The First Vision Happened in 1825?! – LDS Discussions

Introduction and Episode Overview

Kolby Reddish 0:17 Hello there and thank you for joining today's episode of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. I'm one of your three hosts for today, Kolby Redish. And today we will be examining Dating around the First Vision. Many people know that one of Joseph Smith's first stories that connects with investigators who are learning about the church that missionaries go out and teach all of the time is about this first vision where Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ. Depending on which story version of the story we're looking at today, we're going to be looking at dating that story using other contemporary historical sources.

Kolby Reddish 0:52 A few reminders about the LDS Discussion Series the LDS Discussion Series is an effort to examine Mormon Church truth claims based on the best available evidence and to approach them objectively and as fairly as we can. This series was created by Mike, building on the work of his website ldsdiscussions.com who has since retired from this project. But we are happy to keep this project going and incredibly grateful for the work that he did to build the foundations for this series. This series is best consumed sequentially. It builds upon itself and you can find the full series on the LDS discussions playlist on YouTube or or on Spotify and Apple podcasts as its own standalone podcast.

Kolby Reddish 1:33 John with Mormon Stories believes that LDS Discussions is some of the most important work that the Open Stories foundation has ever done, and we're thankful to everyone who supports it and allows us to keep producing episodes like this. With that, I'm going to bring in our other co hosts for today, Julia Sanders and Nemo the Mormon. Good morning both of you. How are you?

Nemo 1:54 Good, I'm very well.

Kolby Reddish 1:58 How well did I summarize what we're going to be looking at today? Julia?

Julia 2:01 Yeah, I feel like it's a very simple concept just moving the first vision, but why?

Nemo 2:08 The key is I think that Joseph Smith claimed it happened in 1820 and then he claims a series of events following it that then lead to the publishing of the Book of Mormon, lead to the establishing of the church that then lead to the what's called the restoration of the Gospel. The restoration of the Church has a timeline narrative. And so we're investigating whether the thing that kick started all of that when he was 14 years old actually happened when he was 14 years old or not.

Kolby Reddish 2:36 Right. And by Joseph Smith claimed, I think it's accurate to say Joseph Smith claimed It happened in 1820, in 1838. So famously, there are various different accounts of directly from Joseph Smith and the secondhand accounts of the first vision. I don't think we're really going to delve into all of that. There are previous episodes in the LDS discussion series that dig into that. Instead, we're going to be looking at when is the most accurate time we could say, based on other sources, that this event likely happened because Joseph Smith describes a big lead up to his first vision that allows us to analyze it using whether those contemporary events would have happened before or in 1820.

Julia 3:16 Yeah, I really like that you're pointing that out because he, Joseph Smith didn't record the first vision until 1832 and then he recorded in 35 and 38 and 42, I think. So Joseph wrote it, Joseph recorded it four times and then there's several secondhand accounts. But yeah, so Joseph didn't claim. So Joseph didn't claim in 1820 that he'd seen God. He, that he'd seen, had the first vision because he. There's different characters. So in 1832 is when he first claimed it. So and this maybe can be, this could maybe be a different episode. But there is no evidence of Joseph Smith telling anyone about his first vision until 32. It's just void. It's not in any anti Mormon literature, it's not in his family's letters or journals. It's not, it's nowhere in the history of the church.

Kolby Reddish 3:56 Right.

Julia 3:57 So, yeah, so, so with, at the. To start this off, we are going to kind of set up the first vision, kind of tell, retell some of the story with these first few slides and then we're going to go into why the timeline is incorrect. So Kolby, will you read this one from the church's website?

The Official First Vision Story Explained

Kolby Reddish 4:14 I sure will. In the spring of 1820, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith as he prayed in the grove of trees near his home in western New York. This event is known as the first vision.

Julia 4:26 Yeah. So 1820, I mean, there's just to

Nemo 4:30 be really clear with people, the phrase in the spring of 1820. Mormons often will affect a certain tone of voice when they start to say those words. Those words are deeply spiritual. Those words are words that are often used to try and invoke spiritual feelings in others when you're testifying of these events. This is something that's discussed in missionary discussions when people are attempting to convert others to the church. This is when you give testimony to a friend, to a neighbour, to a family member. Those. That sentence in the spring of 1820 is really quite core to what it is to be a member of the church. I don't think that could really Be overstated.

Kolby Reddish 5:08 Yeah, right. To maybe underscore that point, Nemo, like Mormonism, has hymns unique to Mormonism about this whole event. Joseph Smith's first prayer. I can already hear the music swelling as you were talking about the emotion going on when people talk about the story. It's also something that is, as I said in the introduction, the first vision account is something that's incorporated into the missionary discussion. So if someone is meeting with Mormon missionaries, this is something that is often made kind of the climax of that first lesson is you basically build this pattern of talking about how God has always called prophets. Why don't we have prophets today? And, oh, what do you know? We have this story about a prophet who is called today, and it dates back to at least the origin story. Again with the caveat that all of this origin story is created after the fact begins with this first vision account.

Julia 6:07 Yeah, yeah, Brilliant. So, Nima, will you talk about this 1835 account?

Guest 6:12 Sure.

Nemo 6:13 So while the 1832 account is void of any mention of James 1:5, it is present in the 1835 account. I retired to the silent grove and bowed down before the Lord under a realizing sense that he had said, if the Bible be true, ask and you shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened. Seek and you shall find. And again, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not. Information was what I most desired at this time. And with a fixed determination to obtain it, I called upon the Lord for the first time in the place above stated. Or in other words, I made a fruitless attempt to pray.

Julia 6:52 And then he launches into the story.

Nemo 6:54 But, yeah, James 1:5 again, is another one of those very seminal Mormon things. It's a scripture that most Mormons will know by heart, if not be incredibly aware of the reference and the content of. And it's one of. We'll say it later, but it's one of the most consistent things that he is talked about amongst the first vision accounts. The idea that James 1:5 was the scripture that caused Joseph Smith to go and seek information from God and then receive a heavenly visitation.

Julia 7:22 Right. And this is an important part that we're going to talk about throughout this episode.

Kolby Reddish 7:27 And so the big thing, the big thing we want people to recognize in this slide, because we, as we talked about kind of leading into our introduction today, there are multiple different accounts of the first vision directly attributed to Joseph Smith. Then there are other accounts that are secondhand also traceable back to Joseph Smith. We're not going to reiterate every single deviation from one account to the next, but I think it's important to take away from this slide that this scripture that Nemo's just correctly talked about, how it's so foundational to this story and in the 1835 and then the 1838, which is really the version of the story that most people know, that's the version that's in the Pearl of great price and that missionaries share with people, that story or that scripture doesn't feature in the story in the earliest handwritten by Joseph smith account in 1832.

Julia 8:18 Right.

Kolby Reddish 8:19 Yeah.

Julia 8:20 Another thing that I wanted that I was noticing, we've done episodes on Joseph Smith's ability to write well worded letters and then he was able to remember passages of the Scriptures. It doesn't seem like in this one that he's got the scriptures open. I'm wondering if he's just pulling us from memory. Just because I recognize that some of the words are different. I don't know, because it isn't if any of you lack wisdom, but it's he's saying if any man. So I just thought that was interesting.

Nemo 8:42 Yeah, this is him paraphrasing rather than quoting for sure.

Julia 8:44 Right. Okay. So then this is the 18th. This is about the 1838 first vision account. So according to that, the 1838 one, we understand that at the time of his first vision, there were revivals among the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians. And this is a quote from that first vision. 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. It commenced with the Methodist, but soon became general among all the sects in the region of country. Indeed, the whole district of country seemed to seemed affected by it. And great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no small stir and division among the people.

Julia 9:23 Some crying low here and some low there. Some were contending for the Methodist, some were contending for the Methodist faith, some for the Presbyterian and some for the Baptist. And then he goes further into detail. But what I want you to pull from this one is that all three of these religions were having revivals during this time of his first vision.

Nemo 9:41 Yeah, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, all having a revival sometime in the second year after Joseph Smith's removal to Manchester. And that will become important later also.

Julia 9:52 Right? Yeah. Okay. So this is just another piece of the. To set up the story for the first vision. President Ballard is president. Was he President, I can't remember, but he's going to talk about some of the Smiths joining the Presbyterian Church be restored.

Guest 10:10 By 1820, the world was ready for the restitution of all things spoken of by Peter and all God's holy prophets since the world began. At this time, religious excitement was sweeping across the countryside. In upstate New York, ministers from different denominations vied zealously for the loyalty and for the faithful. In villages and towns including Palmyra, the home of the family of Joseph Smith Sr. And Lucy Mack Smith. The Smith family followed this religious excitement and members of the family were proselyted to various faiths. Mother Smith and three of the children, Hyrum, Samuel and Sophrina joined one church while Father Smith and his eldest son Alvin affiliated with another.

Guest 11:07 When 14 year old Joseph Jr. Considered which church to join, he investigated each denomination carefully, listening to the respective ministers and trying to sort out the truth. He knew there was one faith, one Lord, one faith and one baptism.

Guest 11:29 But which was the one he did not know. In the midst of this war of tumult and opinions, Joseph Smith Jr. Wrote, I often said to myself, what is to be done? Who of all these parties are right or are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it and how shall I know it?

Nemo 11:56 The great, great grandson of Hyrum Smith speaking to us there just to make that fact known.

Julia 12:05 Yeah, so he's saying that in part of the story is that in 1824 of the Smiths joined the Presbyterian Church. And then another part of the story, and we'll talk about this too. But Joseph Smith, after he sees he, after he has his heavenly vision, he goes home and he's leaning up against the fireplace and his mom's like, are you okay? And he says, yeah, I'm fine. I can't remember exactly the wording. He says, I'm fine, but I've just learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true. So that's, that's another part of this story. Okay, so to.

Smith Family Presbyterian Church Membership

Nemo 12:31 There also seems to be some confusion as to which of the Smith members of Smith family joined the Presbyterian Church. Which sister particularly? Is it Catherine? Is it Safrina?

Julia 12:39 Right.

Nemo 12:41 There are different accounts on that.

Julia 12:43 Right. Okay. So I am going to set this whole episode. I'm going to set up this timeline. So you have 1820 here. Joseph Smith saw God the Father, Jesus Christ. So I should have said Joseph Smith claimed. How do we decide to word that, Nima?

Questioning the 1820 Date of the First Vision

Nemo 12:59 Well, this is the traditional timeline is that Joseph smith says in 1820 he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. That's the narrative the church teaches today, right?

Julia 13:07 Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to read this one. It would be nearly impossible to prove that a person has or has not seen God and Jesus in a heavenly vision. While I have my own opinions on the matter, my aim in presenting this research is simply to show that in 1820, vision we Joseph Smith was not possible. If a first vision occurred at all, it would have been sometime in 1825, five years later than his proposed date, placing Joseph at the age of 19.

Julia 13:33 There are. There are several aspects of the historical record that we must take into account when trying to date Joseph Smith's first vision. We must take into account the following. So first we have the death of Alvin. That four of the Smiths joined the Presbyterian Church, the Palmyra Revivalists themselves, the involvement of Reverend Stockton and the involvement of Reverend Lane. And those come from the testimonies of William Smith and Oliver Cowdery.

Kolby Reddish 13:56 I love this framing, Julia. It feels very much like we're investigating a whodunit. We're watching a whodunit type movie here. So these are the five different things that we need to put into place to make sure that according to Joseph Smith's own account, all of these events have happened to make the dating work.

Julia 14:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first thing that we're going to talk about, and so many of these are intertwined with each other, so it's hard to like parse them out. So I. So we're going to be talking about all of them in all of them, if that makes any sense. But the first one is the death of Alvin Kolby. Will you talk about this slide?

Alvin Smith's Death and the Revival Timeline

Kolby Reddish 14:31 Sure. So Alvin Smith was born on February 11, 1798 and passed away on November 19, 1823. William Smith, Joseph and Alvin's brother, gives the name of Reverend Benjamin Stockton as the pastor who spoke at Alvin's funeral. Reverend Stockton was a Presbyterian minister. William States Hyam, Samuel, Catherine and mother were members of the Presbyterian Church. My father would not join them. He did not like it because Reverend Stockton had preached my brother's funeral sermon and intimated very strongly that he had gone to hell. For Alvin was not a church member, but he was a good boy. And my father did not like it. And he later says they were hesitant to join because of Stockton's harsh opinion.

Julia 15:15 Yeah. So Alvin dies in 23, at the very end of 23. And then this Reverend Stockton says, sorry, your son's gone to hell. So I can't remember it. Ballard. He said that two of the Smiths, he said Father Smith joined a church. Did he say. I can't remember, was it Hyrum?

Nemo 15:29 So he said Mother Smith, Hyrum, Samuel and Safrona, I think is what he said.

Julia 15:34 Oh, yeah. But he said Father Smith and another son joined a different church. I can't remember which one. Like, I wasn't sure if it was Alvin, but I just can't remember. Okay, so that's the main thing on that. And then while Alvin's death does not change the date of the first vision, it may help explain the religious questions Joseph was confronting immediately before the revivals. In his 1832 account of the first vision, Joseph Smith says, at about the age of 12 years, my mind became seriously impressed with regard to all the important concerns for the welfare of my immortal soul which led me to searching the Scriptures. Joseph, of course, could have been concerned with the welfare of his soul because Alvin had died. He could have also just been concerned at the age of 12. So, like, it's not a definite moving, but I feel like that's a pretty good reason.

Nemo 16:19 And Alvin's death does impact the date of the first vision for other reasons. It doesn't directly, but for other reasons it will change or it should change the date if what Joseph Smith says about the vision is to be relied upon.

Julia 16:35 Yeah. Okay, so then I'm adding Alvin Smith's death on the timeline to murder.

Nemo 16:41 November 19, 1823.

Julia 16:43 Yes.

Nemo 16:44 Okay.

Julia 16:45 Okay. So again, they're all intertwined because we're just about to talk about the Smiths joining the Presbyterian Church. Nima, will you read this one?

Nemo 16:51 Yeah. Joseph Smith's 1838 account of the first vision speaks of the conversion of some of his family members to the Presbyterian Church. I was at this time in my 15th year. My father's family was proselyted to the Presbyterian faith, and four of them joined that church, namely my mother, Lucy, my brothers Hyrum, Samuel Harrison and my sister Sophonia. During this time of great excitement, my mind was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness. But though my feelings were deep and often pungent, still I kept myself aloof from all these parties, though I attended their several meetings as occasion would permit. But in process of time, my mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to be united with them.

Nemo 17:35 But so great was the confusion and strife amongst the different denominations that it was impossible for a person as young as I was and so unacquainted with men and things to come to any certain conclusion. Who was right and who was wrong.

Julia 17:48 So this is Joseph's account, and he's saying that four of the. He says at his 15th year. So when he's 14, he's. He's saying that in 1820, four of his family members joined the church. And we know that that's not the case.

Kolby Reddish 18:02 Can I go back to that last slide and just remark? I know we're not going to comment on every single variation or inconsistency in these different accounts, but I just want to point out that last line when it talks about how he's a young person, he's so unacquainted with things, he can't come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong. In the 1832 First Vision account, Joseph Smith makes a point of saying that because of his study of the Scriptures, he had come to the conclusion that there was no true church upon the face of the earth and that a restoration would be necessary. It's just completely different. Like the premises behind those two different accounts are completely different in my mind.

Nemo 18:45 Even within this account, within a couple of pages, he talks about determining that none were right. And then he says, it never entered into my heart that none of them were right. So he's internally contradictory within one account. But yes, it's a good point and

Julia 18:58 entered your heart three years before when you recorded in 1832. So yeah, but yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Okay, so in his own history, Joseph.

Kolby Reddish 19:08 Oh, sure, I'm sorry, can I make one more comment about that, which is I've been doing some interviews and having some more conversations with Ganesh, Cherian, and one of the things that's really interesting about Ganesh and his topical biography of Joseph Smith is that he does a good job of explaining what other things are going. Going on at the same time.

Kolby Reddish 19:29 Not on this particular issue, because one of the things about apologetics and counter apologetics is apologists often rely on people's inability to remember all of these disparate kind of thought threads. And one of the things I think is important to understand about 1838 version of Joseph, like why he's recording this story the way that he is, is in 1837 and 1838, the church is experiencing its greatest level of apostasy. We had multiple members of the Quorum of the Twelve leave the church over the Kirtland banking scandal and just a lack of confidence in Joseph Smith's leadership. And I only bring that up to say that the 1838 account always has to be understood. Through that lens, that it's a response to Joseph's contemporary needs.

Julia 20:16 Yeah. No, that was great. Yeah. Okay. So in his own history, Joseph tries to push his family joining the Presbyterian Church to sometime before his vision in 1820. Yet in her own biography, Lucy Mack Smith places they're joining the church after Alvin's death, which occurred in November of 1823. As we've stated, William Smith also placed four of the family joining the Presbyterian Church after Alvin's death. So Lucy and William are both saying that.

Nemo 20:44 And the reason that you can take that from what William says is because William directly relates the fact that the speech or the sermon given at his brother's funeral was a reason why his father didn't want to join in with other members of the family in joining the Presbyterian Church.

Julia 20:58 Yeah.

Nemo 20:59 He says they can be. It can be directly deduced from that that they joined after Alvin's death in 1823.

Kolby Reddish 21:06 That's a great point.

Julia 21:09 Joseph reported in the 1838 First Vision account that after he experienced the vision, he came home and told his mother that I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true. If Joseph told them in 1820 that Presbyterianism was not true, why would Lucy and some of her children then join it in 1824?

Nemo 21:26 That's a good question.

Julia 21:27 Yeah. Kolby, will you talk about this one?

Kolby Reddish 21:30 Sure will. When Joseph Smith first wrote down his first vision in 1832, he wrote, while in the attitude of calling upon the lord in the 16th year of my age of pillar of light above, the brightness of the sun at noonday came down from above and rested upon me. And I was filled with the spirit of God. And the Lord opened the heavens upon me. And I saw the Lord. And he spake unto me, saying, joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. At the bottom of the page, he writes, I pondered these things in my heart about the time that time, my mother. But after many days on the Joseph Smith Papers website, the church has an interesting footnote for this section.

Julia 22:10 Yeah. So about that time, my mother. These parts have been crossed out. And so there's this footnote on Joseph Smith on the Joseph Smith Papers website that says, this canceled fragment may refer to the Presbyterian affiliation of Joseph Smith's mother and three of his siblings. And then they talk about that. So, but like the church is also trying to say, oh, this is probably about his family joining the church, the Presbyterian Church, but this. This would not have happened until 1824. So I just wanted to point that out because that's part of what we're talking about today?

Nemo 22:42 Yes, even the church is admitting that Joseph is claiming multiple times in multiple accounts that his family joined Presbyterianism around the time of his first vision. And that's not the case.

Julia 22:53 I wonder if Joseph crossed it out because he realized that there was some kind of timeline problem. But that's just my speculation.

Nemo 23:01 Yeah, very possible.

Julia 23:03 So on the timeline we're adding the Smiths joining the church. And of course I don't know when in 1824 they joined, but just sometime in 1824 they joined the church. So okay, so next we're getting into Reverend Lane and Reverend Stockton and this comes from the testimonies of William and Oliver.

Kolby Reddish 23:17 Before we go to them, what would we say to the criticism that, well, you know, Joseph's, Joseph's, Joseph's. Looking back, we already know that because of these accounts are coming later and we know that memory is faulty. I know especially with COVID like the way that the pandemic kind of like changed the way I understand time and especially as I've gotten older, it's harder for me to keep in mind all like the order that things may have happened. The way that it was kind of written in that 1832 account. Like about that time my mother. And it seems like he was going to write, you know, something about their conversion to Presbyterianism. What would you say, I guess to the pushback that maybe this is just Joseph misremembering the detailed order of the way things were happening. But, but that that's just what's to be expected because he's a normal human.

Nemo 24:16 Well, if, if we accept that, then we accept that the first vision didn't happen in 1820 because there is more replete documentary evidence that we're going to get into as to these things needed to happen in 1824. We know for a fact when his brother died, for example, and we know from multiple accounts that they joined after he died. So that dates it later. So okay, Joseph Smith was wrong. It wasn't 1820. Then we have to account for two things and we'll get into one of them later. But the first is we have to account for the spiritual power that is attributed to the phrase in the spring of 1820 that has been uttered thousands, if not millions of times in an effort to convert people to the message of the Mormon Church.

Nemo 24:55 If that is incorrect, we need to reckon with that. That is important. And then second, it would also change the timeline of all the other unfolding events because it takes four years off Joseph Smith and his ability to then Unfold the Gospel and go and have visitations from Moroni and go and look at the plates multiple times over a number of years. It takes away from all that. And we'll get into exactly how that affects that a bit later on.

Kolby Reddish 25:16 Great.

Julia 25:17 Yeah. I think there's a. I don't think that Joseph Smith is being nefarious when he's. Because I. I genuinely think he's misunderstood. Misremembering the 1820 into 1825. I don't think he's being nefarious and being like, ha, like I'm. I'm going to change the date. But changing the date from a 14 year old to a 19 year old is a huge difference. And then keep in mind Joseph Smith's treasure digging around this time of whenever he's 19, 20 years old. And then, and then his visitations with Moroni. I almost said President Moroni with the angel Moroni. Those all change because of the timeline. So, like, the story doesn't really line up, even if he's just honestly mistaken,

Nemo 25:52 because, I mean, there's mistakes like him saying in the 1832 account in his 16th year, rather than the 1838 account in his 15th year. Right. So, yeah, cool. Was he 14, was he 15? That sort of thing. You can kind of. It's easier to swage. But this is a big timeline difference. That's what we're going to get into.

Julia 26:09 Right.

Kolby Reddish 26:09 Great.

Nemo 26:10 Half a decade.

Julia 26:11 Yes. Okay. Yima, will you talk about this one? Sure.

Nemo 26:15 All right. You should make that full screen for me.

Julia 26:16 Oh, yes.

Nemo 26:17 Cool. So this is the testimony of William Smith. William Smith's testimony of the palm bearer revivals and the pastors involved in them is arguably the most important piece of information in dating the first vision. In his own book, published in 1883, William dates the revivals to sometime between 1822 and 1823. We'll get into why he's not quite right about that. He also places Joseph at 17 years old and recounts the vision not of God and Jesus, but of an angel who informs him that none of the churches are correct. Additionally, William Smith gives the names Reverend Stockton and Reverend Lane as being key characters in Joseph Smith's journey to seek for a heavenly vision.

Julia 26:56 And again, I've done a lot of research on the first vision. There is nowhere in any of the family's journals or letters anywhere that talk about the first vision before 1832, but also even so much of the literature afterwards, because William's book was published in 86. I think this book here he Even then doesn't really talk about the first vision. Even the books after, I don't know, it's just void of the first vision.

Kolby Reddish 27:24 Well, the other thing I guess people should understand about the first vision is even though the first vision is like central to Mormonism today, and I'm sure that previous entries in the discussion series that talk about the first vision helped make that point, it wasn't central to Mormonism's claims or central to missionary work until much later. Like after it was canonized in the Pearl of Great price, in what, 1880. Something, I don't remember, couldn't tell you,

Nemo 27:57 but 1880 is around this time of the first Pearl of Gray Price. I believe I've seen one at Benchmark Books. I think our good friend Brian was able to show me an early edition of the Pearl of Gray Price with a big fold out facsimile. It's quite cool.

Julia 28:12 Oh wow.

Kolby Reddish 28:14 It was canonized on October 10, 1880. So it really doesn't start becoming like a core part, a core identity marker, I guess I would say, in what Mormons believe until much later it really wasn't. Even though what you're saying is correct, Julia, that it was not even spoken of until the 1830s. It's not like it was something that was commonly shared with people who wanted to convert to Mormonism. Joseph Smith's claim back in those days was more about the Book of Mormon than it was about the first vision. Right.

Julia 28:48 Well, like he claims in the first vision accounts that he was persecuted for his first vision. And if none of the anti literature, if none of the newspapers, if nobody, if nobody seems to know about it, I mean, of course we can't know everything from what was not published, but like it just feels, it's just completely void of any evidence of Joseph Smith ever being persecuted for this first vision.

Kolby Reddish 29:08 And I think the important part there is the way he talks about it, because he talks about how odd it is that these two ministers or these several ministers were, were so focused on a boy of his age, education level and inexperience. It's true that absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence, but where we would expect evidence, which I think the way that Joseph Smith describes the story, we would expect there to be something, something in a newspaper editorial, something in someone's personal letter, something in someone's journal, and none of that exists.

Julia 29:41 Right? Right. Okay. So yeah, I said the wrong date. So William smith spoke as 83 Kolby, will you read this little snippet from his book?

Kolby Reddish 29:51 Yeah. Can you say that one more time. When was William Smith's book published?

Julia 29:55 It was published in 83.

Kolby Reddish 29:57 83. Okay.

Julia 29:58 So I guess was because you said the Pearl grade price was 80.

Kolby Reddish 30:02 18. 80. Yes.

Julia 30:03 Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Kolby Reddish 30:05 Okay. So he continues and says, during this period I enjoyed in common with other boys of my age and circumstances, but limited opportunities for acquiring an education. Patient and being, like most youths, more fond of play than study, I made but little use of the opportunities I did have. In 1822 and 1823, the people in our neighborhood were very much stirred up with regard to religious matters by the preaching of a Mr. Lane, an elder of the Methodist Church and celebrated throughout the country as a great revival preacher.

Julia 30:34 Yeah. Okay. So this is another interview from William Smith. This was from the Deseret Evening News. And this was published on January 20th of 1894. William Smith's testimony was also published in January. I just said that he says, or the question is being asked to him, what caused Joseph to ask for guidance as to what church he ought to join? Asked Brother B.

Julia 30:56 Why there was a joint revival in the neighborhood between the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. And they had succeeded in stirring up quite a feeling. And after the meeting, the questions arose, which church should have the converts. Reverend Stockton was the president of the meeting and suggested that it was their meeting and under their care and they had a church there and they ought to join the Presbyterians. But as Father did not like Reverend Stockton very well because, of course, he had preached at Alvin's funeral, our folks hesitated. And the next meeting, a Reverend Lane of the Methodist.

Julia 31:31 Of the Methodist preached a sermon on what church shall I join? And the burden of his discourse was to ask God, using a text, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally. And of course, when Joseph went home and was looking over the text, he was impressed to do just what the preacher had said. And going out in the woods with childlike, simple, trusting faith, believing that God meant just what he said, he kneeled down and prayed. And the time having come for the reorganization of his church, God was pleased to show him that he should join none of these churches.

Julia 32:07 But if faithful, he should be chosen to establish the true church. So here William is bringing up this revival time and he is connecting Rev. Stockton and Rev. Lane as being part of those revivals. And then also James 1:5, which was brought to Joseph Smith's mind from Reverend Lane.

Nemo 32:28 And even here, William Smith is getting the dates wrong and trying to place them before the death Of Alvin. He's got it as 1822, 1823. That's like a year or so off. And so what is consistent though between Joseph and between William and between others is the revival and the revival involving the three religious groups and the revival involving these preachers. And so we can look to contemporary records to date when this revival actually took place and see when it could have actually happened. If the fact of the revival being contemporaneous with the first vision is true. Even if William and Joseph are getting

Julia 33:08 the dates wrong, is he dating the revival in this one?

Nemo 33:12 He dates the revival in the one before.

Julia 33:16 In the one before. Okay. Yeah. Because like here. Because he doesn't say why in this one in the Desert Evening News. But my folks hesitated and he. We know that from. From Stockton preaching at Alvin's funeral. But which would. Which if that's the case, would push the. Would push it to 24. But okay, so this is a little snippet that I found in the Wayne Sentinel. And it says while Reverend Stockton had visited Palmyra a week before Alvin's death for a wedding, he was not installed as a pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Palmyra until February 18th of 1824. So he could. While he was there for the wedding, I'm assuming he could have officiated in the funeral. But what were you going to say?

Oliver Cowdery and the Palmyra Revivals

Nemo 33:53 Yeah, I was going to say I think if there's a newspaper the church likes less than the Nauvoo Expositor, it's probably the Wayne Sentinel. Just because a lot of stuff like this seems to come out of it.

Julia 34:03 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 34:05 Do we know what Stockton was doing before he was installed as the pastor? I guess I'm wondering.

Julia 34:10 He was a pastor in Skinatals. I don't know exactly where that is or where in reference Palmyra, but Skinatals. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 34:17 Sounds made up. Julia. I'm just kidding.

Nemo 34:20 Sounds like a British place name, to be fair.

Julia 34:23 Also, this is not anything to do with this episode today, but one thing that I'm thinking of is Joseph was supposed to bring somebody with him to go and get the plates. And the angel had told him that it was Alvin. And so there was this rumor going around that they had to. That they were going to exhume Alvin and bring a part of him with them. I'm pretty sure I'm getting this correctly. And so Joseph Smith Sr. Was so worried that people were going to exhume his son's body that for several weeks, I think it was probably five weeks, he posted the same kind of warning in the newspaper, but that's not what this episode's about. But. But I just thought that was really interesting about Alvin's death and the. The gold plates, But.

Nemo 35:01 So Palmyra Tuscanatls is a day's walk, and it's about 48 miles or so.

Julia 35:08 48, okay.

Nemo 35:10 It's at Sknatals, is at the top of, like, these series of lakes that look like sort of direct lines down, like fingers, almost. Wouldn't be surprised if they're actually called the Finger Lakes, but who knows?

Kolby Reddish 35:23 Anyway, yeah, I think they are.

Nemo 35:26 Yeah.

Julia 35:28 Kolby, will you talk about the testimony of Oliver Cowdery?

Kolby Reddish 35:31 I sure will. In addition to William Smith, Oliver Cowdery gave dates for the revivals that occurred in Palmyra. Cowdery places the date of the revival in 1823, but makes. But makes no reference to any vision occurring in 1820. In fact, he stated that Smith was wondering in 1823 if a Supreme being did exist, which would make absolutely no sense if you've seen God himself in 1820, I would say. Oh, you phrased it slightly softer, which seems strange if Smith had already had a vision three years prior in 1820. In his version, Oliver Cowdery also gives the name of Reverend Lane of the Methodist sect and claims, just as William and Joseph did, that the revival was spurred by this sect.

Julia 36:13 It's also interesting that. So Oliver Cowdery is noting this. In February of 1835, Joseph records the first. First vision. 1832. And I don't remember what year, what month he recorded the second one, but it's just interesting that he. Oliver doesn't even seem to know about the first vision when he's giving this. And the messenger and advocate.

Kolby Reddish 36:33 Right.

Julia 36:34 So just a thing to note. But yeah, so he's also. And I'm also thinking, because, like, Oliver obviously wasn't there. He's not part of the family. He could have been hearing this from Joseph or William about this Reverend Lane, but it seems most likely that he would have heard it from Joseph himself. But of course, I don't know that.

Kolby Reddish 36:54 Every once in a while we. When we're doing these episodes, I'll be looking at some things, just looking at where the name Skinatals comes from. It comes from the local first nations people, the Onondaga. That's a very interesting.

Julia 37:10 Where have we heard that name before?

Kolby Reddish 37:13 Yeah, just sometimes you. We would have to dig into that a little bit more for me to feel confident in saying that. But, wow, what an interesting find is. I'm just sitting there looking. I didn't even know there was a first nation called the Onondaga, so.

Julia 37:25 Well you didn't know that or are you just teasing?

Kolby Reddish 37:28 No, I did not know there were Onondaga.

Julia 37:30 The Onondaga Indians were right around Palmyra in the same area. And so Joseph. The reason this is interesting to me is Joseph Smith says later when he's the Zion's camp with Zion's camp they unearth this body and they. He's like oh, it's self. He's a white Lamanite. And he says he was under the prophet of named Onondagus. And so Joseph's just kind of. For me I. I think Joseph's just playing on the words of. Of this Native American group that was right around his area. Anyway, um, but anyway that's really interesting. I didn't know Skinn Adal had a. Had a connection to that.

Nemo 38:02 So yes, the more you learn.

Julia 38:05 Yeah. Nemo. Will you talk about this Stockton?

Nemo 38:09 As stated earlier, William Smith gives the name of Reverend Stockton as preaching at Alvin's funeral and being part of the revivals. Benjamin B. Stockton was serving as a pastor in Skinatals, New York from March 4, 1818 until June 30, 1822. While he did visit Palmyra for a youth missionary society in October 1822, the newspaper still describes him as Reverend Stockton of Skinatles. Stockton was not installed as a pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Palmyra until February 18, 1824.

Nemo 38:43 Stockton was the one who strongly intimated that because he was not baptized, Alvin had gone to hell. William states as Father did not like Reverend Stockton very well. Our folks hesitated joining with the Presbyterians. Reverend Stockton was not stationed in Palmyra until 1824. Stockton was the president of a revival meeting the day before. Joseph Smith got the idea for James 1:5 from Reverend Lane. Therefore, Joseph's first vision would have happened sometime after February of 1824. We were following the logic of that.

Julia 39:14 Yeah. So some of this is repetitive, but I just want to get these points across. So like Benjamin, you know, he preached at the Alvin's funeral. The family joins in 24. He wasn't even stationed there until February of 24. And then he was part of the same revival meeting with Lane. And so that pushes. That pushes Joseph Smith's vision back into 24.

Julia 39:33 So yes, okay, so George Lane. So William Smith gives the name of Reverend George Lane, an elder of the Methodist Church, as being part of these revivals. William also informs us that it was Reverend Lane who suggested the text of James 1:5, which is perhaps the most consistent of all the nine accounts. So even it's the most consistent of the first four that Joseph Smith gives and all the secondhand accounts. Lane's account gives us not only the year 1824, but even the month and date. According to George Lane's report, the Lord's gracious work in Palmyra commenced in the spring and progressed moderately until the time of the quarterly meeting, which was held on the 25th and 26th of September, 1824.

Julia 40:13 And he says a reformation is going on in this town to a great extent. The love of God has been shed abroad to the hearts of many, and the outpouring of the Spirit seems to have taken a strong hold. About 25 have recently obtained a hope in the Lord and joined the Methodist Church, and many more are desirous of becoming members.

Julia 40:32 With this additional, additional information, placing Rev. Lane as part of the Methodist revival in Palmyra. This would place Joseph Smith's first vision from the spring of 1820 forwards onwards. So we're pushing it to the spring now, not just February. In order to place the vision more securely, we have to examine the revivals occurring not only in the Methodist sect, but the Baptist and Presbyterian sects as well. And Nemo. I haven't been present for all the LDS discussions. You guys have discussed the Palmyra revivals, is that right?

Nemo 41:01 I believe so, yes. We've certainly discussed Joseph's misconnections to Methodism as they relate to the Book of Mormon as an orally dictated text. And I think we covered it during that.

Julia 41:12 Perfect. Okay, so I can link that in the show notes. I just wanted to let people know that if you want more information on the revivals, go and watch that one. But we're just going to kind of run through the different sections.

Nemo 41:24 George Lane says that from spring 1824 to September 1824, things were just chugging along. And we'll soon discover that In September of 1824, things started going like toxy and the revivals really start kicking off at that point.

Julia 41:39 Yeah. Okay, so with this timeline, we're adding Reverend Stockton and we're adding Reverend Lane. So February of 1824. And then Lane is spring of 1824. So we're still setting things up.

Nemo 41:51 And just to be clear, Joseph couldn't have had the idea if he's relying on James 1:5. He could have only come across this idea of James 1:5 as it's reported by William Smith and others from Reverend Lane, who spoke an evening after Reverend Stockton. So they both have to be present, which Means it has to be the spring of 1824, earliest that Joseph then hears from Reverend Lane the idea of James 1:5 and then goes and asks God and receives a vision.

Julia 42:19 Yeah. And so the next question is just, was William.

Kolby Reddish 42:22 William is one of the witnesses. Correct.

Julia 42:24 Of the plates? Yeah.

Nemo 42:25 He's a member of the Smith family? I'd assume so. Sorry, is that facetious?

Kolby Reddish 42:31 If it's good enough for Twain, it's good enough for.

Julia 42:35 I couldn't be more convinced the whole. Wait, the whole of the Whitmer family had seen the plates?

Nemo 42:39 Yeah, something like that.

Julia 42:42 But. Okay, so the next thing is to explore is the Pamyra revivals. What I'm basing a lot of this research on is Wesley P. Walters. And I have not seen an apologist or a scholar or critic or. How do I say that? I haven't seen anyone combat his research very well. But I wanted to hit this first before we dive into this. This is Stephen Harper, and this is on Gospel Tangents, and he's kind of pushing back against Wes Walters.

Kolby Reddish 43:06 Before you play that, I just want to say I looked it up because I couldn't. I knew we had several members of the Smith family that were in the eight witnesses. William was not one of them, for what it's worth.

Julia 43:16 Oh, was it Christian?

Kolby Reddish 43:17 Oh, no, that's Samuel Hyrum and Joseph Sr.

Julia 43:20 Okay, so he was not interesting. But I think there was some beef between William and Joseph at times. I don't. I don't know if that's.

Kolby Reddish 43:27 Yes, I remember that as well.

Julia 43:29 Yeah. Okay.

Guest 43:30 Interesting.

Julia 43:31 Not one of the witnesses. Okay, so then again, this is the clip that. Where he's kind of pushing back on what I'm about to present. And we can talk about this.

Guest 43:39 All we know are a few facts. And we often think we know more than we know. Right. To decide whether something is anachronistic or not. How do you know? Right. Do you have enough pieces of the puzzle to know if it's an acronym?

Kolby Reddish 43:55 But if you know, there weren't revivals

Guest 43:57 until 1823, do you know there weren't? No. You know that there's no evidence in the newspaper, for example. So Wesley Walters takes the. The area, the geographical area to be Palmyra Village. And he shows that there are no newspaper accounts of camp meetings in the Palmyra village area in the 1820 window. That's what he knows.

Guest 44:30 So let me be crystal clear. The fact is that. And he overstated it. Milt Bachman did find a reference to a camp meeting in early 1820 in a Palmyra newspaper. So Wesley Walters knows that the facts are that in the records he researched, there was little to no mention of unusual religious excitement in palmyra village in 1820.

Guest 44:59 Well, what he doesn't know is, is there unusual religious excitement in the whole district of country where we lived. Right. That's Joseph's line. Joseph doesn't say Palmyra village. He says the whole district of country. Indeed, the whole region of country.

Guest 45:15 Right. Joseph locates the unusual religious excitement around Manchester, which is actually where his family lives. They don't live in Palmyra at the time of the vision or within a couple of years of it. So you can't be. You can't decide whether something's anachronistic or not. If you are deciding all the parameters of that, you can't be too close minded about what Joseph means.

Julia 45:47 Did you guys have thoughts?

Nemo 45:49 Oh, yeah. Kolby, do you want to go first, though?

Kolby Reddish 45:52 Well, I apologize for snickering, but I couldn't help myself when he says, well, do you know it didn't happen. This is the constant apologetic game of shifting the burden of proof over to the other side. If Wesley Walters and the material that we're going to examine, Julia, looks for evidence where we would expect it and we don't find it, I think it's entirely reasonable to conclude that these camps didn't happen, notwithstanding the fact that Stephen Harper can ask, well, do you, can you prove that they didn't happen? No, but historians do the work that based on the evidence that they have, and then they conclude what's most likely to have occurred.

Kolby Reddish 46:33 So that line of thinking is just a fallacy known as the shift of the burden of proof. And it's just really interesting to see how I've said this before when we've had conversations, the three of us, but so much of the modern apologetic Mormon moment is about retreating from the things that Joseph Smith actually said or making them more fuzzy. And we saw that with the way he's talking about, well, we shouldn't just center it on Palmyra. We need to center it on the entire region. We can make that region as broad as we need to. We also had this discussion when we talked about Nahom.

Kolby Reddish 47:08 Right. Nahom is 150 miles off of the coast. The story talks about how it's right in the borders near the Red Sea that they turn at. Nahom is where they turn east. It's just, I just laugh at the apologetic methodology of making anything Joseph Smith said as nebulous as they need it to be so that it can't be disproven. That's what they are doing.

Scholarly Debate Over the 1820 Revivals

Julia 47:32 Okay, so let me just kind of recap what Stephen Harper was saying because, like, it. So Wes Walters, we're going to show this, but he says in 1820, there was no, there was no revivals going on. There was nothing of. There was no religious excitement. And then it seems like Stephen harbor is talking about Backman and how he found a source for a campmeeting in the. I don't know if he said Palmyra or Manchester area. So he's like, oh, so therefore we don't know. Is that kind of what he's saying? Because like Joseph saying the whole district of country, the whole region of country is having this religious excitement. But like, if you're not finding it, I don't, I don't guess I don't really understand what he was trying.

Nemo 48:08 Well, it would be, it would be reported on throughout the region. If the excitement was throughout the region, it wouldn't be isolated to just Manchester. Because his argument is he's checked the newspapers in Palmyra and can't find any. Well, he's actually in Manchester. Well, but also we found a camp meeting in 1820 in Palmyra. Well, which is it? Pick one, Stephen. Is it that it didn't happen in Palmyra and so we shouldn't be looking to Palmyra for evidence, or is it when you can find like a slither of evidence, perhaps that helps when it comes to Palmyra, then you'll grab it and use it.

Kolby Reddish 48:35 They don't even. They don't even want to look for evidence, though. What they want to do is leave the gap of possibility open. And you can see it reflected in the way that he even thinks, in the way that he's answering Rick Bennett's question by saying, well, you can't prove it didn't happen. That's what he cares about. He cares about making a possibility that it still can happen. The way that Joseph Smith said. They'll never point to. To your point, Nemo. They will never point to something that is an advertisement in the newspaper and say, see, this is the one. This is the revival that led Joseph Smith to go say the prayer. They will never stake their flag. That's not what apologists do. Instead, they just create these gaps of possibility for people to continue believing the things that they already believe.

Julia 49:19 Isn't that just sort of unfalsifiable? Because, like, I started this episode saying I cannot disprove that Joseph Smith did not. Am I saying that right? I cannot disprove that Joseph Smith didn't.

Kolby Reddish 49:28 You cannot prove that Joseph Smith did not.

Julia 49:30 Right.

Nemo 49:31 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 49:31 See God the Father and not exist.

Julia 49:34 Right. And same with the. I guess he's like, oh, you can't disprove that the revivals didn't happen, so therefore they did.

Nemo 49:40 So. Yeah. I did a video where I talked about how apologetic arguments will very often retreat to supernatural things. I think another way of phrasing that is they will often retreat to the unfalsifiable. They will retreat to a position that you can't disprove when the original claim. So that's their sort of mott that they retreat to. But the Bailey that we were all dealing with was a claim that is falsifiable.

Nemo 50:03 And so the claim is, were there camp meetings in that area of the country, in that region of country in 1820? The evidence seems to suggest no. Ah, but you can't prove it definitely didn't happen. Well, we were trying to prove if they did. And you've shifted it around now and you've run away to an unfalsifiable position to try and leave space for belief. It's interesting that they condemned the God of the gaps when actually apologists engage in sort of the evidence of the gaps so often.

Kolby Reddish 50:36 Right. And you have to combine the lack of publication or lack of any reporting in the newspaper about revivals at the time frame that Joseph Smith talked about it happening in 1820. But you have to combine that fact with the fact that Joseph Smith also claims this just absolutely high level of persecution in his 1838 First Vision account story. You have to combine both of those things because you need both. Both of you have to make two basically arguments from silence to go with Joseph Smith's version being true. You have to have, well, there was some hidden revival or actually multiple different revivals that weren't reported on, that weren't publicized.

Kolby Reddish 51:19 Then you also have to have this great level of persecution that, what do you know, Also wasn't publicized. He's ignoring that second half, at least in the clip that we listened to. I haven't listened to that full interview, so I don't know. But I'm going to guess that he doesn't address the other facts that seemed to point the direction of there were no revivals happening in the 1820. In that early 1820.

Nemo 51:42 Were I a betting man? And obviously because I listened to Dietroge Christopherson, I'm no longer a betting man, but were I a betting man, I would possibly put money on that fact. Kolby. Anyway, should we Carry on. Julia.

Julia 51:53 One thing I want to point out, and I don't know, it's been a minute since I read Wes Walters entire booklet and I was presenting his research today. But you have Palmyra Township here and then you have Manchester Township here. They're right next to each other. In fact, I think if you were to travel, it's like six miles difference. So it's like when you said skinados was 48 or something like that, I was like, okay, that's, that's a. That's a pretty. That's a. It's a gap.

Nemo 52:17 Well, that's the idea that Reverend Stockton isn't popping back and forth.

Julia 52:20 Right.

Guest 52:21 Right.

Nemo 52:22 Because it's 50 miles away. It's a day's travel on foot.

Julia 52:24 So. Yeah. So I can't remember if. So I think he's. I think Wes Walters is looking at Palmyra. But the thing is, I'm not sure that there's a huge difference between like he could. Are the converts just from Palmyra Township? Are they also from Manchester? Like, how do they. I don't really know how.

Nemo 52:42 I feel like these lines. And as a Brit, I'm an expert in drawing arbitrary lines on a map, as you know, is my national legacy. I think it would be safe to say that these lines on a map don't mean particularly much other than sort of census taking and administrative purposes. I'm sure the peoples of these areas are intermingling, intertwining, trading with one another. I can't imagine that those are hard lines in the sand.

Julia 53:08 Right.

Kolby Reddish 53:09 That's why I was thinking. The other question I have is Harper seems to be saying Walter shouldn't have just looked at Palmyra, he should have also looked at Manchester. But I didn't hear him actually point to any revivals in Manchester in 1820.

Nemo 53:22 Here's my point. Earlier he. He just pointed to one that happened in Palmyra in 1820.

Kolby Reddish 53:26 Yeah. So he's committing. This is again another line of fallacious reasoning known as possible proof. So the fact that that proof or that evidence may be possible to produce. Well, wake me up if you find a Manchester revival from the right time period.

Julia 53:44 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 53:46 And then we're arguing that if it was all going on in the region of country, then it's probably going to be reported on in Palmyra, even if it's happening in Manchester.

Julia 53:53 Right. Like the excitement everywhere. Right. Yeah. Okay. So according to Joseph Smith's 1838 account, we understand that at the time of his first vision there were revivals among the Methodist, Baptists and Presbyterians. And so we've already read this. I don't know if we should read it again.

Nemo 54:09 I just want to point out the point where I mentioned second year, because I kind of teased that earlier on. I think if you go to the next slide. The Smiths moved to Palmyra. They moved from Palmyra to Manchester in 1820. So Joseph Smith, in his 1838 account, dates the revival to 1822. Because he said sometime in the second year after our removal to Manchester. So even within his own account, it didn't happen in 1820. In the spring of 1820, the revival hadn't yet happened yet, according to the words of his own account.

Kolby Reddish 54:45 The other thing I want to point out. Yes, that's a great point, Nemo. The other thing I want to point out, just to counter Stephen Harper, is he basically said, well, you have to look at what Joseph Smith actually said. Joseph Smith talks about the whole district of country or whole region of country, but Palmyra is included in that, just like Harper wants to broaden it beyond just Palmyra. And that's fine, but that doesn't mean that Palmyra isn't also part of what Joseph Smith is talking about. That's absurd.

Julia 55:14 Yeah, that part didn't make sense to me why he would point to that. But also saying that there's one camp meeting in 1820. Joseph is saying that there are revivals among these three different religions to have one camp meeting. I don't know what religion it would have been under. But, like, that's not. That's not an evidence of the revival Joseph Smith was talking about.

Nemo 55:32 Again, if you want to look at what Joseph Smith said himself, well, even he is confused within his own account about what year it took place in.

Julia 55:39 Right.

Kolby Reddish 55:39 And look at what Joseph Smith said, which created no small stir and division among the people. The fact that Joseph Smith describes it that way, and then there's no evidence of this division. There's no editorials going back and forth. There's no advertisements in the newspaper like, yeah, I agree with Stephen Harper. Look at what Joseph Smith actually said and then test it. The problem is, I don't think that helps Harper's overall position, because if you look at what Joseph Smith actually said, I see a lot of indications here that we should be finding evidence of some. The things that Joseph Smith is describing here in some form in the newspapers, and it doesn't exist.

Julia 56:20 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Nemo, do you want to talk about this one?

Guest 56:26 Yeah.

Nemo 56:27 Joseph Smith states that at the time of his first vision, four of his family members had joined the Presbyterian Church. He tries to place their joining in 1820 according to the accounts of his mother and brother William. This is incorrect, as they joined after the death of Alvin in November 1823. Joseph Smith also states the religious revivals which preceded his first vision occurred two years after they moved to Manchester, which would put the event as happening in 1832. Not only is Joseph Smith's timeline contradicted by his mother, brother and Lane and Stockton's involvement, it is also contradicted by his own recollection of the dates.

Julia 57:01 Yeah, that's a lot, I feel like.

Kolby Reddish 57:04 But anyway, because we know that they were in Palmyra until 1820. Is that right? Then they moved to Manchester and they

Nemo 57:11 moved to Manchester because they put.

Kolby Reddish 57:14 I don't know that we read this. I think we referenced it. Can I read this real quick just so that people. Yeah. The Joseph Smith Senior and Lucy Mack Smith family migrated to western New York in 1816 and 1817 after a bad harvest and financial troubles upset their livelihood. Don't bet on ginseng, kids. That's what Joseph Smith Senior did. They first settled in Palmyra Village and rented a house for two years, living on wages earned from day labor and running a small shop. Oh, that is so interesting. Running a small Cooper's shop. For what it's worth, in 1820, the family purchased a 100 acre farm a few miles south of Palmyra in Manchester Township. So there it is right there, 1820.

Julia 57:56 Wait, this is really random. You said it was the ginseng. Because like I was taught, I took a natural disasters class at byu, Idaho, and the teacher said that there was a volcanic eruption. I can't remember where, but that it affected all of the crops.

Kolby Reddish 58:09 Yeah, that's how Saints opens in volume one of Saints opens with that volcano.

Julia 58:15 I'm not sure what year. Oh, that's interesting. I had spent a minute. So I wasn't sure.

Kolby Reddish 58:18 I don't remember off the top of my head.

Julia 58:20 But you're like, isn't that such a miraculous thing that this volcano erupted on the other side of the world and then it made Joseph move to where the plates are.

Kolby Reddish 58:28 And now there's millions of people with religious trauma because of that volcano.

Nemo 58:33 I tell you what, the volcano in Iceland canceling half the flights in Europe. It's got nothing on the one that started Mormonism.

Kolby Reddish 58:43 By small and simple things, my friends. Okay.

Nemo 58:45 Or large volcanic things.

Kolby Reddish 58:48 Anyway, let me read this one. Palmyra Revivals according. So this comes from Wes Walters.

Julia 58:54 These might be my thoughts, but your

Kolby Reddish 58:56 Thoughts building on his research. Okay. According to the 1838 account, during the time of Joseph Smith's first vision, each of these three religions must have been undergoing a revival of some kind, each overlapping with each other. Likewise, these revivals must also include Reverend's Lane and Stockton, meaning that the revivals must have occurred sometime after February 1824. This again disproves Joseph Smith's claim that it happened in the second year after the removal to Manchester, which would have been 1822. Before jumping to 1824 or 25. Let's take a look at what was happening in these three different denominations during 1820.

Julia 59:31 Perfect. Okay.

Nemo 59:32 Because it's not just newspaper reports, right?

Julia 59:36 Okay, so this. We're first looking at the Presbyterian Church in Palmyra of 1820. And again, I'm not sure. I can't remember how he distinguishes Manchester from Palmyra. But if there's. If you can't. Like, like Harper said, the Backman found one evidence of a camp meeting. I don't know which umbrella that was under. A camp meeting is not an evidence of a revival. And anyway, so I'm just not sure how Manchester played into West Walter's research in this. But this is for Palmyra. But again, they're. They're like six miles apart, so I'm not sure how much they distinguish.

Nemo 1:00:06 And the whole district or whole county, you know, was involved.

Julia 1:00:09 Palmyra would have been. Yeah. Okay, so in the summer of 1819, gen. Is. Is it Geneva? How do you say these. Geneva.

Nemo 1:00:17 Cayuga.

Julia 1:00:18 Cayuga and Junia Junius reported some activity of revivals within the Presbyterian sect, but there is no activity in Palmyra, the reports read. So for 1820, no distinct mention of a revival. 1821, no special revival in any of our congregations. And then later, that was February of 1821. Now this is October of 1821. No general revivals of religion during that year. So he's saying there's just been nothing.

Nemo 1:00:46 So this is the Presbyterian Synod's own records, right? This isn't just like, oh, was it reported on the newspaper? Was it not? The people with a vested interest in keeping track of their religious activities were saying there was no special revival in any of our congregations, no general revivals of religion during that year, etc.

Kolby Reddish 1:01:05 Yeah, this is much stronger evidence than even the lack of evidence in the newspaper, because this is actually evidence claiming there was no such thing. General revivals of religion during that year

Nemo 1:01:19 by people who wanted revivals of religion to be happening. So their bias is to want to take Any small evidence of that and perhaps even inflate it if we were to be looking for bias here. And even they are saying, nah, nothing really going on.

Julia 1:01:31 Yes. Do you want to talk about the Baptist one? Nemo?

Church Records Contradict the 1820 Timeline

Nemo 1:01:34 Yeah, yeah. The Baptist Church in Palmyra, 1820. The Baptist Church records. Records show clearly that they had no revivals in 1820, for the Palmyra congregations gained only 6 by baptism, while the neighboring Baptist churches of Lyons, Canandiago, Canandougia, whatever, and Farmington showed net losses of 4, 5, and 9, respectively. An examination of the figures for the years preceding and following 1820 yields the same picture of no revival so far as the Baptist church of the area is concerned. And that's from the Palmyra Revivals and Modern Origins by Reverend Wesley Walters.

Julia 1:02:11 So they gained 6. There was net losses of 4, 5, and then 9. So it's just the same. There's just like nothing, in fact.

Nemo 1:02:18 But when has the church ever actually wanted us to look at the numbers of who's being baptized and how many converts are actually staying? They just want to look at overall growth of whatever they can claim. Right.

Julia 1:02:27 Yeah. Okay. So, Kolby, will you talk about the Methodist Church?

Kolby Reddish 1:02:31 I sure will. So this is the Methodist Church in the Palmyra Circuit, 1820. So they recorded net losses of 23 congregants in 1819, net loss of 6 in 1820, and a net loss of 40 in 1821. As Joseph Smith claimed that the revivals began with the Methodist Church, the Mormon prophet could hardly have picked a poor year in which to place his revival. And that comes from Walters.

Julia 1:02:56 Right? I love that line. Okay, so, yeah, the Methodists are having the. The worst time in 1820 in Palmyra. Okay, so now we're going forward. We're jumping forward to 1824 and 25. So while Reverend Lane's testimony above claims that 25 members joined the Methodist sect, the Baptists in that year had reported only two baptisms. This lack of baptisms by the Baptists means that there was no coincidental revival between the Baptists and Methodists at this time. Additionally, the Presbyterian Church in 1824 reported that there had been no remarkable revival of religion within our bounds. And that was published in September of 1824. Okay, so, Nima, will you talk about the Presbyterian church and this 24, 25?

Nemo 1:03:37 Yeah. So the Presbyterian Church in 1824, 25. This is where it started going like, toxic, because George Lane said it progressed slowly up until September 1824, from spring until September. By the end of September 1824, however, George Lane recalls that a revival appeared to break out afresh. That's from the Methodist Quarterly Conference. This revival fire must have spread to the Presbyterian sect as well, for the Synod, which met October 1824, acknowledged with gratitude to the great head of the church 4 instances of special revival, among which was that in the church at Palmyra of the presbytery of Geneva.

Julia 1:04:17 Perfect.

Nemo 1:04:18 So. Yeah.

Julia 1:04:19 So by the end of. By the. By September of 1824, that's when the revivals start to. To take off.

Nemo 1:04:26 Yeah.

Julia 1:04:27 Kolby, will you talk about the Baptists?

Kolby Reddish 1:04:29 I sure will. The Baptist Church in 1824, 1825. When Reverend Lane left the area, December 22, 1824, he was one off Joseph Smith's birthday. He noted that there had in the village in its vicinity, upwards of 150 joined the society, besides a number that had joined other churches. The Baptists were among the other churches who shared in the harvest. Many hearts were so open that they needed only the invitation in order to respond. On Christmas Day, a Baptist preacher wrote to his friend that as I came on my journey this way, I tarried a few days and baptized eight. I think the thing that's so compelling to me about this evidence, Julia, is that these other religions have absolutely no interest in proving or disproving Joseph Smith's claims.

Kolby Reddish 1:05:14 They are just keeping their own history of their faith. Because I know this comes as a shock to maybe any believing Mormons who've made it this far, but there are other religious groups that have their own history that has nothing to do with Mormonism and they don't have any interest in disproving Joseph Smith.

Nemo 1:05:32 I don't understand.

Kolby Reddish 1:05:36 The fact that we're seeing this all kind of crystallize around this late 1824 time period from different church records is. All of which compete with each other, but don't really have any interest in the dating of Joseph Smith's first vision. That is very compelling to me because there's really no need for bias in just keeping their own internal records.

Nemo 1:06:02 Plainly put, there's no need for the Baptists to lie about having a revival in 1824. The Baptists aren't reporting a revival in the hopes that it will disprove Joseph Smith's first vision.

Julia 1:06:11 Right.

Nemo 1:06:12 They're just not exactly.

Julia 1:06:14 And I haven't done a lot of religious history, historical study, but this newspaper is called the Latter Day Luminary. And I don't. There's not a lot of religions or newspapers or I think nowadays other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that have that name. So I'm wondering if Joseph's kind of like this is. This is five years before he organized the church. Well, I guess it was called the Church of Christ and then it changed the Church of Latter Day Saints and then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Anyway, I'm just wondering because, like, this is around his milieu. It's just. It's just interesting to me.

Nemo 1:06:42 Interesting?

Julia 1:06:43 That's just random.

Nemo 1:06:43 Yeah.

Julia 1:06:44 Okay, so going on with the Methodists in 1824, 25 within the Methodist Church, the presiding elder of the Ontario district reported in 1824 that though for two or three years we saw no Great Awakenings, but that the present year we have had some glorious revivals. And that was published in November of 1824. Yeah, so now they're having revivals. So this is a chart that I made based on this little pamphlet from West Walters. So the beginning of 1824, you have the Methodists, where they have 25 members joined the Baptist, they had two. And the Presbyterians, they didn't, they didn't report any. But at. By the end of September, they all had.

Julia 1:07:20 So. And then the numbers just go up. They. There was four revivals in the Presbyterians, and then people are joining the Presbyterians at the end of 24. That there was a lot of members joining because of the death of this young girl.

Julia 1:07:32 Um, so yeah, there's just all these numbers. There's hundreds, 200. You know, it's just. This is where the revival is happening that Joseph Smith was talking about.

Kolby Reddish 1:07:42 Yeah.

Julia 1:07:44 Okay. So, Nima, will you talk about the conclusion?

Nemo 1:07:47 I will just chuck it up big for me.

Julia 1:07:49 Yes.

Nemo 1:07:50 Yeah. Okay. Taking into account that four of the Smiths joined the Presbyterian Church in 1824 after the death of Alvin in November 1823. William and Oliver's testimonies that the revival included Reverend's Lane and Stockton, and taking into account that Stockton wasn't stationed in Palmyra until February 1824 and that lane did not report the kinds of Methodist revivals described by Joseph Smith until September 1824, and that the other sects did not experience revivals until late 1824 and 1825, if we are still to believe that the first vision took place in the springtime, there is little else to conclude but that Joseph Smith's first vision took place in the spring of 1825.

Nemo 1:08:35 Reverend Wesley Walters concluded with his own research that several major revisions will have to be made in Joseph Smith's story, since Joseph presents his vision as occurring in the Spring, the date of the vision would accordingly have to be moved to the spring of 1825 following the revival. This would then also necessitate changing the date of his second vision from September 21, 1823 to no earlier than September of 1825.

Nemo 1:09:01 In turn, this would require another change in his story, for he mentions visiting the hill where the plates were buried in each of the three years that elapsed between 1823 and 1827. The revised date would allow for just one visit in the year of 1826. This must readjustment. And that's a typing error from Wesley Walters there. Smith's memory for events becomes somewhat suspect.

Nemo 1:09:27 Furthermore, such a realignment of dates calls for an entire recasting of the context of the story. Instead of being the naive boy of 14 as he presented himself, he would in 1825 be a young man of 19 who in less than a year will find himself in court charged with vagrancy and fraud, and before a second year has expired, he will be eloping with a young woman from Pennsylvania.

Julia 1:09:51 I love that quote from Wes Walters.

Nemo 1:09:55 Well, I think it also your question earlier, right, Kolby?

Kolby Reddish 1:09:58 That's what I was going to say. This is one of the reasons that I asked the question earlier is like if Joseph Smith is misremembering or is modifying these dates on purpose. I think either one you could, you could conclude is the reason. But it bears remarking that, yes, the 1826 glass looking trial is the exact thing I had in mind when I asked that question. Because we know that that's so problematic and Joseph Smith's history of treasure digging is so problematic that it makes sense to me that when he is adding this element to the story again, decade, at least a decade is the first time that Joseph Smith recounts this in his own handwriting in 1832, it's almost two decades removed by the 1838 account according to its own, you know, 1820 dating.

Kolby Reddish 1:10:49 I guess it is important to me to recognize that Joseph Smith has a vested interest in separating his calling as a prophet, any divine experience he has from that 1826 glass looking trial. And so if he wants to back it up, like if I'm thinking about intent here, it seems to me that the intent is to separate Joseph Smith's calling as a prophet through the first vision from his 1826 glass looking trial specifically and from his treasure digging activities more generally.

The 1826 Trial and Shifting the First Vision Date

Julia 1:11:22 I want to say something more on the 1826 trial. So one account of the trial has a curious statement from his dad and this is A quote from him. He, Joseph Smith Sr. Trusted that the son of Righteousness would someday illuminate the heart of the boy, meaning Joseph, and enable him to see him his will concerning him. And so just this one sentence from the trial, it suggests that Joseph Smith Jr. Had not yet been visited by the Son of Righteousness, but that some future direction would hopefully be given. So it's just, it's just interesting that his dad would say that in 1826 if he had already seen God in 1820.

Kolby Reddish 1:11:58 Is that coming from the purple account, Julia? Do you know?

Julia 1:12:01 I can't remember which source, but I'm pretty sure it's purple.

Nemo 1:12:03 There's arguments that could be made there about how, you know, is his dad appealing to the court and maybe conveniently forgetting their private belief that Joseph's already seen God. To appeal to the court and say, well, hopefully God will find him and set my wayward boy straight. Right, I could see that. I don't know if necessarily we can read a ton into that. I think the evidence is far more compelling here that you've got the glass looking trial and you've got Joseph a year before it, having the first vision. He wants to separate it further away, I think, because also you have in the 1838 account when he talks about Moroni's visitation, he's essentially saying that he'd been caught up in the follies of youth and you know, no great serious sin, but some follies had been happened.

Kolby Reddish 1:12:52 Just some bets on Kalshi I think is what it was.

Nemo 1:12:55 Yeah, right. And so, you know, all of a sudden that rings more hollow if he has a vision, he has that visitation and then he's dragged into court. Unless he places that vision later on after the court. And maybe the court was the thing that he was caught up in, but he doesn't want people to know that, so he's pushed it away further back. It's hard to tell why he would want to do this. It's hard to tell whether it was an intentional thing at all. I don't know if we can necessarily speak to whether Joseph Smith did this intentionally because his own dates within the account didn't line up.

Nemo 1:13:31 So he was either really bad at creating a false narrative or he just got dates mixed up. He wanted it to be 1820, but he kind of misremembered because it was so long after when exactly they moved to Manchester from Palmyra, all those things. There isn't necessarily malice here, but my conclusion, drawing from all of it would be that regardless of why the spring of 1820 is being claimed, it's not an accurate claim. In order for all the other events to be consistent, in order for all the other things that are claimed about it to have happened, the first vision can't have happened until at earliest September 1824. But if it's in the springtime, then it'd be 1825.

Julia 1:14:15 Yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:14:16 Can we go back to the map for a second? And I really like Nima, how you were talking about the intent here doesn't matter because I completely agree. So even though I speculated for a second on why there may be a reason if it was intentional, I think it's good to, as we're kind of concluding today's episode, to center it on the fact that we are just taking a look at what Joseph Smith claimed and seeing whether what Joseph Smith claimed is consistent with other surrounding pieces of evidence. One of the things I wanted to look at is just where the sacred grove is. Right.

Kolby Reddish 1:14:51 So if they don't move from Palmyra to Manchester until 1820, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that Joseph to get to the sacred grove, which for people who are just listening, the sacred grove is between Manchester and Palmyra. But the farm that they buy near Manchester is right next to the sacred grove. For all intents and purposes, it's completely separated from Palmyra. So it seems much more likely just due to travel that the vision happened after their. After they've moved to Manchester. And like you pointed out, Nemo, even according to Joseph Smith's own word, this vision happens two years after they move to Manchester, which happens in 1820.

Julia 1:15:40 Yeah.

Nemo 1:15:43 And so he's going back, he's remembering it, he's getting those details wrong. But it's then the implications it has upon the rest of the restoration narrative that is the issue.

Kolby Reddish 1:15:55 Just looking at some general information, I guess, to be fair, because the LDS Discussions series is our best attempt to do that. As I was looking and kind of fact checking some of the. What Stephen Harper said, there are some accounts of camp meetings or revivals starting as early as 1818 or 1819 in that entire region. And I'm looking at a book on the history of the second Great Awakening that has nothing to do with Mormonism specifically. Obviously it talks about Mormonism because Mormonism comes out of that burned over district in the second Great Awakening along with like eight other religious movements, for what it's worth. But as far as big regional revivals like Joseph Smith describes, this book comes to the same conclusion as you, Julia. About the Palmyra, Manchester area, that that was not occurring until late 1824 and early 1825.

Julia 1:16:48 And what's the name of that even. Oh, sorry, what's.

Kolby Reddish 1:16:51 So the name of that book is the Burned Over District. The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religions in Western New York from Whitney R. Cross.

Julia 1:17:01 Perfect. Okay.

Nemo 1:17:02 I would also say that even if there is a revival that you could point to that's completely unknown to anyone and that happened at the right time for 1820, the point is Joseph Smith talks about how his family had joined the Presbyterian Church and they did not join the Presbyterian Church until after his brother died. And we know that his brother died in 1823. So the earliest it could have been was 1824 when they'd already joined, if that detail is accurate.

Julia 1:17:37 So here on the screen I have a new timeline reconstructing the first vision. So you have Alvin's death, the four of the Presbyterians joining, or excuse me, four of the Smiths joining the Presbyterian Church, Stockton Lane, the revivals, and then moving the first vision. So, Nima, you're saying if you take this revival and you put it here. Yep, put it in 1820 still doesn't change the first vision.

Nemo 1:17:58 It still doesn't change the fact that Joseph claimed that four members of his family were members of the Presbyterian Church. And we know that his family didn't join the Presbyterian Church as a matter of historical fact until after the death of his brother, which is another concrete matter of historical fact. His brother died at a certain time in year. There's no lack of newspaper articles. There's no umming and ahhing about when Alvin Smith died. We know when he died and we know that reasons were given by multiple members of the Smith family as to why certain members joined the Presbyterian Church after his death and certain ones didn't. And it was to do with his death, to do with his funeral and Reverend Stockton and how he preached at that funeral.

Kolby Reddish 1:18:34 Joseph Sr's feelings about the way that he preached at that.

Nemo 1:18:38 At that funeral firmly placed the joining of those family members after the death of Alvin. So if Joseph is correct in his first vision accounts that members of his family were members of the Presbyterian Church at that time, then it could have only happened from 1824 onwards.

Julia 1:18:55 Sweet.

Kolby Reddish 1:18:56 So let's. Oh, go ahead.

Julia 1:18:58 Yeah, I was just gonna say. So even if there is a revival here, it still doesn't. Still doesn't help change the outcome.

Nemo 1:19:03 Doesn't change anything.

Kolby Reddish 1:19:05 I was also gonna say, even if Joseph Smith doesn't have any intention to Modify the history here. Right. To misstate the dates on purpose. Let's say this is all just accidental because, yeah, we'll give him some grace. As a people. As people, we forget the dates that certain things happen.

Kolby Reddish 1:19:22 In fact, when my wife and I got married, we were checking into our hotel after all the festivities were over. She needed to sign some receipt or something and she said, what is the date? And I was like, oh, honey, I'm going to use this against you, I promise.

Kolby Reddish 1:19:37 And so she forgot our actual wedding day. On our wedding day. Let's say that there's no intention on Joseph Smith's part to hide this. I guess the, the problem with the. With the first vision occurring while Joe Smith's engaged in treasure digging activities and so close in time to his 1826 glassicking trial still is a problem in the sense that that means that all of this is happening while Joseph Smith still has these other really wacky, I would say, supernatural beliefs. So the problem exists regardless of Joseph Smith's intentional, you know, changing the story or not changing the story, I guess would be kind of my concluding thought. Nemo, your concluding thought on today's presentation?

Implications of a Later First Vision Date

Nemo 1:20:20 My concluding thought is unless Moroni visited him before the first vision, then Moroni's visitation to him in 1823 has to move. And that's then we're starting to move the fact that Joseph is told to go and get the plates. And then we're starting to question what the timeline was around him going in the plates. Because people have been taught and spiritually edified by the idea that Joseph had to be patient, he had to keep returning, but was told he couldn't get the plates for a number of years. There are so many of these events that have been taught to people and have been used to engender spiritual feelings and engender conversion to the church, that these things do matter.

Nemo 1:21:02 And so whether Joseph got it wrong on purpose or not, whether he was trying to hide something or not, whatever the reason is that it seems as though the first vision couldn't have actually happened in 1820. I would bring it all back to the fact that when someone starts saying to you in a breathy voice in the spring of 1820, if that date is incorrect, we have to reckon with the amount of spiritual weight that phrase has been given over the years.

Kolby Reddish 1:21:26 Julia, thank you so much for putting these slides and this research together. Your concluding thoughts for today.

Julia 1:21:33 Well, I think the same thing with. Because it just doesn't seem like a huge deal. Oh, he just forgot it. It was actually in 25, not 20, but moving it, whether it's whether he was trying to be nefarious or whether he was just mistaken, it changes the whole story. Like he's 19, he can't have gone to go and see Moroni at the place. And the I. Where was he singing?

Nemo 1:21:57 At the place where the plates were buried. He went to the hill Cumorah.

Guest 1:22:00 Yeah.

Julia 1:22:00 So he can't have gone to the hill Cumorah for those four years that it would have only been one. And then immediately he was treasure digging on the trial. And then immediately he eloped with, with Emma. This changes the whole story for me. And then also throughout this episode I've been thinking like if Joseph's just really bad at dates, another day that I think is interesting is this, this dating of polygamy of Joseph Smith with this angel with the drawn sword and how he goes to these women and he says, oh, an angel visited me years ago, but I was too scared to go to you until now.

Julia 1:22:29 And so he's trying to, he's even trying to change the date for those things and he's trying to say, oh, it happened earlier than whenever he actually wrote down the revelation. Just, just this idea of dates in the church is just really troublesome to me. And just this first vision that was a huge part of me of my conversion as an active member of the church and then again as a missionary teaching this story that Joseph Smith sees God the Father and Jesus as a 14 year old boy.

Julia 1:22:53 That's. This is totally a different context of like he's 19, he's just about to go on trial for treasure digging. He is treasure digging at this time. In fact, Dan Vogel puts Joseph starting to treasure dig in 1820. So just like just, it just changes the whole history for me and moving the dates so I think the age

Nemo 1:23:10 is really important there. Julia.

Julia 1:23:11 Yeah, right.

Nemo 1:23:12 The 19 year old, 14 to 19 makes a big difference to the feel of the story.

Julia 1:23:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kolby Reddish 1:23:18 I guess it's just another time, another. And you know, there will be some people who will probably listen to this episode and think, oh, just moving that five years isn't that significant. But to me it's just another time where if we go and we check what Joseph Smith claims that what Joseph Smith claims doesn't seem to be reflected in reality. So both the date and then the fact that there's no publication, journal entry, anything that supports the level of persecution that he claimed in response to sharing the first vision account with the local ministers, that to me Just indicates that Joseph Smith, like I understand why people still believe Joseph Smith based on their faith based experiences, but when we actually go fact check Joseph Smith against actual evidence, it never seems to work out in Joseph Smith's favor.

Kolby Reddish 1:24:07 And that to me is a very interesting pattern that I think this episode helps establish as well, is that regardless of intent, regardless of reason, regardless of whether it was nefarious or not nefarious, it doesn't seem like Joseph Smith is a very reliable narrator about his own life. Like Nemo said, there are internal contradictions in the dating of the accounts if you take them seriously. And so, Julie, I appreciate that you've done that and I think this is a very worthy entry in the LDS discussion series. Are we ready to wrap up for today?

Nemo 1:24:38 Yeah, I'd say so.

Closing Thoughts and Where to Find More

Kolby Reddish 1:24:39 Okay, before we do that, remind people where they can find your other work. You too, Julia.

Nemo 1:24:45 You go first.

Julia 1:24:46 Yeah, so I'm analyzing Mormonism on all the platforms you can support me on. Patreon, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, just all that.

Nemo 1:24:53 So, yeah, I'm Nemo the Mormon. You can find me on all social media platforms under the handle nemotherman except for MySpace. And there was a documentary just released about my excommunication from the church, which if you go onto YouTube and look up Nemo the Mormon excommunicated or documentary or lad Bible, you'll find it. So, yeah, go check that out if you want.

Kolby Reddish 1:25:17 Excellent. I'm. I was going to. Julia, I promise. I'm Kolby Reddish and you can find my channel here on YouTube and MySpace where I have millions of followers. Don't check. Don't fact check that. Trust me, no, you can find my channel. Let's disagree where we talk about Mormonism sometimes, but it's really more about how we model respectful disagreement on some of life's biggest questions. So with that, we will go ahead and close this episode of LDS Discussions. If you value this series and want to see it continue, please consider supporting the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories. These episodes require substantial research and preparation on Julia's part, mostly.

Kolby Reddish 1:25:57 And we compensate the people who are involved in this project so your donations literally make it possible. Second, we want your feedback. So if you have any feedback about today's episode or about the LDS discussions episodes generally, please email john@mormonstoriesmail.com or leave a comment here on YouTube. And as always, thank you for listening and for supporting the LDS discussion series as well as Mormon stories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you again soon.

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