the practice in 1890 when it became apparent that Utah would never be granted statehood within the U.S.A. unless plural marriage was outlawed.

Mr. Woodruff believed that the second coming of Jesus (the Mormon Jesus, that is, not the biblical Jesus) and the end of the world were imminent. He was 12 years away from becoming the Mormon Church's "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" when, on August 22, 1868, he preached a sermon in which he prophesied that New York City would be "destroyed by an earthquake;" Boston would be "swept into the sea, by the sea heaving itself beyond its bounds;" and Albany, New York, would be "destroyed by fire." Speaking afterwards, Brigham Young--the current "Prophet, Seer and Revelator"--stated that "what Brother Woodruff has said is revelation and will be fulfilled."

I don't know how Mr. Woodruff defined "imminent," but 150 years have gone by since he delivered his apocalyptic sermon, and the prophesied events still have yet to come to pass. This blogger finds it very hard to believe that even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would regard T + 150 years and counting as being within reasonable bounds of "imminent."

When it comes to the Mormon President's title, is there anyone who can remember the last time any "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" actually prophesied, saw, and revelated? As Dave Hunt and Ed Decker stated in their book The God Makers (1984), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a "non-Prophet religion."

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