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Joseph Smith's First Vision/Multiple accounts of the First Vision/The first and second visitation of angels
- REDIRECTTemplate:Test3
Joseph Smith's first and second visitation of angels
Questions
Joseph Smith never actually referred to what we now call the "First Vision" by that name. Instead, he referred to it as the "first visitation of angels." Joseph also referred to Moroni's visit as "another vision of angels."
- One critic of Mormonism states that "Who appears to [Joseph] – a spirit, an angel, two angels, Jesus, many angels, the Father and the Son – are all over the place." ("Letter to a CES Director", 2014)
Answer
The account that Joseph entered in his journal on 9 November 1835 was a detailed account and it describes two personages. The account that Joseph wrote just five days later in his journal on 14 November 1835 was a one line summary of the event, which he described as "the first visitation of Angels." Critics of the Church seem to believe that Joseph completely changed his story from "two personages" to "Angels" over the course of only five days. The truth is that Joseph referred to all of the personages that appeared to him as "angels."
This confusion regarding "angels" versus "personages" is illustrated in a critical "Mormoninfographic". We have illustrated the error by comparing Joseph's journal entries on both days.
