“What the First Vision Reveals about the Father and the Son,” Liahona, Dec. 2022, United States and Canada Section.
What the First Vision Reveals about the Father and the Son
The First Vision not only reveals much about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ but shows us how we can come to know Them too.
The First Vision, by Del Parson
A few years ago, I was teaching a seminary class about the First Vision. As part of the discussion, I spoke about the power of sharing that story in missionary work and why it has always been part of our first lesson since the beginning of organized missionary lesson plans. One of my students raised an objection: “Brother Mathews, I think that as missionaries we should teach the world about Jesus Christ, not about the First Vision.”
On the screen in front of the class was a well-known image of the First Vision painted by Del Parson. I pointed to it and asked my student what he saw. Without really looking up or giving it much thought he said, “I see Joseph Smith. That’s my point. I think as missionaries we should teach about Jesus Christ, not Joseph Smith.”
I patiently asked him to look at it again and tell me what else he saw. More thoughtfully this time, he looked up, stared for a moment, and reflected. I could visibly see when the light turned on in his mind. He said, “I see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I think I see your point. The First Vision is not just about Joseph Smith.”
I believe that this story represents a common misunderstanding about the First Vision and the reason why we sometimes fail to value it as much as we should. What makes this story so powerful is not that a farm boy named Joseph Smith went into the woods. (Farm boys go into the woods all the time. That’s not news!) What makes the story so powerful is that God the Eternal Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, revealed Themselves to that farm boy. And in the process, They revealed Themselves to all of us. It was Their great introductory revelation to the world in the latter days.
Here are just a few of the many truths we learn about our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ, from the First Vision.
God the Father
Most members of the Church recognize that the First Vision reveals God to be a separate being from His Son, Jesus Christ, but do we understand why this really matters? This is so much bigger than just a theological point.
Many people believe God is a being “without body, parts, or passions.”1 But the First Vision reveals that God has a body and form like a man and that we are literally created in God’s image. Although the Bible states this in its first chapter (see Genesis 1:27), the First Vision confirms that it is literal. The First Vision began to reveal once again who God is and what our relationship to Him is. In it, our Father in Heaven began to reveal Himself anew.
In addition to God’s form, the First Vision also teaches us that He has feelings. Although viewing God as a loving, approachable, personal being may seem common today, it was not the common view of many Christian churches in Joseph’s day. Contrary to these views of God as a distant and impersonal being, the First Vision revealed that God loves us, knows us by name, and personally answers our prayers without upbraiding us (see Joseph Smith—History 1:25–26). As the classic hymn proclaims, “Joseph sought the God of love,”2 and it was the God of love whom Joseph found. After his experience with this God, Joseph shared, “My soul was filled with love, and for many days I could rejoice with great joy. The Lord was with me.”3
The implications of these truths are profound. If God is a loving, personal being who looks like us rather than a distant spirit essence without form or feelings, then it points to the possibility that God could actually be our literal Father in Heaven.4 Although the Bible calls God our Father, before Joseph Smith this was largely understood as figurative, not literal. As one Latter-day Saint scholar explained: “Since the fifth century, Christian orthodoxy had imposed an almost impassable gulf between the Creator and His creations. Humankind, Christians came to believe, was created from nothing. God was not a craftsman who refashioned existing materials but wholly different and apart from His creation—mysterious and unknowable. The Bible’s parent-child description of God’s relationship to us was understood largely as a metaphor instead of a literal kinship. To suggest otherwise, in the estimation of most Christian thinkers, blasphemously lessened God or dangerously elevated humankind.”5
But the First Vision does suggest otherwise. Although it does not plainly reveal our parent-child relationship to God, the First Vision reveals truths about God’s image and nature that would lay a foundation for Joseph Smith’s understanding of God. In time, our Heavenly Father would gradually reveal more about Himself and our relationship to Him, but it is in the First Vision that God first began to reveal who He is as our literal, loving Father in Heaven.
The First Vision, by Gary E. Smith
The Son, Jesus Christ
The First Vision is the most important revelation of Christ since Jesus Christ revealed Himself to His disciples after His Resurrection.
This was powerfully taught to me through an experience I had a few years ago. While I was waiting in a local restaurant, I began to look through a magazine that featured an article on Easter. After reporting that Easter gives hope of life after death for millions of Christians around the world, it concluded by observing that there were no modern witnesses of Christ’s Resurrection. Those who saw the resurrected Christ had all died thousands of years ago, the article said, and now we were only left to trust their accounts found in the Bible. My mind immediately turned to the First Vision. It struck me how powerfully that event confirms one of the main messages of the New Testament: that Jesus Christ really is God’s Beloved Son and that He really did conquer death through the Resurrection.
But the First Vision does so much more than just confirm what the Bible says about Jesus Christ. While the Bible reveals that Christ lived and spoke, the First Vision reveals that He lives and speaks.6 While the Bible reveals that Christ formed His Church anciently, the First Vision reveals that His Church was lost but “that the fulness of [His] gospel” would be restored.7 Before the First Vision, many believed that “there [are] no such things as visions or revelations in these days; that all such things had ceased with the apostles” (Joseph Smith—History 1:21). The First Vision dramatically reveals that revelation is for our day. The living Christ is the Christ who reveals Himself in the First Vision, and it is that Christ that all the world must come to know to be saved.
Knowing the Father and the Son
Although it was Joseph Smith’s First Vision, in a sense it belongs to all of us. I came to understand that as a missionary. Because the First Vision is part of the first lesson missionaries share, I had the opportunity to teach and testify of it often. The more I shared the First Vision, the more I realized how profound and powerful it really is. The people I taught came to know God better through the First Vision, and so did I.8 I began to see the First Vision as not just a revelation for Joseph Smith but a revelation for all of us. It is the great introductory revelation of God and Christ to all the world in the latter days.
Not only does it reveal much about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, but the First Vision also provides a pattern for how we can come to know Them too. We can seek Them and find Them, just as Joseph Smith did. Following the example of Joseph, we can desire, study, obey, and pray until we know Them for ourselves.9 And we can continue to follow this pattern throughout our lives as we seek to know Them better and draw closer to Them.
Although I was not there in the woods to see the First Vision, I have followed this pattern, and the Holy Spirit has confirmed these truths to me. I have come to know my Father in Heaven and my Savior, Jesus Christ, through the First Vision. And through the pattern and truths revealed in the First Vision, They invite all of us to come to know Them better.
Behold My Hands and My Feet, by Harry Anderson
As we end this year’s study of the Old Testament and prepare to begin next year’s study of the New Testament, we should remember that what we learn from the First Vision influences the way we read and understand those holy books of scripture. This is because the God of the Bible is the God of the First Vision. The same God who spoke to Moses from Mount Sinai spoke to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. The same resurrected Christ that appeared to His Apostles in the New Testament appeared to Joseph Smith in the First Vision. What we learn about the Father and the Son from the First Vision becomes a lens through which we see and interpret Them throughout the scriptures. The Lord Jesus Christ speaks today, just as He did anciently. May we continue to “Hear Him” (Joseph Smith—History 1:17).