The description of the vision was first published by Orson Pratt in his Remarkable Visions in 1840, twenty years after it was supposed to have occurred. Between 1820 and 1840 Joseph’s friends were writing long panegyrics; his enemies were defaming him in an unceasing stream of affidavits and pamphlets, and Joseph himself was dictating several volumes of Bible-flavored prose. But no-one in this long period even intimated that he had heard the story of the two gods. At least, no such intimation has survived in print or manuscript ... The first published Mormon history, begun with Joseph’s collaboration in 1834 by Oliver Cowdery, ignored it altogether ... Joseph’s own description of the first vision was not published until 1842, twenty-two years after the memorable event ...
If something happened that spring morning in 1820, it passed totally unnoticed in Joseph’s home town, and apparently did not even fix itself in the minds of members of his own family. The awesome vision he described in later years may have been the elaboration of some half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement and reinforced by the rich folklore of visions circulating in his neighborhood. Or it may have been sheer invention, created some time after 1834 when the need arose for a magnificent tradition to cancel out the stories of his fortune-telling and money-digging. Fawn M Brodie, No Man Knows My History pp.24-25
Joseph stated in his journal that he ‘translated a portion’ and discovered it to be a history of the person whose bones lay in the mound, ‘a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt’. ibid. p291
... there was apparently no reference to Joseph Smith’s first vision in any published material in the 1830s. Joseph Smith’s history, which was begun in 1838, was not published until it ran serially in the Times and Seasons in 1842. The famous Wentworth Letter which contained a much less detailed account of the vision appeared 1st March 1842, in the same periodical. Introductory material to the Book of Mormon, as well as publicity about it, told of Joseph Smith’s obtaining the gold plates and of angelic visitations, but nothing was printed that remotely suggested earlier visitations.
In 1833 the Church published the Book of Commandments, forerunner to the present Doctrine and Covenants, and again no reference was made to Joseph’s first vision, although several references were made to the Book of Mormon and the circumstances of its origin.
The first regular periodical to be published by the Church was The Evening and Morning Star, but its pages reveal no effort to tell the story of the first vision to its readers. Nor do the pages of the Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate, printed in Kirtland, Ohio, from October 1834 to September 1836. In this newspaper Oliver Cowdery, who was second only to Joseph Smith in the early organization of the Church, published a series of letters dealing with the origin of the Church. These letters were written with the approval of Joseph Smith, but they contained no mention of any vision prior to those connected with the Book of Mormon.
In 1835 the Doctrine and Covenants was printed at Kirtland, Ohio, and its preface declared that it contained ‘the leading items of religion which we have professed to believe’. Included in the book were the Lectures on Faith, a series of seven lectures which had been prepared for the School of the Prophets in Kirtland in 1834-35. It is interesting to note that in demonstrating the doctrine that the Godhead consists of two separate personages, no mention was made of Joseph Smith having seen them, nor was any reference made to the first vision in any part of the publication.
The first important missionary pamphlet of the Church was the Voice of Warning, published in 1837 by Parley P Pratt. The book contains long sections on items important to missionaries of the 1830s, such as fulfilment of prophecy, the Book of Mormon, external evidence of the book’s authenticity, the resurrection, and the nature of revelation, but nothing, again, on the first vision.
The Times and Seasons began publication in 1839, but, as indicated above, the story of the vision was not told in its pages until 1842. From all this it would appear that the general church membership did not receive information about the first vision until the 1840s and that the story certainly did not hold the prominent place in Mormon thought that it does today. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought I iii 31-32
All these debts that he’d incurred ... He has to sneak away; so I think he left in despair and regret that all had gone so wrong. Richard Bushman, John Smith biographer
Even Brigham Young says, at one point in Kirkland there were ten people who believed in the prophet. Will Bagley
Of low birth – vulgar and uncultivated both in mind and person – destitute alike of the talent and the courage which command respect, and possessing no other quality than that which the lowest cunning inspires. The Times, 1843
The Mormon Church had been started by witches for witches ... Joseph Smith was in fact a warlock – the founder of the Mormon Church, and most of the early Church leaders were deeply involved in sorcery. Bill Schnoebelen, lecture ‘The Prophecy Club, Exposing the Illuminati from Within’
March 10, 1843 – Joseph decided that he had no objection to having a brewery put up by Theodore Turley. An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith pp329, editor Scott H Faulring
January 29, 1844 – Capt[ain] White of Quincy was at the Mansion last night and this morning drank a toast. ibid. p443
June 1, 1844 – Drank a glass of beer at Moissers. ibid. p486
The truth is that church defenders ought to be grateful that Joseph Smith’s modern critics may be judging him by the standards of today. After all, how many Recovery from Mormonism posters are big fans of vigilante castration and assassination? Most of us would be more than happy to just see Joseph’s bad behaviour exposed and reproached, and then see his lies fade into the oblivion they – and all other lies – deserve. Joseph’s contemporaries were a little more pro-active. When Joseph supposedly hit on (or actually had sex with) fifteen-year-old Nancy Marinda Johnson, Dr Dennison, with the encouragement of a neighbourhood mob, nearly castrated him. That’s how people in his his own time judged him ‘according to their standards’. So, I guess by the ‘logic’ of church defenders, who say we ought to judge Joseph by 1840 standards of right and wrong, the right thing for us – and them – to all be saying now about Joseph Smith is, that he deserved to be dragged out of the Johnson farm house in the middle of night, nearly castrated, then tarred and feathered by a bunch of angry townspeople. No wonder Mormon defenders are confined to publishing their inanities in church-subsidized publications – it’s only there that the accidental comedy can go unrecognized. Tal Bachman, board post ‘Are We Judging Joseph Smith Unfairly By Using Today’s Standards?’
After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon. George Q Cannon, Gospel Truth p324
If we get our salvation, we shall have to pass by him [Joseph Smith]; if we enter our glory, it will be through the authority he has received. We cannot get around him. George Q Cannon, cited Melchizedek Priesthood Study Guide p142, 1988
But with the Bible it was not and is not so ... it was once in the sole and exclusive care and custody of an abominable organization, founded by the devil himself, likened prophetically unto a great whore, whose great aim and purpose was to destroy the souls of men in the name of religion. In these hands it ceased to be the book it once was. Bruce R McConkie, The Joseph Smith Translation pp12-13
It is also to the Book of Mormon to which we turn for the plainest description of the Catholic Church as the great and abominable church. Nephi saw this ‘church which is the most abominable above all other churches’ in vision. He ‘saw the devil that he was the foundation of it’ and also the murders, wealth, harlotry, persecutions, and evil desires that historically have been a part of this satanic organization. Bruce R McConkie, Mormon Doctrine 1958 p130
cf.
I asked McConkie why, in fact, his reference to the Roman Catholic Church as the ‘Church of the Devil’ had been removed from the 2nd edition of his book, Mormon Doctrine.
McConkie insisted to me that it was excised not because it was not doctrinally sound but because it was too difficult for people to accept. Steve Benson, board post 12th January 2006, ‘The Day Bruce R McConkie Out-And-Out Lied to My Face’
In 1784 a man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg wrote about his visions of the afterlife. His teachings were remarkably similar to what Joseph Smith later claimed to receive as revelation. For example, Swedenborg taught: ‘There are three heavens’, described as ‘entirely distinct from each other’. He called the highest heaven ‘the Celestial Kingdom’, and stated that the inhabitants of the three heavens corresponded to the ‘sun, moon and stars’. This directly parallels Joseph’s vision on the degrees of glory as recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 76.
By Joseph Smith’s own statements, he was familiar with Swedenborg’s writings ...
‘There are three heavens: the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. Those of a lower heaven are unable to see those in a higher heaven. Furthermore, the celestial heaven has three divisions’ ... (Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell ch5)
‘Swedenborg witnessed a marriage ceremony in heaven, in which the husband wore priesthood robes like those of Aaron while the wife was arrayed as a queen. Also, marriage between man and woman is necessary to inherit the highest heaven’. (Conjugal Love @20 & 54 & 155) ...
‘After dying, people enter a world of spirits that is nearly identical to this one. Afterward, they inherit a degree of glory based on how they lived while incarnate’. (Heaven and Hell pp421-422) ...