preacher of the Mormon Church, over thirty years ago, in his controversy with La Koy Sunderland, editor of Zion's Watchman, then published in New York, uttered the following prediction: "Within ten years from now (1838), the people of this country who are not Mormons, will be entirely subdued by the Latter-Day Saints or swept from the face of the earth; and if this prediction fails, then you may know that the Book of Mormon is not true." During that controversy, Parley was evidently annoyed at Mr. Sunderland, and, regarding his own indignation as the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he predicted that "within two years, La E-oy Sunderland will be struck dumb and incapacitated from speaking a loud word." At a later date, in taking farewell of New York, he penned a "Lamentation" for her citizens. In that effusion he tells the New-Yorkers: "When the Union is severed, when this mighty city shall crumble to ruin and sink as a millstone, the merchants undoing," &c., to "sing this lamentation and think upon me."
Parley was a sincere, good meaning man, who honoured extensively the institution of polygamy, and in adding to his family circle he aroused the wrath of an outraged husband, who pursued and killed him in Arkansas, in 1856; but the Union is not severed, New York stands where it did, with no particular signs of the "millstone," and Mr. La Boy Sunderland still lives in Massachusetts, a very forcible speaker as well as writer. Mormon history abounds with innumerable predictions equally veracious.[1]
- ↑ The following is a specimen:—
"A Prophecy; or an extract from the Word of the Lord concerning New York, Albany, and Boston, given on the 23rd day of September, 1832.
"Let the Bishop" (Newel K. Whitney) "go into the City of New York, and also to the City of Albany, and also to the City of Boston, and warn the people of those cities with the sound of the Gospel, with a loud voice, of the desolation and utter abolishment which awaits them if they do reject these things; for, if they do reject these things, the hour of their judgment is nigh, and their house shall be left unto them desolate."
Sixteen years later, the Millennial Star, September 15, 1848, published the foregoing prophecy, supplementing it with a lengthy extract from the Albany Express of August 17th, giving an account of a "destructive fire" in that city. The Apostle-Editor of the Star—Orson Pratt—doubtless felt gratified at being able to help "the Lord" a little to the verification of the prediction. Fires in great cities and in small ones are accidents of daily occurrence all over the world, and just as much the vengeance of "the Lord" as that in Albany for rejecting Newel K. Whitney's mission; but on such predictions and their fulfilment have the Mormons been fed by the modern apostles. Nothing was said by the Prophet about the Chicago fire. With such a terrible conflagration in fulfilment of "the Word of the Lord," Mormonism might have had a fresh lease of life.
