Sunday, May 29, 2022

Joseph Smith's Prophecy that Anson Call Would be a City Builder in the Rocky Mountains

In a listing of allegedly false prophecies of Joseph Smith, Richard Packham wrote the following:

 

PROPHECY ABOUT ANSON CALL: Aug 6, 1842. Anson Call Diary [cited in Morris PJS]. Joseph Smith prophesies that Anson Call will "go and assist in building cities from one end of the country to the other and ... shall perform as great a work as has ever been done by man, and the nations of the earth shall be astonished..."

FULFILLED?: Anson Call assisted in building Fillmore, Utah (population in 1970: 1411). He did not assist in building cities from one end of the country to the other. He did not perform any work "as great ... as has ever been done by man," or at which the nations of the earth were astonished. (Richard Packham, Joseph Smith as a Prophet)

 

Another critic, Dick Baer wrote that

 

History records that Anson Call assisted in settling Millard County, Utah, a southern semidesert region of which Fillmore is the county seat (Church Chronology, page 44), The other "large" cities in that district are Delta, Hinckley, Kanosh, Leamington, Oasis and, Abraham.

 

Anson Call did not assist in building cities from one end of the country to the other.  He did not perform as great a work as has ever been done by man.  Certainly the nations of the earth are not astonished at his achievements. (Dick Baer, Letter to Family & Friends)

 

Firstly, it should be noted that “city” in the 19th century did not necessarily denote our modern understanding of what constitutes a “city.” Webster’s 1828 dictionary offers the following three definitions of the term:

 

CITYnoun

 

1. In a general sense, a large town; a large number of houses and inhabitants, established in one place.

 

2. In a more appropriate sense, a corporate town; a town or collective body of inhabitants, incorporated and governed by particular officers, as a mayor and aldermen. This is the sense of the word in the United States. In Great Britain, a city is said to be a town corporate that has a bishop and a cathedral church; but this is not always the fact.

 

3. The collective body of citizens, or the inhabitants of a city; as when we say, the city voted to establish a market, and the city repealed the vote.

 

We see this even in the 1830 Book of Mormon. In 1 Nephi 11:13, Nephi, in a vision of the then-future mother of the Messiah, records the following:

 

And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem, and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth; and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white.

 

It might strike some readers as being odd that Nazareth is referred to being a “city” in light of its very small size in comparison to ancient Jerusalem, let alone modern conceptions of the “city.” However, the term “city” in Hebrew, עִיר, in the words of HALOT, refers to any "permanent settlement without any reference to its size" such as Bethlehem (Ruth 3:15), so the use of “city” in the Book of Mormon for Nazareth is not problematic.

 

On the meaning of “city” (עִיר) in the Hebrew Bible, Timothy M Willis wrote the following:

 

An Israelite “city” (עִיר) served as a gathering-place for a particular group of people. The purposes for which they might have gathered could be military, economic, religious, or social. It was “a site ideologically apart from its environs.”

 

There probably were four types of cities in ancient Israel and Judah. Two types were present (in both the pre-monarchic and monarchic periods) within individual clans. One is a simple “city,” and the other “the city of the clan.” Some clans had several cities within their borders, some only one (e.g., Shechem, Tirzah). Even where there were several cities within a clan, it is likely that one city served as “the city of the clan.” The city in Zuph in which Saul finds Samuel (1 Samuel 9) might be one example of this. The city is not named, but there is a high place there, and the people gathered there for a sacrifice. Similarly, David’s clan met at a regional center (Bethlehem) for its ceremonial gatherings (1 Sam 20:6). The possibility that the inhabitants of several cities consider one city as their common city, so to speak, is also reflected in the reference to “the cities of Hebron” (2 Sam 2:3). A third type of city served as a gathering-place for a broader spectrum of the population, one that performed a common function for several clans or tribes. These were primarily religious centers (e.g., Shiloh, Bethel, Shechem, Gilgal, Beersheba, the Transjordanian shrine). The kinds added a couple of wrinkles to this picture. First, they apparently incorporated these higher supra-clan centers into their administrative structure. The kings also established new cities of another type, the administrative city, which controlled broader areas than the traditional clan centers. These included royal cities, fortified cities, and store-cities. At the top of these administrative cities was the national capital. Thus, the lines between these different types of settlements probably became blurred in many cases. (Timothy M. Willis, The Elders of the City: A Study of the Elders-Laws in Deuteronomy [Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 55; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001], 14-15)

 

Secondly, as John Tvedtnes wrote in his response to Baer, he noted that

 

This is another second-hand account. Why should we accept this one and not the one noted in No. 40? Second-hand accounts are hard to place in the category of prophecy, whether false or real, because we cannot know for certain if the statement was uttered "in the name of the Lord." But let's deal with specifics here. This quote from Anson Call's Diary does not quote Joseph Smith as saying "large cities", as Mr. Baer reads it, but only "cities." "Cities" were much smaller in Joseph's day than they are today, so why split hairs on population statistics? Besides, the words may not be exactly those of Joseph Smith. Perhaps he said "towns" or "villages" or "townships" or "settlements" or the like. After all, Call notes that he could not remember the "number of others" present at the time. How can we expect him to remember the prophet's exact words? Mr. Baer's contention that this is a "clear cut false prophecy" are totally unwarranted, especially since there is no indication that Joseph Smith made the declaration in the name of the Lord, which is one of the principal criteria in Deut. 18 for a false prophecy. (John A. Tvedntes, A Reply to Dick Baer)

 

One can read the source of this prophecy at Anson Call statement, circa 1854 (MS 364, Church History Library) so it is clearly secondary, not primary, historical source, as noted by Tvedtnes.

 

The following commentary on the prophecy comes from Nephi Lowell Morris, The Prophecies of Joseph Smith and Their Fulfillment (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1920), 74-75

 

In the diary of Arson Call the prophet is said to have predicted that he (Call) would assist in building cities from one end of the country to the other." As a striking fulfillment of that particular prophecy we cite the biography of Mr. Call as written for Tullidge's History of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho. Upon Mr. Call's arrival in what became Utah, he settled in what is now Davis County. His original homestead and descendants are still there. His worthy descendants have spread over the whole county. In 1850 he was settling in Little Salt Lake Valley, as well as in Parowan. He moved to the northern part of the state, but was subsequently placed in charge of a colonizing company of fifty families to settle in the Pauvine Valley. In 1851 he assisted in laying the foundation of the city of Fillmore, Millard County. There he built roads, constructed mills and developed farms. In 1854 he established Call's Fort, in Box Elder County, and in 1856 was sent to Carson Valley on a great colonizing expedition. He came back to Utah County in 1858, and in 1864 was engaged in colonizing in Colorado and southwestern Utah. Tullidge, the historian, says of him: "Such men as Anson Call make history. They are peculiarly adapted to the colonizing of new countries—to laying foundations of empires in a wilderness." Speaking of Davis County, one of the richest in the state, he continues regarding the work of Mr. Call thus: "He had been an important factor in the development of its resources, and he had arrived at a period of life when a man is generally less capable of great and continued exertion."

 

Joseph Smith's prophecy concerning the life's work of Anson Call is almost as complete a biography as that recorded half a century later by the historian. What is prophecy but history reversed?

 

For more, see the biographical sketch of Anson Call one finds in Edward W. Tullidge, Biographies (Supplemental Vol.) of The Founders and Representative men of Southern, Eastern, and Western Utah, and Southern Idaho (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor, 1889), 262-84

 

 

One can find Anson's summarisation of his activities as a colonizer and city builder from 1849 in "Extracts from the private journal of Anson Call, 1875" (MS 4651, Church History Library)

 

While Anson may have garbled some things, it being 12 years after the fact (and 10 after Joseph’s death), it is evidence of Joseph offering a true prophecy; it is clearly not an obvious false prophecy, contra Packham and Baer.

 

As an aside, Anson’s 1854 account is not the earliest source for Joseph Smith’s so-called “Rocky Mountain Prophecy.” That there was an expectation that the Saints would move to the Rocky Mountains was believed in 1842, as evidenced by Oliver H. Olney. On this, see:

 

Oliver H. Olney's 1842 Journal Entries on the Saints' Then-Future Move to the Rocky Mountains

 

Further Reading:

 

Resources on Joseph Smith's Prophecies