DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT—PROPHECIES.

THIS period under consideration was rich in prophecies. The boldness of Joseph Smith's predictions was startling; but it is to be remarked that they have been fulfilled as fast as the wheels of time have brought them due.

A PREDICTION UPON THE PRESENT GENERATION.

I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God of Israel, anguish and wrath and tribulation and the withdrawing of the Spirit of God from the earth await this generation, until they are visited with utter desolation. This generation is as corrupt as the generation of the Jews that crucified Christ; and if He were here today and should preach the same doctrine He did then, they would put Him to death. I defy all the world to destroy the work of God, and I prophesy they never will have power to kill me till my work is accomplished, and I am ready to die.

PROPHECY ON WAR.

I prophesy in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina. It may probably arise through the slave question. This a voice declared to me while I was praying very earnestly on the subject, December 25th, 1832.

These remarks were made in April, 1843, at a place called Raymus, near Nauvoo; and the incidental reference to what a voice had declared to him respecting the war to begin in South Carolina, is doubtless an allusion to the more formal prophecy on that great subject, and which I consider of so much importance that while it does not strictly belong to the period under consideration, I give it in extenso, as connected with the lesser prophecy quoted above.

PROPHECY ON THE WARS OF THE LAST DAYS.

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.

The days will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at that place;

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 thus war shall be poured out upon all nations.

And it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshalled and disciplined for war:

And it shall come to pass also, that the remnants who are left of the land will marshal themselves, and shall become exceeding angry, and shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexation;

And thus with the sword, and by bloodshed, the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquakes, 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 end of all nations;

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.

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 do not hesitate to refer to this prophecy as one of the boldest, most forceful and remarkable ever uttered by a prophet of God in either ancient or modern times; and its exact and minute fulfillment to be read in the history of the United States and other countries is as astonishing as the prediction is bold.^[1] This prophecy was given in December, 1832; and the Elders in those days, at least a number of them, carried manuscript copies of it with them on their missionary journeys, and frequently read it to their congregations in various parts of the United States. In Volume XIII of the Millennial Star, published in 1851, pages 216, 217, is an advertisement of a new publication to be called the Pearl of Great Price. In the announced contents is named this revelation of December, 1832, on war, with the statement that it had "never before appeared in print." Subsequently, but in the same year, 1851, the Pearl of Great Price with this prophecy in it, word for word as it is here quoted, was published by Franklin D. Richards, in Liverpool, England. There are copies of the first edition still extant.

PREDICTION THAT THE SAINTS WOULD REMOVE TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND BECOME A GREAT PEOPLE.

No less remarkable perhaps was the Prophet's great prediction of the sixth of August, 1842, given in his history under that date and published in the Millennial Star,^[2] concerning the removal of the Latter-day Saints to the Rocky Mountains, then a thousand miles beyond the frontiers of the United States; but of which I shall not say more here as it is to receive consideration in a subsequent chapter.

PROPHECY UPON THE HEAD OF STEPHEN A. DOUGLASS.

In the daily journal of Wm. Clayton, who at the time the following prophecy was made was private secretary of the Prophet, and almost his constant companion—under date of May 18th, 1843, occurs the following entry concerning a visit with the Prophet to Judge Douglass at Carthage:

Dined with Judge Stephen A. Douglass, who is presiding at court. After dinner Judge Douglass requested President Joseph to give him a history of the Missouri persecutions; which he did in a very minute manner for about three hours. He also gave a relation of his journey to Washington City, and his application in behalf of the Saints to Mr. Van Buren, the President of the United States, for redress, and Mr. Van Buren's pusillanimous reply: "Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you," and the cold, unfeeling manner in which he was treated by most of the senators and representatives in relation to the subject, Clay saying, "You had better go to Oregon," and Calhoun shaking his head and solemnly saying, "It's a nice question; a critical question, but it will not do to agitate it." The judge listened with the greatest attention, and then spoke warmly in deprecation of the conduct of Governor Boggs and the authorities of Missouri, who had taken part in the extermination, and said that any people that would do as the mobs of Missouri had done ought to be brought to judgment; they ought to be punished. President Smith, in concluding his remarks, said that if the government which received into its coffers the money of citizens for its public lands, while its officials are rolling in luxury at the expense of its public treasury, cannot protect such citizens in their lives and property, it is an old granny anyhow, and I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints in the State of Missouri and punish the crimes committed by her officers, that in a few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted and there will not be so much as a potsherd left, for their wickedness in permitting the murder of men, women and children and the wholesale plunder and extermination of thousands of her citizens to go unpunished, thereby perpetrating a foul and corroding blot upon the fair fame of this great republic, the very thought of which would have caused the high-minded and patriotic framers of the Constitution of the United States to hide their faces with shame. Judge, you will aspire to the presidency of the United States; and if you ever turn your hand against me or the Latter-day Saints you will feel the weight of the hand of the Almighty upon you; and you will live to see and know that I have testified the truth to you, for the conversation of this day will stick to you through life. He appeared very friendly and acknowledged the truth and propriety of President Smith's remarks.

This prophecy was published in Utah, in the Desert News of September 24th, 1856; and afterwards in England in the Millennial Star of February, 1859. It is well known that Douglass did finally aspire to the Presidency of the United States, that he was nominated by a confident, aggressive party in 1860; and it is also known that in the elections of that year that party which had controlled the destinies almost uninterruptedly for forty years became demoralized; that Abraham Lincoln was triumphantly elected, receiving one hundred and eighty electoral votes, while Mr. Douglass received but 12; that Mr. Douglass some six weeks later died a disappointed not to say heart-broken man. All this is known, but it is not so generally known that on the twelfth of June, 1857, about one year after the prediction of his friend Joseph Smith was published in the Desert News, in Utah, he most cowardly betrayed the people of that friend and united with their enemies in a most unjustifiable assault upon them, and in the fervor of his eloquence and to gain the favor of the populace, he cried out against them—

The knife must be applied to this pestiferous, disgusting cancer which is gnawing into the very vitals of the body politic. It must be cut out by the roots, and seared over by the red hot iron of stern and unflinching law. * * * Repeal the organic law of the Territory, on the ground that they are alien enemies and outlaws, unfit to be the citizens of a Territory, much less to ever become citizens of one of the free and independent States of this confederacy.^[3]

He little dreamed that in these utterances he was sealing his own political doom, and leaving on record an event that was to stand as a monument to the inspiration of Joseph Smith.

Footnotes:

1. For the consideration of the fulfillment of this prophecy the reader is referred to the writer's "New Witness for God," ch. XXIII.2. Vol. xix, page 630.3. The speech is published in the Missouri Republican for June 18, 1857. For a more complete consideration of the prophecy, the reader is referred to the author's "New Witness for God," chapter xxii.