"Prophecy contains details not only of Civil War but also of world wars," Church News, May 6, 1989
On Christmas day, 1832, the
Prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation foretelling war between the Northern
and the Southern states of the United States, and the great calamities that
shall fall upon all the inhabitants of the earth.
Elder Joseph Fielding Smith,
writing in Church History and Modern Revelation, noted it may have been easy in
1832 for someone to predict there would come a division of the Northern and
Southern states, but it certainly was not within the power of man to predict
the detail of such a division. The Lord revealed such to Joseph Smith.Elder
Smith said, "We have seen that war, famine, plague, earthquake in divers
places have played their part in the earth in fulfillment of this prediction in
Section 87T, and the end is not yet, other conflicts are to come."
Elder Smith called attention to a
portion of the revelation: " . . . war will be poured out upon all
nations, beginning at this place South CarolinaT." (D&C 87:2.)
Elder Smith wrote: "This,
certainly, is a bold prediction which no one, other than Joseph Smith, dared to
make. . . .
"Following this prophecy, in
1833-35 and 1853-55 wars were fought on the Eastern Hemisphere, and the Mexican
war of 1846-47, was fought in this land; but out of none of these came
suggestions for changed methods of warfare.
"The Civil War was the
incubator where were nurtured practically all the evils of modern warfare.
"Before that time battles
upon the sea were between wooden ships, and on the land with what we would call
today the same inferior weapons which had been used for many years."
Elder Smith quoted from The
Present Time and Prophecy, in which the author, James H. Anderson, noted that
new methods of warfare, mechanical devices and inventions were employed during
the Civil War, leading to new and more destructive methods. Some of those
methods, devices and inventions were:
The machine gun was brought
forth, with a capacity for firing 350 shots per minute.
The Union ironclad warship, the
Monitor, was used for the first time in war when it battled the Confederate's
Merrimac.
The revolving turret was used on
the Monitor.
The first submarine was used in
war when the Confederate sub, David, sank the federal warship Housatonic.
Military telegraphs and military
railways were used for the first time during a war.
The rifle cannon, shooting its
great steel shell, came into existence.
Elder Smith quoted Anderson's
observation:
" `During the American Civil
War, there was introduced a new element in warfare upon the land and sea,
changing the whole method or course of war - a beginning therein which made it
so much more destructive both as to life and property that there was no
comparison with that which had gone before.' "
Elder Smith further wrote,
"People who declare it was easy for Joseph Smith to predict the Civil War
have overlooked the fact that he also predicted the World War, and too, that
this was done 82 years before that dreadful conflict commenced. Yet, strange as
it may appear, the great thinkers of the world failed to see the approaching
storm even within a few months of the outbreak of the conflict."
He also wrote, " . . . no
one except those who had faith in Joseph Smith and a testimony of the truth,
believed that the portion predicting a world war would ever be fulfilled. We
have lived to see two of the most terrible and destructive editions of that war
come upon the entire world. . . ."
Further Reading:
Resources
on Joseph Smith's Prophecies
