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Joseph Smith


(Brodie 21-22).
             Smith did not publish this account of the vision until twenty-two years later in 1842. There are other early accounts of the vision that relate the story differently. In a handwritten letter Smith wrote in 1831, he stated that he was fifteen years old instead of fourteen at the time, and described only one being, as opposed to the "two personages" described in the later account. Not only this, but he declared that he had already concluded all churches to be in apostasy before he went into the woods to pray, while the official account, the one written in 1842, states it had not occurred to him until God informed him of it in the vision. And, according to his autobiography, he was stirred to prayer on the dilemma of what church to join after a Protestant revival in the area that year. However, Protestant church records indicate that there were not any revivals in that area until the years 1824 and 1825. Then in 1835 Smith related the story to a friend, saying that he was fourteen, and had seen "many angels" in the vision. Thus we have varying accounts by Smith himself as to the number of beings in the vision, who they were, and what they said. Furthermore, when the Messenger and Advocate became the first LDS publication to print a history of the rise of the Church, it failed to mention the alleged "first vision" at all, starting instead with the "second vision" of 1823 (Roberts 30).
             Smith also claimed that in 1823 an angel appeared to him, announcing that Smith had been chosen by God to translate an ancient record hidden in a nearby hill. On the night of September 21, he wrote, he was kneeling by his bed asking forgiveness for his sins when a light filled his room and an angel appeared at his side standing in the air: .
             He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness His hands were naked, and his arms also, a little above the wrist, so, also were his feet naked, as were his legs, a little above the ankles.


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