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Multiple accounts of the First Vision/1835/Mentions "Angels"
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Criticism
The Tanners claim that this statement contradicts Joseph Smith’s teaching that the Father and Son appeared to him in the First Vision. They also claim that the later version in the History of the Church has been “falsified.” Furthermore, they state: “The fact that Mormon historians had to make such a serious change in Joseph Smith’s History after his death tends further to weaken the case for the first vision.”
Source(s) of the criticism
Tanner and Tanner, Changing World of Mormonism, 156-59.
Response
- Joseph Smith 1835 diary, p. 37.
- Manuscript History, Book B-1, p. 642.
- “This afternoon, Erastus Holmes, of Newbury, Ohio, called on me to inquire about the establishment of the church, and to be instructed in doctrine more perfectly. I gave him a brief relation of my experience while in my juvenile years, say from six years old up to the time I received the first visitation of angels, which was when I was about fourteen years old; also the revelations that I received afterwards concerning the Book of Mormon, and a short account of the rise and progress of the church up to this date” (Deseret News, vol. 2, no. 15, 29 May 1852).
- (History of the Church, 2:312).
Conclusion
Endnotes
None
Further reading
FAIR wiki articles
FAIR web site
- FAIR Topical Guide: