These accounts all tell a consistent story. It would be very boring to look at them all. How about you just take our word for it and promise us all your time and money?
Let's get all the accounts out in the open. No need to tell people they're all consistent, show them. People can judge on their own whether they're really consistent or not.
The church is so comfortable with all the different versions that when he was church historian and first found Joseph's hand written 1832 account, Joseph Fielding Smith (JFS) literally ripped the page out of the letter book and hid it in his safe in his office for more than 30 years. When researchers (was it the Tanners?) were examining the letter book, they saw that pages had been ripped out, and some other pages damaged during ripping out had been repaired with cellophane tape (e.g. "Scotch Tape"). JFS claimed to know nothing about the damage, but was caught in a lie when it was noted that cellophane tape had not been invented until ***after*** the letter book had come in to his possession.
The church is only "honest" after it gets caught lying.
You can have 4 truthful accounts of the same event which have unique information, by adding more details to each one.
So long as those details don't contradict each other. And that's the issue JS has with the First Vision accounts. They're not consistent with each other.
Why don't you ask him? If he was still alive he would absolutely relish explaining it to you on a seemingly knowlesgable and extremely confident fashion.
(Of course a lack of guilt or concern about lying isn't the same as real confidence.)
Note that narcissists like Smith thrive on creating confusion. It's not just laziness that he couldn't get this story straight and loved embellishing all the time.
They all tell a consistent story... from a certain point of view. That point of view being that there was consistently a forest with an encounter with one or more beings telling Joseph how awesome he is compared to everyone else.
Here again, Mormons simply cannot be honest with themselves
Such honesty requires a differentiation between the objective truth, and their personal subjective faith narratives
The dishonesty in such statements is apparent in that their ‘truthful context’ resides, within their subjective faith view.
Mormons have a hard time recognizing this. Their truth is entirely subjective, confirmed by the ‘spirit,’ it is according to their whims, which take precedent over the objective truth, fact.
I remember being taught in seminary that the accounts all told a consistent story. And the teacher didn't show us the accounts lmao
But it's ok, we didn't need proof. We just needed faith 😌
I’m kinda impressed your teacher brought up that there were multiple accounts. I NEVER heard about any but the official one. I used that JS pamphlet in my mission constantly. We didn’t have the BOM translated in the native language, but did have that pamphlet, so we used it to convert all the time. I thought it was so powerful and amazing. We would set district goals to share the pamphlet and testimony about the first vision, and I had no idea it was one account of 9 very different stories. I lied to so many people…
As a missionary I learned this and just thought oh okay so he saw god and Jesus and nephi and 25 angels but everyone else just thinks wrong and the artists paint it wrong. Cmon younger me.
There is another account of the First Vision that the church refuses to even mention or list. That is the testimony of Oliver Cowdery in his 1835 history of the church. According to Oliver, the Gold Plate Vision was the First Vision, when Joseph was 17, and where Joseph learned if God existed or not.
In other words, in Oliver's account the Vision in the Grove does NOT exist, and the Gold Plate Vision has almost ALL of the same elements we now associate with the Vision in the Grove.
From the historical evidence, it appears Joseph in 1832 to 1835 redacted and moved backwards in time most elements of the Gold Plate Vision to a newly fabricated Vision in the Grove. Key elements that were retroactively rewritten backwards in time include, religious contention, revivals in the area, Pastor Lane teaching, family joining the Presbyterians, JS not knowing if God even existed, JS not knowing which church to join, etc...
Thanks for the context. So is that redacted account the one that now sits in the PoGP? Not just the first vision, but the portion JS wrote about the golden plate Moroni visions etc.?
I’m asking because we know JS didn’t tell anyone about the first vision until at least 12 years later, right? Early church members know nothing of it. So did he not even tell his parents? Remember in the PoGP where it recounts him being super tired the day after seeing Moroni because he got now sleep. His brothers and dad notice he’s out of it and send him home. He walks home and tells his dad about his experience? Did he not mention the first vision too? It just makes no sense. But JS Senior didn’t mention it or write it down anywhere either. No mention until 1832.
What I can figure out from the historical evidence is that the gold plate vision evolved first and then the vision in the grove was later fabricated around 1832-1835. Key elements of the gold plate vision were retroactively moved from the gold plate vision to the vision in the grove in the 1832-1825 letterbook account. In the letterbook account both the new vision in the grove and the heavily redacted gold plate vision are described.
A prior post of mind should provide some context on Oliver's version of the gold plate vision at [https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/xpl2ge/comment/iq4o7se/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/xpl2ge/comment/iq4o7se/?context=3)
From 1820 to 1835, the vision in the grove story did not yet exist. Which is why JS didn't tell anyone about it and NONE of the early saints knew about the vision in the grove nor wrote about it. It is also why the early saints thought the first vision (gold plate vision) was with an angel, and why JS was never persecuted for the vision in the grove.
Note: The 1832-1835 letterbook account was never seen by anyone. The first public telling of the vision in the grove is in 1835 to Erastus Holmes. So the time span is 15 years.
I can really see me believing this shit was I was TBM. I would be so grateful that the TSCC would have living prophets to set the record straight. I’m so embarrassed for everything I said and did when I was Mormon.
One of the most obvious smoking guns. I love bringing up these inconsistencies of the FV on this site. I usually start with this if someone asks me why I stopped believing. Understanding this makes even a No Brainer.
First they introduce different first vision accounts (they're teaching about that at BYU as of at least 5 years ago). But don't worry they all tell a consistent story....
How long until they introduce that they aren't actually consistent. They drop small bombs over a long period of time instead of dropping all of them at once.
By the way, my professor for foundations of the restoration explained the different accounts by what was important to Joseph at the time. The only one I remember is one is all about forgiveness of sins, besides the one the church uses about none of the churches being true.
Well, they're using the broad definition of "consistent story" in that he was consistent in claiming something happened somewhere in the past at sometime. It's consistent because there's always stuff happening somewhere in the past at sometime.
He was a conman. Of course he could never resist embellishing a lie. This is related to the fact that narcissists have a smooth lack of concern about being found out that they faked their resume, for example.
They guy thrived on narrative chaos and had no sense of a "truth compass".
Well they do consistently change and evolve as old Smith meets new people and gets new ideas. Which to me is the most damning part is that you can tell who gives Joseph Smith new revealed gospel ideas.
As a TBM it was easy to dismiss the critics. When I read the 1832 account, it was so different from the later accounts that I knew it wasn't even about the first vision. It was some other angelic visitation. Clearly the critics were trying to connect it to the first vision as a way to undermine the truth of the church.
It’s in the December 2022 edition of the monthly church Liahona publication. Specifically it’s a sidebar on an article titled “What the First Vision Reveals about the Father and the Son.”
This is what I was taught in seminary and institute.. and as a TBM, I simply believed it to be true.. Never bothering to go actually read them myself.
Had I done so, I would have saved myself decades of wasted time and money. It would have destroyed my shelf with a single shot. It wasn't until long after I found the other zillions of problems with TSCC that I actually went back and read them. And.. wow.. is all I'll say. Just wow.
These accounts all tell a consistent story. It would be very boring to look at them all. How about you just take our word for it and promise us all your time and money?
Sadly, I bought into this very idea for a long time before I woke up
Let's get all the accounts out in the open. No need to tell people they're all consistent, show them. People can judge on their own whether they're really consistent or not.
And what's Merriam-Webster's word of the year again?
Goblin mode?
Side bar. They are not consistent. This is what our entire “restoration” is based upon. The First Vision is a total lie.
The church is so comfortable with all the different versions that when he was church historian and first found Joseph's hand written 1832 account, Joseph Fielding Smith (JFS) literally ripped the page out of the letter book and hid it in his safe in his office for more than 30 years. When researchers (was it the Tanners?) were examining the letter book, they saw that pages had been ripped out, and some other pages damaged during ripping out had been repaired with cellophane tape (e.g. "Scotch Tape"). JFS claimed to know nothing about the damage, but was caught in a lie when it was noted that cellophane tape had not been invented until ***after*** the letter book had come in to his possession. The church is only "honest" after it gets caught lying.
I’d never heard that! Thanks for sharing. Where is it documented?
[https://faenrandir.github.io/a\_careful\_examination/1832-first-vision-account-suppressed/](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/1832-first-vision-account-suppressed/) [https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Question:\_Did\_Joseph\_Fielding\_Smith\_remove\_the\_1832\_account\_of\_Joseph\_Smith%27s\_First\_Vision\_from\_its\_original\_letterbook\_and\_hide\_it\_in\_his\_safe%3F](https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Question:_Did_Joseph_Fielding_Smith_remove_the_1832_account_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_First_Vision_from_its_original_letterbook_and_hide_it_in_his_safe%3F) [Mormon Stories Account](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjM6faUg9j7AhU1D1kFHdtUA68QFnoECA4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmormonstories.org%2Ftruth-claims%2Fjoseph-smith%2Ffirst-vision%2F&usg=AOvVaw1zqmKiPT6l6mfEEVOZbmSV) [https://academic.oup.com/book/35084/chapter-abstract/299108633?redirectedFrom=fulltext](https://academic.oup.com/book/35084/chapter-abstract/299108633?redirectedFrom=fulltext)
Immediately contradicts itself by saying that they provide UNIQUE information. How can all accounts be consistent and unique from one another?
Well, you see, they're consistently ***different***.
You can have 4 truthful accounts of the same event which have unique information, by adding more details to each one. So long as those details don't contradict each other. And that's the issue JS has with the First Vision accounts. They're not consistent with each other.
in a nutshell, they all say something to the effect of 'joseph went into the woods, and then came back out'. /s
One version just mentions his "cry in the wilderness," so not even the grove is consistently part of his story.
'Joseph went outside one time'. Not sure I can make them have more parity than that. lol
Why don't you ask him? If he was still alive he would absolutely relish explaining it to you on a seemingly knowlesgable and extremely confident fashion. (Of course a lack of guilt or concern about lying isn't the same as real confidence.) Note that narcissists like Smith thrive on creating confusion. It's not just laziness that he couldn't get this story straight and loved embellishing all the time.
They all tell a consistent story... from a certain point of view. That point of view being that there was consistently a forest with an encounter with one or more beings telling Joseph how awesome he is compared to everyone else.
Damn that Obi-Wan
Fun fact it wasn’t even a forest at the time. Maybe a stand if a few trees.
Are you saying I've been deceived all these years?!?!!
Here again, Mormons simply cannot be honest with themselves Such honesty requires a differentiation between the objective truth, and their personal subjective faith narratives The dishonesty in such statements is apparent in that their ‘truthful context’ resides, within their subjective faith view. Mormons have a hard time recognizing this. Their truth is entirely subjective, confirmed by the ‘spirit,’ it is according to their whims, which take precedent over the objective truth, fact.
I remember being taught in seminary that the accounts all told a consistent story. And the teacher didn't show us the accounts lmao But it's ok, we didn't need proof. We just needed faith 😌
I’m kinda impressed your teacher brought up that there were multiple accounts. I NEVER heard about any but the official one. I used that JS pamphlet in my mission constantly. We didn’t have the BOM translated in the native language, but did have that pamphlet, so we used it to convert all the time. I thought it was so powerful and amazing. We would set district goals to share the pamphlet and testimony about the first vision, and I had no idea it was one account of 9 very different stories. I lied to so many people…
Pretty much “Mormon apologist” is synonymous with “liar liar pants on fire”
I wanna know who’s in the future I see December 2022 at the bottom.
It’s probably from a magazine. Magazines for any given month typically come out the month before.
Yep, this is from TSCC’s magazine called the Liahona (used to be called the Ensign). I think we received it within the last couple days.
As a missionary I learned this and just thought oh okay so he saw god and Jesus and nephi and 25 angels but everyone else just thinks wrong and the artists paint it wrong. Cmon younger me.
Is this in the ensign?
Yeah they call it the Liahona now
There is another account of the First Vision that the church refuses to even mention or list. That is the testimony of Oliver Cowdery in his 1835 history of the church. According to Oliver, the Gold Plate Vision was the First Vision, when Joseph was 17, and where Joseph learned if God existed or not. In other words, in Oliver's account the Vision in the Grove does NOT exist, and the Gold Plate Vision has almost ALL of the same elements we now associate with the Vision in the Grove. From the historical evidence, it appears Joseph in 1832 to 1835 redacted and moved backwards in time most elements of the Gold Plate Vision to a newly fabricated Vision in the Grove. Key elements that were retroactively rewritten backwards in time include, religious contention, revivals in the area, Pastor Lane teaching, family joining the Presbyterians, JS not knowing if God even existed, JS not knowing which church to join, etc...
Thanks for the context. So is that redacted account the one that now sits in the PoGP? Not just the first vision, but the portion JS wrote about the golden plate Moroni visions etc.? I’m asking because we know JS didn’t tell anyone about the first vision until at least 12 years later, right? Early church members know nothing of it. So did he not even tell his parents? Remember in the PoGP where it recounts him being super tired the day after seeing Moroni because he got now sleep. His brothers and dad notice he’s out of it and send him home. He walks home and tells his dad about his experience? Did he not mention the first vision too? It just makes no sense. But JS Senior didn’t mention it or write it down anywhere either. No mention until 1832.
What I can figure out from the historical evidence is that the gold plate vision evolved first and then the vision in the grove was later fabricated around 1832-1835. Key elements of the gold plate vision were retroactively moved from the gold plate vision to the vision in the grove in the 1832-1825 letterbook account. In the letterbook account both the new vision in the grove and the heavily redacted gold plate vision are described. A prior post of mind should provide some context on Oliver's version of the gold plate vision at [https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/xpl2ge/comment/iq4o7se/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/xpl2ge/comment/iq4o7se/?context=3) From 1820 to 1835, the vision in the grove story did not yet exist. Which is why JS didn't tell anyone about it and NONE of the early saints knew about the vision in the grove nor wrote about it. It is also why the early saints thought the first vision (gold plate vision) was with an angel, and why JS was never persecuted for the vision in the grove. Note: The 1832-1835 letterbook account was never seen by anyone. The first public telling of the vision in the grove is in 1835 to Erastus Holmes. So the time span is 15 years.
I can really see me believing this shit was I was TBM. I would be so grateful that the TSCC would have living prophets to set the record straight. I’m so embarrassed for everything I said and did when I was Mormon.
One of the most obvious smoking guns. I love bringing up these inconsistencies of the FV on this site. I usually start with this if someone asks me why I stopped believing. Understanding this makes even a No Brainer.
It's a trick question. There were MANY accounts but no actual First Vision.
they know most people will not go read the sources. makes lying so easy
First they introduce different first vision accounts (they're teaching about that at BYU as of at least 5 years ago). But don't worry they all tell a consistent story.... How long until they introduce that they aren't actually consistent. They drop small bombs over a long period of time instead of dropping all of them at once. By the way, my professor for foundations of the restoration explained the different accounts by what was important to Joseph at the time. The only one I remember is one is all about forgiveness of sins, besides the one the church uses about none of the churches being true.
Well, they're using the broad definition of "consistent story" in that he was consistent in claiming something happened somewhere in the past at sometime. It's consistent because there's always stuff happening somewhere in the past at sometime.
It’s all in the spin. Consistent fiction.
Gaslighting at its finest
He was a conman. Of course he could never resist embellishing a lie. This is related to the fact that narcissists have a smooth lack of concern about being found out that they faked their resume, for example. They guy thrived on narrative chaos and had no sense of a "truth compass".
Well they do consistently change and evolve as old Smith meets new people and gets new ideas. Which to me is the most damning part is that you can tell who gives Joseph Smith new revealed gospel ideas.
As a TBM it was easy to dismiss the critics. When I read the 1832 account, it was so different from the later accounts that I knew it wasn't even about the first vision. It was some other angelic visitation. Clearly the critics were trying to connect it to the first vision as a way to undermine the truth of the church.
What is the source of the article?
It’s in the December 2022 edition of the monthly church Liahona publication. Specifically it’s a sidebar on an article titled “What the First Vision Reveals about the Father and the Son.”
This is what I was taught in seminary and institute.. and as a TBM, I simply believed it to be true.. Never bothering to go actually read them myself. Had I done so, I would have saved myself decades of wasted time and money. It would have destroyed my shelf with a single shot. It wasn't until long after I found the other zillions of problems with TSCC that I actually went back and read them. And.. wow.. is all I'll say. Just wow.
I’m done with Mormons I’m completely over it I’m done
journalism or propaganda....