Saturday, December 10, 2022

Josiah E. Hickman on Joseph Smith's Prophecies

 

Joseph Smith’s Prophecies.—Many of Smith’s prophecies have come true; others are in the process of fulfilment. The scope of this treatise, however, will not permit complete proof of this statement. We will merely name a few prophecies—could Riley call them aberrations?—the fulfilment of which is self evident. He foretold, years in advance, the banishment of his people, the Latter-day Saints, and of their going to the great American desert and redeeming it. Was not the fulfilment also in keeping with Isaiah’s prophecies? (Isa. 35) Surely that was not an hallucination, for it is fulfilled! Mental aberrations are not. Joseph Smith saw and foretold that this nation would not only cease to drive and kill the Indians, but would become as nursing fathers and mothers to them, which service would be of inestimable value to the natives and to the nation itself. (See 1 Ne. 21:22, 23; 22:5-12 Such fulfilment is largely completed, or is in the process of perfect accomplishment.

 

He said that this nation would eventually be lifted up above all other nations in power, wealth, and dominion. (1 Ne. 13:30) Who will deny the fulfilment? He foretold the Civil War, even where it would begin, and also its cause. He seems also to have predicted in 1832 the great World War. (D. and C. 87)

 

With the eye of a seer, the voice of a prophet, and an index finger pointing to the West, Joseph Smith told his people that they would be mobbed and driven; that they would go to the Rocky Mountains; that there would build towns and cities and fill those valleys of the Rockies from Canada to Old Mexico; that there they would become world-famed.

 

The grandchildren of those persons who knew this prophecy have heard their professors of social subjects in the leading colleges of America cite the social regime instituted by the Prophet as a model for the world to study and pattern after. From states and many foreign countries come researchers in economic, political, or educational policies to Utah to learn the principles that underlie the social machinery that the Prophet set in motion. The descendants of those who sought to exterminate the Church are now proclaiming his fame and fulfilling his prophecy. (The reader is referred to Nephi L. Morris, Prophecies of Joseph Smith and Their Fulfillment, for an extended analysis of Joseph Smith’s prophecies)

 

So far as time has tested his prophecies, not one has failed. Where, then, could be the delusion? Could the wisdom of even the keenest statesman, unless divinely inspired, have accurately foretold such details? Could hallucinations have materialized? (Josiah E. Hickman, The Romance of the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City: The Deseret News Press, 1937], 19-20; "Riley" is Woodbridge Riley, author of the 1903 The Founder of Mormonism: A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr.)

 

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