The last “Thus saith the Lord…” revelation was received by Wilford Woodruff in 1889, at the height of the Anti Polygamy crusade, in which God told President Woodruff “Let my servants… make their pleadings… with out any further pledges from the Priesthood”. Six months later, the Church forced President Woodruff, under pressure from the U.S. Federal Government, to publish the “Manifesto”, a direct violation of the revelation he’d just received.

God has not spoken to the Church since.

(The above Woodruff revelation was last published by the Church in “My Kingdom shall roll forth – readings in Church History” 1980).

And those that did, were better off for having done it. I know that I was. I chose to listen to it and follow along in the scriptures.

As to those that finished a little late, I don’t think that the Lord cares. The Lord always blesses those that follow the guidance He gives.

And to those who were commenting on if it was a “challenge” or not please check out the First Presidency Message from August 2005. http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,2043-1-3156-1,00.html

“We studied the Book of Mormon in Sunday School this past year. Nonetheless I offer a challenge to members of the Church throughout the world and to our friends everywhere to read or reread the Book of Mormon. If you will read a bit more than one and one-half chapters a day, you will be able to finish the book before the end of this year. Very near the end of its 239 chapters, you will find a challenge issued by the prophet Moroni as he completed his record nearly 16 centuries ago. Said he:

“And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust? . . .

‘And God shall show unto you, that that which I have written is true’ (Moroni 10:27, 29).

Without reservation I promise you that if each of you will observe this simple program, regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book of Mormon, there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God.”

We are always challenged to read and re-read the scriptures. Study them and learn from them. We should be continually studying the scriptures. We will be blessed in so many ways for doing this.

Second let me add a comment about the whole “Thus saith the Lord . . . ” line. In Old Testament times the Isrealites needed to be completely instructed in everything down to the last letter. (See how specific Moses was told about temple sacrifices) Even then by the time Christ came some had blown the ten commandments out of proportion by, for instance, specifing how many steps you can take on the sabbath. It is my opinion that they also needed to be told “Thus saith the Lord . . .” to emphasize that this comes directly from God. Even with that most did not listen.

If you read OD 2, you will see that it was received by revelation. I offer this quote:

7 Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us that at some time, in God’s eternal plan, all of our brethren who are worthy may receive the priesthood, and witnessing the faithfulness of those from whom the priesthood has been withheld, we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance.
8 He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple. (Doctrine and Covenants | Official Declaration 2:7 –

So, if I read this right, it was in fact a “Thus saith the Lord.”

At first blush, I’d tend to agree with you. The logic is simple: say enough things and some of them are bound to come true. But that’s it’s problem, I think. It’s too simplistic to simply brush it off as a “typical” result. Remember that any review ex post is going to be subject to hindsight bias, which would unfairly weigh in favor of concluding that results are typical rather than unique.

That said, I wouldn’t really know how to “fairly” approach it. We could study of all the things GBH focused on and see which ones “came true,” but who’s to say that now is the right time? Perhaps some things were indeed prophetic (rather than good or inspired leadership) where payoffs won’t show for several years. Also, if any prophet were so obviously inspired that everything he/she spoke came to fruition in an obvious way, it would take from the principle of faith.

Just my thoughts.

I’ve also thought that James Talmage was possibly speaking of young Gordon Hinckley when he stated the following in October General Conference of 1916 “The tribes shall come: they are not lost unto the Lord; they shall be brought forth as hath been predicted; and I say unto you there are those now living–aye, some here present– who shall live to read the records of the Lost Tribes of Israel, which shall be made one with the record of the Jews or the Hobly Bible, and the record of the Nephites, or the Book of Mormon, even as the Lord hath predicted”. Of course, if he did read them, he never shared that with the body of the Church before he passed on.

As far as actually using Old Testament type language to announce a prophesy…I don’t really think that matters nowadays. I think that we as a people have been told to pray often, read our scriptures daily, hold FHE meetings, etc. The list goes on. We’ve been told we would be blessed for doing so. Now, are we being blessed due to our obedience, or being blessed because we were told that we would be?

Personally, I think that is an academic question that could be debated over until it was dusty and dried out, but ultimately any blessings we receive, we receive because we are worthy. I think President Hinckley was able to accomplish a lot during his life because the majority of church members were worthy and the time was right for expansion, construction, reaching out, etc. If people are waiting around to start or stop actions until they hear the words Thus Sayeth the Lord then they will probably be waiting a long time. We sustain the quorum of the 12 as prophets, seers, revelators. We ought to reinforce that sustaining with a willingness to act on their suggestions and guidelines.

What are you talking about?

If you read through the items carefully, you will see there was a measure of Prophesy associated with each one. Whether it was building the conference center or the Nauvoo. you may be right that I mistitled it, but still it is in reference to a revelator experience that the thing happened.

BTW, how many tires do you have?

You should rename the post “administration accomplishments of GBH” or “construction accomplishments of GBH.”

Since when does being a good CEO make you a prophet?

I have kept a journal for 6+ years now. Someone could dig through the thing and find all kinds of ‘prophesy’ if they wanted. And they’d find a lot of things that I have said and written that are just plain junk.

I’m not saying he wasn’t a good person, or that his god didn’t use him in some way, but it’s the law of averages, isn’t it? And as long as no one is using those magic ‘thus saith the lord’ phrases, we can all pick and choose in hindsight and make history to be what we want.

I have thrown up my hands on this matter and resolved to do what I believe is right. That is more guaranteed to uplift than trying to sort through what is prophecy / commandment, et cetera.

First of all, Hinckley didn’t “challenge” anyone to do any such thing. He issued an invitation, by saying “I invite you to” do this thing. Before you know it, people turned it into a “challenge,” and some even decided it was a “commandment.” I managed an LDS bookstore at the time, and I can tell you Deseret Book and its competitors certainly used it as a massive marketing campaign for Book of Mormon associated products (study guides, cd’s, etc.). My bishop at the time reacted to the invitation-turned-commandment so strongly that he required every home teacher at the end of 2005 to obtain a specific report from every single ward member, regardless of age or circumstances, as to whether they had read The Book of Mormon by the deadline (and no, it didn’t come down from the stake president, since I was serving as the stake executive secretary at the time).

Soon after competing the Book of Mormon with my wife and daughter we were blessed to be able to move to a place where I had a better job, our daughter had a better school (she is autistic and her school was bad), and we now have an awesome ward that is very accepting of our daughter.

So, you actually believe that these things happened as a direct result of you reading The Book of Mormon during a specially-designated six month period? Other than timing of “soon after,” what makes you associate the two events? More importantly, what about all those poor LDS members who were a little slow, and finished reading in mid-January of 2006? Since they didn’t meet the Hinckley deadline, did they fail to receive blessings for their reading? If so, would that make deity just a tad bit capricious?

I might just as reliably say that I was “blessed” for not following Hinckley’s invitation. “Soon after” the expiration of Hinckley’s deadline, I found the courage to divorce a truly vicious, mean-spirited, domineering woman, and to begin living my life with integrity. Of course, she no doubt has a few friends who believe she was blessed for accepting Hinckley’s invitation, because I left–ha!

Not only do modern prophets not speaking in prophetic language anymore, they don’t prophesy in the sense of foretelling future events, either. Perhaps they don’t want to take the chance that they are wrong, in which case what does that say about their confidence in inspiration? Or perhaps they aren’t being inspired with visions of the future anymore, which would be a massive change from our early charismatic roots.

As an interesting research task, who can tell us the last time a prophet actually did say something like “thus saith the Lord”?

As to AdamF’s response, I believe that we are always receiving prophesy from the GA’s and it does not need to be prefaced with “Thus saith the Lord” to be prophesy. I also believe that we as a people will not receive more prophesy until we more fully obey the prophesy that we have been given. For instance Doctrine and Covenants 84 says that the church is under condemnation until we remember the new covenant of the Book of Mormon.