In a recent discussion with an LDS Apologist, I posted the following text regarding Joseph Smith’s false prophecies:

Joseph Smith did not fail as a prophet merely once, but repeatedly, and in ways that are demonstrable by the historical record.

In 1832, Smith declared that a war beginning in South Carolina would escalate into global conflict, “pouring out war upon all nations,” and culminating in the destruction of the United States government (Doctrine and Covenants 87:1–6).⁠

Although the American Civil War did begin in South Carolina, the U.S. government was not destroyed, nor did the war expand into a worldwide conflict of nations in Smith’s lifetime.⁠

The prophecy failed in its central claim.

That same year, Smith also prophesied that a temple would be constructed “in this generation” upon a specific consecrated lot in Independence, Missouri (D&C 84:2–5).⁠

Nearly two hundred years have passed, and the property remains undeveloped, its promised temple unbuilt.⁠

This failure is particularly significant because Smith tied the fulfillment to the lifetime of the people living in 1832.

Their generation has died, and the prophecy remains unfulfilled.

A third failed prediction came in 1835, when Smith declared that the Lord would return before he reached the age of eighty-five (History of the Church 2:182).⁠

Smith died at age thirty-eight, and the year 1891 passed without the Second Coming.⁠

These are not obscure or secondary statements. They were delivered publicly, written into official documents, and preserved by the church as authoritative. And they did not occur. According to the standards God Himself gave, this alone ends the prophetic claim of Joseph Smith.

The first and most uncompromising standard is the test of prophetic accuracy. God declares in Deuteronomy 18:22 that if a prophet speaks in His name and what he predicts does not occur, “that is a message the LORD has not spoken,” and the people are not to fear or follow that prophet.⁠

The rule is absolute. Scripture does not grant the prophet a margin of error. The God of the Bible, who cannot lie, cannot inspire a prophecy that fails. For this reason, a single false prophecy is sufficient to expose the prophetic claimant as false.

200 Or 2,000: Why Do We Need a 200-Year-Old Mormon Religion Instead of 2,000-Year-Old New Testament Christianity?

To this post, the LDS Apologist wrote his response.

“Joseph Smith prophesied about the Civil War being the beginning of wars that would continue happening until the Second Coming.

He was correct in this. Wars and rumors of wars poured out upon all nations.

Jesus Christ uses the phrase “this generation shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:34) in the New Testament for future events that still haven’t happened. Generation can simply mean age or tribe or nation of people. By your interpretation Jesus Christ has a false prophecy or your engage in special pleading, by my interpretation “generation” has a particular definition used by both Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith, making those both true prophecies.

The “if you love to eighty three” prophecy is conditional by virtue of the word “if.”

Try reading more carefully next time instead of just regurgitating old and incorrect arguments.”

I followed up the LDS comment with the following response:

“Recent defenses of Joseph Smith’s prophetic authority increasingly rely on a rhetorical comparison between Smith’s failed predictions and the eschatological discourse of Jesus in Matthew 24. The argument typically proceeds as follows: Jesus declared that “this generation shall not pass away” before the fulfillment of certain end-time events, yet those events have not occurred; therefore, either Jesus uttered a false prophecy or the term generation must be redefined. Since Joseph Smith likewise made predictions that did not occur within his lifetime, redefining prophetic language rescues both figures simultaneously. This comparison, however, is built on false equivalence, linguistic distortion, and a fundamental misunderstanding of biblical prophecy.

At the heart of the discussion is Joseph Smith’s 1832 revelation, now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 87, which predicts that war would begin in South Carolina and escalate into global conflict culminating in the destruction of all nations and the Second Coming of Christ.¹ While defenders often highlight the outbreak of the American Civil War as validation, this appeal ignores the prophecy’s specific content and causal claims. The Nullification Crisis of 1832–33 had already placed South Carolina at the center of national political tension, making predictions of conflict neither novel nor uniquely revelatory.² The prophecy goes far beyond predicting civil unrest; it explicitly asserts that a slave uprising would initiate a chain reaction of wars that would spread among all nations and result in their full end.³ No such slave-led uprising occurred, the Civil War did not expand into global annihilation, and the Second Coming did not follow. Selectively isolating one generalized element of the prophecy while ignoring its unfulfilled specifics does not constitute fulfillment but redefinition.

Biblical prophecy is evaluated not by thematic resemblance but by correspondence between prediction and outcome. Deuteronomy 18 establishes a clear criterion: when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the word does not come to pass, that prophet has spoken presumptuously.⁴ The standard is not partial accuracy or symbolic flexibility but factual fulfillment. By that biblical measure, a prophecy that predicts global destruction triggered by a specific historical cause cannot be retroactively vindicated by the mere continuation of warfare in human history.

To escape this difficulty, LDS apologists frequently pivot to Matthew 24:34, arguing that Jesus Himself employed prophetic language that appears unfulfilled: “This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled.”⁵ The solution offered is a semantic expansion of the term generation, suggesting it can mean an “age,” a “people,” or even a perpetual lineage, thereby preserving the prophecy’s truth. This maneuver, however, lacks linguistic and contextual support.

The Greek word γενεά (genea) possesses a well-established semantic range in Koine Greek literature, consistently referring to a contemporaneous generation, occasionally with a moral qualifier, but never to an indeterminate historical era spanning centuries without explicit markers.⁶ Within Matthew’s Gospel itself, genea is used repeatedly to describe Jesus’ contemporaries, often in judgment contexts.⁷ There is no instance in Matthew where the term denotes a vague or elastic age extending indefinitely into the future. To impose such a meaning in Matthew 24 is not lexical analysis but theological necessity.

Moreover, Jesus’ discourse in Matthew 24 is framed by immediate audience relevance. He speaks directly to His disciples, employing second-person pronouns—“when you see,” “you will hear,” “you will be hated.”⁸ The discourse intertwines near-term events, particularly the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, with eschatological imagery drawn from Old Testament prophetic language. This phenomenon, commonly described as prophetic telescoping, is well attested in Hebrew prophecy, where near and distant events are presented together without temporal distinction.⁹ Scholarly solutions to Matthew 24—whether partial preterism, covenantal judgment language, or dual-horizon interpretation—are grounded in historical context and textual precedent, not ad hoc redefinition.

Crucially, Jesus never anchored His prophecy to a personal lifespan, a specific age, or a calendar-bound prediction. Joseph Smith did precisely that. Doctrine and Covenants 130 records Smith declaring, “If thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man.”¹⁰ This statement is not symbolic, covenantal, or apocalyptic imagery. It is a straightforward conditional prediction tied to a specific individual, age, and event. The conditional clause does not render the prophecy optional; it merely acknowledges mortality. The implication is clear: the Second Coming would occur no later than Smith’s eighty-fifth year. When Smith died at age thirty-eight, the failure was not due to unmet conditions but to the nonoccurrence of the predicted event.

Attempts to defend this prophecy by appealing to grammatical contingency misunderstand the nature of biblical conditional prophecy. In Scripture, conditional prophecies are explicitly contingent upon moral or covenantal response, as seen in Jonah’s warning to Nineveh.¹¹ Smith’s statement contains no such contingency. It presupposes the imminence of the event and offers lifespan as the sole variable. This is not prophetic humility but prophetic error.

The comparison between Jesus and Joseph Smith thus collapses on every meaningful level. Jesus spoke within the recognized framework of Jewish prophetic tradition, employing symbolic language, covenantal judgment motifs, and dual-horizon fulfillment patterns. His words were preserved by eyewitnesses who faced persecution rather than revision. Joseph Smith issued specific, testable predictions, repeatedly revised expectations, and left behind a documented trail of failed prophecies that required later reinterpretation.

The charge that critics merely “regurgitate old arguments” is beside the point. Truth is not invalidated by repetition. Deuteronomy’s test for prophecy is ancient precisely because it has proven reliable. What is genuinely recycled is the apologetic strategy employed to defend Joseph Smith: redefine terms, isolate partial elements, import biblical authority, and lower the standard of prophecy until failure becomes unfalsifiable.

In the end, redefining generation to rescue Joseph Smith does not illuminate Matthew 24; it empties prophecy of meaning. If prophetic language can be indefinitely elastic, immune to time, content, and verification, then prophecy ceases to function as divine revelation and becomes indistinguishable from speculation. Biblical prophecy, by contrast, invites scrutiny, anchors itself in history, and withstands examination. Joseph Smith’s does not.”

See Rob’s Book; “New Testament Apologetics: Proving The Historical Jesus Bu Documentary Evidence” At Amazon: in Kindle eBook and Paperback

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Sources and Citations

1. Doctrine and Covenants 87:1–6.
2. Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 204–223.
3. Doctrine and Covenants 87:3–4.
4. Deuteronomy 18:20–22 (NKJV).
5. Matthew 24:34 (NKJV).
6. BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, s.v. “γενεά.”
7. Matthew 11:16; 12:41–45; 23:36.
8. Matthew 24:9, 15, 33.
9. Isaiah 61:1–2; Luke 4:18–21; see also George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 89–102.
10. Doctrine and Covenants 130:15.
11. Jonah 3:4–10.

Categories: Robert Clifton Robinson