Monday, December 13, 2021

W.L. Crowe (1902)'s Attempt to Refute the "Civil War Prophecy" (D&C 87)

W.L. Crowe (1866-1924) was a member of the Church of God Abrahamic Faith. In his 1902 book, The Mormon Waterloo, he attempted to demonstrate that what is now D&C 87, the so-called “Civil War Prophecy,” was not truly prophetic. Further, he is rather open to the theory that the prophecy was a forgery as it was published and made available to the public in 1851(which is false; here it is in Revelation Book 1 and Revelation Book 2). Finally, he believes (mistakenly) that the Civil War would be the same war that would result in “war being poured upon all nations”:

 

In our examination of this alleged prophecy it is not necessary to notice famines, earthquakes, thunder and lightning and Indian uprising, such as had been before this time, and have been ever since; so we will simply notice the slave trouble, and the way that was to begin at South Carolina, as these are all the points in this “prophecy” that can be regarded as foretelling anything.

 

Barnes’ U.S. History, p. 50, tells us that slavery was first introduced into the U.S. in 1619, when twenty negroes were sold by a Dutch trader to the colonists. “From this circumstance, small as it seemed at the time,” says the historian, “the most momentous consequences ensued. Consequences that long after rent the Republic with strife, and moistened its soil with blood.”

 

Thus for 223 years before Smith’s prophecy the slavery question had been preparing the way for a division between the North and South.

 

In the same school history, pp. 172, 173, on the “Missouri Compromise,” we read of the bitter discussions of 1821 (eleven years before Smith’s “prophecy”), as to whether Missouri should be a free or slave state, and whether slavery should be prohibited in all territories west of the Mississippi river and north of parallel 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern boundary of Missouri.

 

As another example of how present and past events cast their shadows about Smith in 1832, we refer the reader to what is known as the “Nullification Act” of that year.

 

See Student’s Encycl. p. 579, how, in 1828, Jackson was elected President of the United States and Calhoun Vice President. How Jackson stood for the federal union, and Calhoun for state rights. IN 1830, at a banquet, the President gave his famous toast: “The federal union—it must be preserved;” to which Calhoun replied: “Liberty is dearer than union.”

 

“The protective tariff bill passed in 1832 was very distasteful to South Carolina, and she declared the law unconstitutional within her boundaries. This became known as the ‘Nullification Act.’”

 

See also Life of Jackson, by J.S. Jenkins, p. 263, where we learn that the convention assembled in South Carolina in 1832 declared the acts of 1828 and 1832, in reference to certain tariffs and imposes, to be unconstitutional, and that attempts to enforce them otherwise than thru civil tribunals would be resisted by the citizens of South Carolina, and would be deemed inconsistent with longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union: and that the people of said state would hold themselves absolved from all obligations to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of other states; and would forthwith proceed to establish an independent government, and do all the acts that sovereign states have a right to do.

 

Now, if Smith did in this same year, 1832, make such a prediction as the above, was it wonderful? When South Carolina had threatened to secede from the Union that same year, was it a marvelous prophecy to predict a revolution beginning with that state?

 

And yet, if Smith ever made such a prophecy, it was not published to the world till after he had been dead seven years and nineteen years after Smith is said to have made it! In 1851, when this “prophecy” was first published, it required no prophet to predict war between the North and South, beginning at South Carolina. But the fact of waiting nineteen years before publishing such an important prophecy, shows, either that Smith was afraid it might not come to pass, so waited awhile to watch developments, or else that it was a forgery of 1851 that Smith had nothing to do with.

 

As to war being poured out upon all nations, beginning with South Carolina, this has failed of fulfilment. We think that the blowing up of the Maine would be a more probable starting point for that last war that is to involve all nations. (W.L. Crowe, The Mormon Waterloo: Being a Condensed and Classified Array of Testimony and Arguments Against the False Prophet, Joseph Smith, his Works, and his Church System and Doctrines: Based upon Standard History, Science, the Bible and Smith Against Himself [St. Paul, Nebr.: 1902], 21-23, emphasis in bold added)

 

For a listing of Joseph's Smith's prophecies, including articles discussing D&C 87, see:


Resources on Joseph Smith's Prophecies