A reminiscence of an 1834 retelling of the First Vision story by Joseph Smith

It’s sometimes alleged by critics that Joseph Smith came up with the idea of a visit of two personages — the Father and the Son — rather late (say, in the 1838 “canonical” version now known as JS-History 1) and/or that he began to soup the story up from a mere vision of angels during, say, the collapse of the Kirtland Panic in the national Panic of 1837 (so as to shore up his personal prestige and authority).  In the light of such charges, I think this 1894 autobiographical account from Edward Stevenson worth noting:

Mormonism was first preached to me and others in Michigan, in a little schoolhouse at Pontiac, in the year 1833.  Joseph Smith and the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon preached there the following year [thus, presumably, in 1834].  The Prophet preached with such power as had not there ever before been witnessed in this nineteenth century.  Let me as a living witness speak of the moving, stirring sensation created in this town and surrounding country. . . .

Here are some of the Prophet’s words, as uttered in the schoolhouse.  With uplifted hand, he said, “I am a witness that there is a God, for I saw Him in open day, while praying in a silent grove in the spring of 1820.”

He further testified that God, the Eternal Father, pointing to a separate personage, in the likeness of Himself, said: “This is my Beloved Son, hear ye Him.”  Oh how these words thrilled my entire system, and filled me with joy unspeakable, to behold one who, like Paul the apostle of olden time, could with boldness testify that he had been in the presence of Jesus Christ! 

The young Prophet further said that in 1823, three years after his First Vision, while praying in his father’s house when suddenly the house was filled with light brighter than the noon-day sun, in the midst of which there stood an angel, who said he was sent from the presence of God, as a messenger to him.  [There then follows the story the visit of Moroni.]

Edward Stevenson was born on 1 May 1820, at Gibraltar, on the border of Spain, and was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 20 December 1833, at Far West, Missouri.  He eventually became a member of the First Council of the Seventy, served as one of the seven presidents of the Seventy until his death, on 27 January 1897. .

The quotation above is drawn from Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, Personal Glimpses of the Prophet Joseph Smith (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2009), 60-61.

Posted from Newport Beach, California