The LDS Church Kept the Earliest First Vision Account in a Safe for 133 Years

You were taught the First Vision your whole life. The sacred grove. The fourteen-year-old boy. God the Father and Jesus Christ appearing together — two separate, embodied beings — in a pillar of light. You learned it in Primary, you learned it from Hymn 26 before you could read, and if you went on a mission or sat through an investigator discussion, you learned exactly what it was worth to the institution: everything. Gordon B. Hinckley said in 2002 that if the vision didn't happen, the whole church is a fraud. That's how much weight was put on one specific account of one specific event. Here's what nobody told you: that account was written in 1838, eighteen years after the event it describes. And there's an earlier one — written in Joseph Smith's own hand, around 1832, the only account he ever wrote himself without a scribe. In that account, Joseph is in his sixteenth year, not his fourteenth. He doesn't go to the grove confused about which church to join. He goes because he already knows the churches have all gone wrong — and because he's convicted of his own sinfulness. And only one being appears. Joseph writes: "I saw the Lord." Not two Personages. Not God the Father and Jesus Christ together. Just Christ. That account sat in the Church Historian's Office for 133 years. The pages were cut from Joseph's letterbook — the repair tape is cellophane, invented in 1930, which means the excision happened sometime between 1930 and 1965. Those pages were kept in Joseph Fielding Smith's personal office safe. Not the general archive. His safe. A BYU graduate student named Paul Cheesman got access to the pages in 1965 and included them in his master's thesis. The church got to call it a discovery. In 2013, the Gospel Topics Essay went up quietly on the church's website. James B. Allen — the church's own former Assistant Church Historian — had already documented that no contemporary 1830s writings mention the First Vision at all: no church publications, no journals, no correspondence from anyone who knew Joseph during the decade the vision allegedly occurred. The essay calls the 1832 account's "I saw the Lord" a statement that "can be read to refer to one or two personages." That's the acknowledgment: not that the accounts differ, but that the earliest one is just ambiguous enough to leave room. The memory argument is real. It applies to accounts people can access. It doesn't reach a document that was in a safe. 🎧 New episodes every Sunday at 9:00 am, just in time for sacrament meeting. 💛 Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem 🎙️ patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem 📲 TikTok & Instagram: @postmormonpostmortem 🌐 postmormonpostmortem.com 00:00 Introduction to the First Vision Accounts 02:45 The Canonized Version vs. Early Accounts 05:28 Cultural Impact of the First Vision 08:17 The Timeline of Suppression and Discovery 09:39 The Implications of the First Vision's Validity 22:50 The Suppression of Historical Accounts 25:19 The Discovery of the Cut Pages 28:41 Analyzing the Gospel Topics Essay 29:56 The Institutional Response to Historical Evidence 32:51 The Complexity of Memory and Embellishment 34:53 The Impact of Institutional Betrayal 42:21 Navigating Personal Betrayal and Healing SHOW NOTES — SOURCING & CITATION GUIDE PRIMARY SOURCES Joseph Smith, 1832 Account (holograph): LDS Church History Library; published Improvement Era (1971); facsimile at josephsmithpapers.org Joseph Smith, 1835 Account: Joseph Smith Diary, November 9, 1835; published in Joseph Smith Papers, Journals Vol. 1 Joseph Smith, 1838 Account: Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith—History 1:1–20 (canonized scripture) Joseph Smith, 1842 Account: Wentworth Letter, Times and Seasons, March 1, 1842 CHURCH-PRODUCED SOURCES Gospel Topics Essay: "First Vision Accounts" — churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/ Preach My Gospel (2023 edition): Chapter 3, Lesson 1 ⚑ Joseph Smith Papers Project: josephsmithpapers.org/site/accounts-of-the-first-vision ⚑ Children's Songbook: "Joseph Smith's First Prayer," Hymns #26 Gordon B. Hinckley: "The Marvelous Foundation of Our Faith," General Conference, October 2002 — churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2002/10/the-marvelous-foundation-of-our-faith Joseph Smith Letterbook 1, Joseph Smith Papers (physical excision documentation) "Ask of God: Joseph Smith's First Vision," Church History Department film, 2015/2020 Russell M. Nelson, "The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World," April 5, 2020 SECONDARY SOURCES James B. Allen, "The Significance of Joseph Smith's 'First Vision' in Mormon Thought," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 3 (1966) Paul R. Cheesman, "An Analysis of the Accounts Relating to Joseph Smith's Early Visions" (master's thesis, BYU, 1965) Steven C. Harper, Joseph Smith's First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (Deseret Book, 2012) Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (2005)