WASHINGTON -- Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, worries that enemies seek to hurt his presidential campaign by distorting a prophecy attributed to LDS Church founder Joseph Smith.
The prophecy was, essentially, that someday the U.S. Constitution would hang by a thread but church members would help save it.But Hatch says reports have reached him that rumors say he claims (or others supposedly do) a revelation that he is the personal fulfillment of that prophecy.
Hatch says nothing could be further from the truth.
"I don't consider myself as that," he said. "That comes up anytime a Mormon considers running for national office -- usually from people who want to hurt him."
It fuels a perception among some that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult with strange beliefs, and may make them more hesitant to vote for a Mormon.
Like most candidates from a variety of faiths, Hatch says he does pray and seek inspiration in his life. He said he also feels after long prayer that it is appropriate to run for president.
"I think it is something I need to do. But it is a very, very uphill fight. Everyone knows that," he said.
But that also does not mean that Hatch considers himself as the personal fulfillment of that prophecy. "I don't," he said.
A happy byproduct of Hatch's long-shot candidacy may be to kill off such rumors for all future LDS candidates by bringing a closer look now at the old prophecy -- and how no reports of it ever predicted that one, single LDS member would somehow ride in on a white horse to save the Constitution.
Joseph Smith apparently never wrote down the prophecy. But several early church leaders and others mentioned it in talks and other reports later.
Brigham Young, the church's president after Smith, reported in an Independence Day speech, "As Joseph Smith said, 'The time will come when the destiny of the nation will hang upon a single thread. At that critical juncture, this people will step forth and save it from the threatened destruction.' It will be so."
Orson Hyde, an LDS apostle, also said he heard Smith make the prediction but remembered it a bit differently.
"I believe he said something like this: that the time would come when the Constitution and the country would be in danger of an overthrow; and said he, 'If the Constitution be saved at all, it will be by the elders of this church,' " Hyde said.
Eliza R. Snow, who was married to Smith and was later president of the church's Relief Society for women, recorded, "I heard him say that the time would come when this nation would so far depart from its original purity, its glory and its love for freedom and its protection of civil and religious rights, that the Constitution of our country would hang as it were by a thread. He said, also, that this people, the sons of Zion, would rise up and save the Constitution and bear it off triumphantly."
One last witness with another slightly different version comes from James Burgess, who said he heard Smith make the prophecy to him and other members of the Nauvoo Legion (a militia group) in Illinois.
He said Smith said "the time would come when the Constitution and government would hang by a brittle thread and would be ready to fall into other hands, but this people, the Latter-day Saints, will step forth and save it."
None of those accounts claim one single LDS person or candidate or president would somehow save the Constitution -- but do suggest work by many LDS members would preserve the nation.
Former LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson put it this way when he mentioned the prophecy in a speech, "It is my conviction that the elders of Israel, widely spread over the nation, will at that crucial time successfully rally the righteous of our country and provide the necessary balance of strength to save the institutions of constitutional government."
Or as Hatch -- chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- also said, "I work my guts out to make sure it (the Constitution) is preserved. I hope everyone else does, too."