Monday, April 18, 2022

James B. Allen on Early Latter-day Saints Believing Prophecy to be Always Contingent upon the Free-Will Actions of Human Agents

  

early Mormons seemed to have a pragmatic attitude toward the fulfillment of such prophecy . . . It was an active, faithful pragmatism that compelled them to look at prophecy concerning their own future as a personal challenge. They were obligated to work to make the great things predicted by the prophet actually happen. But if they did not happen, this was no sign that the prophet was false. It was only a sign either that the Saints were not faithful and hardworking enough or, if they had done all they could, that the enemies of the church had prevented them from fulfilling their obligations. "Verily, verily, I say unto you," the Lord had told them through Joseph Smith in January 1841, "that when I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work unto my name, and those sons of men go with all their might and with all they have to perform that work, and cease not their diligence, and their enemies come upon them and hinder them from performing the work, behold, it behooveth me to require that work no more at the hands of those sons of men, but to accept of their offerings." (James B. Allen, Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987], 77)