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Expiration of the Rising Generation
Dang. I had this post pretty much composed two months ago, and now I see that Blogger of Jared has taken up the issue. Well, here is my take.
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In April of 1843, Joseph Smith said the following:were I going to prophecy I would prophecy the end will not come in 1844 or 5 or 6. or 40 years ["more" crossed out here] there are those of the rising generation who shall no taste death til christ comes. I was once praying earnestly upon this subject. and a voice said unto me. My son, if thou livest til thou art 85 years of age, thou shalt see the face of the son of man.--I was left to draw my own conclusions concerning this & I took the liberty to conclude that if I did live til that time ["Jesus" crossed out here] he would make his appearance.--but I do not say whether he will make his appearance or I shall go where he is.--I prophecy in the name of the Lord God.--& let it be written. that the Son of Man will not come in the heavens till I am 85 years old 48 years hence or about 1890.
Earlier, in February of 1835, Joseph had said,
[bracketed items above are from the text at the link]...it was the will of God that they should be ordained to the ministry and go forth to prune the vineyard for the last times, or the coming of the Lord which was nigh, even fifty six years should wind up the scene. [link]
It seems clear that Joseph thought, based at least in part on the criptic answer to his prayer, that the Second Coming would occur around 1890-91.
In Mormon Doctrine (entry: "Second Coming") Elder McConkie wrote that a young man with at least one child on the day of Joseph's speech might live another 50+ years and father additional children in his old age with a younger wife. The children born in old age would still be part of the 'rising generation', having older siblings that were alive in 1843. These later children could easily live past the year 2000.
Using McConkie's explanation, when can we consider the 'rising generation' to have passed? Here is a spreadsheet I put together. I used 110 years old as the maximum mortal age. (Click to enlarge.)
So I guess it is within the realm of biological possibility that one of McConkie's 'rising generation' will be with us until 2048. I expect to be retired by then--if the Second Coming has not yet occured.
4 comments:
Yeah, if you look at the journals of BY, JT and WW they all thought that either 1880 or 1890 would be the 2nd coming.
You should be careful though, Jared*. The issue of the second coming was the first thing which I flat out rejected any form of reconciliation in church doctrine. The whole idea simply came to seem entirely absurd to me. In fact, I still think that it would be the most difficult of all doctrines for me to accept in the church.
It seems to me that a lot was placed on an amazingly vague prophecy of Joseph Smith which, to me, taken literally seems to be a complex way of saying, "I'm not telling you." That Joseph didn't take it that way is interesting. That so much did come to a head in the 1890's is much more interesting.
It was my understanding that alternative transcriptions of these quotes yielded fairly different readings of the statements, which adds to the confusion.
Matt W.
Jeff,
Well, I don't know if it will be like the Left Behind series portrays it, but the doctrine itself doesn't bother me.
Clark,
I agree.
Matt,
Be sure to click on the link I provided.
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