“Why was Joseph Smith’s First Vision not widely known to Church members in the 1830s?,” First Vision Accounts (2022)
“Why was Joseph Smith’s First Vision not widely known to Church members in the 1830s?,” First Vision Accounts
Why was Joseph Smith’s First Vision not widely known to Church members in the 1830s?
Because Church members created few records during the early 1830s, it is unclear how much Joseph Smith shared the story of the First Vision with others. Early Saints usually spoke of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon as the starting point of the Restoration and the most important evidence of Joseph’s calling. If Joseph did limit his sharing of the vision, it may be that he viewed it as a personal experience at first. When he wrote the earliest account of the vision in 1832, that is exactly how he described it. That early account emphasizes his own personal search for forgiveness.
Joseph Smith’s understanding of the vision’s significance to the Church developed with time and experience. This is frequently true of the important experiences in our own lives. Over time, events take on greater significance or we come to understand their meaning for us in new ways.
By the late 1830s Church members were more familiar with Joseph’s vision. In the early 1840s, accounts of the First Vision were published in Church newspapers and included in missionary tracts in two languages. Over time, Latter-day Saints came to appreciate the First Vision as the beginning of Joseph Smith’s calling to restore the Church of Jesus Christ.