The prophetic track record: failed predictions and reversed teachings

Measured against their own published words, Church presidents have a long record of predictions that failed and teachings later reversed, though critics overstate a few items.

What the Church claims

Church presidents are prophets, seers and revelators who speak for God; what they teach as the Lord's will can be relied upon.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. Individually many items are minor or arguable; collectively, with several canonized or First Presidency-level, they show no detectable advantage over uninspired contemporaries and a repeated pattern of unacknowledged reversal.

The record

D&C 87 (1832-12-25) predicted wars 'beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina', North against South, the South calling on Great Britain, and war 'poured out upon all nations'. The Church's own heading notes it came amid South Carolina's nullification crisis. The Civil War did begin in South Carolina 28 years later; Britain did not enter, no general slave uprising 'marshaled and disciplined for war' occurred, and war was not then poured out on all nations.
D&C 84:4-5 (1832-09) says the New Jerusalem temple at Independence, Missouri 'shall be reared in this generation. For verily this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord'. No such temple has been built.
On 1835-02-14 Joseph Smith told the meeting that organized the Twelve that 'the coming of the Lord, which was nigh, even fifty six years, should wind up the scene' (i.e. about 1891). The Joseph Smith Papers annotate this with his 1843 statement now in D&C 130:14-17 about seeing the Son of Man if he lived to 85.
Brigham Young taught in the Tabernacle (1870-07-24) that the moon has inhabitants and, of the sun, 'Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is' (JD 13:271).
Brigham Young in General Conference, 1863-10-06: 'Will the present struggle free the slave? No'; 'Ham will continue to be the servant of servants, as the Lord has decreed' (JD 10:250). The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December 1865.
Brigham Young, 1866-08-19: 'The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy' (JD 11:269). D&C 132:4 still reads that those who do not abide the covenant 'are ye damned'. The 1890 Manifesto ended new plural marriages, and the Church's essay concedes that some new plural marriages were nonetheless performed, mainly in Mexico and Canada, between 1890 and 1904.
The 1909 First Presidency statement 'The Origin of Man' called the idea that the first human was 'a development from lower orders of the animal creation' one of 'the theories of men' and affirmed Adam as the 'primal parent'. In 2016 the Church's youth magazine stated 'The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution.'
D&C 89 was given 'not by commandment or constraint'. The Church's history says leaders tolerated varied observance for two generations until in 1921 Heber J. Grant called for complete abstinence; in 2019 the Church's youth magazine specified that vaping, green tea and anything ending in '-ccino' are prohibited.
2 Nephi 30:6 now promises converted Lamanites will become 'a pure and a delightsome people' (the 1830 text read 'white'); the Book of Mormon introduction now says the Lamanites 'are among the ancestors of the American Indians' (the 1981 introduction said 'principal ancestors').
Gordon B. Hinckley, asked by reporters in 1997 about the teaching that God was once a man, played it down; in October 1997 conference he told members not to worry about things 'incompletely reported' and that he understood doctrine 'thoroughly'. The Church's 2014 essay acknowledges the Lorenzo Snow couplet and says little is taught about its first half.
Boyd K. Packer's October 2010 conference talk as published calls the Family Proclamation 'a guide'; the published text does not contain the spoken line asking why Heavenly Father would 'do that to anyone'. In 2017 Dallin H. Oaks described the proclamation's drafting as a 'revelatory process'.
In January 2016 Russell M. Nelson said the November 2015 exclusion policy came when the Lord inspired President Monson 'to declare the mind of the Lord and the will of the Lord'; it was reversed on 2019-04-04.
In 1990 Gordon B. Hinckley gave the conference talk 'Mormon Should Mean More Good', embracing the nickname; in 2018 Nelson taught that using such nicknames is 'a major victory for Satan' and that the Lord 'is offended'.

The moving target

1890-10-06: 'The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray.'
2007-05-04: 'Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine'; a single statement is often personal opinion.
2012-04: Repeats the Newsroom standard in General Conference; 'a prophet [is] a prophet only when he [is] acting as such.'

The exchange

FAIR ('Alleged false prophecies of Joseph Smith'; 'Prophets are not infallible'); Church Newsroom 2007

Most items on critics' lists are not prophecies at all: they are opinions, speculation or conditional promises. Prophets are fallible men, prophecy is often conditional on the Saints' faithfulness (Zion's temple), and only canonized, sustained revelation is binding.

The answer: The conditional-prophecy and opinion defenses are reasonable case by case and critics do pad their lists (moon-men and the 56 years were not given as 'thus saith the Lord'). But the defense has a cost: members were never told at the time which pulpit statements were opinion, several items here are canonized scripture (D&C 84:4-5) or First Presidency statements (1909, 1949), and the sorting of 'doctrine' from 'opinion' happens only after a teaching has failed. A test that can only be applied retrospectively cannot guide anyone prospectively, which is the stated purpose of a living prophet.

What they get right: Deuteronomy 18-style 'one strike' tests are not how Latter-day Saints (or most believers) understand prophecy, and Joseph himself hedged D&C 130.

FAIR; Church manuals

D&C 87 is a genuine hit: in 1832 Joseph named South Carolina, a North-South war and its enormous death toll, published in 1851, a decade before Fort Sumter.

The answer: It is the best item in the portfolio and the site should say so. It is weakened by context the Church itself supplies: it was dictated during the 1832 nullification crisis when war with South Carolina was openly discussed, and its other specifics (Britain and other nations drawn in, world war flowing from it, armed slave uprising) did not occur as described.

What they get right: Naming South Carolina and a sectional war with massive casualties was right.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

No single failed prediction falsifies a religion, and honest skeptics should drop the weakest items. The cumulative pattern is what matters. On questions where prophets had no natural advantage (when Christ would return, whether the war would free the slaves, whether the sun is inhabited, where humans came from, whether Native Americans would turn white, what Native Americans' ancestry is) their record is what one would expect of intelligent nineteenth- and twentieth-century men without special access. On questions of doctrine and practice that they declared in God's name (plural marriage as required for godhood, the racial ban as 'direct commandment', the 2015 policy as 'the mind of the Lord') later prophets reversed them, usually under outside pressure and without acknowledging error. The Church's modern answer, that not everything a prophet says is doctrine, is fair but concedes the central point: members have no reliable way to know in advance which prophetic statements to trust.

The apologetic case

Latter-day Saints do not claim prophetic infallibility. Joseph Smith said a prophet is a prophet only when acting as such. The canon is small, revisions come by the same revelatory authority, and the Church's core prophetic witness (Christ, the Restoration, the covenant path) has been stable for two centuries. Critics cherry-pick offhand remarks from thousands of sermons while ignoring hits like D&C 87.

What would change this

A documented set of specific, dated, non-obvious predictions by Church presidents that came true at a rate clearly above chance; or contemporaneous labelling by leaders of which teachings were opinion before they failed.

Sources

An independent project. Not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with any organization cited here. Summaries are written here; short quotations are attributed and linked. Every page names its sources so that it can be corrected, and every page can be challenged.