Before asking whether Joseph Smith is a prophet, Scripture asks a prior question: what does a true prophet look like, and how would we know one? The Bible gives surprisingly precise, testable criteria — criteria not invented by Catholic apologists but embedded in the very books the LDS church claims to honor. This tool walks through four of those criteria one at a time, applying each to the documented record of Joseph Smith using primary sources drawn chiefly from LDS scripture, official LDS publications, and the Joseph Smith Papers project.
The standard is not Catholic. The evidence is not secondary. The question is whether Joseph Smith meets the test his own canon demands.
The Accuracy Test: Do His Prophecies Come True?
"When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously."
This is the simplest and most objective criterion. A prophecy either comes to pass or it does not. The standard in Deuteronomy is binary and uncompromising — one false prophecy, spoken in God's name, is sufficient grounds for rejection. The following evidence comes from LDS scripture and the Joseph Smith Papers.
"A temple shall be reared in this generation... yea, the word of the Lord concerning his church, established in the last days for the restoration of his people... shall be built up unto the Lord in this generation, upon the consecrated spot."
— Doctrine & Covenants 84:4–5 (revelation dated September 22–23, 1832)Smith declared that a temple would be built on a specific site — the "consecrated spot" in Independence, Missouri — within "this generation." The generation that heard that prophecy is long dead. No temple was built on the spot in their lifetime. The LDS Church purchased the property in Independence; it remains undeveloped for temple use as of today. The prophecy named a specific location, a specific type of structure, and a specific time frame — and not one of the three conditions was met. Note that Smith himself, Joseph Fielding Smith, and other LDS leaders acknowledged the non-fulfillment without retracting the original claim.
"Verily thus saith the Lord: It is wisdom in my servant David W. Patten, that he settle up all his business as soon as he possibly can, and make a disposition of his merchandise, that he may perform a mission unto me next spring."
— Doctrine & Covenants 114:1 (dated April 17, 1838)God, through Smith, commanded David W. Patten to prepare for a spring mission. Patten died on October 25, 1838, at the Battle of Crooked River — six months after this "commandment" and months before the prophesied spring mission. If the prophecy came from God, why did God commission a man for a mission He knew the man would not live to perform? LDS apologists respond that Patten's death was not God's will — but this relocates the problem: a true prophet would know the will of God, including Patten's fate.
"President Smith then stated that the meeting had been called, because God had commanded it... it was the will of God that those who went to Zion, with a determination to lay down their lives, if necessary, should be ordained to the ministry... He said that 56 years should wind up the scene."
— History of the Church 2:182 (February 14, 1835); cf. Documentary History of the Church, Vol. 2In 1835, Smith prophesied that 56 years would "wind up the scene" — a clear reference to the Second Coming, placing it no later than 1891. The year 1891 passed without the Second Coming. The Joseph Smith Papers project and official LDS history do not contest the quotation — they contest its interpretation. But the plain reading, received by those present, was eschatological. Lyman Johnson, one of the original Twelve Apostles present, understood it as a prophecy of the imminent millennium.
"Let my servant Joseph and his seed after him have place in that house, from generation to generation, forever and ever... And the name of that house shall be called Nauvoo House; and let it be a delightful habitation for man, and a resting-place for the weary traveler."
— Doctrine & Covenants 124:22–23 (January 19, 1841)God commanded that the Nauvoo House be built and promised that Joseph Smith and "his seed after him" would possess it "forever and ever." Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, three years later. His descendants never possessed the house in any enduring way. The Nauvoo House was sold, changed hands, and passed out of Smith family possession. A promise of eternal possession "from generation to generation" that lasted less than a decade cannot be attributed to God.
The Theology Test: Does He Teach a Different God?
"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods'... you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul."
Deuteronomy 13 makes a remarkable claim: even if the prophecies come true, a prophet who leads toward a different God is to be rejected. Accurate prediction is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The nature of God proclaimed must match the God of prior revelation. This criterion asks: does Joseph Smith's mature theology describe the same God as Scripture?
"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens... I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see."
— Joseph Smith, King Follett Funeral Discourse (April 7, 1844); recorded by four scribes; published in Times and Seasons, August 15, 1844This is Joseph Smith's final major theological address, delivered six weeks before his death. He explicitly states that God was once a mortal man who progressed to godhood. This directly contradicts Psalm 90:2 ("Before the mountains were brought forth... from everlasting to everlasting you are God"), Isaiah 43:10 ("Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me"), Malachi 3:6 ("I the LORD do not change"), and Numbers 23:19 ("God is not man"). The earliest Book of Mormon (Moroni 8:18) itself states: "God... is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity" — a definition Smith later explicitly reversed.
"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit."
— Doctrine & Covenants 130:22 (April 2, 1843)Scripture is direct: "God is spirit" (John 4:24). "A spirit does not have flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39 — the risen Christ distinguishing Himself as embodied from His pre-resurrection spiritual mode). D&C 130:22 defines the Father as a corporeal, spatially located being — a definition incompatible with divine omnipresence, omniscience, and the theology of every Christian writer from the first century through the Reformation. This is not a doctrinal refinement; it is a fundamental redefinition of the divine nature. Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Augustine, Aquinas, and the entire Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant tradition agree on divine incorporeality — and agree that it comes from Scripture.
"And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth... And the Gods called the light Day, and the darkness they called Night."
— Pearl of Great Price, Book of Abraham 4:1, 5 (published Times and Seasons, March 1, 1842)The Book of Abraham systematically replaces the singular "God" of Genesis 1 with the plural "the Gods" — not as a reflection of the Hebrew Elohim (a plural of majesty used with singular verbs throughout Genesis 1) but as a genuine plurality of separate divine beings. This is the theological foundation of LDS polytheism: a council of distinct Gods who collaboratively create. Isaiah is unambiguous: "I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no God" (Isa 45:5). The LDS canon introduces a competing deity structure that neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament supports when read in their historical context.
"And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end."
— 2 Nephi 31:21 (Book of Mormon, 1830 edition) · cf. Mosiah 15:1–4; 3 Nephi 11:27The original Book of Mormon (1830) contains explicit Trinitarian language — "they are one God" and "the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is one God" — that flatly contradicts Smith's later teaching of three separate beings. Smith himself revised several Book of Mormon passages in the 1837 and 1840 editions to reduce the Trinitarian language. A prophet who contradicts his own scripture — and then edits that scripture to reduce the contradiction — cannot appeal to consistency as his defense. The LDS church itself acknowledges the textual changes; the Joseph Smith Papers project has published them in full.
The Direction Test: Does He Lead Toward or Away from God?
"But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die... To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn."
Isaiah's standard is direct: prophetic claims must be tested against "the teaching and the testimony" — the prior revelation. This criterion asks not just about the God proclaimed but about the moral and doctrinal direction given to the prophet's followers. Does obedience to this prophet lead people toward the true God — or toward structures, doctrines, and practices He has condemned?
"Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness... David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants... and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me."
— Doctrine & Covenants 132:37–38 (July 12, 1843)Christ's teaching on marriage is unambiguous: "From the beginning it was not so" (Matt 19:8) — explicitly overriding the Mosaic accommodation of polygamy and restoring the original one-man, one-woman norm. The Book of Mormon's own Jacob 2:24 calls David's and Solomon's many wives "abominable." D&C 132 directly reverses the Book of Mormon's own condemnation, rehabilitates what Christ overrode, and presents God commanding a practice that Christ's own words rule out. This is not progressive revelation — it is retrogression to a framework Christ explicitly closed.
"[God told me] that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt... He again forbade me to join with any of them."
— Joseph Smith – History 1:19 (Pearl of Great Price) · cf. D&C 1:30: "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth"The First Vision account — in its canonized form — records God the Father calling the creeds of every other Christian church an "abomination" and their ministers "corrupt." D&C 1:30 declares the LDS church uniquely "true and living." The logical consequence: every person who followed Ignatius, Augustine, Aquinas, or any bishop in the two-millennium apostolic succession was following a corrupt abomination. This is not a claim requiring nuanced interpretation; it is the plain statement that everyone outside LDS membership was separated from God's true church. The direction given is away from the entire prior Christian witness.
"I was filled with the Spirit of God, and the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph my son thy sins are forgiven thee... I was about 15 years old."
— Joseph Smith's earliest First Vision account (1832 holograph ms., Joseph Smith Papers); notably: only Christ appears, no mention of the Father, no mention of other churches being asked aboutSmith produced at least four accounts of the First Vision (1832, 1835, 1838, and 1842). They differ on who appeared (Christ alone; Christ and angels; the Father and Christ), Smith's age (15 or 14), his prior spiritual state (forgiven already vs. not), and his motive (personal forgiveness vs. asking which church to join). The canonized 1838 account — the one in the Pearl of Great Price — is the latest version and the one most favorable to institutional LDS claims. The LDS Church acknowledged these discrepancies in its 2013 Gospel Topics Essay. A foundational theophany with contradictory accounts raises serious reliability concerns.
"And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord... I will destroy her if she abide not in my law."
— Doctrine & Covenants 132:54 (July 12, 1843)D&C 132 records God threatening destruction to Joseph Smith's wife if she does not accept his plural marriages — marriages that were being conducted secretly and that Emma was only partially aware of. The direction being given here is toward an arrangement that involves deception of a spouse, coercion through threatened divine punishment, and the marrying of women already wed to living husbands. Smith was sealed to at least eleven women who were already married to other living men — documented in the LDS Church's own Gospel Topics Essay on Plural Marriage (2014). A God who threatens a deceived wife for non-compliance raises serious questions about prophetic character.
The Fruit Test: What Does the Prophet's Life Produce?
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits... Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit."
The fruit test is the most personal criterion. It concerns the character, conduct, and consequences of the prophet's life — not merely the content of his teaching. Jesus places this criterion immediately after warning about false prophets and connects the wolf image to deception: the danger comes from a true-seeming exterior concealing a destructive interior. The fruits examined here are drawn from documented primary sources.
"During the 1840s, when rumors about plural marriage were spreading, Joseph Smith and other Church leaders made carefully worded denials... At the same time, Smith was privately teaching and practicing plural marriage."
— LDS Church, Gospel Topics Essay: "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo" (LDS.org, 2014)The LDS Church's own 2014 Gospel Topics Essay acknowledges that Smith made "carefully worded denials" of polygamy while practicing it. A public 1844 statement — "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one" — was made while he had approximately thirty-five. This is not a matter of privacy or complexity — it is documented public denial of documented private practice. A prophet claiming to speak for a God who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8) built his authority on a foundation of systematic deception about his own conduct.
"Thousands of dollars were... lost by confiding members... The Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company was organized... The institution lasted only a few months, and its failure caused widespread financial ruin."
— B.H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church 1:399–411; cf. Messenger and Advocate, 1837; Joseph Smith Papers, Documents Vol. 5Smith organized the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837 after Ohio refused to grant it a banking charter. He issued promissory notes anyway, reportedly stamped over "anti" and "ing company" on the certificates to make them resemble legal bank notes. The institution collapsed within months, wiping out the savings of many church members who invested on Smith's prophetic credibility. Several early LDS leaders — including Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris — apostasized or distanced themselves as a result. A prophet is not immune from financial failure — but systematic misrepresentation of financial instruments to trusting followers is a matter of character, not competence.
"The Council passed a resolution that the Nauvoo Expositor was a nuisance and ordered the Mayor to destroy it. Joseph Smith ordered the City Marshal to destroy the press and scatter the type."
— History of the Church 6:432–449 (June 10, 1844); Joseph Smith Papers, Documents Vol. 15The Nauvoo Expositor was a newspaper run by dissident LDS members who intended to publish evidence of Smith's secret polygamy and financial abuses. Smith, acting as both mayor and prophet, convened the city council, declared the paper a "nuisance," and ordered its printing press destroyed and its type scattered — a direct suppression of a free press publishing true information about his conduct. This act was the legal trigger for his arrest and ultimately his death. The destruction of a free press to suppress evidence of one's own misconduct is, by any standard, bad fruit — and it resulted directly from Smith's use of prophetic and civic authority in combination.
"Joseph Smith, the Glass-looker" was brought before Justice Albert Neely on a charge of being a "glass-looker"... The original trial record was discovered in 1971 and confirmed by multiple scholars including the Joseph Smith Papers project.
— Purple, W.D., "A Reminiscence of Joseph Smith" (Chenango Union, May 2, 1877); trial record confirmed in Joseph Smith Papers; see also Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, pp. 50–52Four years before founding the LDS church, Smith was tried under New York's vagrancy statutes for "glass-looking" — claiming to use a seer stone to find buried treasure for payment. He was found guilty or convicted. This background is significant not for its legal weight but for its pattern: the same seer stone used to attract paying customers to treasure-seeking was later used to "translate" the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith's own mother and multiple early witnesses describe the translation as Smith placing the stone in a hat and reading luminous characters — a continuity of method from the treasure-seeking years that the LDS Church acknowledged in its 2013 Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Mormon translation.
✦ The Verdict of Scripture on Joseph Smith ✦
The biblical criteria for a true prophet are not harsh or unreasonable. They are specific, objective, and designed to protect the people of God from deception. Applied to Joseph Smith, they do not produce a close call or a mixed result — they produce consistent, documented failure across all four criteria, using evidence drawn primarily from LDS scripture and official LDS sources.
The Catholic position is not that Joseph Smith was a villainous fraud — it is that he was a man who sincerely believed things that are demonstrably not true, who constructed a theological system that cannot be reconciled with Scripture, and whose prophetic claims fail the tests Scripture itself requires. The stakes of this conclusion are not academic. They determine whether 17 million people are following God's revealed will or a sincere but unverified human construction. Scripture demands the question be asked. This tool attempts to answer it honestly.
Primary Sources Used: Doctrine & Covenants 84, 114, 124, 130, 132 (LDS Scripture) · Pearl of Great Price: Joseph Smith – History; Book of Abraham (LDS Scripture) · King Follett Discourse, Times and Seasons (Aug. 15, 1844) · Joseph Smith Papers Project (josephsmithpapers.org) · LDS Gospel Topics Essays: "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham," "Book of Mormon Translation," "First Vision Accounts" (LDS.org, 2013–2014) · B.H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church · Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (2005) · D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1987) · History of the Church, Vol. 2, 6 · 1826 Trial Record (confirmed, Joseph Smith Papers) · Galatians 1:8; Matthew 7:15–20; Deuteronomy 13:1–5, 18:20–22; Isaiah 8:20