On Christmas day, 1832, the Prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation foretelling war between the Northern and the Southern states of the United States, and the great calamities that shall fall upon all the inhabitants of the earth.
Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, writing in Church History and Modern Revelation, noted it may have been easy in 1832 for someone to predict there would come a division of the Northern and Southern states, but it certainly was not within the power of man to predict the detail of such a division. The Lord revealed such to Joseph Smith.Elder Smith said, "We have seen that war, famine, plague, earthquake in divers places have played their part in the earth in fulfillment of this prediction in Section 87T, and the end is not yet, other conflicts are to come."
Elder Smith called attention to a portion of the revelation: " . . . war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place South CarolinaT." (D&C 87:2.)
Elder Smith wrote: "This, certainly, is a bold prediction which no one, other than Joseph Smith, dared to make. . . .
"Following this prophecy, in 1833-35 and 1853-55 wars were fought on the Eastern Hemisphere, and the Mexican war of 1846-47, was fought in this land; but out of none of these came suggestions for changed methods of warfare.
"The Civil War was the incubator where were nurtured practically all the evils of modern warfare.
"Before that time battles upon the sea were between wooden ships, and on the land with what we would call today the same inferior weapons which had been used for many years."
Elder Smith quoted from The Present Time and Prophecy, in which the author, James H. Anderson, noted that new methods of warfare, mechanical devices and inventions were employed during the Civil War, leading to new and more destructive methods. Some of those methods, devices and inventions were:
The machine gun was brought forth, with a capacity for firing 350 shots per minute.
The Union ironclad warship, the Monitor, was used for the first time in war when it battled the Confederate's Merrimac.
The revolving turret was used on the Monitor.
The first submarine was used in war when the Confederate sub, David, sank the federal warship Housatonic.
Military telegraphs and military railways were used for the first time during a war.
The rifle cannon, shooting its great steel shell, came into existence.
Elder Smith quoted Anderson's observation:
" `During the American Civil War, there was introduced a new element in warfare upon the land and sea, changing the whole method or course of war - a beginning therein which made it so much more destructive both as to life and property that there was no comparison with that which had gone before.' "
Elder Smith further wrote, "People who declare it was easy for Joseph Smith to predict the Civil War have overlooked the fact that he also predicted the World War, and too, that this was done 82 years before that dreadful conflict commenced. Yet, strange as it may appear, the great thinkers of the world failed to see the approaching storm even within a few months of the outbreak of the conflict."
He also wrote, " . . . no one except those who had faith in Joseph Smith and a testimony of the truth, believed that the portion predicting a world war would ever be fulfilled. We have lived to see two of the most terrible and destructive editions of that war come upon the entire world. . . ."
