In an
article that appeared in This Rock magazine
from 1995, we read the following from Catholic Answers wherein they
affirmed the conditional nature of prophecy, both biblical and otherwise:
Timothy Kauffman is employed as
an engineer with NASA, is the director of a Protestant ministry called White
Horse Publications, and describes himself as “a former devotee of the
apparitions of Mary [who] now invests [sic] himself in exposing the deceptive
spirit behind them.” He has written two anti-Catholic books.
In its winter 1995
newsletter, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, an Evangelical organization to
which Catholics sometimes refer people who are concerned about relatives who
are involved with cults, published an article by Kauffman: “Another Mary,
Another Jesus, Another Gospel.” The article gives Catholics a good reason to
cease cooperating with SCP, which has shown itself to be at root an
anti-Catholic organization.
After referring to
some admittedly false apparitions, Kauffman writes, “The apparitions of Mary at
Fatima (1917), Paris (1830), and Guadalupe (1531), among several others, could
be trusted because the Church had assured the faithful that these were the
authentic Mary of the Bible. But what did these approved apparitions have to
offer? The same deception as any of the others.
“Even the most devout
followers of the Paris apparition acknowledge that the visionary, Catherine
Laboure, was known to have received pro-phecies that did not come true, a clear
indication to us that ‘the prophet hath spoken presumptuously: thou shalt not
be afraid of him’ (Deut. 18:22). The Guadalupe apparition asserted bold ly that
‘she’ was our ‘fountain of life,’ and the Fatima apparition had denied the
sufficiency of the Cross by stating that we should ‘make sacrifices for
sinners, for many souls go to hell because they have no one to sacrifice
themselves and to pray for them.'”
Kauffman makes
elementary errors here. One can find in Scripture conditional prophecies “that
did not come true.” The gist of a conditional prophecy is that something will
happen if something else doesn’t occur. If that other thing
doesn’t occur, the event prophesied doesn’t come to pass –but this doesn’t mean
the prophecy is false. It means only that a required condition did not occur.
And this consideration applies to unfulfilled prophecies given in true
apparitions.
Interestingly,
the conditional nature of prophecy is rarely, if ever, discussed by Catholic
apologists when they attempt to critique Joseph Smith’s claim to being a
prophet. On the issue of Joseph Smith’s prophecies (both fulfilled and
purportedly false), see the listing of articles at:
Resources
on Joseph Smith’s Prophecies
