Tobin again shows that he can't comprehend what he reads.
I gave my bio. and said I left the church in the early 1980’s. I was 19 in 1976, and got in a motorcycle accident that delayed Mission for the Church until a year later. After that I went to B.Y.U. As for the Civil War, here is what I said,
"And Smith saying that beginning in South Carolina war would be "poured out on all nations" is absurd. Here is a list of all the wars up to the Civil War. War has been ongoing since the time of Christ, all over the world."
I said that there were wars all over the world since the time of Christ,
up to the Civil War. I didn’t speak of any wars after the Civil War. I even listed all the wars since the first century up to the Civil War. Smith's "prediction" is absurd, because anyone could have predicted it. Like Smith, Ellen G. White made a prediction but got some things wrong. In 1861 she predicted the World Wars, (her followers claim) after she also incorrectly predicted that Great Britain would enter the eminent Civil War,
“I was shown that if the object of this war had been to exterminate slavery, then, if desired, England would have helped the North. But England fully understands the existing feelings in the Government, and that the war is not to do away slavery, but merely to preserve the Union; and it is not for her interest to have it preserved.—Testimonies for the Church, p. 258.
Other nations are making quiet yet active preparations for war . . . . When England does declare war, all nations will have an interest of their own to serve, and there will be general war, general confusion. . . . A portion of the queen's subjects are waiting a favorable opportunity to break their yoke . . . .—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 259.
I was shown the inhabitants of the earth in the utmost confusion. There was war, bloodshed, want, privation, famine and pestilence, in the land; and as these things were without, God's people began to press together, and cast aside their little difficulties. Self-dignity no longer controlled them. Deep humility took its place. Suffering, perplexity and privation, caused reason to resume its throne, and the passionate and unreasonable man became sane, and acted with discretion and wisdom. My attention was then called from the scene. There seemed to be a little time of peace. Then the inhabitants of the earth were again presented before me, and everything was in the utmost confusion again. Strife, war and bloodshed, with famine and pestilence, raged everywhere. Other nations were engaged in this confusion and war. War caused famine. Want and bloodshed caused pestilence. And then men's hearts will fail them for fear, "and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." (ibid, p. 268)
Smith, claiming to hear voices, wrote,
"For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations."
This isn't even close to what happened. Great Britain did not enter the war, and Great Britain did not call upon other nations to defend themselves against other nations. Great Britain, as it turned out, was never even interested in getting into the Civil War on the side of the South. (Great Britain’s ties to the Southern Cotton Trade was well known and generated much speculation about what Great Britain would do). As Ephraim Douglass Adams wrote in his book Great Britain and the American Civil War,
Herbert Spencer, in a letter of May 15, 1862, to his American friend, Yeomans, wrote, "As far as I had the means of judging, the feeling here was at first very decidedly on the side of the North ..." The British metropolitan press, in nearly every issue of which for at least two years after December, 1860, there appeared news items and editorial comment on the American crisis, was at first nearly unanimous in condemning the South. The Times, with accustomed vigour, led the field. On November 21, 1860, it stated:
"When we read the speech of Mr. Lincoln on the subject of Slavery and consider the extreme moderation of the sentiments it expresses, the allowance that is made for the situation, for the feelings, for the prejudices, of the South; when we see how entirely he narrows his opposition to the single point of the admission of Slavery into the Territories, we cannot help being forcibly struck by the absurdity of breaking up a vast and glorious confederacy like that of the United States from the dread and anger inspired by the election of such a man to the office of Chief Magistrate.... We rejoice, on higher and surer grounds, that it [the election] has ended in the return of Mr. Lincoln. We are glad to think that the march of Slavery, and the domineering tone which its advocates were beginning to assume over Freedom, has been at length arrested and silenced. We rejoice that a vast community of our own race has at [V1:pg 39]length given an authoritative expression to sentiments which are entertained by everyone in this country. We trust to see the American Government employed in tasks more worthy of a State founded on the doctrines of liberty and equality than the invention of shifts and devices to perpetuate servitude; and we hear in this great protest of American freedom the tardy echo of those humane doctrines to which England has so long become a convert."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13789/13 ... CHAPTER_II
Of course Smith didn’t foresee that unlike Mormon “prophets” who called slavery a “divine institution”, the people of Great Britain loathed slavery.
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.”
http://mit.irr.org/joseph-smith-william ... peculation
