Will praying about Joseph Smith tell us if he's a prophet?

Mormons claim that prayer proves Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God, so if you want to know if Joseph Smith is a true prophet, pray about it and God will reveal it to you that he is. They say to "sincerely pray to your Heavenly Father and ask Him if what you are learning is true" (mormon.org), then quote Moroni:

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.Moroni 10:4

They also quote James as justification for saying you should pray about whether Joseph Smith is a prophet or not:

5 But if anyone is deficient in wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without reprimand, and it will be given to him. 6 But he must ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed around by the wind.James 1:5-6

What to do when a Mormon asks you to pray

First, don't do it. When Balaam went against what God had already revealed to Him, God became angry. Since God has already warned us against false prophets, those teaching other gods, those teaching other christs, those teaching other gospels, etc, we already know that Mormonism is false! Learn from Balaam and don't question what God has already revealed to you.

Second, read the following quote to the Mormons asking you to pray:

But there are some that say, show us a sign and we will believe. We answer; that Christ, and the apostles, never worked miracles to gratify the curiosity of any man. When Satan tempted Jesus, saying, make bread out of stones, he said get behind me Satan. A set of wicked priests afterwards sought a sign of him; but he said, "a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign and none shall be given unto it." This is the only rule that is laid down in the scriptures, by which we can judge of the character of sign-seekersTimes and Seasons v3 n1 p580

Even their own church says not to look for a sign! So tell the Mormons you will not pray about it and will not look for a sign, but instead, you have tested it according to Scripture, as God commands, and have found that Mormonism fails every single test.

Some points on praying about prophets

Go ahead and pray from wisdom, as Scripture suggests, but don't pray about Joseph Smith or any other prophet, which Scripture never says to do.

  1. God will never confirm Joseph Smith to you, since God is a God of truth and would never confirm a false prophet as a true one.
  2. Moroni is not Scripture. To accept Moroni as Scripture first requires that you accept Joseph Smith as a prophet. Saying the Book of Mormon is true because Joseph Smith says so, and saying Joseph Smith is trustworthy because the Book of Mormon says so is circular reasoning.
  3. James doesn't say that God will confirm anything to us through prayer, and he doesn't even mention prophets. He says to ask for wisdom. In fact, this is rather opposite of praying for God's direct confirmation of anything, since it instead is a prayer for personal discernment.
  4. Scripture tells us how to test prophets, but nowhere does Scripture say to pray for God's confirmation of them or their message. Scripture commands us to beware of false prophets and to test them! God doesn't say to pray about them, He tells us to TEST THEM (1 John 4:1). What tests are we to use?
  5. In Acts, the disciples didn't pray about things. They simply did them according to the Scriptures, and because "it seemed good" to do them. That is, they didn't look for God to tell them what to do, they did what made sense. We should do the same with Joseph Smith; not rely on God's telling us through prayer what to do, but to base our judgment of him on Scripture and what "seems good" to us.

God doesn't tell us to pray about prophets. Instead, He gives us very clear-cut tests we can put a prophet through. Now certainly you can pray about things, but why expect God to reveal Joseph Smith to us if God we don't expect Him to reveal winning lottery numbers to us? And if we pray about Joseph Smith, shouldn't the answer to our prayer match what God has revealed to us in His written Word? Of course! God will not condemn a prophet through the Bible yet confirm him through prayer. Joseph Smith fails the tests God HAS given to us in Scripture. If you think God is confirming Joseph Smith to you through prayer (God never asked you to prayer for confirmation of prophets anyway!), then either God is contradicting Himself, or you are not truly getting a confirmation from God.