Earth to be Destroyed
D&C 88:87; “For not many days hence and the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man; and the sun shall hide his face, and shall refuse to give light; and the moon shall be bathed in blood; and the stars shall become exceedingly angry, and shall cast themselves down as a fig that falleth from off a fig-tree.”
Deuteronomy 18:20-22; “But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.”
This was a prophecy given by Joseph Smith on December 27, 1832. You can also find it in History of the Church 1:302-312.
The problem with this prophecy is obvious to all I’m sure! None of the things Smith prophesied took place! As of today’s date (October 20, 2011) it’s been 178 years, 297 days. That means 65,267 days have passed by since that revelation, so my next question should be obvious as well. What’s the meaning of “not many days”?
2 Peter 3: 8-10
“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
Since you seem to like to use statistics to make this point let us look at a few more.
The Fall of Adam was about 4000 years before Christ, and this prophecy was pronounced in 1832 years after. Meaning up to that point 5832 years had been the entirety of the Earth’s mortal history. That is, 2,130,138 days made up the earths history up to that point.
Now, using your calculation of 65,267 days, this would mean that just over three percent of the Earth’s history has past since Joseph Smith wrote this prophecy.
Doesn’t sound like many days to me, all things considered.