Is Glenn Beck Attempting to Fulfill the Mormon ‘White Horse Prophecy’?
Is a prophecy known to few outside of the Mormon faith motivating Glenn Beck’s crusade against President Barack Obama’s administration?
That’s Washington reporter Dana Milbank’s conclusion. In an article published Tuesday at The Huffington Post, Milbank details the history of Joseph Smith’s so-called “White Horse Prophecy.”
Though two of Smith’s followers are said to have heard him deliver the prophecy in 1843, it was not actually written down until the 1850s, when the men were elderly and Smith had passed away. In 1855, Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, distilled the prophecy into the following line:
When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they [American citizens] will have to call for the ‘Mormon’ Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it.
As Milbank notes, within days after Obama was elected president, Beck began frequently invoking the very same language when assessing the state of the country:
“We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance,” Beck told Bill O’Reilly on Nov.14, 2008, just after President Obama’s election. “I feel the Constitution is hanging in the balance right now, hanging by a thread unless the good Americans wake up.”