Gospel Topic Essay: 001: First Vision Accounts

Memory? Yes, it changes, but you don’t forget that your first vision godhead is very different than early teachings, including the first BoM, BoC and LoF… Only pathological liars have this big of a memory problem. Everyone who remembered his vision recounts close variations which all contradict the revised, official, Fabricated FV version.

My own focus of the problem with all the accounts is the 1838 vision not only outright contradicts the other version in so many ways, but that it proves itself a fraud in many ways even before any debate on it begins. Debate on it with apologists and church officials is only an exercise of running in circles and avoiding truth. More deception. “Lie upon Lie, decept upon decept?” I can’t personally reconcile all the many historical contradictions in just the 1838 account in a healthy way.

I’m glad I finally read the April 1970 Improvement Era article by Dr. James B. Allen, which turns out to be pathetic apologist tactics leaving out substance and facts to mislead and smooth over the well known lies, known to him and to so many other LDS “historians.” These tactics are unethical in themselves. This only adds to the growing heap of deceptions by the church and apologists.

I supposed that it sometimes gets trite once you become familiar with this topic. It’s depressing when we can’t talk about these things at the place where it counts the most (at church).

Most members will just dismiss the topic and not take a serious look at the nuance behind what really transpired.

A faithful perspective is to consider the Evolution of Theology and that the story grew over time and by the power of the spirit of God.

If we allow room for the flexibility of things, perhaps the first vision experience can still be a transformative, transcendent experience. For what can be more powerful than receiving an answer from God, but finding out what that actually looks like instead of thinking well Joseph received a visitation from God and Christ… he is so much better than I am, I’m just an average Joe, I’m not like the General Authorities or Apostles, much less the prophet.

So this notion that Joseph received this revelation while others don’t feeds an inferiority complex. Whereas if we state categorically that this was a revelation, vision, imagination, then we are all entitled to such epiphanies then some how it asserts our self esteem and allows us to feel equal to Joseph Smith and any other general authority or leader in the church out there.