I can not help but agree with what this General Authority had to day on the matter. I believe fully if you say Heavenly Father and the Son of God wouldn't you get the details correct? I have to say I myself have had vivid dreams that have come to pass and it was just as the dream. So if just a dream can stay with me in detail I con not imagine that seeing God and the Lord would be forgettable.
S. Dilworth Young, Improvement Era, June 1957, p. 436. Report of April 1957 General Conference. Available online here. Young was a senior member of the First Council of the Seventy, and one of the General Authorities.
"I cannot remember the time when I have not heard the story,…concerning the coming of the Father and the Son to the Prophet Joseph Smith... I am concerned however with one item which has recently been called to my attention on this matter. There appears to be going about our communities some writing to the effect that the Prophet Joseph Smith evolved his doctrine from what might have been a vision, in which he is supposed to have said that he saw an angel, instead of the Father and the Son. According to this theory, by the time he was inspired to write the occurrence in 1838, he had come to the conclusion that there were two beings. This rather shocked me. I can see no reason why the Prophet, with his brilliant mind, would have failed to remember in sharp relief every detail of that eventful day. I can remember quite vividly that in 1915 I had a mere dream, and while the dream was prophetic in nature, it was not startling. It has been long since fulfilled, but I can remember every detail of it as sharply and clearly as though it had happened yesterday. How them could any man conceive that the Prophet, receiving such a vision as he received, would not remember it and would fail to write it clearly, distinctly, and accurately?” - S. Dilworth Young
Not only did he change who he saw he changed the fact that he saw God and the Lord separately (which is the version the LDS currently uses). However, if you read in the Scriptures God and the Son are talked about as one. Take this scriptures;
Mosiah 15: 1, 2, 5 "And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son... And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation..."
They way these read to me as that they are one in the same. However, that is not what the Church currently teaches. What changed? Why did Joseph Smith say it was both when it clearly could only be one.
Another potential evidence that Joseph Smith did not see the Father and the Son in 1820, to those who believe in the restoration of the Priesthood, is the fact that in the year 1832 Joseph Smith claimed to have a revelation which stated that a man could not see God without the Priesthood. This revelation is published as Section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants. In verses 21-22 we read:
"And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh;
"For without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live."
Now, it is claimed that "The Father and the Son appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith before the Church was organized and the priesthood restored to the earth" (Doctrines of Salvation, by Joseph Fielding Smith, vol. 1, p.4).
Below is a link to an article in the Ensign addressing that there is indeed different versions of the 'First Vision'.
Being that the entire church is based on this 'First Vision' and what Joseph Smith taught as Gospel, how can you explain the difference in a valid logical way. To some they may be able to. For me I feel that it means Joseph Smith's decisions were man made and not made of God.
Moroni and the Mormons;
The name was also published in the 1851 edition of the Pearl of Great Price as "Nephi." ("He called me by name and said unto me, that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Nephi." (Pearl of Great Price, 1851 edition, page 41) The original handwritten manuscript of the PofGP dictated by Joseph Smith reveals that the name was originally written as "Nephi," but that someone at a later date has written the word " Moroni" above the line. All evidence indicates that this change was made after Joseph Smiths death.
Walter L. Whipple, in his thesis written at BYU, stated that Orson Pratt "published The Pearl of Great Price in 1878, and removed the name of Nephi from the text entirely and inserted the name Moroni in its place" (Textual Changes in the Pearl of Great Price, typed copy, p.125).
Why was it changed from what Joseph Smith said himself which is Nephi. Why is it Moroni and why is Moroni the one on so many temples if it was indeed Nephi who brought this message?
Once a devout member learns these and other discrepancies where does that leave others and myself?
Once this happens to you...
- You never look at Joseph Smith the same way again
- You never look at scripture the same way again
- You never look at the church the same way again
- You never think of "authority" the same way again
- Your concept of God and Jesus and "the one true church" can change dramatically
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