In this country we have had our prophets too. One, indeed, likened himself to the ancient Hebrews, and called himself Prophet. He founded a new faith on the strength of his visions, which he called prophetic, and which critics called fake. But he was believed unquestionably by thousands of followers, earnest, upright men and women who walked in the ways of the Lord. His name was Joseph Smith, and, like Moses, he predicted that his people would find the Promised Land, but that he himself would never set foot there. "You will go to the Rocky Mountains," the Vermont-born visionary told his disciples in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, "and you will be a great and mighty people established, which I will call [from Revelation] the White Horse of Peace. But I will never go there."

His people, the Mormons, recalling an earlier quest for a Promised Land, were driven and persecuted across the Western plains, from upstate New York to Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and eventually Utah, which Joseph Smith, as he foretold, never lived to see. In June 1844, with his brother Hyrum, he was murdered by a mob that broke into a Carthage, Illinois, jail cell where he was being held on a trumped-up charge of sedition. Many years later, his successor, Brigham Young, was to report: "I heard Joseph say many a time, 'I shall not live until I am forty years of age.'" He was thirty-nine when he died.

He was a man of many prophecies. In 1833, he foresaw the Civil War, a generation later, proclaiming, "A terrible revolution will take place in the land of Americas, father against son and son against father."

He foresaw the discovery of gold, predicting accurately, many years before the find in Sutter's Creek, that it would be "shoveled like sand." And he predicted that the Constitution of the United States would someday hang like a thread.

His most notable prediction was reserved for the end of times, when he revived the promised Biblical struggle against Gog and Magog, but with two startling departures. He identified the enemy—Russia—hardly a factor in world affairs then, and he fixed the time, the century after the American civil War. "England and France are now bitter enemies," he pointed out more than one hundred years ago, "but they will be allied together one day and united to keep Russia from conquering the world." He believed that the Lost Tribes of Israel had turned up in England, perhaps with the venturesome Phoenicians, a Semitic tribe that had found Carthage. "The wisdom and statesmanship of England comes from having so much of the blood of Israel in the nation," he observed.

Although communism would wax great, he forecast its overthrow: "These kingdoms that will not let the Gospel preach will be humbled."

And with the Russia threat, he saw another menace from the Orient, with a threat to our West Coast by a slant-eyed people of the yellow race. But in the great showdown, America would lead the banners of Christ to victory: "The last great struggle will be called Gog and Magog and their power will be great. But all opposition will be overcome, and then this land will be the Zion of Our God."

Only time, of course, would tell whether Joseph Smith, the marrying Mormon, was a good or false prophet. But the greatest Prophet of all had told His people what to look for on that eternal judgment day:

"Portents will appear in sun, moon, and stars. On earth nations will stand helpless, not knowing which way to turn from the roar and surge of the sea; men will faint with terror at the thought of all that is coming upon the world; for the celestial powers will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming on a cloud with great power and glory. When this begins to happen stand upright and hold your heads high, because your liberation is near."