The Tanners, in Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? wrote the following against Parley P. Pratt and his prophetic abilities:
Writing in 1838, the Mormon
Apostle Parley P. Pratt prophesied that in 50 years there would not be an
unbelieving Gentile on this continent, and if the inhabitants were not greatly
scourged within 5 or 10 years the Book of Mormon would be proven untrue. His
statement appears as follows in the tract, Mormonism Unveiled—Truth Vindicated:
Now, Mr. Sunderland, you have
something definite and tangible, the time, the manner, the means, the names,
the dates; and I will state as a prophesy, that there will not be an
unbelieving Gentile upon this continent 50 years hence; and if they
are not greatly scourged, and in a great measure overthrown,
within five or ten years from this date, then the Book of Mormon will
have proved itself false. (Mormonism Unveiled—Truth Vindicated, by
Parley P. Pratt, p. 15; copied from a microfilm of the original tract at the
Mormon Church Historian’s Library) (Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism:
Shadow or Reality? [5th ed.; Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry,
1987, 2008], 188)
In this blog post, I will (1) provide previous apologetic
responses to this issue and (2) Ian Barber’s comments situating Pratt’s
eschatology and prophecy.
(1)
Apologetic Explanations of Pratt’s Prophecy
In response
to a question by "RBYSECKER," the "Latter-day Saints Haven"
(PKA "Mormon Haven") Website responds thusly:
JOEL - Parley P. Pratt's
"Mormonism Unveiled: Zion's Watchman Unmasked" was a pamphlet written
solely by himself in an emotional response to the many lies and hostile
articles written by a Protestant minister named LeRoy Sunderland. Parley's
attitude was obviously quite livid throughout the writing of this pamphlet
which may at times have allowed his emotions to cloud his judgement about some
of the things he said.
However, the "prophesy"
he makes correlates to a prophesy that he refers to in the Book of Mormon
earlier in the article. He speaks of 3 Nephi Chapter 21:11-21 when he says,
"where all who will not hearken to the Book of Mormon, shall be cut off
from among the people; and that too, in the day it comes forth to the Gentiles
and is rejected by them. And not only does this page set the time for the
overthrow of our government and all other Gentile governments on the American
continent, but the way and means of this utter destruction are clearly
foretold; namely, the remnant of Jacob will go through among the Gentiles and
tear them in pieces. like a lion among the flocks of sheep. Their hand shall be
lifted up upon their adversaries, and all their enemies shall be cut off. This
destruction includes an utter overthrow, and desolation of all our Cities,
Forts, and Strong Holds -- an entire annihilation of our race, except such as
embrace the Covenant, and are numbered with Israel." (Mormonism Unveiled,
Pratt p.15)
These are the things that Jesus
predicted will happen to all the people in the latter-days if they harden their
hearts and not hearken to the Book of Mormon. At the time Parley made his
prophesy, it seemed that that was they way things were going to go. And if the
people of his day continued to harass and persecute the saints, he believed
that "within five or ten years" everyone would either be converted to
the Lord's Church or would be destroyed as predicted by Jesus in the 3 Nephi
21:11-21 scriptures.
But obviously, the governments
were not completely overthrown, cities were not desolated, and an entire race
was not annihilated. Were both Jesus and Parley wrong? No! Here is the reason
why.
Later in 3 Nephi 21 Jesus places a
provision on His earlier prophecy when He said:
"But if they will repent and
hearken unto my words, and harden not their hearts, I will establish my church
among them, and they shall come in unto the covenant and be numbered among this
the remnant of Jacob, unto whom I have given this land for their
inheritance;" (See 3 Nephi 21:22-29)
Parley's and Jesus' prophesy of
destruction did not need to come to pass, because later on there were enough
people who did not harden their hearts and who were willing to listen. Because
of that God did not destroy them and He was able to establish His church among
them.
Therefore, Parley's
"prophesy" was essentially valid if opposition and hatred against the
Church had continued in the way it seemed to be going at the time he said it.
Fortunately that did not happen and Christ was able to firmly establish His
Church on the earth as it is today.
Notice the portion I emphasised in bold: the author argues that the
prophecy in 3 Nephi 21 (and, as a result, Pratt’s prophecy in his 1838 Mormonism
Unveiled) were conditional prophecies.
FAIR has an article on this topic here
where the influences of the Book of Mormon and its eschatological prophecies on
Pratt is discussed. Later on in the article, on the question of "Was
Parley's interpretation correct?" we read that
it is hard for later readers to
read these verses and say that it is as explicit as all that. The scripture
uses the term "in that day," which is typical of Isaiah's millennial
prophecies in the KJV. So, I think Parley misunderstood these verses, and
assumed that this meant that the end would be very near to the Book of Mormon's
publication and so saw them as a prophecy with a clear time-frame.
Unfortunately for his argument, I
don't think this was not the case. The Book of Mormon simply isn't that clear
or specific. And, notably, Joseph Smith (the prophet and president of the
Church) made prophecies which insisted that the end would not come within the
time frame that Parley offered up.
And that
In this case that Elder Pratt was
simply wrong. He had no authority to declare doctrine for the Church. What he
was doing, it seems, was instead reading scripture and interpreting what he
thought was a prophecy contained therein. If he had been right in his reading,
then of course his prophecy would have been true, since scripture has the
authority to give prophecy. But, it is hard to read the scripture and think
that this is as clear-cut as he makes it out to be. It isn't.
Parley likely wanted a response to
Sunderland's argument, but Sunderland was right--there is no prophecy in the
Book of Mormon that is specific enough that someone in 1838 could have said,
"Oh yeah, this is obviously from God, it foretold X." And, while
Sunderland may think that a weakness, modern believers would probably see it as
normal and expected--God does not give "signs" like that. There may
well be prophecies we can appreciate, but they won't be so compelling that they
will force people to believe, and we may not see them until "after the
fact."
In sum, Parley is here really more
(mis)reading scripture than coming up with a prophecy out of the blue. He was
mistaken, but that's OK--even apostles can be wrong, and an isolated apostle has
no right to declare binding doctrine. New revelation would always come to the
prophet--which Parley likely knew, but he just thought his reading of the
scripture was obviously correct, so felt no fear in making it. But, we must
remember that he came out of a long religious background before joining the
Church in which he had a deep sense of the second coming's urgency and
imminence. So, what seemed a "natural" reading to him just wasn't.
It's a good reminder that what we
think is really obvious about scripture may not be so; our own biases and
cultural presuppositions come into it. (This article may be doing the same
thing, of course, reading it with more historical distance, but a compelling
case can certainly be made, nonetheless, that the Book of Mormon is not near so
precise or specific as Parley thought.)
If the Book of Mormon had actually
said what Parley thought it did, and did so as specifically as he thought it
did, that might pose a problem. But, he's mistaken about what it says, and so
the Book of Mormon stands or falls on Parley's misreading.
What Parley was likely trying to
do was force Sunderland to take the Book of Mormon seriously (since this
argument in itself would have proved nothing to Sunderland, since it was well
in the future). Parley took the Book of Mormon text more seriously than many of
his fellow Saints, and so he was probably trying to encourage his readers to
give it a fair shot.
(2)
Ian Barber on the Apocalyptic Background of Pratt’s Prophecy
Commenting on D&C 87 (the “Civil War Prophecy”) and its
eschatology, Barber notes that
In the revelation on war, Smith
referred to but also looked beyond the time that the northern and southern states
would be divided against each other. ‘After many days’, the revelation foresaw,
‘slaves shall rise up against their masters who shall be marshaled and disciplined
for war’. This s the church leader’s first, recorded reference to apocalyptic conflict
involving slaves. As well, Smith added, ‘the remnants who are left of the land
will marshal themselves, and shall become exceedingly angry, and shall vex the
Gentiles with a sore vexation.’ ‘Thus,’ the text continued, ‘with the sword and
by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn’, where God would also
chasten the earth with famine, plague, earthquake, ‘the thunder of heaven, and
the fierce and vivid lightning . . . until the consumption decreed hath made a
full end of all nations.’ (Doctrine and Covenants, 87)
In context, the revelation’s
marshaled remnants ‘left of the land’ are resonant of Book of Mormon prophecies
concerning the vengeance of the remnant of Jacob on latter-day American
Gentiles. These documents demonstrate Smith’s continuing claims of Indian alliances
against Missouri, it is worth noting also that there is nothing in Joseph Smith’s
private teachings in the 1830s that would suggest any proposed Mormon
encouragement of Native American vengeance. Rather, it seems that the Native
Americans were expected to fulfill an apocalyptic role on their own terms,
consistent with the report of contemporary Indian conflicts with Anglo-American
settlers that Smith had followed. As the revelation on war put it: ‘the
remnants . . . will marshal themselves, and . . . vex the Gentiles’ [emphasis
added]. [Ibid., 87:5]
Joseph Smith’s public reticence is
also reinforced in the comparison of the reserved 25 December 1832 revelation
with the public, 4
January 1832 letter that omitted war in a list of God’s apocalyptic
judgments, to say nothing of the agency of avenging ‘remnants’, as noted above.
Considering this, it seems significant that the revelation on war remained
unpublished during Smith’s lifetime. [Bushman, Joseph Smith, 192] On the
eve of the American Civil War, Joseph Smith’s confidante and immediate successor
Brigham Young recalled that this revelation was ‘reserved’ during the
compilation of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1835. ‘It was not wisdom to
publish it to the world, and it remained in the private escritoire.’ [Brigham
Young, 20 May 1857, Journal of Discourses, 8:58] Other revelations that
referred to ‘Lamanite’ engagements were also expurgated or unpublished in the
1835 Doctrine and Covenants. [Walker, ‘Seeking the “Remnant”,’ 10] (Ian
Barber, “As A Lion Among the Sheep: Indigenous Americans and the National
Apocalypse in Early Mormon Thought,” in Framing the Apocalypse: Visions of
the End-Time, ed. Sheila C. Bibb and Alexandra Simon-López [Oxford:
Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2015], 42-43)
With that as background, Barber notes the following of this
prophecy and other influences on Pratt:
Not all early Mormon leaders
shared Smith’s reserve. As one of the first missionaries called to the Indians,
Parley P. Pratt became an influential apologist and an ordained member of the governance
Quorum of Twelve Apostles under Joseph Smith. In a defensive, 1838 publication
that went through several printings (including an 1842 reprint), Apostle Pratt
included the following in a list of prophetic Book of Mormon evidences.
Also, [Book of Mormon] p.
527, where all who will not hearken to the Book of Mormon, shall be cut off
from among the people, . . . And not only does this page set the time for the
overthrow of our government and all other Gentile Governments on the American
continent, but the way and means of this utter destruction are clearly
foretold, namely, the remnant of Jacob will go through among the Gentiles and
tear them in pieces, like a lion among the flocks of sheep. Their hand shall be
lifted up upon their adversaries, and all their enemies shall be cut off. This
destruction includes an utter overthrow, and desolation of all our Cities,
Forts and Strong Holds—an entire annihilation of our race, except such as an
embrace the Covenant, and are numbered with Israel. [Mormonism Unveiled [183],
14]
Pratt was so sure of this
prediction to opine that if unbelieving Gentiles ‘are not greatly scourged, and
in a great measure overthrown, within five or ten years from this date, then
the Book of Mormon will have proved itself false.’
[Pratt, Mormonism Unveiled, 14-15] Pratt restated the general principle
with more subtlety in 1841 while editor of the Millennial Star, a
British LDS periodical. A July editorial
acknowledged that public notice of the Indian vengeance doctrine had spread to
Britain. Pratt cited ‘a long article’ that had appeared in the Preston
Chronicle of 24 April, ‘taken mostly from the Baptist Register (an American
paper).’ The article had summarised Book of Mormon teachings about the
sufferings and abuse heaped upon the Indians, and the prophecy that the ‘tables
are to be turned’ as the Gentiles are cut off. With respect to the plight of
the Indians, the article as cited by Pratt even conceded a point: ‘The reader
would obtain a very correct history of the present state of the Indians by
reading the book.’ As reproduced by Pratt, the Chronicle article then
paraphrased Christ’s Book of Mormon prophecies that the House of Israel
would tread upon unrepentant Gentiles ‘as the lion doth his pray’, and then
converted Indians and Mormons would congregate in a holy city (the New
Jerusalem). After this, the Chronicle article observed, the Book of
Mormon anticipated the destruction of American Gentiles by the sword of an “’unfuriated
[sic] fanaticism’ that would become ‘what Mohammedism was to the
contingent of Asia.’ ‘These fulminations have struck terror into the hearts of
the timid’, the article concluded. [P. P. Pratte, ed., ‘Reply to the Preston
Chronicle,’ The Millennial Star 2 [10 July 1841]]
Pratt’s editorial reply recognised
that the ‘enemies of truth . . . seem desperately afraid’ that Jesus will ‘take
vengeance upon the Gentiles for their injustice and oppression.’ Here Pratt
cited the article’s acknowledgement that Book of Mormon testimony ‘in
regard to the Gentile, having wronged and oppressed the Indians[,] is correct.’
Pratt asked bot the Baptist Register and Preston Chronicle what objection
they could have to Christ executing ‘justice in this matter’, since ‘they
themselves acknowledge that the Book of Mormon contains a true and correct
testimony of wrongs, suffering, and abuse heaped upon that remnant by the
Gentiles? (Christians).’
However, while supporting the doctrine
of violent Indian redemption in broad terms, Pratt also denied that any Mormon,
Indian or otherwise, would ever draw the sword against those of differing
belief, ‘however the Lord may see fit to make use of the Indians to execute his
vengeance upon the ungodly, before they (the Indians) are converted.’ Pratt
added: ‘it is certain that if they once become Latter-day Saints they will
never use weapons of war except in defence of their lives.’ [Editor, ‘Reply to
the Preston Chronicle,’ 43] This explanation helps explain the seeming paradox
in 1830s-1840s Mormon doctrine of ‘visions of Lamanites violently reseizing
their homeland and wreaking God’s justice upon the wicked’ with ‘expectations
that Lamanites would be pacified and civilized through conversion.’ [Duffy, ‘Use
of “Lamanite”,’ 125] In short, Book of Mormon prophecies of dire,
Micah-like Indian vengeance on the Gentiles would have to occur before
conversion. Allowing that, the provision that converted Indians might still use
weapons ‘in defence’ in Pratt’s editorial is interesting. It suggests a
further, perhaps post-Missouri persecution nuance in the doctrine. (Ibid., 43-44)
Further Reading
