Talk:First Vision/reaction

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In Latter Day Saint movement theology, the First Vision (also called the grove experience) was a theophany that Joseph Smith, Jr. experienced during the early 1820s in a wooded area, now called the Sacred Grove, near his home in western New York.  Smith said that he prayed to know which church was true, and in response, a heavenly messenger told him that all existing churches were corrupt and false. 
During the early years of the Latter Day Saint movement, Smith's status as a prophet was derived primarily from his publication of the Book of Mormon, which he claimed to have translated from golden plates revealed to him by an angel. Later, during the 1830s and 40s, Smith gave various accounts of the First Vision, as did a number of his associates and acquaintances.  Although the vision was not emphasized during Smith's lifetime,The first extant account of the First Vision is the manuscript account in Joseph Smith, "Manuscript History of the Church" (1839); the first published account is Orson Pratt, An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records (Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Hughes, 1840); and the first American publication is Joseph Smith's letter to John Wentworth in Times and Seasons, 3 (March 1842), 706-08, only two years before Smith's assassination. (All of these accountss are available in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996), volume 1.) by the end of the nineteenth century it had become a foundational element of the faith. Today, most denominations within the movement teach that it was an actual event that marked the beginning of the Latter Day Saint restoration.
Although most Latter Day Saints believe in the veracity of this theophany, they differ in regard to its significance and the accuracy of its canonical details. Even current LDS Church Historian Marlin Jensen, who affirms belief in the vision "with all [his] heart" and who reflects on his own changed understanding of his early journals, admitted being "struck by the difference in [Smith's] recountings." "I've actually studied the various accounts of Joseph's First Vision, and I'm struck by the difference in his recountings. But as I look back at my missionary journals, for instance, which I've kept and other journals which I've kept throughout my life, I'm struck now in my older years by the evolution and hopefully the progression that's taken place in my own life and how differently now from this perspective I view some things that happened in my younger years." PBS interview with Marlin Jensen.  On the other hand, Richard Mouw, an evangelical theologian and student of Mormonism, who rejects Smith's claim that "members of the godhead really appeared" to him, has attributed an instinctive "sincerity to Joseph Smith," a belief that Smith was not "simply making up a story that he knew to be false in order to manipulate people." And so, said Mouw, "I live with the mystery.""My instinct is to attribute a sincerity to Joseph Smith. And yet at the same time, as an evangelical Christian, I do not believe that the members of the godhead really appeared to him and told him that he should start on a mission of, among other things, denouncing the kinds of things that I believe as a Presbyterian. I can't believe that. And yet at the same time, I really don't believe that he was simply making up a story that he knew to be false in order to manipulate people and to gain power over a religious movement. And so I live with the mystery.PBS documentary "The Mormons.
==Historical context==
===Smith family religious beliefs===
Like many other Americans living on the frontier at the beginning of the nineteenth century...
Joseph Smith, Jr.'s paternal grandfather, Asael Smith...
Between 1811 and 1819, Joseph, Sr. reported seven visions...
Richard Bushman has called the spiritual tradition of the Smith family...
The family also practiced a form of folk magic, also not uncommon ...
===Joseph Smith, Jr.===
Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, [[1805...
Because of his family's poverty, Smith had a very limited education...
===Revivalism in the Palmyra area===
Smith's First Vision occurred during the [[Second Great Awakening...
=== Smith's religious confusion ===
Smith said that at about the age of 12 (1818), he became concerned...
Smith's concern for his soul and confusion as to which church was right...
==The vision==
===Date of the First Vision===
Smith said that his First Vision occurred during the early 1820s...
In one of Smith's later accounts of the vision, he dated the religious revival...
Joseph Smith also said that the First Vision occurred in "the second year...
=== What Smith said he saw ===
What Joseph Smith said he saw during the first vision may be reconstructed... 
On a beautiful, clear spring day,. Smith...
His prayer was interrupted by an encounter with an evil spirit...
Smith said he saw a pillar of "fire light," brighter than the noon-day sun...
While in the vision, he said he saw one or more "personages," who are described...
In one account, Smith said that "the Lord" told him his sins were forgiven...
=== People Smith said he told about the vision in the 1820s ===
Smith said he told others about the vision during the 1820s, and some family members...
Smith said that he made an oblique reference to the vision in 1820 to his mother...
Smith said that he had mentioned the first vision to "one of the Methodist preachers...
==How the vision story has been presented==
The importance of the First Vision within the Latter Day Saint movement evolved...
Accounts of the First Vision prior to 1838 are less detailed than those thereafter...
===Possible 1830 allusion===
A possible first mention of the First Vision occurs in the Articles and Covenants...
For, after that it truly was manifested unto the first elder... 
The reference to "remission of sins" might allude to the First Vision...
=== Joseph Smith's 1832 account ===
The earliest account of the First Vision was written in 1832... 
[T]he Lord heard my cry in the wilderness and while in <the> attitude... 
Unlike later accounts of the vision, the emphasis of the 1832 account is on...
===1834 account by Oliver Cowdery===
In several issues of the LDS periodical Messenger and Advocate (1834-35)...
Therefore, according to Cowdery, the religious confusion led Smith to pray...
===Joseph Smith's 1835 account===
On November 9, 1835, Smith recorded an account of the First Vision in his diary...
===Joseph Smith's 1838 Account===
In 1838, Joseph Smith said that eighteen years previous, in the spring of 1820...
One morning, deeply impressed by this scripture, the fourteen-year-old Smith... 
In the light, Smith "saw two personages standing in the air" before him
===Possible anachronisms in the 1838 account===
Joseph Smith became involved with at least two Methodist churches between 1820...
In the 1838 account, when describing his confusion about the various churches...
In recounting her own memories of the events that led to the founding... 
According to Grant Palmer, a former paid LDS religious...
===Accounts created for publication===
An 1840 missionary tract stated that after Smith saw the light...
In 1842, two years before his assassination, Joseph Smith, Jr. wrote a letter...
===Smith's accounts found in later reminiscences===
Late in his life, Smith's brother William gave two accounts...
William Smith said he based his account on what Joseph had told William... 
[A] light appeared in the heavens, and descended until it rested...
In an 1884 account, William also stated that when Joseph first saw the light... 
==Treatment of the vision within the late nineteenth century church==
The First Vision was not emphasized in the sermons of Smith's immediate successors...
==Contemporary beliefs==
All contemporary denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement affirm belief... 
===The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints===
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has canonized Smith's 1838 account...
Our entire case as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints... 
In 1961 Hinckley went even further, "Either Joseph Smith talked with the Father... 
===Community of Christ===
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Community of Christ (then called...
In the mid- to late-twentieth century, writers within the Community of Christ...
In the 21st Century, the Community of Christ generally refers to the First Vision...
===Church of Christ (Temple Lot)===
Although the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) considers Joseph Smith... 
==Notes==
==References==
Notes and references can be found at the end, I didn't think we needed more than one copy in this work space. 74s181 03:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Current Version

message: Notes and references can be found at the end, I didn't think we needed more than one copy in this work space. 74s181 03:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References