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One day,” we were told, “the Constitution of the United States will hang by a thread and a Mormon, or group of Mormons, will save the nation.”
This was not a casual statement. It was repeated over and over, year after year, in Mormon congregations across the land; it wasn’t only Mitt and I who heard it. It didn’t matter if you grew up like Mitt, the privileged son of the governor of Michigan; or like me, the daughter of a shoe salesman in Ogden, Utah; or like my friend Rae, the child of ranchers moving sheep around the West. This is what we were all taught — that one day the U.S. Constitution, revered by Mormons as a document inspired by God, would become so deeply endangered and torn asunder that it would also tear the nation apart, and it would be up to Mormons in powerful positions to save us.
This prediction had a name, the White Horse Prophecy, and it was supposedly uttered by the founding prophet of the church, Joseph Smith, in 1843, words he was said to have pronounced while he stood before a copy of the apocalyptic painting “Death on a Pale Horse” by the artist Benjamin West.
While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially distances itself from the prediction, it can’t be disputed that for years it was repeated by bishops, prophets and leading Mormon politicians, including Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s secretary of Agriculture and later president of the church. Even Utah’s Orrin Hatch, now retired but the longest serving Republican senator in U.S. history, has referred to it in the past.
Mitt Romney’s father, George, said in 1967, when he was a U.S. presidential candidate, that “the question of whether we are going to proceed on the basis of the Constitution would arise and at this point government leaders who were Mormons would be involved in answering the question.”
Mitt Romney must be thinking about Mormons and threads at this extremely dangerous moment in our country’s history. I don’t see how he could help it. The White Horse Prophecy is not the sort of thing you forget, even if, like me, you have long since left the faith. Romney, after all, is the most recognized Mormon on the planet, who also happens to hold a seat in the U.S. Senate where an impeachment trial would be held, a position of power foretold.
Mitt and I and every other Mormon kid in the 1950s heard the "White Horse" prophecy, which says the Constitution will be "hanging by a thread," and a Mormon will save it.
www.latimes.com
