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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A persistent rumor claims that Lutus Gratus, a Catholic priest, wrote the following in 1739 in his book Hope of Zion, which was purportedly discovered in the library in Bayd, Switzerland:
This "prophecy" first appeared in LDS periodicals in both English and German in 1893, in a story by a returned missionary named Jacob Spori. One of the first to question the authenticity of the document was Rulon S. Wells of the First Council of Seventy, who unsuccessfully attempted to locate the book and its contents in Basel a few years after the story surfaced. Other leaders and missionaries also were unable to verify the statement.
Elder Wells wrote an article called "A Fraudulent Prophecy Exposed" which was published in the January, 1908 Improvement Era. A detailed historical analysis of the false prophecy was published in BYU Studies in 1985.
FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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