The First Visions
September 14, 2007
The story Willard Chase heard may have been the earliest known account of the supernatural event that set Joseph Smith’s feet on the path to prophethood, but it certainly isn’t the only one.
What, exactly, was it that caused Joseph Smith to undertake the project of speaking for God?
Members of the LDS Church today have one “official” answer to this question, but people throughout the early history of Mormonism appear to have had several choices, because Joseph Smith answered that question differently over the years, with a story that, according to skeptics, changes back and forth from what the modern mind might call simple folk magic and superstition, to a visitation by an angel, to a personal visitation by Jesus Christ, back to angels, to a personal visitation by God the Eternal Father and his Son Jesus Christ, to a less-specific visitation by two “glorious personages”. Many believers, on the other hand, see the various first vision accounts as being in perfect harmony with one another. Nobody (including the artist who created the image above) seems to have included all possible accounts in their analysis, each finding his or her own reasons for excluding certain accounts from consideration. In 1880, the LDS Church canonized the 1838 version of the story.
This drawing places visual representations of nine recorded versions of the event side-by-side. The dates indicate the year of each retelling, rather than the year such retelling was published. To see summaries of most of the extant accounts, click here. To see reproductions of the accounts upon which each of the nine pictures is based, click here.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:51 am
By sheer coincidence, I read through the entirety of the Joseph Smith History section of the Pearl of Great Price just last night. I was struck once again by how the story took on a life of its own until it finally was distilled into the “official” account of what happened.
I wonder if Mormons don’t have a peculiar view of history. I wonder if we *all* have a peculiar, and nuanced, view of history. We all acknowledge that the history taught to our children in the public schools is at best a charitable view of our founding fathers, at worst a propaganda ploy on the part of the public school system. So long as history is written by the victors, there will be attempts to put the best possible face on that history.
Joseph Smith was a clever, intelligent, and motivated young man. There is the possibility that his own understanding of events matured and focused over the years. There is also the possibility that he saw the need to change history in order to promote his own agenda. However one sees Joseph’s actions and motives, the result has been a correlated version of the First Vision account long before Correlation existed!
More basic to this whole issue is — did the First Vision actually happen? If Joseph changed some of the details, that’s one case. But if he made it up out of whole cloth, we’re in a different ballpark. Some may insist that the various tellings of the First Vision account show that he really made it all up. I disagree. There are various tellings of the Boston Tea Party, but I still believe it happened.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Any version of the First Vision was written years after the event. Every version differs in many respects. Anyone who studies Church History carefully realizes that.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
[…] Triune God (one eternal Light) of Isaiah breaking through the gross darkness makes me question Joseph’s visitation with his Gods (separate […]
July 21st, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I don’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but if God appeared to me in flesh along with Jesus (which is theologically impossible) I imagine it would leave enough of an impression on me that I could remember what happened.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
If your read the First vision accounts carefully they do not contradict eachother, each add a little more detail.I believe the Prophet Joseph Smith was a prophet because he did many superhuman things. One was translating the Book of Mormon. Some people will not agree, but I submit to you that the Prophet Joseph Smith in translating the Book of Mormon did a superhuman work. I ask you … to undertake to write a story on the ancient inhabitants of America. Write as he did without any source of material. Include in your story 54 chapters dealing with wars, 21 historical chapters, 55 chapters on visions and prophecies, and, remember, when you begin to write on visions and prophecies you must have your record agree meticulously with the Bible. You write 71 chapters on doctrine and exhortation, and, here too, you must check every statement with the scriptures or you will be proven to be a fraud. You must write 21 chapters on the ministry of Christ, and everything you claim He said and did and every testimony you write in your book about Him must agree absolutely with the New Testament.
I ask you, would you like to undertake such a task? I would suggest to you too that you must employ figures of speech, similes, metaphors, narrations, exposition, description, oratory, epic, lyric, logic, and parables. Undertake that, will you?
December 5th, 2008 at 2:27 am
WOH…..I am responding to Christsaysfindtruth. Hey bud or maam, have you ever read the ORIGINAL book of mormon? Did you know there were 100’s and 100’s of contradictions, misspellings, grammar flaws, and distorted histories compared to the book of mormon we read now? Is GOD a changing GOD or is he that ignorant to make so many mistakes compared to the original book? NO WAY!! But Joe has convinced you that YOU may be a god someday…. BLASPHEMY!!!
Did you know there are over 200 places Joeseph deliberately plagarized from the New Testament? Christ says to find truth, well do it!!!! Dont be a blatant hypocrite! There is not one shred of evidence that supports the book of mormon by archeologists to claim it is true, yet there are over 25000 archeological evidences that prove the BIBLE is true. How can you defend this fraud? the TRUTH is…you are brainwashed, i once was, too.
Do what your name suggests, search for the truth about your profit Joe Smith and learn the TRUE motives in his heart in your valiant quest for TRUTH. Do it today!!! check out http://www.UTLM.org…check the references and sources (many are LDS) before discrediting the website.
Then, and only then, you are allowed to stick with your name.
If you do not search for the truth, i suggest you change your name immediately!!! it literally makes me and others sick to our stomachs and hearts
seeing your name (by using our savior Christ) in the same breath as JOE SMITH and defending such a manipulater, liar, and adulterer. Christ would be absolutely disgusted by your words and opinions by defending this false profit. But you are not spiritually advanced (yet) to have any idea what I am talking about, and that IS frustrating. There is a VALID reason there are more ex-mormons than active mormons!!!
EVER PONDER WHY that is so???
Your first sentence you claim that the first visions do not contradict each other. That is blatantly FALSE!!!(If you REALLY searched for the truth, the fact is: Joe drank so much whiskey his memory was faded and millions and millions of brain cells were lost, simple explanation on his different visions over the years, have you ever seen the brain scans of an alcoholic?) But you probably think I am lying. Your hypocrisy and especially Joe’s is blatantly overwhelming, and you probably think you are right and that I am just a lost soul.
I pray someday you will peal your blinders back, be an investigator reporter and search for the truth in an unbiased way.
Then you can keep your name and it will please JESUS that you did such a COURAGEOUS Christlike act.
FACT: The more you defend Joe, the more it displeases Christ, especially using HIS name in your title. Joe was not Christlike, you’ve been professionally duped by your leaders (Your leaders are extremely good, with lots of practice, they have been desperately hiding the truth from us for over 170 years)!
you want the truth..go here NOW!!!! you will thank me someday, I hope.
http://www.UTLM.org
Peace and Love,
TheToast
ps. save this blog for your records, maybe this posting just might accelerate and/or change your whole perspective on TRUTH like millions of us already have.
“People don’t want to know the TRUTH, they only want their prejudices confirmed”
December 9th, 2008 at 1:23 am
There are SO MANY problems with just about every sentence you wrote, I will not beat you to death with this, I’ll just take the first thing you said:
“they do not contradict eachother, each add a little more detail.”
What you are failing to see is THIS IS THE VERY PROBLEM with these successively more fantastic stories.
Don’t you think, that if, in Spring 1820, that if the boy Joseph really had this “most-important-event-in-the-history-of-the-world” where he had this heart-to-heart with God, that he would get all the details right in the beginning?
Why is it that everytime the story is told, it gets more and more fantastic, and literal, and descriptive, and more personages are added?
In the first one, it’s basically “I was forgiven of my sins.”
By the time we get to the last one many years later, it’s a knock-down drag-out fight with the devil, speaking to God and Jesus and telling me all the churches are false etc etc etc etc.
This is the problem. Ponder that. If it really happened, he would get it right TO BEGIN WITH, not keep adding more and more every time he tells it.
If a judge had a witness come into court, and tell a more fantastic story everytime he got to the witness stand, the judge would throw the witness out on his butt because you lose credibility when you do that.
It would take many more pages to show how the rest of your reasoning is wrong, but let’s take baby steps…..
October 28th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
someone would doubt the story if he repeated the same one. over and over again. this seems to qualify J.S. story of the FV
December 18th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
ChristSaysFindTruth, if you are going to directly quote someone, you should give credit where credit is due. You have directly quoted Hugh B. Brown’s “Profile of a Prophet,” speech. Those are not your words. That was a classic speech/essay.
And you should know that in the 4 or 5 decades since Apostle Brown gave that speech, much of what he said has now been disproven by historical fact. Many of Jospeh Smith’s facts do not square with the Bible, or were copied directly from the King James Bible. And Joseph Smith’s predictions absolutely did not come to pass. So update your thinking and use your own thoughts next time.
June 27th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
to: christsaysfindtruth
josph smith saying: angel or god told him (13 or 14 year old boy) no go any church. they are false. but in recoards josph smith did member 3 diffrent church when he is 20-25 year old. buster josph’s story is mixed up.