A basic premise of the LDS faith is the
doctrinal claim that the LDS Church, and Joseph Smith in
particular, represents the “Restoration”—the reestablishment
of true Christianity to the earth. We have already examined
this doctrinal claim in some depth in our
response to chapter 17 of the LDS doctrinal manual
Gospel Principles.
However, in this study we will examine two crucial claims
that the LDS Church makes about this Restoration. The first
is its claim that Joseph Smith’s ministry was that of a
prophet of God who prophesied about events preceding the
Second Coming of Christ. The second is its claim that the
Bible actually prophesied the LDS Restoration.
A. Joseph Smith and William Miller
In 1844, the year of Joseph Smith’s death, another major event took place in the history of American Christianity. Ironically, this other event
involved
another man from upstate New York, named William Miller. In
1832, two years after Joseph Smith published the Book of
Mormon and started the LDS Church, Miller published his
first articles setting forth his theories concerning
biblical prophecy. He had concluded years earlier that the
second coming of Jesus Christ would take place about the
year 1844. The final date that the “Millerites” set for the
Second Coming was October 22, 1844—a date that with its
failed prediction became known as the Great Disappointment.
Following the failure of that predicted date for the Second
Coming, some people who remained in the movement, known as
Adventism, developed new speculative interpretations of the
Bible. The largest of these Adventist groups became known
years later as the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The same year (1832) that Miller began
publishing articles and lecturing constantly on the imminent
Second Coming, Joseph Smith issued some prophetic
predictions of his own. In September of that year, Joseph
predicted that a temple would be built in Jackson County,
Missouri, before the generation living at the time had all
passed away (Doctrine & Covenants 84:1-5). As pointed out in
our previous study responding to chapter 42 of
Gospel Principles,
this prophecy of a Missouri temple failed to come to pass.
On Christmas 1832, Joseph predicted that wars would “shortly
come to pass” and that war would “be poured out upon all
nations” beginning with a war between the northern and
southern States commencing at South Carolina (Doctrine &
Covenants 87).
As the years passed and the Saints
experienced hostile and even violent opposition—including
their explusion from Missouri—Joseph anticipated that the
Second Coming would take place soon but not immediately. On
February 14, 1835, Joseph Smith is reported to have said
that “it was the will of God that those who went to Zion,
with a determination to lay down their lives, if necessary,
should be ordained to the ministry, and go forth to prune
the vineyard for the last time, or the coming of the Lord,
which was nigh—even fifty-six years should wind up the
scene” (History of the
Church 2:182). This comment suggested, though not as an
explicit prophecy, that the Second Coming would take place
as early as February 1891. In 1843, Joseph gave a message
that was later included in the LDS scripture Doctrine &
Covenants, explaining that the Second Coming could take
place no sooner
than about that date:
“I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice repeat the following: Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter. I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face. I believe the coming of the Son of Man will not be any sooner than that time” (Doctrine & Covenants 130:14-17).
Joseph was born on December 23, 1805,
so that he would have turned 85 years of age at the very end
of 1890. The above statement was apparently made in part as
a public rejection of Miller’s prediction, which had given
1843-1844 as the timeframe for the Second Coming. A few days
later, Joseph commented specifically on Miller’s 1844
prediction: “Were I going to prophesy, I would say the end
[of the world] would not come in 1844, 5, or 6, or in forty
years. There are those of the rising generation who shall
not taste death till Christ comes” (Teachings
of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding
Smith, 286; also in
History of the Church, 5:336). After repeating his story
about the Lord revealing to him that he would see the coming
of the Son of Man if he lived to the age of 85, Joseph made
the following comments:
“Then read the 14th chapter of Revelation, 6th and 7th verses…. And Hosea, 6th chapter, After two days, etc.,—2,520 years; which brings it to 1890” (Teachings, 286).
Joseph’s prediction that some of “the
rising generation” would not die before Christ came is
consistent with his prophecy in 1832 that the generation
living at that time would not all pass away before the
Missouri temple was built. Both predictions pointed to the
end of the nineteenth century as the time when the Saints
could expect the Second Coming. Joseph’s cryptic and
puzzling-sounding reference to “two days, etc.” and “2,520
years” is an allusion to a popular interpretation of
Leviticus 26:28 in the light of Daniel’s prophecies. That
popular speculation theorized that a period of two and a
half “days” of a thousand years each, or more precisely
2,520 years (seven times 360 days, with each day
representing a year), would culminate in the Second Coming.
At this point Joseph was apparently using the same methods
of calculation promoted by the Millerites but coming up with
a different end date, that of 1890. According to Joseph, too
many things needed to happen before the Second Coming for it
to occur in 1844 or even shortly thereafter:
“Judah must return, Jerusalem must be rebuilt, and the temple, and water come out from under the temple, and the waters of the Dead Sea be healed. It will take some time to rebuild the walls of the city and the temple, &c.; and all this must be done before the Son of Man will make His appearance. There will be wars and rumors of wars, signs in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, the sun turned into darkness and the moon to blood, earthquakes in divers places, the seas heaving beyond their bounds; then will appear one grand sign of the Son of Man in heaven” (Teachings, 286-87).
In March 1844, Joseph again prophesied
that William Miller’s prediction of the Second Coming to
occur in that year would fail:
“But I take the responsibility upon myself to prophesy in the name of the Lord, that Christ will not come this year as Miller has prophecyed, for we have seen the bow. and I also Prophecy in the name of the Lord that Christ will not Come in forty years & if God ever spake by my mouth he will not come in that length of time, & Jesus Christ never did reveal to any man the precise time that he would come. Go & read the scriptures & you cannot find any thing that specified the exact [time] he would come & all who say so are fals teachers” (The Essential Joseph Smith, foreword by Marvin S. Hill [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995], 231, spelling as in original).
We may summarize the foregoing
information as follows:
- Joseph Smith shared some of the same beliefs as that of William Miller and his followers, including the expectation that Christ’s return would happen soon.
- Joseph rejected Miller’s predictions for 1843 and 1844,
stating instead that Christ could not come any sooner than
1890 or 1891.
-
Needless to say, the expectation that
Christ would return in the lifetime of some people living in
the 1840s proved mistaken decades ago. Joseph’s repeated
references to the time around 1890 and 1891 proved also to
have no real significance; nothing of prophetic relevance
occurred at that time, and it has now been 120 years since
those dates passed. Some of the things that Joseph expected
to occur before the Second Coming have taken place, notably
the War Between the States (the Civil War, 1861-1865), about
which we will have more to say below, and the return of the
Jews to Israel (1948). (The latter event was widely expected
by English-speaking evangelical Protestants long before
Joseph Smith; this was another belief that he inherited from
evangelicalism.) Other events prophesied by Joseph Smith,
however, have not occurred within the expected timeframe,
notably the building of a temple in Jackson County,
Missouri.
B. The “Civil War” Prophecy
As mentioned above, on Christmas 1832
Joseph Smith prophesied correctly that there would be a war
between the northern and southern States “beginning at the
rebellion of South Carolina” (Doctrine & Covenants 87:1). If
there is a predictive prophecy from Joseph Smith that
Mormons are inclined to consider a validation of his claim
to be a prophet of God, this would be it. South Carolina was
the first of the southern States to announce its cessation
from the Union, and the Civil War (or, as Southerners still
prefer, the War of Northern Aggression!) began when the new
Confederate army attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston, South
Carolina, in April 1861.
Looking back 150 years after the
beginning of the Civil War, it is understandable that some
hearing that Joseph Smith had predicted the conflict 28
years earlier, even naming the State where the war would
begin, would find this prediction to be an impressive
fulfillment of prophecy. However, familiarity with the
historical situation in Joseph Smith’s time leads to a
different conclusion. While there were tensions generally
between the southern “slave” States and the northern States,
none of the southern States besides South Carolina was on a
clear, aggressive path toward cessation from the Union. For
four years before Joseph’s prophecy, the people of South
Carolina had been debating how to respond to federally
imposed tariffs that they felt hit their State’s economy
particularly hard. Those who argued for “nullification” (the
State’s right to reject a federal law ) had gained control
of State politics by 1832, and in November—just one month
before Joseph’s prophecy—held a “Nullification Convention”
in which South Carolina formally declared the tariffs
unconstitutional and threatened cessation if the federal
government attempted to use force to collect the tariffs.
This was all “front page news” throughout the United States
in late 1832, and the possibility of a war between the
northern and southern States with South Carolina’s
“rebellion” as the flashpoint was widely recognized.
Prediction in 1832 of such a war is not even evidence of
extraordinary human prescience, let alone divine
inspiration.
In fact, Joseph’s “Civil War prophecy”
is itself a false
prophecy. According to that prophecy, the conflict between
the northern and southern States was going to escalate as
other nations allied themselves with each side, “and then
war shall be poured out upon all nations” (Doctrine &
Covenants 87:3; see also verse 2). In other words, the Civil
War was supposed to escalate into a world war—and not just
any world war, but the war to end all wars, “until the
consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations” (v.
6). Historically, of course, nothing of the sort happened.
The First World War (1914-1918) began nearly sixty years
after the end of the American Civil War, and the conflicts
that precipitated World War I had no significant connection
geographically, politically, culturally, or militarily to
the Civil War. Nor did these wars bring an end to all
nations; it has now been over 66 years since the conclusion
of World War II. The two world wars of the twentieth century
were horrific in terms of the sheer numbers of people killed
and the global dimensions of the conflicts, but they were
not fulfillments of Joseph’s prophecy in Doctrine &
Covenants 87.
C. Signs of the Restoration?
According to LDS doctrine, a number of
events in the life of Joseph Smith were both signs and
crucial turning points in the “Restoration,” which for
Mormons means the re-creation of the true church on earth.
These signs of the Restoration, which the LDS Church claims
were prophesied in the Bible, include the publication of the
Book of Mormon and various appearances of heavenly figures
to Joseph Smith. If the LDS Church’s claims about these
events are true, then obviously it really is the one true
church on the earth today and we should all accept the LDS
gospel and doctrines. On the other hand, if there are good
reasons to discount these claims—especially if they are not
consistent with the biblical passages to which Mormons
appeal in support—then we are justified in rejecting the LDS
Church’s claims.
1.
Did an angel restore the gospel?
According to
Gospel Principles,
“The Apostle John saw that the gospel would be restored by
an angel (see Revelation 14:6–7). In fulfillment of this
prophecy, the angel Moroni and other heavenly visitors
brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to Joseph Smith”
(253-54). The basic premise of this claim is that Revelation
14:6-7 prophesies the restoration of the gospel through an
angel. If it does, then we may consider whether to accept
Joseph Smith’s claim that he saw such an angel and that the
gospel Joseph said he received from the angel was a
restoration of the gospel. On the other hand, if Revelation
14 does not prophesy the restoration of the gospel through
an angel, then it really doesn’t matter if Joseph saw an
angel or not, because such an angel would not and could not
have been fulfilling Revelation 14.
Here is what the two verses say:
“Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water’” (Revelation 14:6-7 ESV).
John’s description of this angel does
not sound even remotely like Joseph Smith’s story about
being visited by the angel Moroni. John’s angel is flying
overhead in the sky; Joseph’s angel appeared in his room by
his bedside. John’s angel is speaking loudly to all the
people on the earth; Joseph’s angel spoke privately (and
presumably quietly!) to Joseph alone. John’s angel brings
the world a message warning people to fear, glorify, and
worship God the maker of the world because the time of
judgment has come; Joseph’s angel brings him a message about
the Book of Mormon, a book that supposedly contains the
fullness of the gospel.
If we read verses 6-7 in the context of
the larger unit that they begin, we see even more clearly
that this passage has nothing to do with opening up a new
dispensation of the church or a restoration of the gospel.
The angel of verses 6-7 is the first of three angels in
rapid succession that bring ever harsher messages of
judgment:
- The first angel urges people to worship God because the time of judgment has come (14:6-7).
- The second angel announces that God’s wrath has caused Babylon the Great to fall (14:8).
-
The rest of the chapter continues this
theme of God’s wrath and judgment from which those who die
in the Lord are spared, with three more angels involved in
executing that judgment (14:13-20).
But does not the first angel proclaim
“the eternal gospel”?
Indeed he does, but this is not a “restored” gospel but the
same gospel that
has always been proclaimed. The gospel is not merely a
message of salvation; it is a message of salvation for those
who follow the Lamb (Christ)
and a message of
judgment for those who do not. It is good news for those who
accept it, but bad news for those who do not! There is
nothing in the angel’s proclamation to indicate that a lost
or corrupted gospel is being restored; instead, his message
is a very basic, very elementary one: God is the maker of
the world—start honoring him as such, or else!
2.
Did Isaiah prophesy about the coming forth of the Book of
Mormon?
According to
Gospel Principles,
“In Old Testament times the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel
foresaw the coming of the Book of Mormon (see Isaiah
29:4–18; Ezekiel 37:16–20)” (254). However, neither of these
passages refers to the Book of Mormon. Not only do these
passages not mention the Book of Mormon by name, they do not
describe anything corresponding to the Book of Mormon.
Let’s look first at Isaiah 29. There is
a reason why the LDS citation begins with verse 4 of that
chapter instead of verse 1: verses 1-3 establish that the
context of this prophecy is Jerusalem (called “Ariel”), not
the Nephite civilization in the Americas:
“Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city
where David dwelt! add ye year to year; let them kill
sacrifices. Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be
heaviness and sorrow: and it shall be unto me as Ariel. And
I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege
against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against
thee” (Isaiah 29:1-3 KJV).
The description of Ariel as “the city
where David dwelt” unambiguously refers to Jerusalem, and
the “siege” that will come against Jerusalem referred in
Isaiah’s context to the Assyrian army that besieged
Jerusalem in 701 BC, though the scenario could be seen as
repeated a century later by the Babylonians. The rest of the
chapter continues in this context, which means that it has
nothing to do with the supposed Book of Mormon peoples.
Gospel Principles begins its citation of the passage
with verse 4: “And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt
speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of
the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a
familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall
whisper out of the dust.” Mormons traditionally understand
the “voice” from “the ground” as the Book of Mormon buried
in the ground near Joseph Smith’s home, and its “familiar
spirit” as referring to its similarities to the Bible (e.g.,
James E. Talmage, Articles of Faith, 18; Joseph Fielding Smith,
Doctrines of Salvation, 3:213; LeGrand Richards,
A Marvelous Work and a
Wonder, 69). This is a most unfortunate misunderstanding
of Isaiah 29:4. In context Isaiah is saying that the proud
city of Jerusalem would be humbled, pummeled into the dirt,
like a man who has been given a beating by mobsters and is
lying on the ground quietly moaning. Worse still, the Mormon
reading of the verse badly misunderstands its reference to a
“familiar spirit.” This expression is used consistently in
the King James Version to refer to the spirits of the dead
in the underworld that supposedly spoke through mediums or
necromancers, whom the Israelites were forbidden by God to
consult:
- “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither
seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the
Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:31).
-
-
-
The expression “familiar spirits” is
used everywhere else in the Old Testament in reference to
spiritists or necromancers, including elsewhere in Isaiah
(8:19; 19:3). Thus, what Isaiah 29:4 means is that Jerusalem
will be beaten down so severely that its “voice” will be
like those necromancers who whisper and mumble words
supposedly coming from the spirits of the departed. Yet
Mormons use this verse to claim that Isaiah was predicting
the coming forth of the Book of Mormon from the ground!
After speaking further about the many
nations that were going to come and humiliate Jerusalem,
again called Ariel as well as Mount Zion (Isaiah 29:5-8),
Isaiah prophesies that Jerusalem will become so spiritually
dense that its most respected wise men and prophets will be
completely ignorant of what God is doing:
“Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. 10 For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. 11 And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: 12 And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned. 13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: 14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid” (Isaiah 29:9-14 KJV).
As an act of judgment against Jerusalem
for its disobedience, the Lord announces that Jerusalem will
suffer from extreme spiritual blindness. Isaiah uses some
analogies to describe what this blindness will be like. It
will be like a deep sleep afflicting Jerusalem’s rulers as
well as its prophets or seers, preventing them from seeing
what is clearly happening (verse 10). It will also be like a
book (or scroll) that no one can read, whether they are
literate or illiterate, because it is sealed (verses 11-12).
Here again, the idea is that the truth is right in front of
the wise men of the city but they cannot see it (verse 14).
Mormons have been taught a very
different understanding of this passage, and especially of
verses 11-12. They think that Isaiah was prophesying about a
specific incident involving the Book of Mormon. In 1828,
Joseph Smith gave his associate (and financier) Martin
Harris a piece of paper with several rows of characters that
Joseph said he had copied from the gold plates containing
the Book of Mormon. Harris then took this “transcript” to
New York City and showed it to some scholars, including
Charles Anthon, to get their opinion of the characters.
According to the LDS Church’s official account, when Anthon
offered to translate the plates if Harris brought them to
him, Harris told him that part of the plates were sealed and
that he was forbidden to bring the plates to him. To this
Anthon reportedly replied, “I cannot read a sealed book”
(Joseph Smith—History 1:65). Mormons note the similarity in
wording of this statement to the one found in Isaiah 29:11,
where the learned is asked to read the words of a book and
he responds, “I cannot; for it is sealed,” and they conclude
that Anthon’s statement about the Book of Mormon fulfilled
Isaiah’s prophecy. “Thus unwittingly did this man fulfil the
prophecy of Isaiah concerning the coming forth of the
volume” (Talmage,
Articles of Faith, 242).
We have already seen that Isaiah was
not referring to a literal book or scroll, but was using an
analogy to describe the spiritual blindness of the seers and
wise men of ancient Jerusalem. Even if we ignore the context
of Isaiah 29:11, however, its wording does not fit the
incident involving Charles Anthon. What Isaiah says is that
men deliver “a book that is sealed…to one that is learned”
and ask him to read it, and he says, naturally enough, that
he cannot read it because it is sealed. But no book, sealed
or not sealed, was delivered to Charles Anthon. The only
thing that was shown to Anthon was an alleged copy of some
of the characters on the plates. Mormons may try to get
around this problem by saying that it was only the
words of the book
that were delivered to the learned man, referring to the
words on the transcript that Harris showed to Anthon. This
isn’t what Isaiah says (compare the parallel statement in
verse 12), but taking it this way only makes the problem
worse, because Joseph Smith—History 1:65 claims that Anthon
was able to read
the transcript and verify its translation of the characters!
So whichever way one tries to read the Anthon incident into
Isaiah 29:11, it simply does not fit.
The difficulty of making the Anthon
incident fit the supposed prophecy about it in Isaiah
29:11-12 eventually led Joseph Smith to produce an alternate
version of Isaiah 29 in the Book of Mormon and later in the
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. This alternate Isaiah
29 features over 700 words added in and around what are
verses 11-12 in the King James Version that turn those
verses into an explicit prophecy of the coming forth of the
Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 27:11-26; Isaiah 29:6-24 JST). Such
wholesale rewriting of Scripture to make it “prophesy” about
one’s own work only reveals the weakness of the original
claim and Joseph Smith’s audacity to distort the Bible for
self-serving purposes.
3.
Did Ezekiel prophesy about the bringing together of the
Bible with the Book of Mormon?
The other Old Testament prophetic
passage cited in
Gospel Principles as prophesying the coming of the Book
of Mormon is in Ezekiel:
“Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ 17 And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. 18 And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what you mean by these?’ 19 say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand” (Ezekiel 37:16-19 ESV).
According to the LDS Church’s
interpretation, the stick of Judah is the Bible, and the
stick of Joseph is the Book of Mormon. The uniting of the
two sticks symbolizes the bringing of the Bible and the Book
of Mormon together in modern times through Joseph Smith.
A basic rule for interpreting symbolism
in a text is this: whenever the text itself gives an
explanation for the symbolism, take it! For example, when
Jesus explains his parable of the sower and the four soils
to depict four different kinds of responses to the word of
God (Mark 4:1-20), and when the Book of Revelation explains
that the golden bowls full of incense “are the prayers of
the saints” (Revelation 5:8), it is pointless and
wrong-headed to look for or even suggest other explanations.
So also here in Ezekiel 37: after
enacting the symbolism of taking two sticks, one labeled for
Judah and the other for Joseph, and holding them together in
his hand as one stick (verses 16-17), the people naturally
asked Ezekiel what this symbolic action meant (verse 18).
The Lord’s answer through Ezekiel is that he will unite the
“stick” of the tribes of Israel headed by Joseph in Ephraim
with the “stick” of the tribe of Judah to make them one
(verse 19). That is, the two sticks represent the tribes of
the northern kingdom of Israel led by Ephraim and the tribe
of Judah in the southern kingdom. This division of Israel
into two kingdoms had begun after the death of Solomon and
had led to the conquest of the northern kingdom by the
Assyrians in the eighth century BC and of the southern
kingdom by the Babylonians at the end of the seventh century
BC. This is the immediate context of Ezekiel’s prophecies,
since he was writing during the Babylonian Exile in the
sixth century BC. After explaining what the “stick” imagery
meant, the Lord through Ezekiel explicitly explains what the
action of uniting the two “sticks” symbolizes:
“When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, 21 then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land. 22 And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms” (Ezekiel 37:20-22 ESV).
The uniting of the two sticks in
Ezekiel’s hand symbolizes a future time when the Lord will
reunite all of the people of Israel into one nation under
one king, the end-times shepherd-king called “David” (verses
24-25), that is, the son of David, Jesus Christ. This
prophecy is not about bringing together the Bible and the
Book of Mormon; it is about the reuniting of God’s people
Israel under the redemptive rule of the Lord Jesus Christ.
4.
Is the missionary effort of the LDS Church fulfillment of
prophecy?
The LDS Church claims that its
worldwide missionary program is fulfilling the prophetic
words of Christ, “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” (Matthew 24:14 KJV). “Ever
since the Restoration of the Church, missionaries have
preached the gospel” (Gospel
Principles, 254).
As noted in our
response to chapter 33 of
Gospel Principles,
the LDS Church came into existence well after the
evangelical Protestant missionary movement had formed
numerous organizations to pursue the evangelization of the
world. The LDS missionary program is impressive in some
ways, but it is neither original nor ground-breaking nor
even especially successful. As pointed out in that earlier
response, what we think of as the Mormon missionary program
is actually less than forty years old, and there is evidence
suggesting that it is losing steam.
A few statistical comparisons may prove
surprising to those who have had the impression that the
Mormon missionary movement has been in any way outstanding.
It took the LDS Church (founded in 1830) 117 years to reach
a million members (in 1947). By comparison, it took the
Seventh-day Adventist Church (founded in 1863) only about 95
years to reach a million members. Jehovah’s Witnesses
(founded in 1879), also known for their very public
proselytizing effort focused on door to door work, reached
the same milestone in just 85 years. In one century,
Pentecostalism (which originated in 1906) grew from a
handful of people to well over
100 million
people—with 57 million members in the Assemblies of God
denomination alone.
One should also recognize that at least
up to now Mormon missionaries have drawn the vast majority
of their converts from people of nominally Christian
backgrounds, nearly all in countries that were predominantly
Protestant or Catholic for centuries before the Mormons
began their efforts there. The only nation with 100,000 or
more Mormons that is not predominantly Christian is Japan.
Of the LDS Church’s 14 million members (as of 2010), it is
reasonable to estimate that at least 13 million come from
Christian backgrounds. The bottom line here is that Mormons
are not bringing millions of people from animism, Buddhism,
Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism to faith in Jesus Christ. Their
converts come almost entirely from people of Christian
backgrounds disaffected, for whatever reasons, with
traditional forms of Christianity.
The real task of world evangelization
of which Jesus Christ spoke in Matthew 24:14 has been going
on since the first century. During the first thirty years of
Christianity the gospel had spread from the Middle East
throughout Eastern Europe and at least as far west as Italy.
By the end of the second century the gospel was being
preached throughout most of Western Europe including the
British Isles. By the end of the fourth century, Christian
churches were established throughout North Africa and from
Britain in the west to India in the east, covering what was
for them virtually the entire known world. Christianity
reached Iceland and Greenland by about 1000, and Scandinavia
and Russia were largely Christianized by that time.
Dominicans and Franciscans were evangelizing people as far
away as China and Mongolia in the thirteenth century, India
in the fourteenth century, various parts of Africa in the
fifteenth century, and the Americas in the sixteenth
century. By the end of the sixteenth century the still-young
Protestant movement was evangelizing American Indians and
Brazilians, and the first Protestant missionary organization
for reaching American Indians was established in 1649. By
the time of Joseph Smith in the early nineteenth century,
most of North and South America had already been extensively
evangelized. In the nineteenth century Protestant and
Catholic missionaries began the hard work of evangelizing in
Africa; by 1900 there were about 9 million Christians in
Africa, and that number exploded to about 380 million by
2000.
Examined in the context of the history
of Christian worldwide missions, or even in the short
history of Christian missions during the past two centuries,
the Mormon missionary movement barely merits a footnote. At
best, it is quite premature to proclaim Mormon missions a
fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy that the gospel would be
preached to all the nations before the end would come.
Of course, what really matters is
whether the LDS gospel is the true, full, restored gospel
that it purports to be. Throughout this study of
Gospel Principles
we have presented reasons from the Bible why we cannot
accept this LDS claim.
5.
Did Elijah appear to Joseph Smith in fulfillment of
Malachi’s prophecy?
About four centuries before the
birth of Jesus Christ, the Lord spoke the following words
through the prophet Malachi:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:5-6 ESV).
The LDS Church claims that this
prophecy was fulfilled in 1836 when Elijah appeared to
Joseph Smith:
The prophet Malachi prophesied that before the Savior’s Second Coming, the prophet Elijah would be sent to the earth. Elijah would restore the sealing powers so families could be sealed together. He would also inspire people to be concerned about their ancestors and descendants. (See Malachi 4:5–6; D&C 2.) The prophet Elijah came to Joseph Smith in April 1836. Since that time, interest in genealogy and family history has grown. We are also able to perform sealing ordinances in the temples for the living and the dead” (Gospel Principles, 254).
Gospel Principles offers no explanation or evidence to
support its claim that Malachi was prophesying an appearance
of Elijah before Christ’s
second coming. When one turns to the New Testament, it becomes
apparent that this prophecy was fulfilled at the time of
Christ’s first
coming. Jesus himself told his disciples so:
“For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:13-14 ESV).
“And the disciples asked him, ‘Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?’ He answered, ‘Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, , and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist” (Matthew 17:10-13 ESV, emphasis added; see also Mark 9:11-13).
These statements do not mean that John
the Baptist was literally the same person as Elijah (say,
his reincarnation, as New Age teachers sometimes argue).
What they mean is that Malachi’s prophecy was about the
coming of a man who would be a kind of latter-day Elijah, a
prophet like him. This point is made clearly in Luke’s
account of Gabriel’s announcement of John’s birth to his
father Zechariah:
“And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:16-17 ESV).
Notice Gabriel’s use of the language of
Malachi, “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children,” leaving no doubt that John was to be the
fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy.
If John the Baptist’s ministry of
preparing people for the coming of the Lord Jesus was the
fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy about Elijah, then there
is no reason to think that Malachi was prophesying a visit
of the actual Old Testament figure of Elijah to Joseph
Smith. But did such a visit take place? Joseph Smith
reported in his journal, in an entry later published as
Doctrine and Covenants 110, that he and Oliver Cowdery had a
“vision” in which they saw with “the eyes of our
understanding” a series of heavenly figures speaking to
them: the Lord Jehovah (110:1-10), Moses (110:11), Elias
(110:12), and Elijah (110:13-16). From Joseph’s description
of this experience, it was at most a “vision” that he and
Oliver had in their minds—not a physical appearance of these
figures. Ironically, two years later Oliver was
excommunicated from the LDS Church, and we have no separate
account of this vision from him.
It should be noted that nothing in
Doctrine & Covenants 110 supports the claim that Elijah’s
appearance to Joseph Smith initiated the program of
genealogical research and proxy ordinances for the dead.
Joseph Smith himself did not begin teaching about baptism
for the dead until four years later in 1840, and he did not
connect Malachi’s prophecy with baptism for the dead until
1842 (Doctrine & Covenants 128:17).
Raising further questions about the
vision in 1836 is the apparent confusion in Doctrine &
Covenants 110 regarding the names Elijah and Elias. In D&C 110 these are treated as the names of two different
figures, but in fact they are different English forms of the
same name, reflecting the difference between the Hebrew (Eliyyahu) and Greek (Elias)
spellings. Thus, in the King James Version the name
Elijah appears only in the Old Testament (throughout 1-2 Kings and
in 2 Chronicles 21:12, Ezra 10:21, and Malachi 4:5) while
the name Elias
appears only in the New Testament (26 times in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, and in four other places). Everywhere in the
KJV New Testament, “Elias” always refers to the Old
Testament prophet Elijah or to John the Baptist as the
fulfillment of Malachi’s latter-day Elijah prophecy.
In review, the New Testament clearly
teaches that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of Malachi
4:5-6, and an analysis of Joseph Smith’s purported vision in
D&C 110 shows additional reasons for denying that that
vision was a fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy. This means
that we should reject Joseph Smith’s claim that this vision
restored “the keys of this dispensation” (D&C 110:16).
D. Conclusion
Joseph Smith’s interpretations of the
prophecies of the Bible, and his own claims to speak
prophetically about the future, show a pattern of error and
failure. He falsely prophesied that the generation alive in
his time would not all die before the building of a temple
in Jackson County, Missouri, and the Second Coming of
Christ. His most famous “fulfilled” prophecy, a prediction
of the Civil War, was itself a false prophecy because it
predicted that the war would become the largest and last
global war before the end of the age. Joseph Smith and the
LDS Church have also misinterpreted various biblical
prophecies as being fulfilled in the LDS Restoration. From
an evangelical Christian perspective, Joseph does appear to
fulfill one biblical prophecy related to the signs that will
precede Christ’s second coming: the Bible’s repeated
warnings about the rise of false prophets (e.g., Matthew
7:15; 24:11, 24; Mark 13:22; Luke 6:26; 2
Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1).
For Further Study
Bowman, Robert M. Jr.
Prophets Old and New. A response to chapter 9 of
Gospel Principles
focusing on the issue of the LDS Church’s claim to be led by
true prophets of God.
__________.
Restoration and the LDS Church.. A response to chapter 17
of Gospel Principles dealing with the LDS Church’s claim to
be the restoration of the only true church of Jesus Christ
on the earth.
Does Ezekiel
37 Predict the Book of Mormon? IRR web article showing
that the LDS use of Ezekiel 37 takes the passage out of
context.
Failed Prophecies of Joseph Smith. IRR web article
detailing seven lesser-known false prophecies made by
Joseph.