In his Joseph Smith as a Prophet, critic Richard Packham offered the following example of a purportedly false prophecy of Joseph Smith:
MORMONS
WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO COOK: Feb 6, 1844. Joseph Smith prophesies
that within five years the Mormons would be able to live without cooking their
food. (Joseph Smith manuscript diary, omitted from the HC. Cited in Quinn, p.
642).
FULFILLED?: The Mormons are still cooking
their food.
“Quinn” here refers to D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy:
Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994). On p. 642, we
read the following:
6 Feb. At a dinner party Smith
"prophesied at the table that 5 years would not roll round before the
company would all be able to live without cooking." The official History
of the Church deletes this entry from Joseph Smith's manuscript diary.
The relevant text is the diary entry for February 6, 1844 from “President
Joseph Smith’s Journal,” Journal, 4 vols., Dec. 1842–June 1844 in the
handwriting of Willard Richards. The following is the relevant image and transcription
thereof from The Joseph Smith Papers website:
Tuesday Feb 6— [5 lines blank]
evening, with Hyrum [Smith] &
Sidney [Rigdon] and the 12 and th[e]ir wives at John Taylors at 5 P.M at supper
very plesnt time— I prophesied at the table that 5 years would not roll rou[n]d
before the company would all be able to live witho[u]t cooking
In spite of claims by critics of the Church, this is an example of a prophecy that was fulfilled. As FAIR noted in their response to another critic (Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods) who also claimed this was a false prophecy:
The 'company' referred to was the
Twelve apostles and their wives, at dinner. It says nothing about all Mormons
refraining from cooking. Those to whom the prophecy was addressed were soon to
endure the privations of the migration to the west. At times they would have to
go without fuel, and doubtless learned to subsist on fare that they would have
turned down in the comforts of Nauvoo. Thus, Joseph's remarks (made "at
supper...at the table") were probably prompted by the abundance of good
food before them, which Joseph then prophesied they would not always have. (source)
Further Reading:
Resources
on Joseph Smith's Prophecies