Inspired Prophetic Warnings To All Inhabitants of the Earth

Now let me point out some other things which will occur, before the coming of the Son of Man. The Lord has a controversy among all nations of the Gentiles. He has sent to them a warning. He has sent his servants to prophesy to them. He has sent them to preach and bear record of the truth. He has sent them to call upon the nations to repent, both high and low, rich and poor, religionist and non-religionist, priest and people, for all of them to repent and receive the Gospel in its fullness, and not only to do this, but to gather out from these nations. Will they hear? They will not. We know they will not; but this does not justify us in being slack in delivering our message. We have a responsibility placed upon us, and that responsibility we must fulfill, whether the people hear or whether they forbear, we must warn them, so that they shall not have any excuse, when the tribulations shall come which I have named.

The Lord, therefore, has a controversy among them, the same as he had with the Egyptian nation, with this difference, that the Egyptians did not have the same length of time to consider the message which you have. They only had a few days, and if they would repent and receive the word which Moses and Aaron delivered to them, well and good; and only a short time, a very few days were allowed them to decide this matter. You have had a portion of a whole generation. Your times are not quite yet fulfilled, and hence you have had the privilege to consider it from your childhood up to middle age, and some of you from middle age to old age, to see whether you will receive the latter-day message which God has sent or not. Now, the consequences will be, if you receive it you will save yourself by fleeing out from the midst of this nation. You will save yourselves and your children temporally speaking as well as spiritually.

On the other hand, if you do not receive it, the Lord, who is long-suffering, will, after he has borne with the people all the day long, withdraw his servants from your midst. When that day shall come there shall be wars, not such wars as have come in centuries and years that are past and gone, but a desolating war. When I say desolating, I mean that it will lay these European nations in waste. Cities will be left vacated, without inhabitants. The people will be destroyed by the sword of their own hands. Not only this but many other cities will be burned; for when contending armies are wrought up with terrible anger, without the Spirit of God upon them, when they have not that spirit of humility that now characterizes many of the wars amongst nations, when they are left to themselves, there will be no quarter given, no prisoners taken, but a war of destruction, of desolation, of the burning of the cities and villages, until the land is laid desolate. That is another thing that will come before the coming of the Son of Man.

What about my own nation--the American nation? What can I say more than I have said in times that are past? They have had a great desolating war; a war between the North and the South in which many hundreds of thousands were destroyed. This war was foretold twenty-eight years before it took place; the very place where it should commence was marked out by the Prophet Joseph Smith, that young man of whom I have spoken. By him it was designated that the revolution, should commence in South Carolina, and it did so. By him it was pointed out that this war would be great and terrible, and it came to pass although twenty-eight years intervened before it commenced. These revelations and prophecies have been published by hundreds of thousands and circulated in your midst here in Great Britain. The people are not altogether ignorant about these matters; they have been forewarned.

But what about the American nation. That war that destroyed the lives of some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand people was nothing, compared to that which will eventually devastate that country. The time is not very far distant in the future, when the Lord God will lay his hand heavily upon that nation. "How do you know this?" inquires one. I know from the revelations which God has given upon this subject. I read these revelations, when they were first given. I waited over twenty-eight years and saw their fulfillment to the very letter. Should I not, then, expect that the balance of them should be fulfilled? That same God who gave the revelations to his servant Joseph Smith in regard to these matters, will fulfill every jot and every tittle that has been spoken, concerning that nation.

What then will be the condition of that people, when this great and terrible war shall come? It will be very different from the war between the North and the South. Do you wish me to describe it? I will do so. It will be a war of neighborhood against neighborhood, city against city, town against town, county against county, state against state, and they will go forth, destroying and being destroyed and manufacturing will, in a great measure, cease for a time, among the American nation. Why? Because in these terrible wars, they will not be privileged to manufacture, there will be too much bloodshed, too much mobocracy, too much going forth in bands and destroying and pillaging the land to suffer people to pursue any local vocation with any degree of safety. What will become of millions of the farmers upon the land? They will leave their farms and they will remain uncultivated, and they will flee before the ravaging armies from place to place; and thus will they go forth burning and pillaging the whole country; and that great and powerful nation, now consisting of some forty millions of people, will be wasted away, unless they repent. Now these are predictions you may record. You may let them sink down into your hearts. And if the Lord your God shall permit you to live, you will see my words fulfilled to the very letter. They are not my words, but the words of inspiration -- the words of the everlasting God, who has sent forth his servants with this message to warn the nations of the earth.

-- J.D. Vol. 20, pp. 150-1.

The plain fact is this, the power of God begins to fall upon the nations and the nations of the Gentiles are like the waves of the sea, casting up mire and dirt, are all in commotion, and they are hastily preparing to act the part allotted them, when the Lord rebukes the nations, when He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. The Lord declared to His servants, some eighteen months since, that He was then withdrawing His Spirit from the earth; and we can see that such is the fact, for not only the churches are dwindling away, but there are no conversions, or but a very few; and this is not all, the governments of the earth are thrown into confusion and division, and destruction, to the eye of the spiritual beholder, seems to be written by the finger of an invisible hand, in large capitals, upon almost every thing we behold.

-- Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 11-12.

You must make yourselves acquainted with those men who like Daniel pray three times a day toward the House of the Lord. Look to the Presidency and receive instruction. Every man who is afraid, covetous, will be taken in a snare. The time is soon coming, when no man will have any peace but in Zion and her stakes. I saw men hunting the lives of their own sons, and brother murdering brother, women killing their own daughters, and daughters seeking the lives of their mothers. I saw armies arrayed against armies. I saw blood, desolation, fires. The Son of Man has said that the mother shall be against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother. These things are at our doors. They will follow the Saints of God from city to city. Satan will rage, and the spirit of the devil is now enraged. I know not how soon these things will take place; but with a view of them, shall I cry peace? No! I will lift up my voice and testify of them. How long you will have good crops, and the famine be kept off, I do not know; when the fig tree leaves, know then that summer is nigh at hand"

-- Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 161.

We see nations rising against nations; we hear of the pestilence destroying its thousands in one place and its tens of thousands in another; the plague consuming all before it, and we witness this terror that reigns in the hearts of the wicked, and we are ready to exclaim, "The Lord is certainly about bringing the world to an account of its iniquity." Let us reflect, then, in the last days, that there was to be great tribulations; for the Saviour says, nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in divers places, and the prophets have declared that the valleys should rise; that the mountains should be laid low; that a great earthquake should be, in which the sun should become black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon turn into blood; yea, the Eternal God hath declared that the great deep shall roll back into the north countries and that the land of Zion and the land of Jerusalem shall be joined together, as they were before they were divided in the days of Peleg. No wonder the mind starts at the sound of the last days.

-- February 1845.