Any person can repeat the first vision
of Joseph Smith, and every person of this Church, sooner or later, should
repeat that vision. If members of the Church fail to have that first great
vision, then the Lord pity them; their lives will be empty.
What I mean by this is <that>
any people think <that> seeing God and his Son was the essence of the
first vision. That is contrary to that was <is> embodied in
<the> that vision. The essence of the first vision is that Joseph
Smith <as he> arose from his knees and knew <that> God was
<is> a personal Being, that certain statements of religion were false,
that certain others statements were true. ever he He had found
the truth. I do not have to go to a grove in western New York and lie upon my
knees <there> before I can <to> discover these truths. Any
man and woman who has lives a righteous life, by the simple process of
prayer, <the> approaching <to> God, may know with the same
certainty that Joseph Smtih knew it, that God lives, that he spoke
<speaks> to man, that he is a personal God, and that his truth may be
distinguished from the untruth of the ages. . . . We too often fail to fail to grasp the essence of the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith. (John
A. Widtsoe, Lecture 1, “The Need and Nature of Revelation,” January 13, 1938, Modern
Revelations and Modern Questions, 21, 22)