White Horse Prophecy

Joseph Smith, Jr., first leader of the Latter-day Saints (Mormons), made an 1843 statement, an apparently-embellished version of which, in around 1900, would become known as the White Horse Prophecy.

The White Horse Prophecy is the popular name of an influential but disputed version of a statement on the future of the Latter Day Saints (popularly called Mormons) and the United States. It was given by Edwin Rushton in about 1900, and supposedly made in 1843 by Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.[1]

The Latter-day Saints, according to Rushton's version, would "go to the Rocky Mountains and... be a great and mighty people," associated in the prophecy's figurative language, with one of the biblical four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation.

Smith's supposed original statement predicts that the US Constitution will one day "hang like a thread" but be saved by Latter-day Saints. The embellished version portrays it to be "by the efforts of the White Horse."[2]

On the basis of either Rushton's version or Smith's original statement, some critics of Mormonism and some Mormon folk doctrine enthusiasts hold that Mormons should expect that the US will eventually become a theocracy dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[3][4]

The idea that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will at one or more times take action to save an imperiled US Constitution has been referenced by numerous Church leaders, but as to the Rushton version of the Prophecy, the Church has stated that "the so-called 'White Horse Prophecy'... is not embraced as Church doctrine; while numerous Mormon fundamentalists continue to preach the doctrine."[5]

  1. ^ Don L. Penrod (2010). "Edwin Rushton as the Source of the White Horse Prophecy". BYU Studies. 49 (3): 75–115. Archived from the original on 2017-07-15. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference White_Horse_FAIR was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Under_Gods was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference An_American_president was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference LDS_Disclaimer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).