Monday, October 21, 2019

Brigham Young and Joseph Smith’s First Vision


Some critics have argued that Brigham Young never addressed the First Vision and/or was completely ignorant thereof. For a refutation, see the following from D. Charles Pyle and Cooper Johnson:


Recent scholarship on the shorthand records of Brigham’s sermons further refutes this, showing that he even talked about it in greater detail than previously believed. As Steven C. Harper noted:

It has long been thought that Brigham Young alluded to Smith’s vision only occasionally. LaJean Carruth’s recent translation of shorthand records reveals that Young talked about it more often and in more detail than previously thought. Young evoked Smith’s vision, for instance, in an 1855 sermon:

When Joseph first received revelation, the Lord could not tell him what he was going to do he didn’t tell him he was going to call him to be a prophet seer revelator high priest and founder of kingdom of God on earth. Joseph would have said what just what does that mean you are talking that I can’t understand. He could merely reveal to him that the Lord was pleased to bless him and forgive his sins and there was a work for him to perform on the earth and that was about all he could reveal. (Brigham Young, March 25, 1855. Papers of George D. Watt, MS 4534, box 3, disk 1, images 142-53, Church History Library, Salt Lake City. Transcribed by LaJean Purcell Carruth, July 2009)

A decade later, Brigham delivered his only known narrative version of the vision story. His point of emphasis was

the very principle of Joseph Smith asking the Father in the name of Jesus according to the exhortation of James the Apostle that was repeated to us this morning, the effect of his asking the Father to teach him the right way, to show which of all these churches are correct that he might attach himself to that individual church.

Young continued to make the case that Smith’s experience proved the promise in James 1:5 that God gives to those who ask.

He did ask he did receive and the heavens were opened to him and the angels said to him all those that you behold all those that you hear lo here lo there in there lo younger lo in another place here is Christ in the wilderness shall I say in our camp meeting here is Christ in our protracted meeting upon the anxious bench and here is Christ in the silent chamber where we say nothing and lo here is Christ and lo there the Lord said to him through that messenger he is not there he is with none of them you will have to commence entirely anew. Joseph Smith was only a little over 14 years old this time. (Brigham Young, July 8, 1866, Papers of George D. Watt. Transcribed by Lajean Purcell Carruth, December 10, 2008; corrected April 13, 2012)

Here, Brigham Young evoked the vision to make a point about apostate Christianity, situating young Joseph Smith amid evangelical confusion. (Steven C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins [New York: Oxford University Press, 2019], 94-95)



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