The Time Apollo Astronauts Trolled a Mormon Prophet
The Time Apollo Astronauts Trolled a Mormon Prophet
Joseph Fielding Smith had opinions. As a leading member of the Mormon church hierarchy — serving as Church historian, head of the Genealogical Society, and church apostle — he was used to people listening to him.
So in 1957, when he prophesied that man would never travel to space, much less set foot on the moon, that was as good as the Word of God, the closest modern Mormons come to “thus saith the Lord.”
Years later, the Apollo 15 astronauts would give Joseph Field Smith hard, physical proof that his prophecy was wrong.
*
A direct descendant of Hyrum Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith was Mormon royalty. His ancestor was the brother of church founder Joseph Smith — killed next to the prophet in Carthage Jail.
When the church split between rival claimants to the prophetic mantle, Hyrum’s family (and associated cousins) pledged allegiance to Brigham Young, following the new prophet on the migration to Utah. Joseph’s family mostly stayed in Illinois, forming various Mormon splinter groups.
Once they settled in Utah’s craggy shelter, the Hyrum Smith family and associated cousins flourished. Their illustrious, polygamist line produced multiple Mormon apostles, Utah political leaders, and a smattering of other high-ranking Mormon functionaries. Most importantly, they produced three prophets, the heads of the Mormon church: Joseph F. Smith, George Albert Smith, and Joseph Fielding Smith.
Fielding Smith’s father, Joseph F. Smith, was the sixth prophet of the church. The prophetic mantle was Fielding Smith’s destiny. He rose quickly through the Mormon hierarchy, gaining a reputation as a prolific writer and a staunch advocate for Mormonism's most conservative threads, among them the rejection of modern science.
**
In the 1950s, the Space Race was in full swing.
After a mad dash to collect Nazi scientists from the wreckage of wartime Germany, and early experiments with captured V-2 missiles, the United States and the Soviet Union raced to capitalize on their jump-started nascent space programs.
While politicians debated the merits of manned spaceflight, the public consciousness exploded with dreams of interplanetary adventure. The public was inspired in no small part by Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun’s detailed hypothetical space missions published in Collier’s magazine and brought to the silver screen by Disney. Space travel was all the rage.
At the time, Joseph Fielding Smith was serving as President of the Quorum of the Twelve, the top apostle among the twelve.
He didn’t feel the fever of the race to the stars.
***
In 1957 — the same year the Soviets launched Sputnik — Joseph Fielding Smith published his Answers to Gospel Questions, an attempt to compile authoritative answers to any and all gospel questions.
With space on everybody’s minds, the Mormons wondered about the theological implications of the new frontier and turned to Fielding Smith, who, at the time, was the fourth highest-ranking Mormon leader, for God’s message.
In the Volume 2 chapter "Guided Missiles and Interplanetary Travel," Fielding Smith expounded God’s thoughts on questions of rocket policy:
“The Savior said that preceding his coming there would be signs in heaven… Naturally the wonder in heaven that man has created will be numbered among the signs which have been predicted — the airplanes, the guided missiles, and man-made planets that revolve around the Earth. Keep it in mind, however, that such man-made planets belong to this earth, and it is doubtful that man will ever be permitted to make any instrument or ship to travel through space and visit the moon or any distant planet.”
[Author’s note: People were still figuring out space terminology in the 50s, so “man-made planets” would refer to satellites and other orbital vehicles.]
“The Lord will permit men to go just so far and no further; and when they get beyond their proper bounds, he will check them.”
“When man was placed on this earth [sic] it became his probationary, or mortal home… There is no prophecy or edict ever given that mortals should seek dominions beyond this earth [sic] while they dwell in mortality. Here we are, and here we should be content to stay. All this talk about space travel and the visit of other worlds brings to mind vividly an attempt long ago made by foolish men who tried to build to heaven.
Fielding Smith couldn’t prophesy that all orbital flights were impossible since they had already happened. Achieving planetary escape velocity seems to be where Mormon God drew the line.
In 1961 Fielding Smith once again repeated his prophecy to an audience in Honolulu, Hawaii:
“We will never get a man into space. This earth is man's sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.”
That same year JFK issued his famous challenge to reach the moon within the decade. The Moon race was off.
Little did the NASA planners know that the real danger facing the astronauts wasn’t the Van Allen Belts, explosive rocket fuel, or the cold void of space. It was the hand of Elohim, Mormon God, and creator of the universe. No amount of thrust could dodge divine command.
Or so Fielding Smith prophesied.
****
As history shows, Fielding Smith’s prophecies were proven wrong on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 Lunar Module touched down in the Sea of Tranquility and Neil Armstrong took one small step.
Really, Fielding Smith’s prophecies had been disproven earlier. In 1957 he had said:
“… it is doubtful that man will ever be permitted to make any instrument or ship to travel through space and visit the moon or any distant planet [emphasis mine].”
Both the Soviets and the United States flew lunar flyby and impact missions in 1959 (Luna 1, Pioneer 4, Luna 2, and Luna 3.) The Soviets had even managed to take pictures of the far side of the moon with their Luna 3 mission.
I suspect that even Fielding Smith realized he was wrong, which is why his 1961 pronouncement is more specific to manned missions:
“We will never get a man into space [emphasis mine].”
Once again, he was proven wrong, this time in the same year, when Yuri Gagarin completed the first manned spaceflight (Vostok 1.)
By 1969 the Soviets and the United States had launched multiple successful manned spacecraft programs (Mercury, Gemini, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz) along with successful remote lunar missions.
Apollo 8 orbited the moon, Apollo 11 sealed the deal for Fielding Smith’s failed prophecy, and Apollo 15 drove the final nail into the coffin.
Apollo 15 was an ambitious mission designed to employ lessons learned from previous landings. It was known as a “J Mission,” a longer-duration lunar mission. The spacesuits were redesigned, the Command Module carried more scientific instruments, and NASA launched a Lunar Rover packed into the Lunar Module. The Rover gave the astronauts freedom to explore more of the lunar surface.
NASA astronauts were allowed to carry small items on their lunar missions. Among the items Apollo 15 carried during all their lunar adventures, tucked into their spacesuits, was a small Utah flag. I suspect it belonged to James Irwin, a graduate from East High School in Salt Lake City.
The flag of the Mormon state traveled from the Earth to the moon and back, while Joseph Fielding Smith, now the head of the Mormon church and alleged prophet of God, watched his prophecy get broken…again.
*****
Whenever the Apollo astronauts splashed down from their missions, they became instant celebrities. NASA would throw parades for them and truck the astronauts around the country for meetings with dignitaries and government officials.
NASA scheduled Apollo 15 to visit Utah. This most likely was a decision from the new NASA administrator, James C. Fletcher. He was a practicing Mormon, and Apollo 15 was the first lunar mission under his tenure.
(Side Note: Fletcher ended up having an interesting career. He was responsible for the early planning of the Space Shuttle program and oversaw the Viking, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and Skylab missions. After his first tenure as NASA administrator, he worked as a consultant for the Strategic Defense Initiative before being brought back for a second term as administrator following the Challenger disaster.)
The astronauts flew off to Utah to meet the Mormon prophet, President Joseph Fielding Smith, as well as apostle Harold B. Lee.
The crew had a gift for the prophet: the Utah flag they had carried, set on white cardboard, a physical reminder that despite all his claims to divine guidance, Fielding Smith had been absolutely wrong.
In return, the Mormons gave the astronauts a “white volume telling the story of the Church with the names of the astronauts stamped in gold.”
******
Fielding Smith’s prophecy is one of the clearest examples of a Mormon prophet misfiring when he channeled the voice of God. Apologetic arguments claim that he was just sharing his opinion, or that since he wasn’t the prophet at the time his words don’t have as much weight. It’s the constant game Mormon apologetics play: the church leaders are absolutely right until they are proven wrong, which in that case, is your problem for holding them to such high standards.
Missing from the apologetic analysis is any description of a spiritual mechanism that would have allowed a reader in 1957 to discern that the words of the President of the Quorum of the Twelve apostles (4th in command of the church), written in a book called Answers to Gospel Questions, were non-binding and outright wrong.
Why Fielding Smith decided to make such a strong pronouncement on spaceflight is anybody’s guess, but it speaks to the tendency of Mormon men, especially in authority positions, considering themselves experts on literally everything.
In the era of standardization (which Fielding Smith kicked off), the church authorities are more cagey on their pronouncements, avoiding any predictions. Notice how even as the Ukraine War has blanketed the Western airwaves, the conflict seems to have escaped the prophetic gaze of the First Presidency, outside of vague PR statements. Instead, they opt for sweeping statements on morality, issuing screeds on pornography, LGBT rights, or whatever else is the conservative freakout de jour.
Answers to Gospel Questions is no longer in print, but is available to archive.org. I didn’t read through all of it, but I’d assume that it’s chock-full of …troubling… racial views. Down the rabbit hole it goes, another bit of prophetic detritus flaked off when it was too embarrassing for the current Mormon leadership.
Now, to be fair to Fielding Smith, he still has another space prophecy that could come true:
“It is my opinion that the great stars that we see, including our sun, are celestial worlds; at least worlds that have passed on to their exaltation or other final resurrected status. This is in conflict, of course, with the teachings of men, who declare that the sun is losing its energy and gradually cooling off and will eventually be a dead world. I do not believe the Lord has any such thing in his plan. The Lord lives in ‘everlasting burnings’ we are informed. President Brigham Young has said that this earth when it is celestialized will shine like the sun, and why not?” (Doctrines of Salvation 1:88-89)
Somebody needs to contact NASA and have the Parker Solar Probe or Solar Dynamics Observatory look for Mormon temples dotting the sun with white-robed polygamists performing proxy work for the dead. After all, why not?
Fielding Smith didn’t live long as a Mormon prophet but entrenched the dominant Mormon cultural strands of the last few decades: scriptural literalism, arch conservatism, and strong ecclesiastical centralization.
To end, I should mention that James Irwin had an oddly religious post-NASA career. He wasn’t particularly god-fearing before his flight, but during the mission experienced a spiritual rebirth, reawakening his faith in Jesus Christ. He spent the rest of his days trying to spread the good word, espousing Biblical literalism and even leading search efforts to find Noah’s Ark.
As part of his quest, he founded the High Flight Foundation, a Christian activist group that greets you on its homepage with a pithy quote:
“Jesus walking on the Earth is more important than man walking on the moon.”
Sources
https://www.highflightfoundation.org/
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1991/08/10/james-b-irwin-astronaut-and-searcher-for-noah-s-ark/
Doctrines of Salvation 1:88-89
"3 Apollo Astros in S.L. For Busy One-Day Visit," Deseret News
Answers to Gospel Questions, Vol. 2