Just a quick scan of D&C 89, before he gets to all the WoW stuff, has this (emphasis mine):

"To be sent greeting; not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom, showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the LAST DAYS—

3 Given for a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints.

4 Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the LAST DAYS."


Just one of many places that show the 19th Century LDS were told they were awaiting the Second Coming; apologists can spin all they want.

Also, slightly OT, verse 3 could be construed to mean that the entire WoW is only for the "weakest" of members, so "strong" members can eat or drink or smoke whatever they want.

Hey, just lookin' at what's written and thinkin' like an apologist... :-)

As an LDS woman, I was never a "doomsdayer". May have been some odd balls that were, but not me or my family.

Fully half of every ward I ever attended were doomsayers who believed they'd see the end of the world.

Actually, what I meant was that JS had his people in the 1800's believing that they would be "gathering in Zion" for the Second Coming, as did BY and many others (in other religious sects as well, of course).

Nothing gets your minions working harder for you than telling them they need to work hard and not get left behind when the Big Guy comes back.

But it's getting on almost 200 years since JS had his First Vision and ......crickets.

My father was never not a Mormon doomsdayer.

This reminds me of all the hype before Y2K. At the time, I was TBM and our ward's relief society president was running around like chicken little and declaring that the year 2000 was going to be the end of the world.

Even better: My parents believed it, so much that my Dad boarded up all the windows on the house the night before, stocked up on food, and my mom bought gas masks!

I was married and out of the house by then and so the next day, (when the world surprisingly didn't end) I asked her why she didn't buy gas masks for the rest of the family if she thought they were going to help her in some way during the supposed apocolypse? Nothing but silence..

Apparently, it's survival of the fittest when the Lawd comes..