Richard Price, in his Action Time (1985), discussed Joseph Smith III's eschatology, showing that he did not believe (or at least was unaware) of any teaching from his father that Jesus could come again in 1890/91:
Joseph
III Declared That Christ Would Not Come Before Fulfilling Prophecy. The second president of the Church, who gave
so much good advice to the saints, also indicated that there would not be an
immediate return of Christ. He preached, “Under the influence of this thought
we have been preaching for years the coming of Christ, but have distinctly
affirmed all along the line of our ministry, that no man was authorized to set
the day and the hour when he whom we regard as our Redeemer should come; and
while we have stood should to shoulder with many thousands who believed in the
second coming of Christ, and who have from time to time set the day of his
appearing, we have told them straightly he could not come; he would not come
until things which had been predicated by himself should be accomplished; for if
he did, it would unfortunately prove him to have been a false prophet, which we
could not afford to accept” (The Gospel Banner, March, 1897, No. 1, pp.
2-3. Also see other statements which Joseph III made on this subject: Saints’
Herald, May 21, 1935, pp. 657-658; The Memoirs of Joseph Smith III,
pp. 98-99, 132).
On
this subject, Joseph III also wrote, “ . . . I aroused the anger of a
practicing physician . . . who was an ardent follower of the ‘Second Advent’
theory. He had been engaged in circulating the works of one Doctor William Cummings
. . . who had figured the chronology and the prophecies of the Bible in such a
way as to bring the time of the second coming of the Savior down to a definite
point—a date prior to our visit . . . In a subsequent statement, circulated
widely through the press, Dr. Cummings had stated that he had made a mistake in
one figure in his calculations, which, corrected, would alter matters somewhat
and place the date for the expected Advent ahead, instead.
“I
preached from two texts [in the King James Version]: ‘And this gospel of the
kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and
then shall the end come’; and Revelation 14:6, ‘And I saw another angel fly in
the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that
dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.’
“In
summing up, I reminded them that Doctor Cummings had already been under the
necessity of revising his calculations as originally stated, claiming a mistake
in figures, and assured them that I was of their opinion that until those two
prophecies I had read in their hearing were fulfilled, neither he nor any other
man would be able to calculate correctly the coming of Christ, or fix the hour
or date of that appearance. I added that if they did, it would contradict the
statement made by the Master in that same chapter on Matthew: ‘Of that day and
hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels in heaven, but my Father only.’” (Saints’
Herald, July 30, 1935, p. 977)
In
view of the above prophecies and statements concerning the Latter Days or the
end time, the saints should realize that there is much to happen before Christ comes—which
will apparently take a number of years. (Richard Price, Action Time: The
Problem of Fundamentalism Versus Liberalism in the Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, and Suggestions for Coping with That Problem [rev
ed.; Independence, Miss.: Price Publishing Co., 1985], 206-8, emphasis in
original)
Further Reading:
Did Joseph Smith Predict that the Second Coming would happen in 1890/91?
