http://firstvisiontimeline.com

When I first discovered that there were inconsistencies in the story Joseph Smith told of his first vision, I began researching as much as possible on the subject to get the real story. This site is the result of my efforts.

The site is designed to compare Joseph Smith's accounts with everything else we have on parallel timelines. That way it's easy to see where the timelines agree and differ and how the story evolved and when. Much of this information will not be new to anyone who has read about the first vision accounts and how they line up with historical records, but you probably haven't seen all the source material to back it all up, which I have linked all over the place inline with the text.

I have tried my best to make it neutral. I'm hoping that it can be shared with anyone interested in the First Vision so that the real story can be told in a (kind of) concise and visually appealing way.

If you have any suggestions for improvement or accuracy, please let me know.

Special thanks to kimball and H. Michael Marquardt for assistance with tracking down images of original documents.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 04:35PM by whitethunder.

Excellent work! I hope that you continue fleshing it out with further details (Smith family Presbyterian baptisms, Peter Bauder's 1830 interview/report of no Christian experience, William Smith's angel-only account, Lucy Mack Smith's angel-only account, etc.).

BTW, it would also be VERY cool to see separate timelines for the Book of Abraham, the Kinderhook Plates, and the restoration of the priesthood and related changes to the revelations.

I got the William Smith account in there. I've debated on including things like Bauder's interview since he doesn't refer to the First Vision at all, just the Moroni experience. It doesn't really help establish the timeline, even though it is valuable information that challenges JS's story. And as far as I've read, Lucy never knew there was anything other than a visit from Moroni. Does she talk about a vision prior to 1823 anywhere?

I was referring to the 1841 interview of William Smith by James Murdock. http://www.eldenwatson.net/wmsmith.htm


You are correct about Lucy. When Lucy dictated her history in 1844-45, she was only aware of the later visit by the angel. This is consistent with William Smith's knowledge in 1841, which means that Joseph's own family was unaware of the two personage first vision in the 1840s. This is also consistent with the 1835 version of Joseph Smith's history published by Oliver Cowdery in the Messenger and the Advocate. In other words, the people closest to Joseph Smith thought that the first vision received by Joseph Smith (i.e. the "First Vision") was in fact the visit by Angel Moroni. This is also how many of the early apostles and Brigham Young understood and taught the beginnings of the church. Apologists would have us believe that Joseph simply kept the experience secret, but that is contradicted by the official account wherein Joseph was widely persecuted from 1820 through at least 1827 for defending his first vision.

The Bauder interview is very important because he spent an entire day with Joseph Smith to learn the origins of the BoM/Church, and not only did not mention the First Vision, but also reported that Joseph could not point to a "Christian experience" in the origins. Joseph seems to respond to this criticism shortly thereafter by inventing the unpublished Jesus-only First Vision in 1832.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 06:01PM by Facsimile 3.

Well sheeit, I don't know how I didn't see the 1841 Wm. Smith account prior to you pointing it out. That is extremely valuable. Thank you!

Thank You! This really needed to be done. Even I was getting confused by the time line!

still needs some work

Care to be more specific?

lol....no kidding. That response was no help at all.

Nice

This looks really good. I second the ideas about the BoA and the Kinderhook plates.

I've toyed with the idea of registering a general Mormon timeline domain and doing just that. I think /u/mithryn over at that other ex-Mormon site (mastermind behind Exploring Mormonism) has a bunch of timelines that would work really well there.

That was the first thing which caught my eye and got me studying further.

I was just trying to figure out what Prop 8 was and it seemed like every time I clicked on a link, I was landing on an ex-Mormon site.

I was getting frustrated. I'd click out and try a different link. I felt all creeped out being on an "anti-Mormon" site. Now of course I realize that anti-Mormon and recovery from Mormonism are very different things.

But anyway, one day before I clicked out of a site, something about the multiple versions of the First Vision caught my eye. I clicked out and then went, "Wait a minute, what?" I hit the back button.

I began reading and went, "What?!" I was so shocked. I'd no idea that there were other versions. I thought, "Well what else don't I know?" I lost my fear of being on an anti-Mormon site and spent days pouring over everything on the site and eventually noticed the link to the forum and the rest is history.

But it all started with the First Vision. I'm sure most Mormons don't know about it. They assume that there has always been just one version, right from the beginning - the official one that we have today.

The good news is you can learn about the multiple versions on LDS.org now. Of course they out their spin on it to try and inoculate the reader. I was much more troubled by the inconsistencies in the timeline than the inconsistencies in the story JS kept telling. It's pretty hard to explain away all the historical records I've linked to on the site.

That's pretty cool. I like how it moves along the timeline with each new section. We'll add your site to our FV page.

Awesome, please do!

Great job WT!!

Excellent work. Will you include information alluding to the fact that most of the early documents referenced Nephi as the visiting angel instead of Moroni?

I've debated back and forth on including stuff like that. Part of the problem is you have to answer the question: to what vision were they referring in those accounts? Sometimes it's clearly the 1820 vision, sometimes it's clearly the 1823 vision, and sometimes it's completely ambiguous. Since this site is primarily focused on the history and evolution of the First Vision, it's sometimes hard to find a fit for examples like these. But I'm open to adding them in if there's a valid case to be made for their inclusion other than something like "it shows that it's all a fraud".

Thank you for your reply.

I know it's hard. I was trying to craft a "response" to the church essay on the First Vision and it was tough trying to decide how to make the message clear without letting all the "other issues" cloud the message.

Great work!!

Ken

Very professional - I want to spend more time looking, but don't have the time now. It may be just a me problem - but I have a small computer and had scrolled down, never noticing the arrow on the right side that progresses the timeline. I spent a while trying to figure out how to move to the next page or section when inspiration (the spirit? ha, ha) struck and I used my right arrow on my computer. When I scrolled back up, I finally noticed the right and (now) left arrows on the screen. So personally, it would have helped me to have a little more direction about how to navigate, but, as I said, that could just be a me problem...

Is your "small computer" a touchscreen? When the screen size falls below a certain width, it becomes swipeable instead of clickable to advance left and right.

No, just a little notebook - it works to click on the arrow, the problem was discovering the arrow. I'm not the sharpest tack in the technology department sometimes. I had scrolled past the arrow, then discovered the arrow keys on my keyboard worked, then when I scrolled back up to see the pics/text I finally clued into the arrows. I don't think you need to worry, it looks like it is just a me issue! Again, awesome job, really nice work!

I just bookmarked it. Great website and excellent information.

Did JS ever identify the two personages? If I read correctly the first person to identify the personages as God (though he calls him the Lord) and Jesus is John Taylor on December 7, 1879.

Could JS have meant Mormon and Moroni?

Does he not identify them because he is afraid of committing blasphemy? Which would not, of course, be the case if in fact he really saw them. But if he made it up, that could be a concern.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 01:04AM by releve.

In his 1832 account he says he saw The Lord, but all the other accounts just say two personages - a father and son. Most people that heard his story seem to have thought they were angelic messengers. I have to wonder if he was being intentionally ambiguous so as to let people think whatever they wanted.

My view is that the official account (1838) adequately identifies the two personages as Jesus and Heavenly Father via the following three passages:

"One of them spake unto me calling me by name and said (pointing to the other) 'This is my beloved Son, Hear him.'"

"My object in going to enquire of the Lord was to know..."

"...the Personage who addressed me said that all their Creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those professors were all corrupt, that they draw near to me to with their lips but their hearts are far from me..."

I think that's enough for most people to conclude it was Elohim and Jesus, but if you asked William Smith, he certainly wouldn't have thought so. Strange how JS's own brother who was alive for all the visions and was an apostle couldn't even figure it out.

Not just William Smith. NOBODY thought it was God and Jesus Christ until 1880.

It's clearly God and Jesus when viewed through our modern lens, but to truly understand it in context you have to look at how people at the time and place viewed it, and they ALL referred to the being (or beings) as merely an angel (angels), including people like Brigham Young who spent significant amounts of time in private conversation with Joseph Smith that none of us will ever have the privilege of hearing. The earliest person to explicitly turn this vision into a theophany, as far as I know, was Orson Pratt on September 19, 1880. This tells me that there is a very good possibility that Joseph didn't actually intend to mean that he saw God and Jesus Christ.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 12:22PM by kimball.

Does JS ever refer to the vision without recounting it?

If he's telling people about his vision from the time of the vision, why are there no accounts of people referring to him as the guy who saw God? Or are there such accounts?

Does BY ever acknowledge that JS saw God?

QUESTION: "Does JS ever refer to the vision without recounting it?"

I do not understand the question.


QUESTION: "If he's telling people about his vision from the time of the vision, why are there no accounts of people referring to him as the guy who saw God? Or are there such accounts?"

The final version of the 1820 First Vision was not invented until 1838, and he did not begin telling variants of the same to anyone else until 1835 (he never published or mentioned the Jesus-only version written in 1832). His own family was unaware of the 1820 First Vision during this time, as were his friends and neighbors. This is why apologists try to claim that the experience was deeply personal and private, thereby explaining why it was unknown. Of course, this contradicts the official 1838 version as per the three excerpts below that claim widespread persecution from 1820 until at least 1827:

"..in which men of high standing would take notice sufficiently to excite the public mind against me and create a hot persecution, and this was common among all the sects: all united to persecute me." (1820)

"I continued to pursue my common vocations in life until the twenty-first of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three, all the time suffering severe persecution at the hands of all classes of men, both religious and irreligious, because I continued to affirm that I had seen a vision." (1823)

"Owing to my continuing to assert that I had seen a vision, apersecution still followed me, and my wife’s father’s family were very much opposed to our being married." (1827)


QUESTION: "Does BY ever acknowledge that JS saw God?"

My understanding is that BY eventually gets the story straight and begins relating the official version of the First Vision, but not before he taught the following in 1855:

"The Lord did not come with the armies of heaven ... but He did send his angel to this same obscure person, Joseph Smith jun., who afterwards became a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and informed him that he should not join any of the religious sects of the day, for they were all wrong." Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 171 (1855)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 11:57AM by Facsimile 3.

I think the first question has to do with accounts like the Nov 14, 1835 journal entry, where Joseph Smith refers to "the time I received the first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14 years old." In other words he mentioned the first vision without actually recounting it.

http://www.fullerconsideration.com/sources.php?cat=PBOM-TFV#journal2



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 12:16PM by kimball.

Yes, that is the type of reference I was looking for, but in that case he's referring to Angels.

Thank you for your patience with my questions. Let me rephrase the first question. When speaking of the organization of the church or the BOM did JS ever say something like, "When God appeared to me he told me to ....". Did he ever talk about the vision or the content of the vision without telling the story of the vision.

I've never seen any documented allusion to the First Vision pre 1832.

I doubt any exists merely because if it did, apologists would be touting it as this is a common critique of the first vision.

Initially he talked a lot about his visions with Nephi/Moroni, magic frogs and such. His account of his vision when 17 was something he talked about and alluded to a lot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 12:22PM by The Oncoming Storm - bc.

It's not just about looking for allusions by Joseph Smith either. I would expect, considering the amount of "persecution" from "all sects" and "all classes of men" that Joseph claims he received about the first vision, SOMEBODY would have said something in the 12 years prior to 1832. Instead the historical record gives us dead silence. Nobody, not even in his family, ever wrote anything about any of it, and they all wrote an awful lot about Moroni's visit.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 12:29PM by kimball.

Grant Palmer talks about how there were four "foundational visions" - Eight Witnesses, Angel and Gold Plates, Priesthood Restoration, First Vision. All four were to Joseph Smith Jun., start out rather mundane, become more impressive, become more physical, become more unique, become more embellished, and become more miraculous as time progresses. More impressive versions come along when he is in trouble with his own leadership status being maintained in the church. I'd love to see a timeline on these other 3 too.

Nice work!