2 thoughts on “Giuliani campaign builds up Romney link to ‘White Horse Prophecy’”

1. While the elaborate “White Horse Prophecy” has been repeatedly repudiated, the idea that “the Constitution will hang by the thread” and that “if it is to be saved, it will be by the Elders of Zion” is still persistent (though equally questionable as a statement of Joseph Smith). The latter is prominent enough in LDS thought, that I can’t imagine it doesn’t pass through the minds of many, if not most, LDS candidates for office.

   The idea expressed in one comment on the story, that it only means the members of the church will vote, certainly doesn’t reflect the folklore surrounding this statement. While modest types will naturally avoid the game of claiming this “prophecy” refers to them individually, not all are modest. Bo Gritz comes to mind, as an LDS member who certainly thought he was going to be the great savior of the Constitution.

   Ironically, I’ve run into many LDS who advocate very UNconstitutional measures, particularly when it comes to free speech issues, yet they consider themselves to be following their religion by doing so.

2. The Tribune interviewed George Cobabe, a writer for FAIR that researched the origins of the White Horse Prophecy. I wish they would have given him more air time. For those interested see Cobabe’s article at http://www.fairlds.org/pubs/whitehorse.pdf .

   Using the white horse imagery has some problems. For the most part Mormon commenters have interpreted the white horse in Revelation as one that the prophet Enoch or Adam rode triumphantly. That goes back to section 77:7’s discussion about each of the 7 seals representing 1000 years, an interpretation that assumes young earth creationism. Skeptics of section 77 question whether it was written or influenced by Sidney Rigdon. Section 77 first appears in the 1839 history; it isn’t found in the Kirtland Revelation book like a lot of the D&C sections from that era are.

   Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo sermons revisit the Book of Revelation and this time Joseph comments that Revelation is mostly about the future and not the past, unless it is obvious. That sets up a tension with the Enoch-on-a-white-horse .

   I make mention of the prophets to qualify my declaration which I am about to make so that the young Elders who know so much may not rise up and choke me like hornets. there is a grand difference and distinction between the visions and figures spoken of by the prophets and those spoken of in the Revelations of John. None of the things John saw had any allusion to the scenes of the days of Adam or of Enoch or of Abraham or Jesus, only as far as is plainly represented by John and clearly set forth. 9 John only saw that which was “shortly to come to pass” and that which was yet in futurity (He read Rev. ch. 1 v. 1) Now I make this declaration, that those things Which John saw in heaven, had no allusion to any thing that had been on the earth, because John says “he saw what was shortly to come to pass” and not what had already transpired. John saw beasts that had to do with things on the earth, but not in past ages; the beasts which he saw had to devour the inhabitants of the earth in days to come. The revelations do not give us to understand any thing of the past in relation to the Kingdom of God. What John saw and speaks of were things which were in heaven, what the prophets saw and speak of where things pertaining to the earth.

   8 April 1843 Clayton Report in Ehat and Cook

   Let me back up a little bit to a sermon made a few days earlier which Orson Hyde associates the White Horse with a triumphant Christ in the Second Coming. The same idea is found in Rev. 19:11-16

   Alluding to the coming of the Savior, he said, “When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, &c. He will appear on a white horse as a warrior, and maybe we shall have some of the same spirit. Our God is a warrior. (John 14:23.) It is our privilege to have the Father and Son dwelling in our hearts, &c.”

   This prompted Josep Smith to correct him, but doesn’t comment on the white horse:

   When the Savior shall appear, we shall see Him as He is. We shall see that He is a man like ourselves, and that the same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy. (John 14:23.) The appearing of the Father and the Son, in that verse, is a personal appearance; and the idea that the Father and the Son dwell in a man’s heart is an old sectarian notion, and is false.

   Also in Nauvoo, Joseph cut a fine conquerer-on-a-white-horse image with the Nauvoo legion. Prompting rumors after his death. From Gov. Ford as recorded in HC 7:37

   The Mormon Church had been organized with a First Presidency, composed of Joe and Hyrum Smith and Sidney Rigdon, and Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. The Twelve Apostles were now absent, and until they could be called together the minds of the ‘saints’ were unsettled, as to the future government of the church. Revelations were published that the Prophet, in imitation of the Savior, was to rise again from the dead. Many were looking in gaping wonderment for the fulfillment of this revelation, and some reported that they had already seen him, attended by a celestial army coursing the air on a great white horse.

   Perhaps the genesis of this rumor comes from this account recorded in Oscar McConkie’s Remembering Joseph:

   Charles Henry Stoddard was born on the 21st of April, 1837 [1827?], in Newark, New Jersey, his parents being Israel Stoddard and Sarah Woodward. As a boy he was employed by the Prophet Joseph Smith, in Nauvoo, Illinois. While the Prophet was in hiding, he carried food to the Prophet and delivered messages to and from the Prophet. The Prophet trusted him implicitly. Upon one occasion, when in the street fixing a kite, with other boys, a man came up and inquired where the Prophet was, to which Charles replied, “He went to heaven on Hyrum’s white horse and we are fixing this kite to send his dinner to him.” No one suspected his important duties because of his youth.

   Another interesting early source is found in an 1847 publication The Prophet of the Jubilee, written by Dan Jones on an overseas mission, which speculates on the identity of Revelation’s horsies in a manner quite different than the White Horse Prophecy attributed to Joseph Smith. This shows that speculation was fairly common back then:

   John says that the red horse would follow quickly on the heels of the white horse; and are not the whinnies of the red horse the sound of wars and the thunder of weapons resounding from the steep cliffs of Circassia, Russia, and Poland? Was it not his steps that trampled to dust hundreds of our fellow countrymen, and thousands of the Chinese, the Hindus, and the Bengalis, lately? Did he not gallop from there through Africa to Portugal, leaving thousands lying in their blood? And behold him now having put the western continent like a boiling cauldron under his feet. Santa Ana rode him for years through the states of the patriots, &c. Now, horse against horse, and steel against steel, and thousands of the Americans thirst after the blood of men. And all this so quickly after the white horse, namely the ETERNAL GOSPEL which was brought by the angel to men in the year 1830. Why can we not expect the third horse, namely the black one, with his cruel famine to follow on their heels? Will the two come so clearly, and the third not follow them? What is the lament, the mourning, and the groaning that are heard throughout the world? We see, we hear, or we read the news of the age. Food—Food—Famine, is their cry, until all the kingdoms of Europe are racing to engage in clever competition for food from the far countries, and are preparing for famine. In Poland, Russia, &c., the people are greedy for the rotten potatoes, the unripened corn and the hay, and are living on animal feed in order to stay alive.

   But it has come still closer than that! Yes; his whinny can be heard loudly from his black nostrils in Ireland, and his severe wound can be seen on the face of our sister island next to us. It is grievous to hear through the newspapers of our country, from here and there, about strong and once fit men—wives and mothers, together with children, by the hundreds making their way along the roads, like shadows of what they were, their outward appearances proof all too obvious that hunger grips their stomachs and who are still without hope for any remedy. Thrown together by the tortures of famine, the people swarm together in some places by the thousands, and they storm the food shops, rushing in to snatch a loaf of bread, or any food they can get their hands on; and the government has sent an army to defend houses, shops, and the very lives of the upper classes lest they be killed and destroyed before the ravenous appetites of the perishing. Neither the carts of the bakers nor the butchers travel along the roads except they be defended by soldiers. Some are killed there every day, either in their homes, on the roads, or else trying to defend their storehouses.

   In the city of Dublin, over a thousand of these wretches walked the streets under the name of “The starving rioters;” and the feast they got was the imprisonment of twenty-two of them by the soldiers, and the others were chased away to die of starvation, or to survive if they could.

   In Tipperary, it was feared that the food which the government intended to present to the town was too late to save the lives of many, as they were dying of starvation daily; and at times it is impossible to get food for money. From Cork one reverend writes that sixteen have died from starvation during one week in his neighborhood—that over 600 families are without work or food, and the children as well as their parents are starving; and for the sake of filling their cups with wormwood the tenants have to sell their furniture and their possessions for the rent, and they are turned out to die of exposure, with hardly any kind of bed to lie on, or any shelter over their heads except for the clouds. In the Poorhouse in Dungarvan, eight hundred have been squeezed in, over two hundred more than the house is suitable to hold; yet, if it were four times as big, it would not hold the applicants who come to it to save their lives. In Mayo so many are dying that not enough coffins are to be had to bury them all! Over sixteen, says another, have died of starvation in his own parish in ten days. We could quote similar reports from the newspapers from every corner of Ireland or deaths because of starvation, murders for food, and dreadful massacres of this black horse. But we add the following as an example of the tortures and pangs of hunger. In Bautry, and its environs, there were hungry rioters who had become so cruel as to kill several who opposed them. The soldiers chased them to the mountains, &c., but to no avail, until hunger finally forced their leaders, one by one, to come to the town and give themselves up to the Police, confessing that they did not expect anything less than their hanging, but they would choose that in preference to the death by starvation that stared them in the face if they remained any longer, with any hope of food gone, and that they would have to die somehow! They had come to look so thin and weak that their old friends did not recognize them unless they made themselves known. Other infections and diseases are beginning from lack of food, clothing, and shelter, as natural consequences; and nothing less can be expected in Ireland than a great many more dying this way. To the potato plague, most particularly, is this hunger attributed. It is said that there are shortages of turnips and corn, especially wheat, in places. Who can foretell the results when other elements of our diet increasingly fail, from one year to the next! Who considers and understands this? The prophet spoke the truth,—”The wicked will go before them worse in their wickedness; but the wise will understand the signs of the times, and they shall lift up their heads in hope, for the time of their deliverance is nigh.” No one considers that it is because of their rejection of the white horse and their contempt for him, that the red horse and the black horse take their revenge on them; and before long the pale horse, in his turn, will also come, to kill with the sword, and with famine, and with the beasts of the earth.

   Several of the pastors of the people deny that all this is the hand of God, but through other happenings they confess God; and they take courage, but not to search out whether the foundations of their beliefs are divine, and based on the word of God, rather they take that for granted from the traditions of their forefathers; and all the judgments of God have no effect except to bind them more tightly in their nets, and to cleave closer to their beliefs. Then they proclaim fasting and prayer, yes, all the conflicting religions, as if God would accept all in their own ways. Prayer and fasting are good in their appropriate time; but we think it would make more sense for the papist priests to proclaim a feast than to proclaim further fasting, to the wretches who are already fasting of necessity, to the point of dying by the scores!

   But why must we talk so much of the sound of the black horse so far away as Ireland! It draws closer to us still! Yes; it has crossed the channel already, and it is galloping through the chief towns of England, grating on our ears with the groans of the wretched, too numerous to count. He who holds his reins will tighten his bridle, and keep him from rushing upon us, the Welsh, unprepared!

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