Hope, Fear, & Creation
Living in Response to Prophecy
“Prophecy is more certain than history.”
Dad doubtless meant this assertion to offer certainty in an uncertain world. Prophecy, understood as the declaration of an unalterable fate, represented a rock of stability we might glimpse through the mists ahead.
My father was then an ardent young convert to the Restoration, which began with fulfillment of prophecy. Hadn’t Joseph Smith verified Isaiah’s ancient prediction that a sealed book would be offered to the learned and then taken to the unlearned (Isaiah 29:11–12)? This incident, in which Joseph sent Martin Harris with characters from the golden plates to Charles Anthon, became a prototype for the fulfillment of prophecy.
Prophecy, the dramatic event assured, was being fulfilled in modern times.
But what assurance could I feel in my childhood world when the certainty offered was that of certain destruction?
Reading about another “sealed book,” one bound with seven seals, fascinated me—and frightened me. As a twelve-year-old late in the Cold War, I combed through the book of Revelation one Sunday afternoon to figure out when the Second Coming would commence. Having been told repeatedly that I was growing up in the closing of Revelation’s sixth seal, the events it predicted were ones I anticipated in my own lifetime. What, then, might I expect? The sun going black, the moon turning to blood, and the stars falling from heaven (Rev. 6:12–13), “hail and fire mingled with blood” (Rev. 8:7), and monstrosities fit for Mordor—battle locusts
like unto horses prepared unto battle; . . . and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. . . . And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. (Rev. 9:7–10)
Such omens did not inspire optimism for my life ahead.
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