EVENTS CONCERNING FIRST VISION - PART 3

(Commentary of Primarily Robert Millet & Joseph McConkie)

"In other accounts Joseph mentioned that they exactly resemble each other in features and likeness.  So we don't know for sure if he knew then if the Father had a corporeal, physical body.  At least he didn't know it yet. 

After a little research I discovered that a Presbyterian Reverend Truman Coe in Kirtland, Ohio in writing about the Latter-day Saints in 1836 says this:  'These Latter-day Saints have some strange beliefs.  They even teach that God has a body.'  That says to me that the Saints are at least teaching it by 1836 and perhaps before then.  We certainly know it by Nauvoo, where Joseph Smith declares it in Ramos, Illinois, 'the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as mans.

There has been a notion that some of other faiths that have tried to popularize that, in the early years, Joseph believed in the God of the creeds, the God of the sectarian world, the God of the Trinity.  Frankly, the facts of the matter don't bear that out.

There is a statement that Joseph made after the King Follet sermon, shortly before Joseph's death that says, 'I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ as a separate and distinct personage from God the Father and that the Holy Ghost as a separate and distinct Spirit. These Three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.'  A pretty strong statement, 'I've always declared that.'  It makes sense since he learned that at 14 years of age.

There is another important principle taught her and that is the relationship between the Father and the Son.

That is, the manner in which the question was answered.  Joseph did not say when he got out of the grove and had asked the question that God answered or that the Father answered.  The answer had to come through Jesus Christ.  Now that's very important.  From the day that Adam introduces the fall, we need a Savior.  From that point, all the revelations of salvation must come to us through that same channel.  The Father introduces.

As if to say, 'Joseph, this is my Beloved Son.  You get all your answers through Him.'  So it wasn't like the Father said, 'I better handle this one; this is big; this is important.  You take over a little later and handle the minor questions.'  No, instead, 'This is my Beloved Son, you hear Him!'  This is priesthood government; the order of heaven. 

Something else that would be easy to pass through is, early on, Joseph learns about the immortality of the soul.  Before him stands a Being who had been crucified, put to death and he learns something about life beyond the grave.  Further, Joseph learned that what James said is true.  Revelation is real.  If someone wants to have wisdom from God, he can go to God and receive it.

Years later, Joseph will write that if he wants to learn, it is not through reading the experiences of others but by going to God directly.  He later said, 'If man could gaze into heaven for five minutes he could learn more than by reading all the books that had been written on the subject.'  He had family experiences before this but now he has had his own experience.

He also learns the answer to his question.  The language of the 1838 experience is very strong.

'All their creeds are an abomination in my sight.'  I think we need to clarify this.  We don't want to sugar coat this on the one hand but we don't want to overstate it either.  I don't think the Lord is condemning all people in other churches, obviously, but he is saying that the creeds trouble Him.  Why?  Because in the early centuries after Christ, there is where we begin to unravel and pull apart.  The scriptures had plainly taught about the nature of God and yet when we begin to dabble about the nature of God, everything else falls.

The nature of God to man, man's ability to reveal himself, man's ability to know God, man's ability to become like God, are all affected.  God has reason to be just a little annoyed.  They took God's body, they took His gender, they took his manhood, they took his fatherhood, they took his passion, they robbed him of his family, and they took everything away from Him that is meaningful.

They redefined man and therefore took and insulted all his children, by cutting off His association of His children with Him.  Now has He a right to be just a little offended and a little upset about all this?  I think so, I think so.  I think the language should be fairly strong or He doesn't have those passions that we say ought to be restored here. 

In spite of this, Joseph was courageous and never squeamish about telling the story of the first vision to answer questions about who we are or what we are.  By way of summary to this remarkable discussion let us close by two statements by leaders of the Church.  First by President Gordon B. Hinckley:

'To me it is a significant and marvelous thing that in establishing and opening this dispensation, our Father did so with a revelation of Himself and His Son Jesus Christ.

As if to say to all the world that he was weary of the attempts of men, earnest as those attempts might have been, to describe and define Him.  The experience of Joseph, in a few moments in a grove, on a spring day in 1820, brought more knowledge in the reality and substance of God and His Son than men had arrived at in centuries of speculation.'

Then this from J. Rueben Clark, who taught: 'There are for the Church and each and all of its members two prime things which may not be overlooked, forgotten, shaded or discarded.  First, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Only Begotten Son of the Father in the flesh.  He was raised from the tomb, a resurrected Being, a Perfect Being, the first fruits of the resurrection.  The second of the two things for which we must all give full faith is that the Father and the Son actually in truth and in very deed appeared to the Prophet Joseph in a vision, in the woods; that other heavenly visions followed unto Joseph and others, that the Gospel and the Holy Priesthood after the Holy Son of God were in truth and fact restored to the earth for which they were lost by the apostasy of the primitive Church.  These facts and each of them, together with all things necessarily implied therein or flowing there from, must stand unchanged, unmodified, without dilution, excuse apology or avoidance.  They may not be explained away or submerged.  Without these two great beliefs, the Church would cease to be the Church.  We can now understand why God would say something so profound to Joseph Smith as this:  'This generation shall receive My Word through you.'"