Overview
The "Mormon Prophecy of WWI/WWII" theory holds that the great wars of the twentieth century were foreseen in an inner prophetic text known only to initiates or privately circulated believers. In most forms, the theory is not centered on one fully stable “secret book” with a clean publication history. Instead, it gathers around a cluster of texts and traditions: Joseph Smith’s 1832 revelation on war, later statements about the Constitution “hanging by a thread,” and the so-called White Horse Prophecy attributed much later to private reminiscence and manuscript circulation.
In conspiratorial retelling, these materials are fused into the idea of a hidden Mormon war book that predicted not only the American Civil War but the wider sequence of world conflict that culminated in World War I and World War II. The theory’s power comes less from one canonical document than from the sense that scattered prophetic fragments were being privately guarded, copied, and decoded.
Historical Setting
The oldest historical anchor for the theory is Joseph Smith’s December 25, 1832 revelation, now Doctrine and Covenants 87, which speaks of war beginning in South Carolina and eventually being “poured out upon all nations.” That text became important later because it appeared, to many believers, to anticipate the American Civil War and to suggest a widening of war beyond the United States.
A second anchor is the White Horse Prophecy tradition. The most influential versions were recorded long after Joseph Smith’s death and are associated with Edwin Rushton and later manuscript circulation. These expanded accounts used apocalyptic horse imagery, constitutional crisis, and a future role for the Saints in preserving order. By the early twentieth century, copies and variants were circulating as private documents, rumor texts, and movement folklore.
Central Claim
The central claim is that Mormon insiders possessed a prophetic war document that described, in hidden or symbolic form, the global wars of the twentieth century. Some versions say World War I and World War II were named only by implication, through references to worldwide conflict, famine, revolution, and the breakdown of governments. Others go farther and claim the real text was fuller than the printed or public versions, but remained restricted to trusted readers.
The “secret book” phrasing often reflects how these texts actually moved: not through standard scripture, but through private copies, diaries, family manuscripts, collected prophecy sheets, and oral explanation. This gave them an aura of concealment even when no official secret archive can be demonstrated.
Why World War I and World War II Were Added
The original texts predated both world wars. What gave the theory its twentieth-century form was retrospective interpretation. Once global war did occur, readers revisited older prophetic language about conflict “among all nations,” constitutional crisis, and social disorder. The First World War seemed to confirm the global dimension of the prophecy. The Second World War then reinforced the idea that the prediction extended beyond a single nineteenth-century conflict.
This is a common structure in prophetic conspiracy theory. A text first understood narrowly becomes, after later events, a wider key to history. In Mormon war-prophecy culture, the Civil War prophecy and White Horse tradition became mutually reinforcing parts of a larger retrospective scheme.
The White Horse Prophecy as a Secret Text
The White Horse Prophecy was especially suited to “secret book” treatment because it was never canonized and circulated in manuscript and copied form. That private mode of transmission made it feel more esoteric than ordinary church scripture. Even where copies were available, the theory could still claim that only a fuller or earlier version contained the real war forecast.
This dynamic also helped the theory survive institutional disavowal. Because the text existed in private circulation and variant form, a denial of official status could be reframed not as disproof but as further evidence that the real prophecy had always lived outside public doctrine.
Church Distance and Folk Persistence
A major part of the theory’s history is the tension between folk influence and official distance. The LDS Church repeatedly declined to treat the White Horse Prophecy as doctrine, and historical work has challenged its authenticity as a verbatim Joseph Smith statement. Yet the text remained influential because it offered a dramatic prophetic map of collapse, war, and constitutional rescue.
That tension is central to the “secret book” idea. A text rejected officially but beloved unofficially can be interpreted as suppressed truth rather than uncanonized folklore.
Legacy
The "Mormon Prophecy of WWI/WWII" theory survives because it fuses real nineteenth-century Mormon war language with later manuscript prophecy culture and twentieth-century hindsight. Its enduring claim is that somewhere between Joseph Smith’s 1832 revelation and the later White Horse tradition there existed a hidden prophetic framework for modern world war—one circulated privately, read apocalyptically, and repeatedly updated by events.