How realistic is the First Vision?
One of the seminal events in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the First Vision of Joseph Smith. Missionaries today around the world in their very first lesson with those interested in the Church recount the story of Joseph Smith praying in the woods near his house and being visited by God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ as his very first prophetic calling. As a missionary I testified that I “knew” this event happened on thousands of occasions.
But how plausible and realistic is Joseph’s First Vision account that God the father appeared to him?
Different Accounts of the First Vision Undermine the Claim
It is worth mentioning that there are some serious problems with Joseph Smith’s recounting of the First Vision. There are no written accounts of the First Vision before 1832, a dozen years later. And Joseph himself gave four first-hand accounts of the First Vision, in 1832, 1835, 1838, 1842. The earliest account suspiciously does not mention the appearance of the Father, expressly identifying only one personage that is identified as Jesus Christ. There are also some other more minor inconsistencies.
I will invite the reader to study the different First Vision accounts for themselves and decide whether Joseph’s recollections are believable and trustworthy. But for the remainder of this article, I am going to assume that the familiar 1838 account of the Father and the Son appearing to Joseph Smith is what Joseph is alleged to have seen. And I want to explore whether this appearance of the Father and the Son is believable and credible.
The Bible does not Support the Claim
The Bible does not support a bodily manifestation and vision of God the Father. To the contrary, the Bible teaches that no man can see the father.
John 1:18 is quite explicit:
No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (KJV)
Other translations of this verse are even clearer:
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:18 NIV)
No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:18 ESV)
“No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.” (John 1:18 NET)
From this verse we learn that no human being has seen the God the Father. Jesus Christ, who is in a special relationship or fellowship with God the Father and who is himself God, is the one who reveals God to mankind.
This verse was so problematic to Joseph’s claim to have seen the Father that in his Joseph Smith translation he changed it to no longer say what it plainly says in Greek. So John 1:18 becomes “ And no man hath seen God at any time, except he hath borne record of the Son; for except it is through him no man can be saved.” This change is not consistent with a single manuscript of the Gospel of John and just happens to conveniently support Joseph Smith’s claims
John 6:46 is similar: “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.” (KJV)
Later in John’s Gospel the Apostle Phillip asks Jesus to “shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us” and Jesus responds “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:8-9 KJV)
Paul similarly explained that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and the “brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). In other words, Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God.
Jesus Christ and his Apostles are emphatic that no human being has or can see the Father who is invisible and who reveals his image or glory through his Son Jesus Christ.
Joseph Smith’s “Extraordinary” Vision
According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there isn’t a single recorded example of the Father appearing to someone in vision in the history of the world—until Joseph Smith that is. As President Joseph Fielding Smith explained “all revelation since the fall has come through Jesus Christ, who is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. In all of the scriptures, where God is mentioned and where he has appeared, it was Jehovah who talked with Abraham, with Noah, Enoch, Moses and all the prophets. He is the God of Israel, the Holy One of Israel. . . . The Father has never dealt directly and personally since the fall, and he has never appeared except to introduce and bear record of the Son.”
And speaking of the First Vision specifically, President Gordon B. Hinckley explained: “[i]n all of recorded religious history there is nothing to compare with it. The New Testament recounts the baptism of Jesus when the voice of God was heard and the Holy Ghost descended in the form of a dove. At the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw the Lord transfigured before them. They heard the voice of the Father, but they did not see Him.” (The Marvelous Foundation of Our Faith, October 2002).
In other words, to believe in the First Vision as taught by Joseph Smith you need to be willing to accept that God the Father remained invisible and unseen for 5,000 years of biblical history. Noah didn’t see him. Moses ddin’t see him. Elijah didn’t see him. Isaiah didn’t see him. Daniel didn’t see him. Jesus himself didn’t see him. Peter, James, and John didn’t see him. Paul didn’t see him. Only Joseph Smith saw him. In all of history, he alone saw the Father of Jesus Christ in an open vision.
Is this realistic and believable?
Repeated Visions of the Father
But in reality Joseph Smith didn’t just claim that the Father appeared to him one time. On at least four other occasions after the First Vision Joseph Smith claimed that the father appeared to him or to other members of the Church.
In order to believe Joseph Smith’s claims, one would have to believe that God the father, the invisible God, did not manifest himself to anyone in the history of the world until 1820. And that afterwards he appeared on several occasions in the span of just a few years.
On at least one occasion at the School of the Prophets in Kirtland Ohio, Jesus Christ appeared First and walked around the assembled elders. Then after he left, God the Father allegedly appeared and openly walked around the elders without saying a word.
This is what Elder Zebedee Coltrin reported:
At one of these meetings after the organization of the school, . . . when we were all together, Joseph having given instructions, and while engaged in silent prayer, kneeling, with our hands uplifted each one praying in silence, no one whispered above his breath, a personage walked through the room from East to west, and Joseph asked if we saw him. I saw him and suppose the others did, and Joseph answered that is Jesus, the Son of God, our elder brother. Afterward Joseph told us to resume our former position in prayer, which we did. Another person came through; He was surrounded as with a flame of fire.
Joseph Smith then identified this personage as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
To believe this story you would have to accept that God the Father who never manifested himself to mankind from creation until 1820 was now making routine appearances to Elders of the Church, not to inaugurate some great dispensation or commemorate a momentous occasion, but just as part of an ordinary prayer meeting.
Furthermore, one would have to reject the notion that the Father only appears to bear witness of the Son that JST John 1:18 and Joseph Fielding Smith advanced. Notice that there is no reference here to the Father testifying of the son. And the father appears after Joseph Smith said the Son already appeared to them.
To believe this story, you also need to believe that the Father felt the need to appear on multiple occasions in the 1830s in Kirtland, but that since then he stopped doing so, as there are no similar manifestations of the Father after these occasions in Ohio.
Are those claims realistic and believable?
Joseph Smith’s claims are not Believable
There are too many inconsistencies and problems here for me. The Bible teaches that no human being can see the Father. And Joseph’s earliest First Vision account did not involve an appearance of the Father. But Joseph changed the Bible to allow for a manifestation of the Father in order to support his own extraordinary claims. He then claimed that the Father appeared to him and others on several occasions without complying with the rules that he set in his own rendition of the Bible.
Ultimately, I am going to have to side with what Jesus himself taught through John the Beloved Disciple and through Paul his chosen Apostle. Jesus is the express image of the invisible father. Anyone who claims to have seen both the Father and the Son can be dismissed as such a manifestation is incompatible with the witness of scripture.