Does your Prophet make apocalyptic predictions?

Occasionally, throughout church history, the Prophet has made some pretty specific and remarkable declarations about the future.  But I think most of the apocalyptic prophecy we need is already on the books (in the Bible and so on). By far, most of what a Prophet does day-to-day is raise a voice of warning, pointing out through divine inspiration what our civilization's secular wise men are not sensing.

Here is an interesting article, not written (as far as I know) by a member of the church: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/08/are-macroeconomic-models-useful.html.  The author creates a simple but meaningful metaphor as he compares predicting earthquakes to predicting macroeconomic events.  He points out that even though neither science has developed to be able to predict catastrophe, both have some usefulness.

In Sunday School, we used to sing a song about a wise man building his house on a rock, and a foolish man on sand. The wise man built his house upon the rock because of natural disasters.  Prophetic guidance is a rock; Jesus himself referred to revelation from the spirit to Peter as the rock upon which the church itself should be built.

While there are specific historic examples of explicit and accurate prophecy, most of the prophetic direction I have seen in my life did not so much predict fallout as protect from it.  If individuals live according to sound principles, they will mitigate risk from large catastrophes when they do appear, whether they be natural, financial, or social.  In addition, if the world as a whole would stop living near the edge and heed prophetic direction then many of the disasters themselves would be avoided.

For example, many members (including myself) felt inspired by and followed the direction of President Hinckley starting in 1998 when he said "Now, brethren, I want to make it very clear that I am not prophesying, that I am not predicting years of famine in the future. But I am suggesting that the time has come to get our houses in order." (http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1998/10/to-the-boys-and-to-the-men?lang=eng). (By the way, the distinction between daily directive inspiration and mountaintop revelatory experiences is not a revolutionary idea for members of the church.)

Of course, many people weathered the storm well even unaware of the Prophet's warning. But perhaps not all of them did so with the same confidence and peace that those of us not living near the edge enjoyed.

Now, while hindsight and macroeconomic research allow us to begin putting in to place regulatory policy that will prevent another 2008 housing-induced crisis, I think that a world following sound principles would have avoided ever building such a "house on sand" as the mortgage derivatives market turned out to be.

"I don't think our models are very good at detecting accumulating stress", says the author in the earlier article.  He is talking about natural earthquakes and unnatural financial upheavals. But perhaps that applies to our morality as a society as well: The short-run and long-run scientific models for worldly morality look very attractive, but it is my opinion that the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a prophet, and constant heed is worthwhile because he has a spiritual gift to detect accumulating stress that science cannot model, and that he does point in the right direction for relief.