Joseph Smith’s First Vision w/ LDS Discussions – 17

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:02 Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions) Edition. I am one of your two hosts. I am your host for today. It is August 18, 2022, and we have taken a bit of a summer hiatus with the amazing LDS Discussions) project.

John Dehlin 0:23 For those of you who don't know who are, who are new to Mormon Stories, several months ago we brought on our amazing friend and colleague Mike from the amazing website LDS discussions.com to do this very lengthy series on Mormon truth claims. And we've released, I don't know, 15ish or so episodes, maybe a little bit more digging into things like Joseph Smith's treasure digging, you know, the Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon historicity, you know, the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Flood, Tower of Babel. Just all sorts of issues that, you know, are parts of Mormon theology or Mormon doctrine. And we've been sort of looking at each one of those with a scientific, empirical, scholarly lens.

John Dehlin 1:17 And we had to take a break for the summer. But we are now back to talk about one of the most important issues that Mormons are going to need to think about or deal with or confront as they're trying to, you know, validate or confirm or disconfirm LDS Church truth claims. And that's Joseph Smur Smith's first vision. Before we jump into the Joseph Smith's first vision topic, I just want to make sure everyone knows that one of the cool things that we've done is we've gotten this entire LDS discussion series up on Anchor, which is a podcast platform where you can listen to or watch these episodes in sequence, or you can share them with people you know and love.

John Dehlin 2:11 In addition to being available on Anchor, it's also available on Spotify and on itunes. And we also created a YouTube LDS discussions playlist. So if you go to MormonStories.org, click on the playlists, you'll find the LDS Discussions) playlist. And the purpose for all of those is if you don't want to deal with these really important LDS discussions episodes intermingled with all the other Mormon stories content, we're trying to create places you can go for yourself or for your loved ones, friends and family to just consume all these episodes in sequence because they're. Some people just want to binge. So that is where we are.

John Dehlin 2:52 And we, we just did, you know, I think we just did Deutero Isaiah. I'm not sure exactly when things are going to be posting, but we, we still have at least a few dozen, I believe to come. And I Will just say as I bring Mike on. Hey, Mike, welcome back.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:11 Hey everybody.

John Dehlin 3:12 Did you have a good summer?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:13 Yeah, you know, it was nice. We, we at least as far as this goes, it was cool that we, we had kind of banked a lot of episodes, so I think there was only like a two or three week break. So thankfully we were able to kind of keep it going and then we kind of did our summer thing and, and now we're back and, and it gave me a nice break to kind of get some. You get a little burned out. I don't know how you do it doing all these, doing all these episodes. I got a little burned out at the end, so it's good to get a break. And now we're back and re. Energized and all that good stuff.

John Dehlin 3:40 Yeah, well, it, it's, it is, it is exhausting. But it's also, well, you know, just coming to the purpose. We want to just make sure we always state our purpose up front and the way we're going to be.

John Dehlin 3:51 We're distilling our purpose and our messaging for why we're doing LDS discussions. And it really does just match up with the mission of the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories. And if we had to say kind of two words that summarize why we're doing this series, Mike, it's informed consent. We believe that people who dedicate their lives to the Mormon Church or who are considering dedicating their lives to the Mormon Church or who are just trying to learn about the Mormon Church, we believe that they deserve to have all the information they can to make informed, intelligent decisions because there's so much time, money, reputation and life decisions at stake. So informed consent, how does that sound for our mission statement?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:33 I think it's good. Like, you know, I've told people a lot over the last few years. I really don't think the LDS discussion site is the first thing anyone's going to see. I don't think if you're a believing member, you're going to come across it and then just be like right into it, you're going to come across CS Letter Mormon stories. So for me, the whole project was about like putting the pieces back together in a way that made sense to me and then having it there for when people are ready. So I know sometimes people go, you know, why are you posting this stuff that's so hateful, whatever.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:00 And I'm, I always want to go. It's one is not hateful. Most of this stuff is just really kind of dry Looking at the history. And two, I'm not going, we're not going door to door to tell people who are members of the church, throwing them in their face like, you're wrong. This is more like when you're ready for it, it's here. And this whole project was started because someone had asked me to put it together and that person actually has not read it yet. And so it's there when, when they're ready for it. And that may never happen, but in the meantime, I think it's helped a lot of people because I think it's done in a way, hopefully that's somewhat like calm and more balanced than some of the other stuff you might come across online.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:40 And hopefully for people that are a little nervous to dive in, they can do that. And it's sourced. And I think it's, you know, to your point, it's just about like you want the info. Here it is. If you don't want it, then, you know, you don't have to, you know, don't, don't read it until you're, until you're ready to. Because obviously it's, it's going to be painful for a lot of people. And I know it was painful for me when I, when I came across this info. So, you know, with that in mind, the whole point of writing this was like writing it to someone who I would know personally that would read it with the mindset of like, you know, try to make this as soft as you can while also not sugarcoating it.

John Dehlin 6:16 Yeah, yeah. So if you are a person that wants to know the truth about the Mormon Church and its truth claims and want to be shown, you know, an attempted, objective, science based, scholarly based evidence, that's what we're about.

John Dehlin 6:33 And if you're not interested in, in knowing the evidence or the facts or the truth. Not that we're providing at all, but we're providing an important perspective that you don't get when you're raised in the church or when you talk to the missionaries. That's what we're about. The website is LDS discussions.com that's where Mike has all his essays. And then these episodes that we're recording are sort of audio and visual representations of, of the essays and the amazing work that Mike's already done.

Why the First Vision Matters

John Dehlin 7:05 So should we dive into to the first vision? This is, this is one of the biggies, Mike. Like, yeah, I'll just give a tiny bit of context. Like, like when you take the missionary discussions when you're four or five and you, you Start learning about the church. Joseph Smith talking to God and Jesus is. Is the way it all begins. And so there's really nothing, probably there are few Mormon truth claims issues more important than understanding the real facts and evidence behind Joseph Smith's first vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:39 Yeah, and I was a investigator and a convert in the 90s. And so I remember vividly being shown, you know, the artwork of Joseph Smith being visited by God and Jesus, and it being presented as like this very clean, well documented event. And so it makes it all the more jarring when you see that Joseph Smith was telling the story multiple times a long time after it happened and changing the story. And so this was one of the overviews for me that was the most satisfying isn't the word I want to use because it's not happy, satisfied. It's more like this one was the one that made the most sense when I was done with it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:16 And so it made me feel so much better about it because at least all the pieces fit back together. And I go, okay, now it makes sense. As opposed to, like, when you first encounter the changes and you're just like, oh, we just changed the story. It's like, it's so much more complicated than that. But it's also very easy to kind of trace. And I think in that regard, this overview and next week's will be the priesthood restoration. These two, I think, are two of the most important ones because we have, not to use the cliche, but we have the receipts. We can show how he was changing his story and why.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:48 And once you see that, then you can kind of understand how he was doing it. And again, it's not going to be comforting to a lot of people, but we can show it with documentation. And that is, I think, why it's so just incredibly important to go over these, like this week and next week, I think, are just really important to looking not just at historical truth claims, but how Joseph Smith was able to evolve his theology and backfit it into the historical record of the church.

John Dehlin 9:17 Absolutely. So just as the overview on the left, you see the visual that we all grew up with, Joseph Smith seeing God and Jesus. And then on the right is a visual that many of you probably haven't seen, which is an artist's attempt to represent, from this artist's perspective, at least nine different versions of the first vision, that many of them were related by Joseph's own hand or by his own mouth. And so the question is, why are there so many different versions that conflict? And that's what we're going to be discussing today, so let's jump in. Mike.

The Church's Official Account and Its Problems

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:51 Okay. You know, I just wanted to start this off by looking at the church's like, official essay and just kind of reading their kind of overview of the first vision before we dive in, just to give their framing of it, because I think it's helpful to understanding as we go into kind of why this doesn't quite line up. But the church's essay says Joseph Smith recorded that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in a grove of trees near his parents home in western New York State when he was about 14 years old. Concerned by his sins and unsure which spiritual path to follow, Joseph sought guidance by attending meetings, reading scripture and praying.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:24 In answer, he received a heavenly manifestation. Joseph shared and documented the first vision as it came to be known on multiple occasions. He wrote or assigned scribes to write four different accounts of the vision. Joseph Smith published two accounts of the first vision during his lifetime. The first of these, known today as Joseph Smith History, was canonized in the Pearl of Great Price and thus became the best known account. The two unpublished accounts recorded in Joseph Smith's earliest autobiography and a later journal were generally forgotten until historians working for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints rediscovered and published them in the 1960s.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:00 Since that time, these documents have been discussed repeatedly in church magazines, in works printed by church owned and church affiliated presses, and by Latter Day Saint scholars in other venues.

John Dehlin 11:12 Now, what, what, what are some of the most important parts of that that you want to highlight for people?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:17 You know, honestly, it's more just to get the ovary, but I would just highlight the fact that the church is saying that, you know, Joseph Smith, you know, documented the first vision. It talks about how he, you know, recorded it multiple times. It does not mention the changes. I realize the essay does later. So we'll get to that. And then just also as, we'll, we'll go back to, as we get further down in this episode, it's just the church kind of saying it's been talked about repeatedly. It's been mentioned multiple times. And I think that'll be something. As we get further down in this episode, we'll kind of show that that's not really, I don't think the experience of the average member of the church.

John Dehlin 11:52 Yeah, the, the, the point I would want to make from, from this, from this first slide and I know we're going to discuss it, that's the purpose of the rest of today's discussion. But, but the church has known about multiple accounts and multiple problematic accounts of the first vision since at least, at least the, the mid-1950s, 40s or 50s, if not longer, and definitely in the 60s, 70s and 80s, because this was discussed in BYU journals and, and by scholars and Dialogue and Sunstone and all the different trade rags. So the fact that this doesn't really come out to the church membership, the church doesn't really acknowledge these problems with the first vision story until what, 2014, 2015 in the gospel Topics essay shows for a long, long time the church knew that this was an issue, knew it was a problem, and they, they didn't want us to know about it.

John Dehlin 12:53 They kind of withheld it from us. And I don't mean to steal your thunder, no, that's. But the fact that this, this, this essay didn't get released until just relatively recently, after all the podcasts, after CES Letter, after all the Internet focus on the. The problems of the truth claims shows that the church was kind of backed into a corner to admitting this about the first vision versus being proactively upfront and honest and, and fully honest, which is honestly what they encourage us to do as members.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:27 Yep.

John Dehlin 13:28 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:28 Okay, that's fair. Yeah. So this is just, you know, Gordon Hinckley giving us a very, very clear description of how important the first vision is to the truth claims of the Mormon Church. I think it's important to listen to this after list, you know, reading that part of the essay, and then we'll dive into the actual issues with the first vision.

John Dehlin 13:46 Okay, take it away, President Hinckley. We declare without equivocation that God the Father and his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared in person to the boy, Joseph Smith. Our whole strength rests on the validity of that vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud.

John Dehlin 14:17 If it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens. That they came, both of them, that Joseph saw them in their resplendent glory, that they spoke to him and that he heard and recorded their words.

John Dehlin 14:38 Of these remarkable things, we testify. I knew a so called intellectual who said the church was trapped by its history. My response was that without that history, we have nothing. The truth of that unique, singular and remarkable event is the pivotal substance of our faith. Okay, those are some strong words by President Hinckley. What do you think is most important about what he said?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:09 I think it's just the fact that at this point in the church's history, the Internet wasn't there. And so it was a lot easier to get out and say if this didn't happen, as Joseph Smith said, this is all a fraud. Because it's such a black and white statement that I guarantee you, you're not going to see anyone make today. Because as we're going to show this, this is just not. The history does not back up what Joseph Smith claims to have had happen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:33 And it just. And then also the little so called intellectual debt dig at the end is also very frustrating. And that happens today where it's, it's a way to kind of, you know, throw people who are willing to look at this stuff in, in a more scholarly way under the bus. And you know, again, we're going to show that the history does trap the church. And in fact this event is going to trap Joseph Smith to the point where he has to then make changes to retrofit it into the history and make changes to other things to make it fit. And that really is where you can see the fingerprints and the trail of Joseph Smith's evolution of the story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:09 And it's something that Gordon B. Hinckley is in no way going to tell the people during this talk when he makes the claim that it's basically all or nothing. Either it's true or everything's a fraud. So I just think that statement is one of those ones that will haunt the church for a long time because of the fact that as we will outline here, you can show that it absolutely did not happen in the way Joseph Smith claimed.

John Dehlin 16:31 Yeah. And. And not only is it like the foundational narrative for the church, this is one of the top five to 10 issues that cause people to leave along with the Abraham and a few other things. So this is a huge deal.

The Four Main First Vision Accounts

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:43 Yep.

John Dehlin 16:43 All right, so I, you know, that photo I showed at the beginning showed nine different accounts, but here you're saying there's four main accounts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:51 So there's four main ones, and I think there's nine kind of like secondary ones that are like secondhand or written down by other people. These are the four main accounts. And there are a ton of smaller differences in these accounts. But I want to focus on this because I don't want to get too much in the weeds because as much as that is important, it really, I think the more important thing is looking at these from an overhead view and looking at how they change. And so what I really want to point out here just is that in the 1832 account, Joseph Smith hand wrote this in a journal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:23 It's the earliest account. It was written in a letter book. And this is the one that was kind of hidden by the church until the 1960s, and we'll get to that later, but this one is the one that we're going to focus on a lot. And then the 1835 account is a retelling of the first vision by Joseph Smith to Robert Matthews, which was written down by Warren Parish in November of 1835. It's a shorter retelling, but that's the first time you start to see this idea of two personages versus one. The 1838 account is the one that is now the correlated official version that you will always know as a member, because that's the way it's taught.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:59 And then the 1842 account is from what is known as the Wentworth Letter. It was written in response to a Chicago Democrat editor who was requesting information about the church, and it was printed in the Times and seasons in 1842. So it's just to show that for the purposes of this, we're going to focus on the four main accounts, but in all honesty, it's really going to be focused on those first three, because that's really where you're going to see the evolution of the story.

John Dehlin 18:25 Okay. And, yeah, that's just an important thing as an overview that in 1832, that's the first time Joseph is, you know, the first counter we have of the first vision. Then three years later, there's another one where it's retold, changed significantly. And then the 1838 account is the one that we know now.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:44 Yep.

John Dehlin 18:45 And then there's another one that came a little bit later. And there are other. Some other mini accounts, but they're not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:50 Yeah, I mean, they're helpful, but for. For what we're doing here, it's kind of one of those things where it just won't matter. Like, once you get to the point where you can kind of see the evolution and the way the story changes in and is created, the secondary accounts don't really matter because you can show that the whole thing's being retrofitted into the history. And I think that's why. I think for the purposes of this, it's easier. It's better to get into the weeds and some of the timeline issues than it is about the accounts themselves.

John Dehlin 19:17 Okay, perfect. All right, so should we jump into the.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:21 Yeah, so let's jump in. This is the. One of the biggest problems, and it kind of goes to what you just said. So remember that we're told that Joseph Smith had this vision in 1820, but he's not going to tell anybody about it. And so this is a theme that we're going to see a lot as we start diving into these historical issues. And next week will be the same thing with the priesthood restoration, which is many of these stories that we are told today with such confidence were not spoken of when they were supposed to have occurred. And so these are foundational events of the church, and they're being described in detail in many contemporary accounts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:56 But with the first vision, Joseph Smith claims to have had this in 1820, and there's no mention of it happening anywhere before 1832. And even then, Joseph Smith's not really talking about on the outside. He's writing it in his own little journal, and it doesn't really see the light of day. And so we have countless interactions of Joseph Smith with the early witnesses, with the early members of the church. And they have all sorts of things they write down in their journals. They have the newspapers that are publishing about the church, interviews, all these things. Nothing mentions it. And so this event is unknown to everybody close to him, including family, the early leaders of the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:35 And so that is a problem when, as Gordon B. Hinckley said, this is like the most important, singular event basically, in modern history. And he tells nobody, despite all the other things he talks about happening to him. And so this is just. It's a huge problem because this is a black hole where for the first 12 years after it supposedly happened, there's no mention to it, there's no real reference to it. There's no way to say, here's Joseph Smith, you know, telling members that he was visited. And I just don't know what else to say. There's just nothing there. And so we want to show a clip of John Larsen from your podcast last year, detailing all of the different places that you would expect to hear some mention of the first vision. And it's just not there.

Early Silence Surrounding the First Vision

John Dehlin 21:24 All right, so we're going to play John Larsen, who appears, who is the. The former host of Mormon Expression Podcast, which is an amazing library of content that everyone should check out. It's on Spotify. And also John comes on Mormon Stories once a month to talk about a topic of his choosing. He's a legend, so take it away, John Larsen.

Guest 21:46 I'm going to go through notable non mentions.

John Dehlin 21:50 So

Guest 21:53 Joseph Smith claims in this vision and in others more forcefully, that he was persecuted for this, that this was an important thing that he told everybody about. This was the heralding of the church when you read the canonized version. All right, I Have a list of things that never mention this.

Guest 22:11 All the local newspapers, there's no mention of the first vision. Alexander Campbell, if you remember. Alexander Campbell was the man who Sidney Rigdon was a disciple to. And Joseph grew the church incredibly in Kirtland by taking Sidney Rigdon's Campbellite congregations and their buildings and everything and converting them over to Mormonism. Joseph Alexander Campbell hated Joseph Smith with a passion and didn't much care for Sidney Rigdon and investigated and researched the church a lot. He dug up every piece of garbage he could find on, on, on Joseph Smith. No mention of the first vision at all.

Guest 22:51 Ed Howe, 1834. The very first really established Mormon expose, right? The first anti Mormon book. No mention of the first vision whatsoever. J.B. turner, 1842. Mormonism in all ages. No mention, no mention of the first vision. It doesn't even exist. John Whitmer was first. The first one assigned to write a history did not mention the first vision. There's no mention of the first vision whatsoever.

Guest 23:15 John Carrell was replaced John Whitmer and was the 1839 historian. No mention of the first vision whatsoever. Sidney Rigdon never mentioned in any of his writings or any of the things that the first vision ever happened. Apparently unaware of it.

Guest 23:31 Evening and Morning Star wars was the official church publication where we got almost all the Book of Commandments was taken from the Evening and Morning Star and they printed it on the Evening and Morning Star printing press. It was the big newspaper from 1832 to 1834 was overturned. No mention of the first vision whatsoever. The latter day saint messenger and advocate. No mention at all of the first vision. We're not talking about just this account that it happened at all, that it was even part of anything. The Book of Commandments first published Book of Commandments. No mention of it whatsoever. Of course the Book of Mormon doesn't mention it, nor does the Doctrine and Covenants.

Guest 24:06 So you have all. Everything we have about early Mormonism that has no idea this event ever took place. Right? Now remember I just read to you that President Hinckley said this is the key issue. This is the thing that all the church stands on and the Church is either false or true by what happened in the first vision.

Guest 24:25 And these guys don't even know what happens. Well, it gets worse than that. The Church during the early period of the Church, the first vision when it was mentioned was always mentioned as an angelic visitation. It's not even mentioned that God came in. There are several notable people who were in the church inner circle who knew Joseph Smith participated things who wrote about it. And before the 1870s, whenever they wrote about the first vision, they always identified it as an angelic vision. They never mentioned God, they never mentioned Jesus. Those individuals include Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, Orson Hyde, William Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, George A.

Guest 25:05 Smith, Heber C. Kimball, Brigham Young, John Taylor, who later changed it but after 1870s, and Wilford Woodruff. All of those people, when they mentioned the first vision, only mention it as an angelic visitation.

John Dehlin 25:20 Okay, there's John Larsen doing what John Larsen does best. I guess I want to ask, I guess if we wanted to kind of set what we would think would happen would be that Joseph Smith would be somewhere between 12 and 14 years old, depending on the version that you've read, and that he would have this vision based on the 1938 version that we all were taught God and Jesus would come to him, say that all the other churches were false, say that he was gonna be set up Joseph to found the new church. And then he would just tell all his family members, hey, family members, don't bother ever joining any other church again.

John Dehlin 26:02 Let's all work together now. Because I've been told to start God's one true church, and because it's God and Jesus visiting him, you would think his parents would know about it, his siblings would know about it, and that would be what everyone knew and discussed. And that when the church was founded in 1830, he would be telling everybody, everyone, I'm starting the true church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And God and Jesus told me to back, you know, 10 years ago.

John Dehlin 26:33 And, you know, it would just be super well known and widely known and not completely unknown and completely never discussed. Is that, is that how you think about it, Mike, or.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:47 Well, yeah, I mean, I just. This is one of those things where, you know, I think getting into kind of we'll get into this as we do more of these historical episodes. But Joseph Smith wasn't shy about boasting about his experiences. And so this idea that he would not mention this to anybody, to the witnesses, to his family, it doesn't make sense. And we're going to get into the timeline in a few slides. But once you get into the timeline, it just, it's crystal clear that this is not a developed story in his mind because, you know, I don't want to get into many spoiler alerts, but things would have gone differently if Joseph Smith had had this vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:21 And so this idea that he's being persecuted for having it does not line up with the fact that nobody is aware of it. And this is a church that was going through a lot of struggles early on, and this would have been a rallying point for them, and this would have been something that they could have, you know, gone and really had as a central way to say we're in the right place. And it's just. It's just absent. And the only reason it'll be absent is if it's a story that's not developed yet. And we're gonna show again how this stuff develops and how he's pulling from surrounding people to do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:53 And it just. It lines up perfectly. Once you look at it, both from a timeline standpoint and from the evolution of his teachings, everything lines up perfectly to this being a late addition that's back, you know, retrofitted into the history.

John Dehlin 28:06 So I guess if almost this were a trial, we would ask viewers and listeners to ask themselves what's more likely, based on the evidence we're about to present, that everything happened the way the 19, you know, 1838 account says, but there was no mention of it prior to the founding of the church, or that actually the first vision never really happened, and that the story was created later to help address issues that came along later. Is that kind of the question we want listeners, viewers to ask?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:38 Yeah. And, you know, the question I've mentioned a lot in our episodes is basically, listen to this episode and pretend it's Warren Jess, pretend it's David Koresh, pretend it's the Pope. Any other religious leader giving a story like this, where you have all of the documentation, all of their own words that tell us this is just a late story and say, would you believe it if it was another religious leader or a politician?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:02 I've mentioned it, and I think I mentioned one of our first episodes that I've had family, close people to me who will literally go through this exact same process we're going to do here. When it's a politician and they're like, yeah, this shows, without doubt, they're lying. Now, if I were to say, now apply that to the first vision, they would immediately shut me down. But the point is, you have to apply that critical thinking the same to Joseph Smith here as you would to anyone else, and then ask yourself, if it was another leader, would you say, oh, yeah, that makes sense, or would you say, oh, they absolutely made it up, because we can show it by looking at the timeline and looking at their own words.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:40 And I think that is, as we go through this, it's going to be really clear because like I said, there's so many different areas where you can show it. And they all kind of come together in a way that, like I said earlier, it's satisfying not because it makes you happy, but it's satisfying because all of a sudden you look at and go, holy crap, this all makes sense now, as opposed to when you first read there's different visions and you're like, oh, you know, maybe had a different perspective or a different understanding. It's like, no, no, no, we can trace it, we can show it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:06 And then you look at, you're like, oh, this sucks. But, you know, it adds up in every single way. It kind of like all of these different areas confirm each other. And I think that's where to me, it's really fascinating, yet obviously troubling too.

Scholarly Perspectives on the First Vision

John Dehlin 30:19 All right, so let's talk about what James B. Allen has to say.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:23 Yeah, so he was a former assistant church historian and he said, so employee

John Dehlin 30:28 of the Mormon Church, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:29 Yeah. And so this would kind of like, go along with what John Larsen just said. But he, you know, but from more of a, you know, faithful perspective, he says there is little if any evidence, however, that by the early 1830s, Joseph Smith was telling the story in public. At least if you were telling it. No one seemed to consider it important enough to have recorded it at the time, and no one was criticizing him for it, not even in his own history. Did Joseph Smith mention being criticized in this period for telling the story of the first vision. The fact that none of the available contemporary writings about Joseph smith In the 1830s, none of the publications of the church in that decade, and no contemporary journal or correspondence yet discovered, mentions the story of the first vision, is convincing evidence that, at best, it received only limited circulation in those early days.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:11 And so it's just basically saying, like, there are so many different sources we have from other members of the church, from the witnesses, from their own interviews. This is just. It's a ghost. It just does not exist until 1832. And he writes it down. But even then it's not talked about for a long time.

John Dehlin 31:29 Yeah, that's a pretty important thing to acknowledge. And that was in 1966, when Dallin H. Oaks was one of the founders of Dialogue and the Leonard Arrington administration was still, you know, getting up to speed or was about to start. And the Church was showing some signs of being willing to be open about its history before they shut it all down in, like, 1982. So that's an important admission of a church historian early on, Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:56 I think so. I mean, I think it's important too because it confirms what John Larsen was saying, which is just, it's just, it's non existent and that does not make sense.

John Dehlin 32:05 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:06 And so this, yeah, this just kind of, you know, to kind of recap that. It just says, you know, when you think of all the amazing events that Joseph Smith spoke of in the early years of the church, you know, he talked about the priesthood restoration, he talked about all the visions, all the visitations from Moroni, all the revelations, restoring the lost 116 pages, viewing a lost writing from John, parchment of John in a cave. It just becomes impossible to believe that Joseph Smith would not mention what would be the most important revelation in modern history or certainly the Church's history. And so when you think about all the other things Joseph talked about, how likely is it that Joseph Smith would neglect to mention this?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:44 Especially given the fact that as we're going to outline later in the episode, he would go up against a lot of clashes with some of the early members of the church. And this is partly why the story evolves. But, and you know, you would think this would be something that would be known about so people know like, yeah, Joseph Smith is the guy. And yet they just, no one is aware of it until he starts kind of crafting it, you know, 12 years after he claims it happened. And even then he's not talking about it.

John Dehlin 33:11 Yeah. And he wasn't bashful about talking about his treasure digging prowess, the seer stone and the hat and the gold plates and all the things he found. So there's, there's, I guess we'll probably talk about this, but the church likes to play it off as him being humble or being so sacred he didn't want to share it. But that's not, that's not the Joseph of the historical record.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:33 It just doesn't, it doesn't line up at all. And so that's, it's just, it's like there's nothing there. And you know, it just doesn't, it doesn't add up. And like I said, if you apply the same logic you would to any other religious leader, it just, you'd immediately go, oh yeah, okay, that does not make sense. So, okay, yeah, so now, yeah, so now we're going to start to get into the meat of this a little bit. But you know, for the most part, if you're watching this, you've probably heard about the first vision. But you know, the first vision is taught to members for the most part, as being an event with no contradictions, as the church really only teaches the 1838 version in correlated materials.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:09 You do start to see some of the stuff, like in saints, where they'll kind of mention there's different visions, but they'll frame it as they have some different, you know, kind of details that kind of complement each other. And they'll try to play it off as basically saying, aren't we so fortunate to have multiple accounts to give us even more information?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:25 But when you read it, you notice that there are a lot of small differences, and we're not going to go into all of them, such as, like, being bound by Satan, the pillar of fire, host of angels. Those are all contradictions and changes that he makes. But the biggest ones are in 1832, Joseph Smith claims that he already knew all the churches were not true. In 1838, he claims that he went there to find out which one was true.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:49 And then in the 1832 account, he claims to see just one personage, the Lord, but then in 1835, he changes it to two personages. And then in 1838, he, you know, makes it very clear that it's God and Jesus both as physical beings. And so that that's a huge change to make.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:07 To go from one being to going to two beings. And not understanding in 1832 that, you know what I mean, to say that he just had a different understanding doesn't line up with the fact that he's pretty clear in 1832. It's just one person.

John Dehlin 35:20 Now, are we going to dig into these, or is that where. Is that where we're dealing with these two points?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:25 We're going to dig into them, but we're going to dig into them and kind of hopefully a different way than people are used to, because I think it'll help to kind of explain why this doesn't. Line doesn't work.

John Dehlin 35:34 Okay, so the questions people need to ask themselves, just to summarize are, you know, why has the Church always taught a single narrative until just the past few years? We'll talk about their bricolage attempt at resurrecting the first vision. But why is the church taught this is a single narrative for so long, ignoring the other ones? Are you going to talk about the Joseph Fielding Smith stuff in this presentation?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:56 Yeah, we'll get to. Yeah, we got that at the end.

John Dehlin 35:57 Okay. I won't. I won't give that away. And then. And then, of course, what was Joseph's intent when he went to the grove to pray. That's something that people should pay attention to. And why would that ever change? And then the third is who visited Joseph? Was it. Was it a single person? Was it multiple people? And why would that ever change? Those are the things people should ask themselves, right?

Timeline Problems and the 1820 Date

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:22 Yeah. And I think, like, for me, the timeline is so important. And that's why I think we're gonna do this today and then with the priesthood restoration, because the timeline is everything. And, you know, Joseph Smith claims it happened in 1820. The church correlated, says it happened in 1820, but the historical records are very clear. It would not have happened until 1824. And just to go over a few of these points, the. Our tax records that show that the Smith family moved from Palmyra to Manchester in 1822 or from Palmyra to. To Manchester. And so Joseph Smith notes that sometime in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion that would indicate 1823-24 as those years of excitement.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:05 Church denominations were very steady in 1820, but they grew very quickly in 1824, which is another impact of a religious revival. And then by 18, by September 1825, the results of the revival for Palmyra had become a matter of record. The Presbyterian Church reported 99 admitted on examination, and the Baptist had received 94 by baptism, while the Methodist circuit showed an increase of 208, which is to say that in 1820, there's no growth in the churches. And then all of a sudden in 1824, which lines up with the kind of. The more contemporary record of when there was a lot of preaching going on. The churches are really growing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:44 And that also lines up with when Joseph Smith talks about when they moved. And so that immediately puts the 1820 year in a lot of, you know, problematic areas because they need it to be in 1824. And yet we're looking at a lot of reasons why it's not.

John Dehlin 38:04 Tell us again why they needed to be in 1820, not in 1824, actually.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:11 Because I've got that a couple slides ahead, so. Okay, we'll get to that in a second. So that's actually. That'll be good because. And this is, you know, another area where, you know, Alexander Campbell, who is someone that, you know, kind of ran, did the Campbellite branch. And that's where Sidney Rigdon came from. He wrote on March 1, 1824, concerning a revival in the state of New York, Enthusiasm flourishes. This man was regenerated when asleep by a vision of the night that man heard a voice in the woods saying, thy sins be forgiven thee. A third saw his Savior descending to the tops of the trees at noonday.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:44 And so it's just showing that you have all of these accounts that are contemporary to the 1824 kind of timeline, and they're having visions, which obviously is something that's important to this. And it's also from a source of someone who's kind of someone that's important in this kind of history because he really did not like what Joseph Smith was doing. And this was obviously written before he knew about Joseph Smith. So he has no reason to try to screw with the timeline. And then, you know, we have kind of like John Larsen said, about having a lack of coverage about the First Vision. Well, we also have a complete lack of coverage about any kind of religious revival in 1820, but coverage of them occurring both four years earlier and four years later happens.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:27 So another significant lack of information concerning an 1820 revival lies in the area of the religious press. The denominational magazines of that day were full of reports of revivals, some even devoting sections to them. These publications carried more than a dozen glowing reports of the revival that occurred at Palmyra in the winter of 1816 and 17. Likewise, the 1824 and 25 revival is covered in a number of reports. These magazines, however, while busily engaged in reporting revivals during the 1819-1821 period, contain not a single mention of any revival taking place in the Palmyra area during this time. It is unbelievable that every one of the denominations which Joseph Smith depicts as affected by an 1820 revival could have completely overlooked the event.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:09 Even the Palmyra newspaper, while reporting revivals at several places in the state, has no mention whatsoever of any revival in Palmyra or vicinity either in 1819 or 1820. The only reasonable explanation for this massive silence is that no revival occurred in the Palmyra area in 1820. And so it's just showing that the timeline doesn't line up. And as we get to the next slide, this, this is very important to looking at the First Vision story as a whole.

John Dehlin 40:36 Yeah. So for those whose eyes or ears glaze over when things are being read, the 18, the official 1838 version of the First Vision account, which we were all sold for decades and decades, has an 1820 Joseph being exposed. You know, this is even the film that we all grew up watching about Joseph Smith in the First Vision. It's got Joseph as a 14 year old boy walking around, going to all these revivals, seeing all These different competing churches, feeling confused about which church to join. He reads James and it says, if any of you lack wisdom, ask. Ask of God, because he's experiencing all these revivals.

John Dehlin 41:14 So then he goes to the grove and prays, and he has, you know, he sees God in Jesus. That's all according to the first vision movies and stories we were told. That's all happening in 1820. And what you're saying is, is that there's no evidence that any of those revivals happened within a two or three year plus or minus range, maybe even four year plus or minus range. There may have been some three or four years before when Joseph would have been too young, probably to remember or to attend or much later, which would fit the timeline a lot better. But there's just no evidence that the 1830, 1838 official account is accurate. And that's a problem.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:53 It is.

Guest 41:53 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:54 And that's just it. It can before or after, but not when they need it.

John Dehlin 41:58 Yeah, yeah. And it's a problem. Okay. All right, let's go to the next one.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:01 Yeah, and so this is just. So when we. Like you said, when you glaze over when you hear this, you might go, what difference does the year make? But it makes a big problem when you look at the way Joseph Smith kind of gives us history. Because in 1820, Joseph Smith claims to experience the first vision, kind of as stated in the correlated material, followed by the visitation from Moroni in 1823. So if the first vision were to have happened in 1824, which would match kind of the contemporary evidence in the area, then the visit from Moroni becomes really out of place. So because of that timeline, the first vision has to be in 1820, but the evidence just doesn't line up for it being a time of unusual excitement on the subject of religion.

John Dehlin 42:42 Okay, yeah, go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:45 No, I was just saying this is an issue we're gonna run into in a lot of these episodes now that we're doing the historical stuff, which is to say that when you create these changes to the story later on and you're trying to retrofit them back into your history, you. You have a lot of problems that arise because you try to fix. It's the same thing I say about apologetics, where it's like, you try to fix one thing, then all of a sudden a problem pops up over here. And then you go to push that down, and then one comes up over here because you need all the details to line up, but you're creating a story after the fact.

John Dehlin 43:13 That.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:13 And it's going to contradict what you did earlier. It just. It almost always will because these are complicated histories that you're trying to weave to recruit people to your church. And, you know, this is an issue where they need it in 1820 to be.

John Dehlin 43:27 For.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:27 To be before the visitation. It just, it can't be, you know, as. From a documentary standpoint, it just doesn't line up.

John Dehlin 43:34 Okay, all right, well, let's keep. Let's keep it going. The evolution of the first vision story.

Evolution from One Personage to Two

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:40 Yeah, and so this is, you know, really, as we talked about earlier, the most important change in his first vision accounts going. It goes from seeing one person to two. And so in 1832, he says to see just the Lord. In 1838, he's now saying they saw both God and Jesus. And this change is critical because this really shows that he's going really changing the theology he has from kind of that trinitarian, modalist viewpoint to a plurality of God's. And it's something that we can see outside of the first vision. This is why this is so important to take this in totality, because when you look at this process, you can see that the evolution is reconciled by his outside teachings.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:18 But then you have to go back and make changes. And so to put a finer point on this, if Joseph Smith saw both God and Jesus in 1820, why did Joseph Smith write that they were not separate beings in the Book of Mormon in 1829? And so it's like all of a sudden now you have an issue because he makes this change in his theology, but he's already cemented the fact in the Book of Mormon that he had kind of that modalist, you know, trinitarian viewpoint. And so this is a problem that has to be addressed. And as we're going to show, he's going to try to make changes to kind of fix it, but it doesn't always. It leaves fingerprints and it leaves problems.

John Dehlin 44:56 Now, are you.

Guest 44:57 Are.

John Dehlin 44:57 Are you going to be. Mike, are we going to be reading from the actual 1832 account in this episode where Joseph actually writes those words?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:07 I, you know, I didn't do that just because I was more focused on looking at, like, the timeline and the evolution of it. So I don't have, like, the actual first vision accounts here where we're going to read them. We can certainly do that.

John Dehlin 45:20 No, no. Let me just. Let me just pull it up really quick.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:23 Okay.

John Dehlin 45:23 Because I think. I think for those who sometimes worry that we go a little fast, I think it's helpful. So this is. Tell me if I've got the right thing here. This is the Joseph Smith Papers website. So this is official, you know, church headquarters approved content. This is the 1832 account, Joseph Smith's accounts of the first vision on the Joseph Smith Papers project. And I'm just going to read what it says and you tell me if this is the right text. Mike. This is Joseph Smith writing in the 1832 account, which, which has been withheld from all of us forever since time immemorial. It says, therefore I, meaning Joseph Smith, cried unto the Lord for mercy, for there was none else to whom I could go and obtain mercy.

John Dehlin 46:13 And the Lord heard my cry in the wilderness. And while I was in the attitude of calling upon the lord in the 16th year of my age, and that's a red flag, obviously. 16, not 14, a pillar of light above the brightness of the sun at noonday came down from the above and rested upon me. I was filled with the Spirit of God and the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord. And that, I mean, I, I don't mean to like, put a fine point on it, but to me that is a major, major smoking gun. It's Joseph saying a single, he prayed to a single personage.

John Dehlin 46:55 It was when he was 16, not 14. And it was a single personage that appeared to him, which is the Lord. And because it's the 1832 version, which we all know in, you know, accurate history, the earliest account is always the most reliable. So it's the first account, it's the earliest account, and it's then by definition the most reliable account. And he's saying he's 16 and it's just a single personage called the Lord. Now, was I being too ham fisted there?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:29 No, I mean, it's just. And I think it would be the most reliable because of the fact that you're not going to, you know, all of a sudden, a few years later go, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that God and Jesus were both there and they're, you know, and especially given the factors we'll go into that, he is very clearly of this belief and mindset for years after he writes this and years before he writes it because of the fact that he writes into the Book of Mormon that there's just one God. And then all of a sudden you have to kind of change that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:57 And these are things and we'll get into this a little more at the end, but it also gets into the whole tight versus loose Translation, the Book of Mormon translation. Because all of these things are impacted by Joseph Smith changing the story. And that's why the first vision, you know, to me it might not be the biggest smoking gun in the sense of like, I think the Book of Abraham and DNA are probably bigger, but to me, it's a smoking gun in the sense of. You can see how Joseph Smith is able to create stories, retrofit them into the history, and leave his fingerprints to where we can then go back and say, this is where he's making changes, this is where he's pulling from outside sources.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:31 And once you see that, then you see with other issues in church history, and it all becomes a lot easier to understand how he did it and what he was trying to accomplish in doing so.

John Dehlin 48:42 Yeah. And by the way, I think. I think Richard Bushman and others want us to feel like this is not a big deal, but I'm just going to go read a little bit more in the paragraph because I think this is a huge deal. Because Joseph goes on to Write in the 1832 account, and he spake unto me, saying, and so this is the Lord now. Right.

John Dehlin 49:05 And you think, oh, well, Mormon theology, we all know that the great innovation is that God the Father is heavenly Father and Jesus is the Son. But no, it says, and he spake unto me the single personage, Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee, go thy way, Walk in my statutes and keep my commandments. Behold, I am the Lord of glory. I was crucified for the world, that all those who believe on my name may have eternal life, blah, blah, blah. And so this is clearly Jesus, God talking. And, and for those who already, you know, we've talked. Did we already talk about the trinitarian view in the Book of Mormon? In, In a little bit.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:46 Yeah, we have a little bit. And just kind of how, you know, the, the, you know, I know it'll probably more technically like a modalist viewpoint, but, you know, for, for, you know, for this particular debate, and I'm not like a, you know, theo. Theologian.

John Dehlin 50:00 Theologian. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:01 So I couldn't really go into the biggest detail. I know modalism is probably more what the Book of Mormon is, where they all have different modes as opposed to the straight tra. But either way, yeah, it is not in any way the Book of Mormon did not line up in any way with the 1838 version of the first vision as far as what God is. And I think that's again, another huge tell that this is a late addition that Joseph Smith had not thought up in 1829.

John Dehlin 50:28 Yeah, yeah, I think. I think it's a really big deal. Okay, which slide are we on?

The Godhead in Early Church Texts

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:34 So go to. I think we're two next one and one more.

John Dehlin 50:38 Joseph Smith was consistent.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:39 Yeah. And so this is just, you know, to kind of show how consistent the church was on the Godhead before Joseph Smith makes these changes. In the statement from the three witnesses, they say, and the honor be to the Father and the Son and to the Holy Spirit, which is one God. So again, you've got the witnesses of the Book of Mormon making clear that they have no idea that God and Jesus are separate. And the fact that Joseph Smith would have absolutely read and approved the statement from the three witnesses, the title page of the Book of Mormon says. And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations on the evening and Morning Star in July 1832.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:18 Now this one's, I think, more damning where this is a kind of them proclaiming what the Church is. And so they say, now what things can there be of greater moment and importance for men to know or God to reveal than the nature of God in ourselves, the state and condition of our souls, the only way to avoid eternal misery and enjoy everlasting bliss. The scriptures discover not only matters of importance, but of the greatest depth and mysteriousness. There are many wonderful things in the law of God, things we. We may admire but are never able to comprehend. Such are the eternal purposes and decrees of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, and the manner of the operation of the Spirit of God upon the souls of men, which are all things of great weight and moment for us to understand and believe that they are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:06 And yet. Yet may be unsearchable to our reasons as to the particular manner of them. And so you've got a publication that Joseph Smith would approve of, the Evening and Morning Star, literally saying they believe in the Trinity. The witness statements say that the Book of Mormon is making that claim. And yet now we're told basically, no, that's actually not correct. And it's just. It shows the paper trail. The paper trail is quite clear of this evolution and we're going to keep seeing it as we go because Joseph Smith, if he had had that, that vision, this stuff would not be in there. It just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:38 It, you know, otherwise he's lying. But there's. There's no way around it either this didn't happen and Joseph Smith is doing what he believes at the time or the first vision happened. And Joseph Smith's deceiving everybody. And I think it's pretty easy to show which of the two options would be more likely.

John Dehlin 52:53 And just to summarize, everyone, you know, pretty much everyone around Joseph smith prior to 1830, prior to the formation of the Church, pretty much everyone thought of God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost is one. There was no. There's no notion in. In the United States, in the world, that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost were all literally separate beings with separate spirits that existed in a preexistence. And. And Even through the mid-1830s, the church and Joseph and the three witnesses and Sidney and Oliver and the Book of Mormon itself, they're all continuing on this consistent, globally acknowledged idea that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are one.

John Dehlin 53:38 And what becomes later one of the defining, you know, doctrines or revelations of Joseph Smith, which is the God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are literally separate beings that does not emerge until the mid-1830s and beyond. And that's why it wasn't in the original version of the first vision, and that's why it wasn't in the original Book of Mormon, and that's why it wasn't in any of the early accounts. And this is like evidence that is undeniable and everything else is revisionist history.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:08 I mean, it is. And that's the thing, like, we're looking at this in a way that goes, how does the timeline line up? And the next slide, if there's one slide in this entire presentation that you pay attention to, there's one piece of evidence that I think makes perfectly clear that Joseph Smith did not. That Joseph Smith created the first vision later on. It's right here. So Joseph Smith, after proclaiming a very trinitarian, modalist view in the. In the Book of Mormon, he's doing his Bible revision. So it's about 1831. So in Luke 10:22 in the King James Bible, it says, all things are delivered to me of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:49 So the King James Bible is saying, no man knows who the Father is, except for the Son, the Son of the Father, which that is going to be changed by Joseph Smith to. All things are delivered to me of my Father, and no man knoweth that the Son is the Father, and the Father is the Son, but him to whom the Son will reveal it. So Joseph Smith were to believe 11 years after seeing God and Jesus as separate people is revising the Bible and making the trinitarian modalist viewpoint stronger.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:20 You know what I mean? Like, it would be one thing if you said, well, he left it alone, didn't change it. He actually went out of his way to make it stronger. In 1831, if he saw God and Jesus as two separate beings, he would not make. I mean, like, this, this right here, to me is the biggest. You know, I hate the phrase smoking guns sometimes because I know we overuse it. But to me, this is one of those things where I'm like, this one slide tells you that the first vision story was not created yet in 1831. Because this is Joseph Smith changing the Bible to say that God and Jesus are one, even though we're to believe. Eleven years earlier, he was visited by both. This, to me, is everything.

John Dehlin 55:56 And for those who don't even know that backstory. Because Joseph Smith by 1830, is claiming to be a prophet, seer and revelator. And he's so bold and so confident. He says, I'm going to translate the Bible as it should have been translated, with direct divine revelation from God and my seer stone and my hat, or however it is that I discern God's true will. We know now that he had. He likely had the Adam Clark commentary that he was just kind of plagiarizing. But at the time, he's telling everybody, I'm going to actually correct the Bible and restore it to its original intent and its original doctrine. And like you say, the fact that he makes Godfather and the Holy Ghost a single unified being. And again, this is prior to his own beliefs changing. Yeah, it's everything you need to know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:45 Yeah, yeah, that. Like, I said that to me, that's like the one slide, I think, when I think it was. I think it was Johnny Stevenson, who. I think a lot of people who study Mormonism would know the name. I think. I think his name is Johnny Stevenson. He was awesome and he passed away. But he was the one that first posted this, I think. And I remember seeing him being like, holy crap. Like, that is the most damning piece of evidence against first vision that there is, because that is Joseph Smith. You can't claim he's translating an ancient record where you could blame the people who may have abridged it in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:17 That is Joseph Smith via revelation, changing the Bible and making the Godhead a unified being. You just. You can't have it. To me, that is the clearest indication that this story Was not thought up in 1831. Because he is doing this. He's inserting it into the Bible. It's just I can't express how to me, how important that one changes to understanding Joseph Smith's mind and experiences until 1831.

John Dehlin 57:47 Absolutely. Okay. I think that is an important point we just showed. All right, let's continue with the Lectures on Faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:56 So the Lectures on faith happened in 1834. And this is kind of, you know, for people who don't know, and I didn't really know this as a member. The Lectures on Faith were. What was the doctrine part of the Doctrine and Covenants. And they were removed.

John Dehlin 58:11 But that's when they were eventually removed.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:15 Eventually removed.

John Dehlin 58:15 But they were removed before they were included in Scripture. Right, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:19 They were moved in 1920, I think.

John Dehlin 58:21 Right, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:22 But in these lectures, in the fifth lecture, it says there are two personages who constitute the great matchless, governing and supreme power over all things, by whom all things were created and made. They are the Father and the Son. The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power, possessing all perfection and fullness, the Son who was in the bosom of the Father, a personages, personage of tabernacle made and fashioned like unto man. And so later on, they say in a question answer section, how many personages are there in the Godhead? And they say to the Father and the Son, this is, you know, something that Joseph Smith would have approved of being published.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:02 And it kind of shows, like, the beginning of the evolution here to say, because this still kind of matches kind of that trinitarian mindset, which is to say that, you know, Jesus is the only physical being. God is kind of like the Heavenly Father. But it does show that there's like this little bit of a slight move towards changing their view of the Godhead, which is going to be the reason we see in 1835 that first vision starts to change to seeing two personages in that vision.

John Dehlin 59:32 Yeah, yeah, but the first. I mean, the first vision. I'm sorry, the Lectures on Faith. I mean, for me, the summary points here are. Number one, Joseph Smith writes the lectures on faith between 1830 and 1835. Number two, they continue this idea that God and Jesus are one. Number three, they were included in Mormon Scripture and. And then number and the prophet, it was studied in the school of the prophets. And then number four, it was removed from Mormon Scripture. Why in the fetch in the 20th century? Why are the Fetch. Are we ever removing Mormon Scripture? If Joseph was a prophet, seer and revelator, certainly he wasn't confused about what the Church wasn't confused about what is or was doctrine and what wasn't.

John Dehlin 1:00:18 Why were they removed? They were removed primarily because they showed an inconvenient inconsistency or evolution in Joseph's theology. That becomes problematic if you accept the 1838 version or official version of the first vision. Correct?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:35 Yeah. I mean, I think Sidney Rigdon wrote a lot of the Lectures on Faith, but Joseph Smith obviously would have approved and published them. So this again shows that, you know, and this is something we'll see in the priesthood episode next week, because Sidney Rigdon brings a lot of ideas that tend to work their way into Joseph Smith's theology as well. And this is kind of the whole pattern we've seen with the Book of Mormon from our earlier episodes, that Joseph Smith is really gifted at taking surrounding ideas and repackaging them to fit his theological goals. And this is another area where you see it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:07 But to your point, all of a sudden, in the 1920s, they're looking at this and going, this has a lot of contradictions to what we believe in our correlated material. So they remove them from the DNC because it would be pretty clear, I think, especially.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:20 Especially now. But even then, to someone who was looking at it critically, to say, this just doesn't line up together. And with the first Vision, it really becomes problematic because of the fact that they're going to use the 1838 history as the, you know, the correlated official account.

John Dehlin 1:01:38 And are you going to be showing later when they change the Book of Mormon?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:41 Yes.

John Dehlin 1:01:42 Okay. Okay. I won't give that away then. Okay, so the next slide is the Lectures on faith and the 1835 verse vision account.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:50 Yeah, so we're kind of, like I said, we're going on the timeline here. So you got the book of Mormon, 1829, the revision to the Bible in 1831, lectures on faith, 1834, and now in 1835. It was an account given in November of 1835. And Joseph Smith claims that a personage appeared in the midst of this pillar of flame, which was spread all around, and yet nothing consumed. And another personage soon appeared, like unto the first, he said unto me thy sins are forgiven thee. He testified unto me that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And I saw many angels in this vision. And so this one's an interesting one because you've got two personages.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:26 They're not identified as God and Jesus. It lines up better with the Lectures on Faith. There's still a lot of weird kind of issues here. Like, for example, if the first one is God and the second one says, thy sins are forgiven thee, but then he's also testifying that Jesus Christ is the son of God, you would think that means that that is not Jesus, but like an angel. And I think this goes to what John Larsen was saying in the earlier clip we played, which is that a lot of the teachings of the first vision that the early members understood was that it was an angelic vision, not that it was God and Jesus.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:56 And this kind of backs it up, which is to say that, you know, why would you have. You wouldn't have Jesus testifying that Jesus Christ is the son of God, because you just have it be like, I am the son of God, you know, because he doesn't identify them. So it does show that he's starting to change it, but it's obviously still very cloudy, and it certainly is a lot less detailed than the 1838 vision is going to be.

John Dehlin 1:03:18 Yeah, and. And I think just a very basic thing to understand. We all know about the fish stories, right? How. Yeah, when. When you first tell the fish story, the fish is small. Maybe there's not a lot of detail, But a common human tendency is the longer you go telling a story, the way memory works and the way that exaggeration or embellishment works is stories tend to get longer and more detailed over time. Not because they get more accurate, but because you get good reactions from the story and you start adding other events and exaggerating and they get embellished. And so the fact that the stories get. Get more detail over time, more fantastic, when he could have just, in 1832, told the full story accurately when he had the chance, it's just an indication that he's exaggerating and embellishing over time. Is that fair to say?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:19 No, I mean, I absolutely agree with that. I think. And we'll get to this at the end a little bit more. But there's a reason why these stories are getting grander. There's a reason why he's telling this story, and it's because he needs to establish his authority in the church. And what better way to do it than to put himself on a pedestal where God and Jesus are visiting him? And it also obviously lines up with the fact that he's learning Hebrew. He's learning that in the Bible there was a council of Gods. He's learning that there was this ancient belief that there was more than one God, and now he's repurposing it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:49 Back down into his earlier works, and it lines up with the timeline. That's why I like looking at this on a timeline in a linear way, because the church will kind of just jump to the 1838 and make it sound like everything lines up to it. It really doesn't. It actually the 1832 is not the outlier. It's just the beginning of the evolution. And I think that's one of the big differences we'll see near the end when we look at the essay again of how they frame it versus kind of how this timeline shows the evolution.

John Dehlin 1:05:17 Yeah, I think that last sentence in the slide is really important just to reemphasize.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:21 Yep. Yes. They removed the lectures on Faith in 1923. And like I said, that kind of lines up a little bit better with the 1835 account. So now we're seeing this evolution of the first vision accounts that's lining up with his teachings outside of the first vision. And I think that's really important.

John Dehlin 1:05:36 Yeah. Okay, Next slide is Book of Mormon is changed to Joseph's new, like, Book of Mormon, literally translated with the seer stone in a hat where the words are appearing on the seer stone. We've got a whole episode about that. So the Book of Mormon should literally be word for word, the word of God. Go ahead and talk to us about this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:58 Yeah. And so this is just, you know, this shows. So now, remember, in 1835, the first vision account is changing. He's got two personages now. We know in 1838, the next year, he's going to have his history documented, which is going to make very clear that God and Jesus are separate physical beings. And so in order to make this, you know, kind of correlated with the earlier materials, he goes back and he makes these changes to the Book of Mormon. And so I'm just reading a few of them. So it says, behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God. And he changes it to the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God.

John Dehlin 1:06:33 In 1837.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:35 In 1837. So he's changing this seven years later. And so, you know, it says, behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father. And that's changed seven years later to behold the Lamb of God. Yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father. You know, yea, the everlasting God was the judge of the world to, yea, the Son of the everlasting God was judge of the world, and the Lamb of God is the Eternal Father was changed in 1837 to the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father. So they add the Son of the in front of, you know, God and Eternal Father.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:05 Because now they're trying to go back and make sure that people are trying to understand as you read this, that, you know, God and Jesus are two separate beings. But as you said, we're also told that Joseph Smith is reading off of his peepshear stone in a hat and that the words do not change until they're read exactly right and written down exactly right. And we have this. And so that gets back into that why the tight versus loose translation is so important. Because you need to have a loose translation for this, but if you have a loose translation for this, you've got a lot of other issues. And so I think.

John Dehlin 1:07:36 I think this is as much of a smoking gun as. As the previous slide that you said was such a big deal, just because, like, you could write off one the Son of As, like, oh, maybe the scribe left something out. But these are at very different points in the book. And the change is consistent in 1837, and it's clearly a reflection of Joseph's evolving theology. And his 1832 version of the account was consistent with the Book of Mormon, original 1830 Book of Mormon theology. There's just. No, there's. This is the FBI or the CIA. There would be zero question what was going on here. Zero question.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:24 I mean. Yeah, and this is like, literally, you know, like the way you would expect somebody who's trying to kind of COVID their tracks and to change any past accounts to line up with your current one so that people don't realize that this Book of Mormon text, which is supposed to be directly from God, whether it's from a rock and a hat with words appearing on it, or whether it's from pure revelation into Joseph's head, this is being changed seven years later in a way that just happens to match a change in Joseph Smith's teachings that happened over those previous seven years. And so to your point, yeah, I mean, it would make more sense if Joseph Smith had been teaching since the beginning that God and Jesus were separate.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:06 And then seven years later, they said, we're going to make these changes because it's confusing our members. But that's not what happened. They're changing it in order to fit the later narrative. They're not changing it because the only confusion would come later because Joseph Smith is about to record his history. That's going to completely upend the Book of Mormon's framing of God.

John Dehlin 1:09:27 Yeah. Absolutely. So to kind of summarize, this point of changes in the Book of Mormon. Get at it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:35 Yeah, it just says, you know, as we've said already, but it's like, why would these changes be necessary if the Book of Mormon is directly translated from the Seer Stone and the words did not change in the hat until the words were written correctly, as the people who were involved in the Book of Mormon process claimed?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:50 Second, why would Joseph Smith alter these verses that were preserved and translated by the power of God in order to correlate to his evolving theology of the Godhead? And third, and most importantly, if Jesus, or if Joseph Smith truly saw both God and Jesus as we're told in the first vision, why did he not pray to God for revelation when coming across these verses in the Book of Mormon that are clearly a trinitarian modalist viewpoint or when revising the Bible and strengthening the trinitarian view, as we noted above, because, you know, one of the things that we're going to talk about in a future episode on his translations is him and Oliver get to a point in the Bible and it's in John and it's the, you know, what do you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:30 What is it to you if they should. Terry or whatever, and they pray and Joseph Smith is given a revelation of the writings of John on a parchment in a cave. So he's clearly able to pray when he sees something that doesn't make sense and get a direct answer. And yet here we're to believe that he just wrote down something that he knows in his head is absolutely not true. If you believe God and Jesus are separate beings. And I think that is, to me, the most important takeaway is the fact that in some instances, Joseph Smith will pray and say, hey, I'm confused. What does this mean?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:00 And God just gives an immediate revelation, or in this case, where not only does he not pray for guidance on that and record revelation, but he puts it in the Book of Mormon knowing that's not correct. And then in the King James Bible, he revises the Bible to strengthen it to a viewpoint that would completely upend his first vision account that he would then say, you know, state seven years later. And that is, those are massive problems that you cannot just brush away by saying there was confusion by the members or he had a. I know Richard Bushman, I think in the priesthood, says he changed the story because he might have had a greater understanding.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:34 It's like, no, I mean, this is pretty clear that this is a very linear change that's happening over years. It's not the 1832 account again. I know I've already said it is not an outlier. It'd be one thing if he was teaching they were separate then the 1832. He kind of clumsily said they were one and then went back. This is from 1832 to 1838. You can see the evolution without having to make excuses for why there's changes.

John Dehlin 1:11:59 And sometimes when I get salty at people like, you know, Terrell Givens or, Or. Or Richard Bushman or others, it's because, you know, when you. When people who know better, when apologists or scholars who know better isolate these issues and they just talk about the first vision. So, you know, yeah, we'll probably get to this. But Richard Bushman's famous reconciliation is that, well, when Joseph was younger, he was reflecting on the first vision this way, but then as he gets older, he reflects on it in a different way, or the church's version that they're all true.

John Dehlin 1:12:36 And so they'll come up in the past few years with the video that incorporates all the different versions as if it's a single account. It's disingenuous. And I think scholars and apologists have to know it on some level to talk about the first vision as if it's somehow just Joseph's evolving understanding of his own experience, or somehow they're all true. To talk about that in isolation, but to leave off the discussion of the lectures on faith, to leave off the discussion of the changing Book of Mormon, to leave those parts off from any isolated discussion of the first vision is fundamentally disingenuous and misleading. Because.

John Dehlin 1:13:25 Because it's leaving out crucial corroborating evidence that shows that. That shows that there is a significant problem here versus sort of an evolving, maturing, synthesizing understanding of what happened in the first vision. Sort of in isolation. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:45 Yeah. No, I mean, I agree. And I think, you know, a lot of the main apologists that you read that kind of try to have that softer approach. I mean, obviously you'll have, like. There's a Dan. Daniel C. Peterson article in the Deseret News from a few years ago where he talks about it's much ado about nothing, and it's just. It's, you know, again, I don't mean I don't want to, but Daniel C. Peterson is one of those guys that will play word games as he writes books literally called, like, How Ex Anti Mormons Play Word Games to under. Whatever it is. And it's just like it is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:14 It's One, the difference is not just that you can show that he changed it, but you can show why he changed it and you can show how he changed it. And those are, you know, the reasons why you can be sure this is a late addition to Joseph's theology. Because it's, like I said, it's not that the 1832 account was an outlier. They'll keep saying it's an outlier. It's not an outlier. It's his starting point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:38 And so to me, being able to show before 1832 where he was actually strengthening the 1832 belief of the Godhead, it makes it very clear that it's a very deliberate change that cannot come from some sort of confusion or misunderstanding that Joseph had of his earlier experiences, especially given the fact that there's no revelations or anything during this timeframe that would show why Joseph Smith is changing. This is just something that's happening kind of almost outside of the official church records, because he's not telling anybody about this.

John Dehlin 1:15:09 And Mike, have you ever heard Bushman or Peterson or Mason or the Givens, have you ever heard them try to explain this entire set of discrepancies incorporating not only the first vision accounts, but also the, the, you know, the Joseph Smith translation of the New Testament and the changes to the Book of Mormon and the evolving theology? Have you ever heard an apologist, a credible, scholarly apologist try to explain all those things in aggregate? Or is it always in isolation?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:45 I haven't heard it, but I'm sure someone's done it with, like on a BYU studies article or something. I'm sure it's been done, but it's going to be. It's going to be done. I would, I mean, I should look. Look for it, because I have, especially in that King James revision. That one was new to me, like a couple, like two years ago when I first heard it from Johnny Stevenson. But yeah, usually, like I said, and you said, too, usually it'll be said something like, he had a greater understanding or the really popular one, and we'll get to a little bit later. But it's like they'll say it's not that he changed the story, he just emphasized different, different points to different people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:15 So that's why it changed. But again, the underlying beliefs of those visions are very well tied to his other teachings. It's not just like, you know, if you go and you go to a party and you're telling a story and you're talking to one group of friends who's really concerned about Basketball. So you're talking to them about basketball, and then the next group of friends isn't really interested in basketball. So you're talking about where you went to eat at restaurants, and you're emphasizing different points, maybe of a night where you saw a basketball game and ate really good food.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:43 And you're emphasizing different points because those groups might care about one or the other. This is an area where you're talking about very foundational events. And he's doing it in a way that is corroborated by the outside teachings to show he's making this change. And so to say he's emphasizing it is really a deflection from the fact that we have. Again, I hate the cliche, we have the receipts to back up the fact that he's making these. These late additions and these changes. And he's doing it for a reason, which we'll get to later, which is because he runs into times when he needs to bolster his own authority.

John Dehlin 1:17:13 Yeah, and I'm excited to talk about that. Did we finish everything on this slide? Did we get the last.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:18 We're good on this one.

Contemporary Visionary Accounts as Context

John Dehlin 1:17:19 Okay, so let's go to similar contemporary visionary accounts. This is also, for me, a huge. A really important piece of evidence. I'll say.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:29 Yeah, this is. This is another one that, you know, of course. And you got to remember in that first video we showed of Gordon B. Hinckley, he talks about how this was the singular event. This never happened to anyone else. And so we talked earlier about how Joseph Smith never mentioned the first vision for at least 12 years before it was supposed to have happened. And yet there are a lot of stories in Joseph Smith, time and place, that are remarkably similar to Joseph's. And so going back to where tomorrow, earlier, you know, I took the missionary discussions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17:58 This was presented as something that just never happened before and never happened since. And so we want to kind of outline. I'm just going to outline a few of the contemporary accounts and to show that when Joseph Smith says he was persecuted, I know Dan Vogel has pointed this out. He said he probably wasn't persecuted because of the fact that they were so common at this point, that people had just been like, it wasn't that they wouldn't believe him. They just like, oh, here's another one. And Richard Bushman wrote that he had located 32 pamphlets that relate visionary experiences published in the United States between 1783 and 1815, and all but seven about visions experienced after 1776.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:37 And so what he's saying is that he Found dozens. Like, at least, like almost three dozen visionary accounts, many of them in Joseph Smith's, you know, time and location that are going to have accounts very similar. What Joseph Smith is going to express later.

John Dehlin 1:18:54 I'm going to put it in John words. It was super common for people during Joseph's day to claim to see or talk to God in Jesus. Jesus. Joseph was a late comer, and it was not in any way novel or cool or interesting. He was just one of dozens and dozens of people. And we're about to show you the evidence. Is that okay?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:16 Oh, yeah. And, and, and, and when, when you, When Richard Bushman says he found 33, I mean, that's what he found. I mean, there's gonna be lots of people who are talking about it who had pamphlets that never survived last 200 years. I mean, this is just. It's very common.

John Dehlin 1:19:28 Joseph was one of many people. All right, so let's talk about those.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:32 Okay, so the next slide is going to be the first one of the first accounts. And this is going to be the 1815 first vision of Norris Stearns. And this is from Norris Stearns, his own words. And he says at length, As I lay apparently upon the brink of eternal woe, seeing nothing but death before me, suddenly there came a sweet flow of the love of God to my soul, which gradually increased. At the same time, there appeared a small gleam of light in the room above the brightness of the sun. Then at his meridian, which brighter and brighter at length, being in an ecstasy of joy, I turned to the other side of the bed.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:05 Whether in the body or out, I cannot tell. God knoweth there. I saw two spirits which I knew at the first sight. But if I had the tongue of an angel, I could not describe their glory, for they brought the joys of heaven with them. One was God, my Maker, almost in bodily shape like a man. His face was, as it were, a flame of fire, and his body, as it had been a pillar and a cloud, in looking steadfastly to discern features, could see none. But a small glimpse would appear in some other place. Below him stood Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, in perfect shape like a man.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:35 His face was not ablaze, but had the countenance of fire being bright and shining. His Father Will appeared to be his. All was condensation, peace and love. And. Does that sound familiar? It's like. Yeah, you know, it's just seeing the two. The two spirits, the pillars of light, you know, the flames of fire.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:20:55 All of that is. And this is from it. This Is this was written, what, 17 years before Joseph Smith wrote his, five years before he claimed to have it. And it's just, you know, this would make Joseph Smith's story so much less remarkable knowing that other people had the exact same experience.

John Dehlin 1:21:10 And for someone who is really seeking to be honest and objective, there's two problems with this. One is, why is it that Joseph's just one of many? And there's so many similarities between Joseph and these other accounts that we're gonna leave out the vast majority of them. But the second is what makes Joseph Smith's story true, but Nora Stearns story and the dozens of other people's stories not true. And you could say, well, I felt the Holy Ghost when my parents told me about Joseph Smith's story when I was five. But that. Is that because it was the Holy Ghost bearing witness to you that Joseph Smith's story was true?

John Dehlin 1:21:49 Or is that because you love your mommy and daddy and you love your family and, you know, all the good warm feelings of church or the hymns or the music or family home evening and the love, or you, you know, in seminary when you're 16, wanting to, you know, please the people around you and conform to the social and spiritual pressures of those around you, you know, was it that. That then led to the good feelings about Joseph Smith? Or if you fall in love with some girl when you're 20 or 22 or 25, and then you take the missionary discussions and you hear about Joseph Smith, was it that.

John Dehlin 1:22:24 Was that that generated the feelings versus the fact that this account, Joseph Smith's first vision account, which wasn't the original account, you know, which left off a lot of details, you know, gave you those feelings at the time, Right?

Guest 1:22:37 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:38 I mean, that's just it. It's like it's special pleading to say this is not true, but Joseph's is. And to say they're both true then obviously takes away Gordon's statement that this was a singular event, because it clearly was not. It's just that we don't talk about the fact that there were dozens of people in his area in his time, in those years leading up to it, having the same experience.

John Dehlin 1:22:59 Absolutely. Okay, let's go to Asa Wilde's 1823 First Vision account.

Guest 1:23:05 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:05 And this one I like, just because this is from the Wayne Sentinel in 1823, which is Joseph Smith's hometown paper in Palmyra. And this would be the year that he's going to first start claiming that there's gold plates. So Asa Wilde says it seemed as if my mind was struck motionless as well as into nothing before the awful and glorious majesty of the great Jehovah. He then spake. He also told me that every denomination of professing Christians had become extremely corrupt.

John Dehlin 1:23:29 Even uses the word corrupt, right? Yeah, that word shows up in the 1838 account, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:35 I think so, yeah. It's one of them where he says they've all become corrupted. So, I mean, this is.

John Dehlin 1:23:38 Or Doctrine and Covenants, maybe.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:40 Yeah, I think it's in one of the first visions. But, yeah, you know, they say all the. You know, I think he calls them an abomination in the. In the. One of the first visions. So, I mean, this is, you know, a very.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:50 This is one he would almost certainly have seen because it's in his hometown newspaper. And it, you know, again, maybe doesn't match all the details like the last one did a little bit. But this, again, is showing you that people are having, during this period where the revivals are starting these visions and they're being told by, you know, they believe God, that all the current churches were corrupt and that, you know, there was no true church. And this is, again, California, top of the mound builder myth. These are beliefs that are kind of percolating around him that he's going to pick up on and repurpose for his own uses. And. And this is a good indication that this idea was out there.

John Dehlin 1:24:24 That's super compelling. Okay, let's go to Solomon Chamberlain's first vision experience.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:30 Yeah. And this one I love because I think the first time I ever, ever heard about this was in the Saints books. They mentioned Solomon Chamberlain joining the church, and they talk about how he visited Palmyra with pamphlets that he gave to Joseph Smith when he first met him. And this is from John Taylor in the Nauvoo Journal talking about Solomon Chamberlain. And he says, dissatisfied with the religions he had tried, Chamberlain prayed for further guidance. And in 1816, according to his account, the Lord revealed to me in a vision of the night, an angel whom Chamberlain asked about the right way. The angel told him that the churches were corrupt and.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:02 And that God would soon raise up an apostolic church. Chamberlain printed up an account of his visions and was still distributing them and looking for the apostolic Church when he stopped in Palmyra. So what they're saying is that Solomon Chamberlain prayed. He had a vision where, you know, the Lord came to him, said, all the churches are corrupt. Chamberlain had these pamphlets he printed about when he came to Palmyra after Joseph Smith had started the church. He gave these pamphlets to Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith is going to write his first vision three years after Solomon Chamberlain was gives him his pamphlet with his visionary experience.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:35 And so it's not to say Joseph Smith plagiarized his experience. It's to say that Joseph Smith had access to a lot of accounts that are eerily similar to his own claimed first vision account. And so to say he was unaware of them or to say that, you know, there were dozens of accounts but he wouldn't have known him, it just doesn't line up because we have the one that's in his hometown newspaper and this one from Solomon Chamberlain is literally handed to him in Palmyra in 1829 before Joseph Smith had ever mentioned having any kind of vision himself of God and Jesus.

John Dehlin 1:26:07 Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:08 So I think, I think that's a big one. But that, you know, like I said, that's, you know, it's from John Taylor and I think they found the pamphlet that Chamberlain was passing around and it's not, it said it certainly doesn't read as close to the first vision. If I remember, I was going to try to look it up. I can't remember where I found. I think BYU studies has it. But the fact is that this is how it was described by John Taylor. And in the saints book they kind of describe it as him having a visionary experience that he told the Joseph Smith that again is going to help shape the first vision three years later, in my opinion.

John Dehlin 1:26:41 Yeah, that's super powerful and profound. Okay, so what is the apologetic responses to the first vision problems?

Examining the Church's Gospel Topics Essay

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:49 Yeah, and so we're going to work mostly from the essay just because I tend to think that their essays are going to be the most, at least what they feel are the most compelling arguments. And so the first one that I want to point to is where they say documentary evidence, however, supports Joseph Smith's statements regarding the revivals happening in 1820. The region where he lived became famous for its religious fervor and was unquestionably one of the hotbeds of religious revivals. Historians refer to the region as the burned over district because preachers wore out the land holding camp revivals seeking converts during the early 1800s.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:20 And we discussed this earlier, but the problem is that the evidence tells us very, I would say very clearly that in 1816 and 1824 there were revivals because you have growth in the churches. But in 1820 it's just, there's no coverage of it, there's no growth in the churches. And so this is where the timeline problem comes. So I Think the church here is going to kind of try to conflate what is happening in the area from those surrounding ears to try to make it sound like this is one kind of consistent area where there's just this constant growth of churches. And it just. It's not what the church membership roles would indicate happened.

John Dehlin 1:28:01 So the church wants to say generically that there is evidence of revivals. What they're not admitting is that the evidence that we have for revivals are totally out of timeline. Yeah, space with the 1820 official. With the 1832 first account, or even with the official account of 1838, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:26 Yes. Yeah, that's where I come down on it, because it's just that the timeline just doesn't line up. And I know we're going to get into this with the priesthood restoration a little bit. We'll get into it. Polygamy. It's kind of. There are certain areas of church history where they need things to happen in a certain timeframe because it has to happen before something else or after something else. And in this case, they need it to be before Moroni comes to tell them about the gold plates. And yet the historical timeline just tells us that is not going to line up whatsoever.

John Dehlin 1:28:53 Yeah. Okay. And you, you're so here you note a misleading footnote in the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:58 And this is something I wrote an article on LDSDiscussions.com at one point called Follow the Footnotes, because there's footnotes in these essays. And if you actually read what they say, a lot of times they kind of don't say what the Church says they're saying, or sometimes they even contradict it. And so in this case, the church cites this one journal that refers to Reverend George Lane being in Joseph's area in 1820.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:20 But it's been shown that his assignment was to be in Pennsylvania from 1819 to 1824. And in 1819, they show that he was about 15 miles from Joseph Smith at an annual conference. But there's no record that he spoke at this meeting. And church records actually show a drop in membership following the meeting and not any kind of growth that you see during the revival years. And so just to reiterate again, that they want this so badly to be in 1820 because they want it to be before 1823. So they use this source to say, see, we've got this one source. But as we talked about earlier, the newspapers cover heavily and the church records are showing growth heavily in 1816 and 1824.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:04 But in 1820, this just doesn't happen. And so to use this citation without really going over why George Lane was in the area, I think is just very misleading. And it's being done to assure members who have come across issues with the timeline that, see, we do have evidence that it happened when this just isn't saying what they want it to say.

John Dehlin 1:30:24 At best, it's just really blatant motivated reasoning, and at worst, it's manipulation or deception.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:30 Yeah, I think they're just trying to find something so they could put some source in there so they can have a footnote there. So if a member reads it, they could go, oh, cool, they did the research. But if unless you read and really look at why he was there, you wouldn't realize that he wasn't there to give these giant sermons. He was there because it was an annual meeting where they were all there, you know, and so it just doesn't. Yeah, you know, it doesn't say what they wanted to. But for someone who's not going to dive into the footnotes and how many people really do, you never know that.

John Dehlin 1:30:57 Sketchy. Okay. Joseph Smith's own mother, Lucy Mack, helps solidify the timeline.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:04 Yeah, and this one, I think is really important because if you look at the 1832 account, you'll notice that Joseph. And this is in the. If you look at the actual, like, handwritten account in the Joseph Smith paper, you'll notice that he writes and then crosses out the sentence fragment about that time, my mother. And. And there's a footnote in the Joseph Smith paper, and it states the following. This canceled fragment may refer to the Presbyterian affiliation of Joseph smith's mother and three of his siblings. In 1838. Joseph Smith recounted that they were proselytized to the Presbyterian faith in connection with the revivalism preceding his vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:38 And this is a huge problem for two reasons. One is Lucy Mack Smith, this is from a Dialogue article, strongly implies that she joined the Presbyterian Church after Alvin's death. And I know Dan Vogel's backed up as well. Alvin Smith died in November of 1823, which would line up with the evidence surrounding the revival being in 1823 and 24 and not 1820. So this cuts against the idea that the first vision happened in 1820, as Joseph writes in his account. And also, if Joseph Smith had this first vision, why in the world would he watch as his mom joined another church if he was told by God that all the churches were corrupt?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:15 So you've got two points here that just both, again, undercut this idea that the first vision happened as Joseph Smith and the church want to state today.

John Dehlin 1:32:24 And I maybe am not fully understanding what happened here. So just explain it to me again in the 1832 account.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:33 So he's right. Yeah, he's writing out the 1832 account and he starts to write about that time my mother. And he crosses it out. And the Joseph Smith paper project seemed to think that the reason might be that he was starting to say about that time my mother and I were affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. And it sounds like he'd cross it out probably because you. Again, you don't want to have that in there. If you're trying to line this up in a way that's going to make sense, you know, and he may have known that his mom joined later. I mean, I don't know exactly why, but that does seem to imply that he kind of was diligent to get to not put that in there after he started to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:14 And as you know, the fact that she joined in 1823 after Alvin died is also problematic when, you know, we're trying to believe it's in 1820. So you've got two different areas here that kind of show that Lucy Mack Smith creates a problem for not just the timeline, but for the first vision itself. Because why is Joseph Smith watching his family join another church if, you know, he truly had a vision from God and Jesus that they were all corrupted? It's a very. Yeah, it's a problematic area, you know, where it's hard to really retrofit that history because it happened and you can't change the records of when his mom joined. So he just kind of tried to muddy it up a bit.

John Dehlin 1:33:51 If Joseph, I mean, if Joseph Smith in 1820 was told by God and Jesus with angels and satanic influences and fire, that all churches were corrupt and that he was going to be starting the one true church. So if you take that as true and you take the fact that he told everybody about Moroni and the visits of Moroni and the plates and everything that was going on, you can't argue that that was such a sacred experience that he wouldn't tell all his family because he told them about everything else. Moroni, the plates, the visitations, etc. So if you, if you accept those two things, then there's no freaking way that he didn't tell all his family.

John Dehlin 1:34:36 If the, if the 1838 First Vision account is accurate, he would have told his family in 1820 and the years after. All churches are false. Don't join any of them. And then they would have never flirted with any other church from then on. But instead we've got them, you know, attending other churches, joining other churches, flirting with other churches. You've got Lucy worrying about Alvin dying and some minister saying to her, alvin's not going to be saved. And so she's making sure everybody else joins so that when they die, they get to go to heaven. None of that would have happened if the 1838 or official first vision account was accurate. None of that would have happened. It made no sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:21 Yeah. And, you know, one of the things to your point earlier, they'll say, oh, you know, Joseph didn't talk about it because it was too sacred. And one of the things I'm reminded of is in our episode on the gold plates, and I can't remember the exact quote, but Joseph Smith is. He's going home and he sees his dad and he says something like, oh, I just got the most sore talking to, or whatever. And Joseph Smith says, like, who told you that? And he's like, oh, the angel. It's, you know, they're telling me that I've let my duty go on the plates. So he's willing to tell his family about these visitations from angels to get these gold plates, but he's not willing to tell them years earlier that God and Jesus told him all the churches were corrupt.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:57 And this is where, again, the inconsistencies are part of a pattern. They're not outliers. They're part of a very clear pattern Joseph Smith uses in some of these stories where he's retrofitting them. And there's a reason nobody knows about them. It's the same reason when we talk about Adam and Eve in the Bible that the early Bible prophets don't know about the story. It's because it's not created yet. And so in this case, Joseph Smith hasn't created the first vision until 1832, and he hasn't really perfected it in the way that we know it today until 1838. So no one's going to know about it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:28 And that's why when you look at the history of his mom joining another church, that's why she joins, because she has no idea that Joseph Smith was told that they're corrupt. And those are problems that don't go away by saying he had a greater understanding later, because those are pretty clear words in the first vision accounts from God and Jesus to Joseph. Those aren't confusing at all, actually, to say they're an abomination and that they're all corrupt is pretty clear.

John Dehlin 1:36:53 And didn't Joseph himself become a Methodist exhorter at one point?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:58 I mean, he, he took less. He took Sunday school lessons.

Guest 1:37:00 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:00 But like, then there's that. There's always that back and forth about like, did he actually join? Did he just sign up? And then I think there's. I think. I think Dan Vogel, and I don't want to misphrase him, I think he said somehow, you know, they didn't like him. Or someone, I think said that, that the methods didn't like him being there. Maybe it was. I think it might have been William Davis in an interview was talking about how he actually was a part of that, but that they might not have liked him. And I don't want to misspeak for anyone, but, yeah, he was definitely involved.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:27 I don't know that he actually joined their church, but he was very involved in listening to the revival sermons, to being part of the Methodist as they're learning how to be exhorters for the church. I mean, he's very well versed in how to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:42 Or at least he's in that milieu. And so, yeah, yeah, it's just all of these things are, like I said, I keep saying it. I know it's probably annoying people. They're all fingerprints. And so, yeah, if you're a forensic expert, you're looking at this and you're going, what does, what do all of these clues tell us? And I think they're pretty clear at some point that this is just not what it. What we're told it is today, for sure.

John Dehlin 1:38:03 Yeah. All right, so more from the Church's first vision essay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:06 Yeah, so this is another couple of paragraphs I wanted to read because I think this is important to go over. And so they say. The second argument frequently made regarding the accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision is that he embellished his story over time. This argument focuses on two the number and identity of the heavenly beings Joseph Smith stated that he saw. Joseph Smith's first vision. Accounts describe the heavenly beings with greater detail over time. The 1832 account says, the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the lord. In his 1838 account states, I saw two personages, one of whom was introduced, one of whom introduced the other as my beloved Son.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:40 As a result, critics have argued that Joseph Smith started out responding, reporting to have seen one being the Lord, and ended up claiming to have seen both the Father and the Son. There are other more consistent ways of seeing the evidence. A basic harmony in the narrative across time must be acknowledged at the outset. Three of the four accounts clearly state that two personages appeared to Joseph Smith in the first vision. The outlier is Joseph Smith's 1832 account, which can be read to refer to one or two personages. If read to refer to one heavenly being, it would likely be to be to the personage who forgave his sin.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:17 According to later accounts, the first divine personage told Joseph Smith to hear the second, Jesus Christ, who then delivered the main message, which included the message of forgiveness. Joseph Smith's 1832 account, then, may have concentrated on Jesus Christ, the bearer of forgiveness. And so there's just. There's so much to unpack here.

John Dehlin 1:39:37 Summarize it for us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:39 Well, they're basically saying that there's no real inconsistency here, because in the 1832 account, if you just kind of ignore the fact that he's constantly referring to just one person as the Lord, they're saying that someone actually was.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:53 Basically what they're saying is in the 1838 account, God introduces Joseph to Jesus and Jesus forgives him. In 1832 account, they only talk about the Lord forgiving him. So basically, God was there. He just wasn't really talking about him because he didn't say anything. And it's just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:06 It's just so dishonest because as we talked about in this episode, all of the earlier writings of Joseph Smith back up the 1832 account. So to say this is an outlier, I think is just. It's a lie. I mean, I don't. I really try to be neutral on this, but this is a lie, because an outlier would be if you had the 1835 account, and then the 1832 or 1838 account, and then the 1832 account, and then the 1838 account, and then you'd go, oh, he misspoke in that one. This is not an outlier. This is a starting point. And so to say that the first account is the outlier is just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:45 It's only an outlier because he changes it later. It's not an outlier because he was teaching it otherwise. He was teaching the trinitarian, modalist viewpoint in the Book of Mormon, in the King James revision, in the Three Witnesses statement, in the Book of Mormon title page, in the Messenger, Evening and Morning Star. All of these things are solid and they're consistent. So if anything, the outlier would be the 1838 account. But it's not really an outlier either, because it's an evolution. And so I just. I feel like what the church is doing here is trying to say three of the four accounts basically say there's two personages, except for the fact that they're ignoring that the 1832 one is first.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:25 And so it can't be the outlier when it's first and it's supported by everything else surrounding it. I just. I really hate the fact that they are going to try to gloss over the. All of the surrounding material that we've discussed earlier to try to just throw it out and say it's an outlier. I just think that's so dishonest and it's intentional because they don't want you to understand the surrounding material, because once you do, you can see it's not an outlier. It's literally just the starting point that he's going to change from.

John Dehlin 1:41:59 All right, yeah, that's problematic for sure. Let's go to the next slide. The problems come from the bigger picture.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:07 Yeah. And so this is kind of what I was just saying. But it's like they talk about how, you know, critics say that Joseph Smith changed the story from one to two people. And that's true. But to me, and this is what this episode's been more about is it's why did he change it? And how do we know he changed it? So it's one thing just to say, oh, he changed it from one to two people. Because of course, you know that if you just say that, then, you know you're going to get those apologetic arguments like, oh, we had a greater understanding, or what they said here, which is to say that it's not really a contradiction because you can just read the 1832 in a different way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:40 But as we said earlier, if you look at the bigger picture, you can see that Joseph Smith is making a very intentional change in his theology from a trinitarian, modalist viewpoint to a plurality of gods. And so one of the biggest problems for the Church's argument here is that not only did Joseph Smith's only handwritten account have that modalist trinitarian view, but when Joseph Smith produces his translation of the Bible, he never changes any references to a trinitarian worldview to define God in the King James Bible whatsoever, and then he actually strengthens it when he changes that one verse. And so if Joseph Smith truly was visited by God and Jesus, and if the 1832 account was truly the outlier, why does every one of his productions and Scriptures in revelations up until 1835 reflect that 1832 first vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:30 It's so clear, and yet we're sitting here being told by the church that we're just reading it wrong. And that drives me insane because they want to tell you that without giving you any of the supporting material, and we give it to you here. And I. I don't know how anyone, without special pleading, without saying, well, my. This is different because I believe in it, would come to the same conclusion. If it was anything else that they didn't care as much about, they would say, yeah, they made it up without question.

John Dehlin 1:43:58 Absolutely. Okay, so let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is the most consistent way to view the first vision. And if I can just kind of summarize what I'm expecting here, it's. If you are interested at looking at the evidence from a neutral perspective, and I think it's fair to say we're not coming at this with a. With an ax to grind trying to destroy anything. I think, I think there's no, you'll never find Bushman, Givens, Mason, you know, Peterson Fair Mormon Joseph Smith Papers project. I defy you to. I challenge you to find a better attempt at laying out all the evidence, analyzing it, and then trying to summarize it in a way that makes most sense, given the evidence, than what Mike is doing here today on LDS discussion slash Mormon stories.

Motivations Behind the 1832 and 1838 Accounts

John Dehlin 1:45:00 I defy you to find it. And if you can find it, put it in the comments, you know, email it to us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we'll share it. But. But I think that this slide is not overstating what we're about to do, which is to present the most consistent way we know of in 2022 to view the first vision. So go ahead and lay it out, Mike. Sorry, you're muted. Go again, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:27 Sorry about that. Yeah, so the church in their essay says basically there's a more consistent way to look at it. If you just read the 1831 or 1832 account differently, and I would argue the most consistent way of seeing the evidence is to note how his worldview changes around 1835, which led to the changes not just in the first vision, but also going back and revising the Book of Mormon and then also how his revel revelations also start to change a little bit too, in the way they're worded with regards to who's speaking to him. And so, you know, the reason that the 1832 account is an outlier is because it was the only account that was recorded before the change was made.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:59 It's not because there are other accounts before it or during it that contradict it. And so, as we've been saying this whole episode, what would you say if any other religious leader made or a politician made similar claims with this much evidence showing that they were changing their story? Would you say the consistent way to look at it would be basically to synthesize their earlier account into the later one? Or would you say they absolutely made it up so that they could gain whatever kind of credibility or authority they're seeking to get? And, you know, again, I mentioned it, I think one of the first episodes, and I just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:33 I'll do it really quickly here because it's so important, but I had a conversation with believing members, and it was during the 2020 election, and it was about Elizabeth Warren, and there's no real politics involved in this, but she had, in her first book, written a story about how she had gotten pregnant, and she was fired when she got pregnant, and she was fired because she was pregnant, because back then, you were allowed to do that under the law, and that was why she got involved in politics. And then they had found an earlier interview that was done before she wrote the book. And in the interview, she said she quit her job because she wanted to spend more time with her kid.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:08 And so at the time, there was a big battle online, which was basically to say, was she lying in the interview or was she lying in the book? And my belief is that in the interview, she was giving a more honest representation of her position, which is she quit her job because she wanted to spend more time with her kids. And the people I was talking to literally said. They kind of laughed and they. One of them said, you can't get away with that kind of stuff anymore with Google. And now these are believing members. Had I said, now apply that logic to the first vision, they would have thrown me out immediately.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:40 And so this is really where it boils down to is, would you give the same space to any other religion or politician, knowing that the evidence is overwhelming that they change their story, or would you really tell. You know, in this case, with this Elizabeth Warren story, those people were not willing in any way to say, oh, of course she was telling the truth. She just kind of misspoke in the first interview because they don't. They didn't like her. And so it was easy to see. But because they care about the first vision, they're giving special pleading to say, well, it's different in my case.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:10 And I just. I think that is really we have to view the things we believe with the same critical thinking that we view the things we don't like in order to make sure that we're on solid ground. And it's something that we're all guilty of, including myself. But this is a very good example of where doing so will make it crystal clear that this is not the first vision, did not happen in the way it's portrayed. There's just no way. And the 1832 account is not an outlier. It is where Joseph Smith began the formulation of this story.

John Dehlin 1:48:39 Absolutely. All right, so let's go to the next slide, which is if we've. We've now shown what the most plausible interpretation is of the evidence, then if this is sort of a courtroom, we want to get to motive. So what is the motive? Why would Joseph Smith, well, number one, produce it so late? I think that's fair to say. Well, why would he produce it so late instead of tell everybody in 1820, and the family all knows about it and the founders of the church all know about it for 10 or 12 years, why would he not produce the first account of it until 1832? And then why would it get embellished over time?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:24 Yeah, and this is going to be next week. We're doing the priesthood restoration, and this is really going to work hand in hand with this. So hopefully, if you're watching this today or listening to it, you'll remember for next week, although we'll cover it again. But there's this argument that the church makes here that say, oh, critics are saying he embellished it. Well, you know, as we've talked about already in this episode, your memory of events is not going to get clearer with time. It's going to get worse. And so part of the reason they get embellished is because you're telling a story over and over again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:50 You're finding out what parts resonate, what parts don't resonate. And you're also trying to create a narrative that helps out your agenda. And in this case, Joseph Smith needed to establish his authority. And so when Joseph smith wrote the 1832 account, he was in the middle of battling with the Missouri branch of the church over his authority. So there are multiple altercations with Bishop Edward Partridge leading up to the summer of 1832. And then in July of 1832, Joseph Smith visits Missouri, finds his leadership being challenged by Bishop Partridge. And a lot of critics like myself, would say that this discord is leading to Joseph Smith wanting to write down these experiences of the first vision and the priesthood restoration, because he needs to find ways to make sure that there is no one that can challenge his authority.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:37 And this is a great way to do it. And so, you know, the 1832 account didn't just come because one day Joseph's like, oh, I should write that down. I think it came because Joseph Smith realized he needed to write down a history that would separate himself from everyone else in the church.

John Dehlin 1:50:52 So just in like a minute, what do you. Do you remember, number one, do you remember what the argument Partridge or others were making when they were challenging his authority, what that challenge was based on? And if someone wants to read more about Partridge and others challenging Joseph's authority in 1832, where would they go to learn more about that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:15 So they have some of it in, like, the saints book covers it. You know, they actually do cover the fact that there's a lot of infighting at this point. We're going to cover this next week in priesthood restoration more. But I know there's arguments over land deals because at one point Joseph Smith actually says to someone like, oh my gosh, it's in next week's slides. But he actually like makes a reference to two people that were killed over speculating on land or something like that as a way to, you know, almost make like a, a way of saying, you know, bishop Archer better, better watch what he's doing because, you know, he may be killed by God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:45 Like, these two people were. So a lot of it's land I think they wanted to buy. They had found land they wanted to. And then Joseph Smith didn't want him to buy it there. And I think that's. And then the early church bishop was as high as anyone. And so because it was as high as anyone, Partridge was basically running the Missouri branch of the church. And so anytime Joseph Smith didn't like what he was doing, I think Edward Partridge felt like he was on his footing to make those decisions for the Missouri branch of the church. And so it led to this back and forth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:17 And then we'll go into more next week. But like, you know, you've got this, this is not just the only time. And so as he's being challenged, it seems like these stories keep kind of getting grander, I think, because he's looking for ways to make sure he's untouchable, basically, as far as credibility and authority goes.

John Dehlin 1:52:35 Okay. And, and so you're, you're mentioning kind of some of the, some of the dynamics, the political dynamics, you know, real estate, leadership dynamics. Do we know anything about, like, when they actually say. Are they saying things like, well, God never told you to start the church, or all of us are prophets? Like, do. Do we know anything about kind of doctrinally, how it is that they're starting to challenge him? And if you don't know the details, we can cover.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:07 Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's like that. I think it's more just that they're. They, they're upset that, you know, they're not getting what they think they need from Joseph and that Joseph's, you know, challenging some of the decisions that they're making. I don't think it's an issue of, like, scriptural issues. I think it's more like land and living arrangements and all of that kind of stuff. But we'll. I'll. I'll do a little bit more work for next week because we're going to cover it there and I can give a little more background.

John Dehlin 1:53:31 So it's kind of like, Joseph, this is a mess. I don't even know that you know what you're doing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:36 Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 1:53:36 And so Joseph's saying, hey, hey, God, and Jesus gave me this responsibility 12 years ago. So you guys shut up. You know what I mean?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:45 Yeah. I mean, and it's, It's a lot more. It's actually a lot more easy to show with the priesthood, because the priesthood, evolution, Evolution is much more clear that Joseph is very purposefully trying to elevate himself and to make sure people below him stay below him. It just ties into this really well. So, like, next week we'll focus a little more on it. But, yeah, it's. It's definitely an issue where he needs. His authority is being challenged, and this is a way for him to separate himself again. And that's, I think, why they keep getting grander, because you got to get grander to make sure that you can't be questioned.

John Dehlin 1:54:14 Yeah, yeah. When I think about, like, Teal Swan or, you know, L. Ron Hubbard or others, you kind of need this founding story to. To be able to claim some sort of divine mandate because that's, that's where your power comes from. So it makes sense that every time we have people questioning him as the leader, questioning his divine mandate, then he's revisiting the first vision and adding whatever details he needs to add both to bolster his claims and to update whatever the founding story is based on what he thinks and feels and believes at the time. He's updating him. Okay. And so that takes us to the next slide, which is the 1838 conflicts that led to the new history.

John Dehlin 1:55:03 And this is just so convenient. Why is it we have an 1838 account? Well, based on what we just said, we would be able to find challenges to his authority in 1838, which is exactly what we find.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:16 And so when the 1838 account was written, Joseph Smith was coming off really one of the biggest strains of leadership he had in the church, which was in November 1837, Joseph Smith's Kirtland Safety Society anti Bank had failed, which cost a lot of early members all their money. A lot of those members were told, at least they reportedly were told by Joseph, that, you know, God had revealed this would be the biggest bank, you know, in the world and all that. And then it just fell apart and they lost everything. And so the next month, the church is going to excommunicate 28 early members, including Martin Harris.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:47 In January of 1838, Smith and Sidney Rigdon fled Kirtland. And then just a few months later, In April of 1838, Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated after taking issue with Joseph Smith's extramarital relationship with Fanny Alger. And so you've got all these things happening. And then in the 1832, 1838 account was included as part of a new history of the Church that started just 15 days after they got rid of Oliver Cowdery. So they got rid of the three witnesses. And then 15 days after Cowdery's gone, he's writing a new history, which is very convenient because he's able to re establish his authority after the people that were there in the early days were around him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:26 So that's. We talked about it in an earlier episode with like the Charles Anthon visit. He's writing the Charles Anthon story when Martin Harris is already kicked out of the Church. So he can frame it in the way that bolsters the Book of Mormon and his own prophetic mantle, because Martin Harris can't question it. And now he can rewrite all of these early things like, such as the priesthood restoration and the first vision without Oliver Cowdery being like, you never said that, you know, and it's really being done in a more detailed and careful way than say, the 1832. And these are important. And we'll cover this again next week because these are areas where we could see where Joseph Smith is now re establishing his authority after kind of clearing house or having, you know, a lot of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:57:06 And in doing so, it creates a Vehicle not just for his changing theology, but a vehicle to separate himself from everyone else in the church and really anyone else in the religious world as being the one true prophet of God.

John Dehlin 1:57:21 Yeah, and I, I remember Grant Palmer first talking about this because not only, you know, is, is it the time that Joseph Smith, you know, chooses to write an updated version of his first vision story. There's also, this is when there's a lot of confusion, and maybe you just said this or maybe you didn't, but it's a lot of this confusion, not only about the bank, but like several of the first witnesses start getting questioned about. Wait a minute, did you really see the golden plates? Did you see them with your actual physical eyes, or did you see them in a dream state or metaphorically or spiritually?

John Dehlin 1:58:05 And that's when, as I understand it, at least Martin Harris, if not others of the first of the three witnesses say, well, it wasn't a physical thing. It was more of my second sight or my spiritual eyes. And that's when the Book of Mormon three witnesses stories start to unravel or have cracks in them. Again, it's during these times when things are going bad, Joseph's prophecies aren't coming true and people are starting to question the, the divine origins because that's the foundation upon which all of this is built. If Joseph Smith really did see God, if an angel did deliver golden plates and the Book of Mormon was from God and there was an ancient Native American civilization, then all these problems can be worked out. But if all this stuff was made up from beginning as fraud, as deception, that would explain why everything keeps falling apart, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:02 Yeah, I mean, that's just it. It's like for me, the fact that he has to keep going back and making these changes to the history tells you it didn't happen as we're told it happened today. And we've gone over the tight versus loose a number of times now. But the reality is, if the Book of Mormon is translated by the gift and power of God through revelation, either through the stone or through pure revelation of Joseph, why do we have all of these theological changes that are going to happen in the years after? This is supposed to be the fullness of the Gospel, and yet we see all these changes in the years after.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:30 And you know, it's just one of those things where it, it did lead people to question the bank did. I think it was Martin Harris who said he saw him with the spiritual eyes, the plates. I mean, you have all of these different events that are happening and it leads to people starting to talk. And this is before even really polygamy gets out. So, I mean, there's just a lot of stuff he's trying to deal with. And then you clear house, you get rid of your witnesses, you get rid of a lot of the early members who are causing trouble. And now you can rewrite history because, you know, there's that phrase, history is written by the victors.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:00:00 Well, Joseph Smith kicks everyone out. There's no one to question him. He's allowed now to basically rewrite his history. The problem is we have a lot of documentation from earlier that we can now look at today. But the early members probably didn't have access to all of that. It's not like the early members could go to a room where all these journals and were kept and go, oh, wow, look at all these contradictions. And so it probably was very effective then, but now we can look at it and go, you know, our ancestors didn't have the information we did. And I'm pretty sure our ancestors would want us to make the decision based on evidence as opposed to, based on their lack of being able to see it all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:00:32 And so, yeah, it's a mess. And next week, again, I keep saying it, but it gets even messier, I think, with the priesthood, because these same problems go into that. And then once you see how he's doing it with multiple foundational events, it's like, well, at this point there's cracks in everything, everything doesn't line up. And then it's like, what is left? You know, And I think that's why this is such a big issue for so many people.

John Dehlin 2:00:54 Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a real problem. But it's also cool to, to actually understand, you know, for, because for so long when, when I was trying to make sense of all this, it's like there's so many, so many issues and each one has this incredibly complex apologetic explanation that takes so, so much back bending and massaging and nuancing to make it all make sense. Or there's one explanation that literally makes everything make sense and everything fits into a super understandable, tight, easy to understand and compelling narrative. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01:35 Yeah. And that's why, you know, I, I said satisfying. I, I just like, I don't want people to think, I mean that, like, I'm giddy about it. I just mean it's satisfying because once you see it, you're like, this all lines up and it lines up in a way that you don't have to do any, you Know, I know the phrase mental gymnastics is a cliche, but you don't have to do any special pleading to make it work. You just go, I followed all of the accounts, I followed all the evidence, I followed all the surrounding stuff, and everything tells us this is how he changed the story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01:59 This is why he changed his story. And it's kind of cool because at that point, you feel like you've solved a mystery that's been bothering you for a long time if you're having questions about the church. And so for me, doing this overview really felt like that because I was like, oh, I didn't realize this all worked together so well. And, and then it does. And it does help to, to feel like you're on the right path as far as understanding kind of the history here.

Has the Church Misled Members About the First Vision

John Dehlin 2:02:23 All right, so this takes us to kind of a really important question that I alluded to at the beginning. You know, has the church. Has the LDS Church misled its members about the first vision accounts?

Guest 2:02:36 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:02:36 And so, you know, another paragraph from the essay, basically it says, Joseph Smith published two accounts of the first vision during his lifetime. The first of these, known today as Joseph Smith History, was canonized in the Pearl of Great Price and thus became the best known account. The two unpublished accounts recorded in Joseph Smith's earliest autobiography and a later journal were generally forgotten until historians working for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints rediscovered and published them in the 1960s. Since that time, these documents have been discussed repeatedly in church magazines, in works printed by church owned in church affiliated presses, and by Latter Day Saint scholars and other venues. So we read that earlier, but we wanted to go back to it because this is a really important thing about the 1832 account.

John Dehlin 2:03:18 And so what is the answer, according to this slide, about the question about the church misleading people?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:27 Well, the next slide really goes into the 1832 issue that we kind of alluded to.

John Dehlin 2:03:31 What's the last slide? What's the, what's this slide basically saying?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:35 Well, this slide's basically saying that, you know, they forgot about the account. You know, they make it sound like an innocent thing. And then as soon as they found it, they started publishing it, basically. And they talk about it repeatedly as if it's basically saying that the, you know, I would take that to mean the majority of teachings about the first vision would include the fact that there were these other ones. And that's just not that the church has been.

John Dehlin 2:03:56 The church has been open and honest and transparent all for the past five decades that when it knew something it shared it openly and released it. That's what this seems to be suggesting.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:10 Yeah, that's what they're trying to say.

John Dehlin 2:04:11 The actual truth is much more problematic. Which is the next slide about that 1832 First Vision account.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:18 And this is actually from the essay on Mormon Stories website on their truth claims. And it says, In 1921, Joseph Fielding Smith was called as church historian and discovered letter book one. Sometime between 1921 and 1935, Joseph Fielding Smith removed three pages from letterbook one that contained Joseph Smith's 1832 account of his vision. By this point, a restricted section already existed in the Church's archives, prohibiting anyone from entering without special permission. However, Joseph Fielding Smith kept the pages within his private safe, the contents of which eventually became part of the First Presidency vault. And so, you know, how do you call in the essay the account forgotten when it was intentionally removed in 1921 by Joseph Smith or Joseph Fielding Smith? You can't.

John Dehlin 2:05:02 And I just want to put a really fine point on this. I'm just going to restate in John Speak what happened. Joseph Fielding Smith, church historian and apostle for the Church, comes across the 1832 account, realizes that it's problematic, and he rips it, literally tears it out of the journal and hides it for decades. And it wasn't until Sandra Tanner and other sleuthers within Mormon studies recognized that there's been a page ripped out and start speaking about it publicly and, and calling the church to account for it that it mysteriously, mysteriously reappears in, in this journal, re taped back in, which shows a intentional conscious cover up by a prophet, a person ordained as a prophet, seer and revelator who was the top insider. Am I overstating that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:06:04 No, that's exactly, I mean, that's exactly it. He knew it was problematic. He tore it out. And it wasn't until it leaked out publicly that they had to then face, basically reattach it and then give it to somebody sympathetic to them to publish it so that they could get ahead of the story, basically.

John Dehlin 2:06:20 And where in the world has the Church acknowledged and admitted this publicly?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:06:25 Where, where to say it was forgotten is just at this point, it's silly. And it's another thing where they're, they're sent these are essays to members to try to keep them from looking further. But it's just, it's really misleading. And, and at this point, I mean, a quick Google search could show any member. You can look at the jo. I mean, I should have included a picture here, but if you Go to the Joseph Smith's paper project. You can see the tape on the page. I mean, it's not. It was deliberately cut out and reattached. There's no. There's no argument about that anymore. That's what happened.

John Dehlin 2:06:51 But the Church is hiding it, and they're not being honest about that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:06:54 Yeah, they hid it until they couldn't hide anymore.

John Dehlin 2:06:56 And no, but even now, they haven't openly acknowledged and admitted it. I mean, this should be something where they go. If they're being honest, they should go to General Conference and say, hey, members of the Church for decades, we told you one version of the First Vision. We had knowledge that a conflicting, problematic version of the first vision, earlier version of the First Vision account existed, and we ripped it out and hid it for decades, knowingly withholding the information from you, and we're sorry, and we did this. That's never happened. It's 2022. That still has never happened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07:31 That's never gonna happen either.

John Dehlin 2:07:32 Yet we have to confess the smallest sin or transgression to our bishops or stake presidents or mission presidents with very severe consequences. But the Church never openly acknowledges and apologizes for and makes restitution for its misleadings or deceptions. It just never does.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07:52 Well, yeah, and the one thing I'll add to that is just if you look up their manual, they have a page on honesty, and in it it says, only telling partial truths or not. The whole truth is also being dishonest. I mean, there's. They tell members if you leave out any information, intentionally being dishonest. And here they're doing exactly that. And that's why these essays are so problematic. Once you dig into the footnotes, into the background, their arguments are just. They're misleading.

John Dehlin 2:08:16 Where's the essay on Joseph Fielding Smith ripping out a First Vision account and hiding it from members? Where's that essay?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:08:24 I don't think you're gonna see that. I mean, that's the thing. Because you don't want to point anyone to it. And it's just. It's, you know, so they only do what they have to, and then they do the bare minimum, at least as far as, like, these essays go, to try to reframe it in a way to make it sound less threatening.

Credit to Critics and Broader Implications

John Dehlin 2:08:37 So, okay, this takes us to, you know, we've referenced this, but basically giving the Tanners credit for, you know, who the church, by the way, has demonized for decades. Right. Yeah, It's. It's. It's only because of the Tanners and their sources. Where we even know about this information?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:08:55 Yeah. And so, yeah, basically, just go over quickly. There was a president of the first quorum of the 70s. He requested access to the journal, which was denied. And he went over his head and obtained clearance and got access to it. And basically what happened was he was doing an interview with Lamar Peterson, and he had mentioned there was a strange account of the first vision, but that, you know, need to remain confidential. And this leaked out to the Tanners and then began writing about it. And once they started writing about it, people realized that they asked to see it. And so Joseph Fielding Smith then taped the pages back into the journal and then gave it to BYU student Paul Cheeseman, who wrote about it in his master's thesis.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:30 So that way, they released it on their own terms and didn't allow, like, the Tanners to release it before they could get out ahead of it. And so this is a very, you know, common tactic that's done by, you know, honestly, any corporation to. Once they're caught in scandal, they want to make sure they get out ahead of it. And so this is their way of trying to kind of say that, you know, pretend like they never hid it from anyone by having it published at BYU so they could say, see, we never were hiding it, when in reality, they would only do it after they were being exposed publicly for it being out there.

John Dehlin 2:10:00 Yeah. So thank you. That's just another reason that we should. Instead of demonizing the Tanners and their sources, we should be thanking them for helping the church become honest. And again, when the church claims we've been honest all along, we've been as honest as. As we know how to be. We've been as transparent as we know how to be. Not only is that not true, but number two, we have to acknowledge they were forced to be honest. And number three, they were forced to be honest by people they demonized for decades, like they've done with Jeremy Runnels, like they've done with me, like they've done with the September six, like they've done with Brent Metcalfe, like they did with Michael Quinn, like they did with so many other truth tellers getting demonized for forcing the church to be honest.

John Dehlin 2:10:47 So the church doesn't get credit, much credit for becoming open and honest in 2014, 2015, 2022, because they were literally forced by people. Forced to be honest by people they demonized. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:02 At that point, they're just responding. So, yeah, I mean, it's. It's.

John Dehlin 2:11:05 Yeah, it's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:05 It's problematic. And Then this is kind of, you know, they say they mentioned in the essay they're discussed repeatedly. And, you know, I would just ask anybody watching this to look at church artwork and manuals from their childhood, you know, even really up to the last few years, and see how many of them mentioned that Joseph Smith originally wrote a vision in 1832 that only saw one being, because you're just not going to see it. And so when they say they're discussed repeatedly, they'll say something like, you know, joseph Smith. We have four different accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision that all give more details and give a fuller picture of what happened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:36 They won't say that Joseph Smith claimed to only see one personage in 1832 and then change it. And so I just. I feel like they're using that as a way to kind of deflect from what critics are actually saying. So it's kind of like trying to. I mean, it's not really a strawman because they're not reframing it, but they're basically just trying to say like, hey, we've been talking about the whole time. But it's kind of like the Book of Mormon translation where it's like they'll say, oh, we've talked about Joseph Smith translating with, you know, the stone in the hat. But then it's like, take 100 random artwork or manual entries from, you know, up until 2016 or whatever, and I guarantee you almost every one of them is only going to give the correlated material and not going to mention the other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:12:16 But they have these other small mentions that they can point to and say, see, we've been transparent all along. And it's, it's just misleading because what they're telling members is very different than what they're publishing. And they're. They're little, tiny, you know, BYU studies or dialogue where they know most members are not ever going to read it. And so this is just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:12:33 It just. I really hate this argument because they know that repeatedly does not in any way mean that they've been open and transparent throughout their teaching Sunday school lessons manuals up until they were forced to. And even now, they still kind of sugarcoat it by just saying, oh, if you read the 1832 one differently, it actually makes sense where it just doesn't. So it just. This is. This is where I get frustrated, because I think you mentioned earlier, it's like they know better and yet they're going to put this out there because this is a way to tell members, you know, don't you don't have anything to worry about.

John Dehlin 2:13:04 Yeah. Okay. All right, so this takes us to a final ish slide. Is this the final slide? Oh, there's two more, but. Okay, so what's the conclusion? If we had to summarize, what's the conclusion on the first vision accounts?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:13:23 I mean, to me is, you know, going back to Gordon Hinckley's original video, if the first vision did not occur as he claimed, in this entire world as a fraud. And I think we can show without any question that the first vision did not occur as Joseph Smith claimed. Now, that's not to say Joseph didn't have some sort of born again experience like the dozens of other people who published at his time did, but it certainly is to say that this story is a late addition that is changed and back, you know, retrofitted into the history. And so, you know, just the questions we asked earlier.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:13:52 If Joseph Smith truly saw God and Jesus in 1820, why would his own mother join another religion in 1823? And then why would he strengthen that modalist viewpoint in the King James Bible and, you know, and put it in the Book of Mormon originally? It's just Joseph Smith did not have a first vision, as is stated by the church. Because we can show, even though we obviously can't be there, we couldn't, you know, we can't be there next time in 1820, we can show how the story was created and how it changed. And so there's no way that it happened as the correlated material states, given the fact that he made so many changes and really taught a completely different picture until he made that change.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:14:30 And so I think the overall picture tells us that this is a slow and steady evolution into what we have today. But, you know, if you're going to have Gordon V. Hinckley use his statement, then this entire work is a fraud because it did not occur as Joseph Smith claimed it could not have.

John Dehlin 2:14:47 Absolutely. Okay, so let's. So what's the final slide? Common threads in Joseph. This is kind of trying to integrate all the other episodes we've done so far with the information of the first vision, with also, I'm sure, themes that we're going to see appearing in future episodes as well, because we've got a few dozen to go, right?

Takeaways and Preview of Next Episode

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:15:08 Yeah. And this is just. Almost just, you know, kind of a tease for next week. But it's just to say to take these issues in totality and not in isolation, and when you take them in totality, you can see these common threads and these Common threads of retrofitting into their history is going to be something we're going to see a lot now that we're kind of transitioning to the historical episodes. And because of that, I hope that people who are listening or watching will start to look at the fingerprints that are left behind, because next week, when we go into the priesthood restoration, we're going to see all of these same themes happen again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:15:39 And it's really hard when you see the same tactics being used in these stories to then somehow say that there's an innocent reason for the changes or that, you know, you could take them in isolation because these two things are going to be so similar to each other with such similar problems that it's hard to be left with any outcome, except for the fact that Joseph Smith did it to bolster his own authority. And I apologize for my dogs getting angry at the end here.

John Dehlin 2:16:05 No, they. They're just passionate about these issues, and they want the truth to be known. They don't want people to be deceived or misled. So I think they're just kind of saying, hey, us too, you know?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:16:17 Yeah, that's pretty much it for that. So next week, I think, will be. I think next week will be even better than this one. I think this one's really important to highlighting how you can show the story was created. But I think next week it's even better because it shows how he was willing to do it to bolster his authority more clearly.

John Dehlin 2:16:31 All right, well, Mike, thank you so much for covering the First Vision. And everyone can check out the show notes if they want to read the essay to this First Vision account. And please make sure to remember that you can get this entire series on anchor on Spotify, on YouTube, and we've got a couple dozen more to go. So if this is the first one you see, check out our back category. That lays a lot of the great groundwork. And make sure and tune into our Future catalog. Not category. Check out our back catalog catalog and our future catalog, because we've got 40 or 50 of these episodes by the time we're all done. Right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:17:13 Yeah, we still got a while, so hopefully it doesn't start to bore you guys by the end. But I really think that now that we're getting into the history, it's going to get a lot more exciting, I think a lot. A little bit less of the. The dryness of all the biblical scholarship ones. I think it'll be a lot more kind of exciting and a lot more fun, especially because it's stuff that people, I think, will be a little more familiar with. So, yeah, I think it'll be it'll be good going forward now.

John Dehlin 2:17:32 And our next one's priesthood restoration, which is going to be super crucial.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:17:35 I think that one's gonna be a big one, so I think that'll be good.

John Dehlin 2:17:38 Thanks so much, Mike, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for your support. Thanks to everyone who makes this stuff happen, especially thanks to Mike and his incredible work@ LDS discussions.com we hope you've enjoyed it. Give us your feedback@mormonstoriesgmail.com or comment either on YouTube or on Facebook or wherever you consume these episodes on the blog itself. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories and on another episode of LDS Discussions). Thanks, everybody.

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