New Light On The First Vision

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Joseph Smith, supposedly according to his own story, says,

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In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself, What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right?

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Or are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it? And how shall I know it? It's interesting that he says here in verse 10,

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Or are they all wrong together? He says that thought crossed his mind. Later on in verse 18 he says,

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For at this time it had never entered into my heart that they are all wrong. What most people don't realize is that what I just read you from verse 18 was an insertion after the original was written.

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So Joseph Smith sort of contradicted himself later on, possibly in response to some of the criticism he had come against.

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But be that as it may, He says, While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contest of these parties of religionists,

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I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads, If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and that braideth not, and it shall be given him.

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Never did any passage of Scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine.

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It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did.

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For how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I had, I would never know. For the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passage of Scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the

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Bible. At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God.

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I at length came to the determination to ask of God, concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom and would give liberally and not a braid,

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I might venture. So in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt.

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It was on the morning of a beautiful clear day, early in the spring of 1820. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties

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I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally. After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone,

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I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so when immediately

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I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak.

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Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

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But exerting all my powers to call upon God had delivered me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when

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I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction, not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being, just at this moment of great alarm

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I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

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It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me

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I saw two personages whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air.

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One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said, pointing to the other, This is my beloved son. Hear him.

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My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right that I might know which to join.

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No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself so as to be able to speak, than I asked the personages who stood above me in the light which of all the sects was right, for at this time it had never entered in my heart that they were all wrong, and which

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I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong. And the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those professors were all corrupt, that they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

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They teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. He again forbade me to join with any of them, and many other things did he say unto me which

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I cannot write at this time. When I came to myself again I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven.

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When the light had departed I had no strength, but soon recovering in some degree, I went home. And as I leaned up to the fireplace,

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Mother inquired what the matter was. I replied, Never mind, all is well, I am well enough off. I then said to my mother,

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I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true. It seems as though the adversary was aware, at a very early period of my life, that I was destined to prove a disturber and an annoyer of his kingdom, else why should the powers of darkness combine against me?

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Why the opposition and persecution that arose against me almost in my infancy? Then he goes on to say that he was persecuted by teachers of religion for having told about his first vision, and so on and so forth.

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This is a substance of the first vision. I think it's important to point out that Mormonism feels this is an extremely important thing.

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For example, Bruce R. McConkie, apostle of the Mormon church, died just a couple of years ago.

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In his book Mormon Doctrine said, This transcendent vision was the beginning of Latter -day

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Revelation. Through it the creeds of Christendom were shattered to smithereens, and because of it the truth about those beings whom it is life eternal to know began again to be taught among men.

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Mormon Doctrine, page 285. The first vision provides the

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Mormon church with a great deal of basis for its teachings. The Mormon church, of course, teaches that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and if God the

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Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith, that obviously would help him in his claims that he was a prophet. Mormonism claims that it teaches polytheism, the belief in more than one

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God. For example, it teaches that God the Father is a body of flesh and bones, as tangible as any man's.

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He is a separate, distinct God from Jesus Christ, and since Joseph Smith saw them both as physical beings, then this would obviously support that as well.

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And so the first vision is very, very important to the Mormon church today. But the question is, did the first vision take place?

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Mormonism claims that it really happened, that it wasn't just simply some spiritual experience, and that it really didn't happen, but it actually took place at a specific time in a specific place.

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That is, in the woods in Manchester in 1820, the spring of 1820, to be perfectly exact about it.

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That is in their own scripture. If it didn't happen that way, then their scripture is wrong, and therefore the

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Mormon church is wrong at the same time. What we will look at today is the information that, up until January of this year, was available to all people to demonstrate that Joseph Smith's story is untrue.

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Next week we will look at the new information that just simply is icing on the cake, in my opinion, that closes the door, nails the door shut, however you want to put it, in saying that what

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Joseph Smith said occurred in 1820 did not occur at all. We will be looking at that information, and that's going to be the bulk of what we examine today.

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First of all, let's remember that Joseph Smith claims that he was immediately persecuted by people in the surrounding area for telling people about his first vision.

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In fact, if you listen to the Mormon missionary films, you will hear that this is mentioned in those films. The fascinating thing to me is that there is no mention of the first vision of Joseph Smith in any

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Mormon or non -Mormon source before the year 1832. What is even more interesting than that is that, for example, in 1834, the first quote -unquote anti -Mormon book was published by E .D.

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Howe, called Mormonism Unveiled. In this book, almost every aspect of Mormonism is attacked, the

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Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and everything else, but no mention whatsoever is ever made of Joseph Smith claiming to see

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God the Father and Jesus Christ. None at all. The fact is, though the Mormon Church today says that Joseph was persecuted for telling people about the first vision, that is a story that was made up 20 years after the vision supposedly took place.

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There is no contemporary evidence whatsoever that Joseph Smith told anybody about a first vision in 1820, or in any of the 1820s at all.

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The first reference that we have to the first vision is found in Joseph Smith's diary for 1832.

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I examined this diary on microfilm in the Church Historical Department, the archives section, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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I have with me the photocopy of the actual archives call slip that I had.

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If you ever want to know where to find it, it is MSF 312 24 -18 -7 -2, if you really want to know.

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I examined that on the 17th of May, 1984.

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It was a couple of years ago that we looked at that. In this handwritten account by Joseph Smith of the first vision, he says the following.

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This is written 12 years after it supposedly took place. While in the attitude of calling upon the Lord in the 16th year of my age, notice it says 15th in the official version, a pillar of light above the brightness of the sun at noonday come down from above and rested upon me.

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And the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord. And he spake unto me, saying, Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee.

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Behold, I am the Lord of glory. I was crucified for the world. No two beings, only one being who identifies himself as the

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Lord of glory, who was crucified for the world, who would obviously be Jesus Christ. Later on in 1835, in Joseph Smith's diary under the date of November 9th, he again mentions the first vision, but here he does mention two personages, only this time these two personages testify that Jesus Christ is the

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Son of God. They do not identify themselves as being God the Father and Jesus Christ. In this account, angels are mentioned, but not

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God the Father or Jesus Christ at all. And these are the earliest accounts that we have. The account that we have in the

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Pearl of Great Price, in my understanding, was written in 1838, which was a full 18 years after this event supposedly took place.

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There are some other fascinating things. For example, the Deseret News of May 29th, 1852 contains another example that is interesting for us to look at.

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Joseph's history of the church was being printed in serial form. The account mentions Joseph telling Erastus Holmes of his experiences, quote, from six years up to the time

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I received the first visitation of angels, which was when I was about 14 years old, unquote.

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As this account contradicts modern teaching concerning the first vision, recent editions of the history of the church have changed the story.

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The text is found in Volume 2, page 312, where it reads, quote, from six years old up to the time

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I received my first vision, which was when I was about 14 years old. So here in 1852, as the church is printing

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Joseph Smith's history, they don't talk about a first vision. They talk about a visitation of angels. In General Discourses, Volume 2, page 171,

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Brigham Young declared, the Lord did not come, but he did send his angel to the same obscure person, Joseph Smith, Jr.

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You will search in vain in the sermons of the church in Utah up until the 1880s to find references to the first vision where it is said that Joseph Smith saw

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God the Father and Jesus Christ as separate, distinct individuals. Why, after the 1880s, does it start becoming important?

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Well, you need to remember that it was in the early 1880s that the Pearl of Great Price, which contains Joseph Smith's history, including the story of the first vision, was made canon scripture by the

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Mormon church. Up until that time, it had not been canon scripture. It had not been canonical. But once it was accepted as canonical, then the first vision was now a part of the scriptures that the individuals carried around with them.

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And then the first vision story starts becoming more and more important. But I think a person who will just honestly examine the information will see that the first vision did not have an important part in the early

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Mormon church when it moved to Utah at all. In fact,

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I would say that Brigham Young never believed in the first vision. But he never believed that Joseph Smith saw

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God the Father and Jesus Christ as separate, distinct individuals in the spring of 1820. Brigham Young died in 1874.

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That was at least six years before the PGP, the Pearl of Great Price, was added to Mormon scripture. And so I do not find any sermons by Brigham Young in which he claims that this occurred.

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And that is a rather interesting thing. But the point is, the normal, modern

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Mormon individual thinks that the first vision was talked about from day one. An individual who, for example, would start with the

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Mormon missionary lessons and go from there, and never hear anything to the contrary, would always think that Joseph Smith immediately started telling people he had seen two gods, that he was persecuted for that.

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And yet when you really examine Joseph Smith, you discover he did not believe in two gods. Even when he wrote the Book of Mormon, he did not believe in two gods.

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His polytheism evolved over time. So the whole thing is important to examine.

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There is much, much more information to look at. We will be looking at it after we take this brief break. We were looking at some of the teachings of the early

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Mormon church. I just wanted to mention one other very quickly. President George A. Smith taught that when Joseph "...went

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humbly before the Lord and inquired of him, the Lord answered his prayer and revealed to Joseph by the ministration of angels the true condition of the religious world.

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And when the holy angel appeared, Joseph inquired which of all these denominations was right." Journal of Discourse, volume 12, page 334.

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Now, I will mention that it has been recently brought up to me by a Mormon individual that the explanation for these is holy angel is another way of saying

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God. But I have challenged this individual to provide any documentation where Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, or anyone else ever used the term holy angel or angels in reference to God.

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I know of none of them. In fact, if you look at Doctrine and Covenants, section 129, you have there a whole section on how you are supposed to be able to recognize true and false angels.

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And if you did not know how you are supposed to do that, you are supposed to do that by shaking hands with them. Just read section 129 and you will see that if you shake hands with them and you can feel them, then they are a real angel.

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But if you don't feel anything, then they are not a real angel. And if they are just, well, never mind. You will just have to read it yourself.

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Sort of hard to explain. Be that as it may, this seems to be a part of the history of the

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Mormon church that a lot of people are not aware of. Now, these, for example, the diaries of Joseph Smith that I read from, were not available to individuals until the 1960s.

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It was the Tanners that first made, for example, the 1832 and 1835 diaries widely available.

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The Mormon church was not extremely excited about the idea of publishing these personal accounts for the simple reason that they obviously contradicted the teachings that they were putting out.

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But they began to give access to their own scholars to these documents. And when these scholars got hold of them, then this information started coming out.

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And of course, the result has been rather negative for the Mormon church in just simply factual information being available to substantiate the charges against Joseph Smith.

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But remember that Joseph Smith claimed that this vision took place in a historical context.

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He said it took place in 1820 in the spring. And he gave his motivation for going into the woods as being the religious revivals going on around his home.

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Well, in the early 1960s, the same time that these other diary accounts were starting to come out, demonstrating that there were problems with the first vision,

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Reverend Wesley Walters, who will be our guest next week here on the program, decided to approach the subject from a rather new and refreshing way that seemingly no one had thought of doing before.

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And that was, he said, well, he claimed, Joseph Smith claimed, that there were revivals in 1820.

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Well, let's do some historical research and find out if there were. No one had seemingly thought about doing that.

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I mean, everybody just simply took it for granted. Well, there were revivals in 1820, and that's why he did this. So what

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Wesley Walters did is he went back into the records of the churches in the

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Palmyra -Manchester area. He went into the newspaper accounts. He went into the official records of the denominations.

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He went into all the information he could track down from that time period to determine whether there was actually a first vision, excuse me, a revival in 1820.

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His results were printed in 1967 in a booklet entitled New Light on Mormon Origins from the

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Palmyra, New York Revival. And what he discovered really rocked the Mormon church, so much so that they even sent, after his material was published, a research team back east to see if they could dig up any more information on this.

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But they all just simply substantiated what Walters had already found. Now, Joseph Smith said in his story that we just read, that the excitement, the revival, began with the

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Methodists. He was right, but he was wrong about the year. According to Wesley Walters, let me just quote a couple of these things here.

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Let me just quote from Wesley Walters when he says, quote, an even more surprising confirmation of this revival occurred in 1824 and not in 1820, has just recently come to light.

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While searching through some dusty volumes of early Methodist literature at a nearby Methodist college, imagine our surprise and elation when we stumbled upon Reverend George Lane's own personal account of the

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Palmyra Revival. It was written not at some year's distance from the event, as the Mormon accounts all were, but while the revival was still in progress and was printed a few months later.

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Lane's account gives us not only the year, 1824, but even the month and the date. By the aid of this account, supplemented by numerous additional references, which we shortly thereafter uncovered, we were able to give nearly a month -by -month progress report on the spread of the revival through the community and surrounding area, and it was indeed an outstanding revival.

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He then goes on to discuss the fact that basically the revival broke out

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September 25th and 26th, 1824. Notice that's four years after Joseph Smith's death. It then began into the other groups, as Joseph Smith did claim, such as the

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Baptist Church and the Presbyterian Church. When you follow it along, you discover that it did become quite a large revival.

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A Baptist pastor in Bristol, New York, reported to a friend on the date of March 9th, 1825, that in Palmyra about 300 have united with the

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Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches, and to each in about equal numbers, which is very much like what

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Joseph Smith described. The Palmyra newspaper from March 2nd, 1825, reprinted a report from the religious advocate of Rochester, which said, quote,

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More than 200 souls have become hopeful subjects of divine grace in Palmyra, Macedon, Manchester, Phelps, Lyons, and Ontario since the late revival commenced.

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This is powerful work. It is among old and young, but mostly among young people, to cry as yet from various parts,

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Come over and help us. There are large and attentive congregations in every part who hear as for their lives.

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So you have a wealth of information from the secular sources and so on and so forth that demonstrates that late in 1824, a revival broke out that continued into 1825.

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Wesley Walters also discovered that there was a revival in 1816 that lasted into 1817, but there were no revivals whatsoever at all in 1820.

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In fact, let me give you some examples. Reverend James Hodgkin's history, his record reveals that the church had no revivals occurring at all for the year of 1820.

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The revivals that did occur were in 1817, 1824, and 1829. The Baptist church records also show clearly that they had no revival in 1820 for the

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Palmyra congregation gained only six by baptism, while the neighboring Baptist churches of Lyons and Farmington showed net losses of four and nine, respectively.

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An examination of the figures for the years preceding and following 1820 yields the same picture of no revival so far as the

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Baptist church of the area is concerned. The Methodist figures, though referring to the entire circuit, give the same results, for they show net losses of 23 for 1819, six for 1820, and 40 for 1821.

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This hardly fits Joseph Smith's description of great multitudes being added to churches in the area. Basically, what

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I'm saying is Wesley Walter's research indicated from all sources, and you see, you need to remember that these denominational papers would print any evidence of any revival at all.

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There were large sections of these papers devoted to the revivals in 1816, 1817, and 1824, 1825.

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Nothing for 1820 at all. The facts that he discovered basically said that there was no revival in 1820 in Palmyra, Manchester.

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In fact, it has even been admitted now by people at BYU that this revival that supposedly took place was in 1824, not in 1820, which of course causes a great problem for the

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Mormon church and their understanding of the nature of their scripture and things like that.

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Now, when we put all of this together, we find that there just simply is no historical basis for the

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First Vision. There are just too many things going against it. The new information just simply finishes that off.

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Let me mention that just before we take a break, one other interesting item from the 84th section of the

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Doctrine and Covenants The 84th section of the Doctrine and Covenants says, Revelation given through Joseph Smith the prophet at Kirtland, Ohio, September 22nd and 23rd, 1832.

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So here you have a revelation that is part of the scripture of the Mormon church that says, beginning at verse 21, "...and

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without the ordinances thereof and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh.

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For without this, no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live."

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According to Joseph Smith in Doctrine and Covenants section 84, no one can see God the Father without the priesthood and live.

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Now, I know that we're throwing a lot of dates at you here, but supposedly, Joseph Smith received the priesthood in 1829.

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Now, if it was in 1829, and he saw God the Father in 1820, how could he live? That didn't work very well at all, obviously.

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And so, it seems to me quite clearly that the 1832 account, the revelation of Joseph Smith in section 84, he was not at that time claiming to have seen

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God the Father at all. Which, of course, is consistent with what we've seen of the other information before.

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We are locked up on the phone lines, and so if you're getting a busy signal, keep trying. I'm sure you'll be able to get in eventually.

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Let's talk first to Dave in Phoenix. Hello, Dave. Yeah, and good afternoon. Hi. Yes, what

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I was going to ask you about, you know, it's good to present this material as far as the truthfulness of, you know, the witness of Joseph Smith, or whatever you'd call it.

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I have a good friend who's a Mormon, and we were speaking the other day, and he asked me about the Battle of Armageddon.

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Basically, what this friend was telling me was that what God has prophesied to come to pass does not necessarily have to happen, because, you know, of man's free will, that man can change the course of history and so forth.

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And as we talked, I said, well, that's a nice idea, you know, to give man such power, but whenever a prophet of God has spoken, it must come to pass.

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And I think of 1 Samuel, where God said, you know, that none of Samuel's words dropped to the ground, because he was

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God's prophet, and a test of the prophet was whether or not he was 100 % true. That's exactly right.

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And I was rather shocked. I said, have you ever heard of a prophet, you know, in the

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Scripture that would say something, and then it didn't come to pass, and him still be classified as a prophet?

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And my friend said, well, sure, Joseph Smith. And I said, no, no, I'm talking about Bible prophets.

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Yeah, real prophets. Well, Dave, remember that, you know, the Christian God is a sovereign

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God, and that's why the prophets can say this is going to happen, because God is in control. But Mormonism doesn't know anything of a truly sovereign

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God. I remember talking to an elder at the Easter pageant last year in Mesa, and he was just shocked when

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I started saying things like, yes, God is sovereign, and God is in control, and he works all things after the counsel of his will,

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Ephesians 1 .12, stuff like that. And he was just absolutely shocked that I would believe in a God like that. Let me suggest an excellent book to you that right now a class

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I'm teaching is utilizing called The Sovereignty of God by A .W. Pink. Right. Have you read it? Yes, I have.

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Excellent, isn't it? It's fantastic. And I think years ago, some

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Mormon missionaries came to my door, and we let them in, and we started witnessing to them, and we tried to find out exactly what they were saying.

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And this seemed to be the whole thing, is they gave me a Book of Mormon to read. You know, I gave them a couple of tracts to read, and as I read through the

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Book of Mormon, it seems like it's the age -old conflict as to who's in charge. Oh, most definitely, yes.

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The Book of Mormon is a fascinating study as far as the differences in theology between the

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Book of Mormon and the Bible, the Scriptures. And the whole thing with man's freedom, man's freedom, and it's an interesting thing.

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I forget who supposedly said it. I think John Wesley's attributed with it of saying, Calvin's God is my devil.

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And you know, I don't know how true that was, whether or not he said that. I hope he didn't say that. I'd have a real problem with Wesley if he did.

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Well, but you know what I mean. He was a little more on what we would call the Arminian. Very, very strongly, yes.

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This fellow just was so defending man's sovereignty. Yes. Well, you've got to remember,

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Dave, when you've made God into the image of man, you've got to defend man's sovereignty, or you're not going to have anyone who's sovereign at all.

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Well, that's true. So, I appreciate your input today. Okay. Okay, thanks a lot. Bye -bye. I'm going to go to Scott Stahel with Jack.

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Hello, Jack. Hiya, John. You're doing a beautiful job. I wanted to take a homage with that little old lady that called you, and she doesn't realize that Moses, he traveled the desert for how long?

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Forty days, I think it was. And then the Mormons have more

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Jews in it than Jews as a traveler, just like Moses. Oh, you mean what she said about anti -Semitism.

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Yeah, yeah. There's no such thing. Listen, she calls it a cult. That's the most true religion there is.

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Well, no, I certainly wouldn't say it is, because Mormonism teaches... All religions are true, John. Please don't lie to me, you bishop.

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I'm not your bishop. I'm not your bishop, and Mormonism is a cult, sir, because it denies the central doctrines of the

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Christian faith while claiming to be Christian. They are Christian. They're more Christian than anybody else. Well, excuse me, sir, but how could a person who believes that Jesus Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer call themselves a

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Christian, sir? Well, wait a minute. You know that Lucifer is your devil.

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All right. He's brought here to stir things up, and it's up to us, the good people, to get these jokers off these streets who look like you're rapists, you're killers, and they're releasing them every day, and these poor ladies, behind doors, they're afraid to go out at night.

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Sir, what does that have to do with the fact that the Mormon church teaches that Jesus Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer?

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Oh, I don't know. You're bringing up a point there that I haven't given much thought.

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Okay. Have you given much thought to the Mormon teaching that God the Father was once a man who lived on another planet? Listen, what are you realizing?

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There's something in metaphysics. Well, I appreciate your phone call today,

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Jack. I'm not sure if we were communicating in the same astral plane or not, but that was very interesting.

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Up until that call, talking about the first vision of Joseph Smith and looking at the information, the chatter, as one of our callers put it, actually, it's simply the facts taken from historical records and taken from the writings of the

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Mormon church itself concerning the first vision, this vision that, according to Bruce R.

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McConkie, apostle of the Mormon church, smashed the creeds of Christendom to smithereens.

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And yet, we have seen today that there is very little historical evidence to substantiate the first vision and its story.

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We've got one more call that we'll take yet today, and we'll go to Mesa with Craig. Hi, Craig.

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Long time no hear. Oh, I know. I've been busy. Been busy, huh? Yeah. Anyway, I was questioning,

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I got a paper here. It's one, two, three, four pages long. Well, it's three and a half. It has your name at the back of it.

29:51

Yeah. The case against the first vision. Case against the first vision, yes. Okay. Anyway, I was going through it.

29:56

Uh -huh. Just came across a couple problems with it, but... Okay, what are they? Real quick.

30:01

I need to find out. Next week, when you have Mr. Walters on, Yes. Is it going to be the same type of hookup that you had with Ted Stender Tanner?

30:09

Unfortunately, yes, it is. Okay. Unless you'd like to donate a new phone system for us, we could use that.

30:16

Well, I know. Don't want to do that, huh? Okay. I talked to Christian, the person, if they had me put on hold and then, you know, all that kind of stuff, you know.

30:24

Yeah, well, that's the best way we can do it. We don't have any other way of doing it because if we put you both on at the same time, we can hear you both talking, but you can't hear each other.

30:31

Okay. All right. Anyway, I was going back through some things down the library and so I just wrote some stuff about the

30:40

Methodist, about the Baptists, about the Unitarians, about Mormons, all talking about, you know, in 1820 and in 1819 and 1818 about different revivals.

30:50

Where? And I copied a book out of, about the Baptists that they said there were revivals all in New York and they called it even the burned -out district.

30:59

Oh, yes, the whole area of upstate New York was called the burned -over district, but you're talking about the district of Palmyra, Manchester where Joseph Smith lived?

31:08

Well, actually, it talked about the whole area and it talked about how, like the

31:13

Universalists and sort of that, but in 1919 this Reverend Canning or whatever gave a sermon and he said and that created no small stir in the whole country and, you know, all this other stuff which was similar language to Joseph Smith's years and how that there was 125 different churches all turned, changed from what they were over to Universalists and other things and over towards Calvinism and other things.

31:39

Anyway, it was just, there's so many different things happening around that time, revivals and stuff and it's kind of hard for somebody now to go back and see and know, you know, what actually took place at that time.

31:52

Well, now wait a minute. Now, Craig, what you're saying is you're talking about an entire large area of upstate

31:58

New York. We're talking about a very specific area because Joseph Smith identifies the area as being the Palmyra, Manchester area and if you'll look at Wesley Walter's New Light on Mormon Origins from the

32:09

Palmyra, New York revival, he will provide for you documentation that will demonstrate, for example, the denominational magazines of that day were full of reports of revivals, some even devoting a separate section to it.

32:19

These publications carried over a dozen glorious reports of the revival that broke out at Palmyra in the winter of 1816 -17.

32:26

Likewise, the 1824 -25 revivals covered an equal number of reports. These same magazines however, while busily engaged in reporting revivals during the 1819 -1821 period, which is what you're talking about, contain not a single mention of any revival occurring in the

32:40

Palmyra area during that time. Walters did not say that there were not revivals in New York itself. He was talking about revivals in that area where Joseph Smith himself identified the revival as taking place and that's why he gives the actual membership records for the individual churches in that area and demonstrates that none of them gained any members that year at all.

32:59

And yet in 1824, if you'll hold on until next week, as you already know the information about next week, tying that together with the data that will be talked about next week from Wesley Walters will pretty much prove that the revival spoken of by Joseph Smith was in 1824.

33:14

That's why, for example, there are already people at BYU who are admitting that that is indeed the case relevant to the

33:22

First Vision and the revival that took place. Does Mr.

33:27

Walters have the documents that he says that he has anyway?

33:33

yes, I've seen them. And all that kind of stuff? Yes, sure does, I've seen them. Have you seen them?

33:39

Yes, I have. Does it show the arms and the records and stuff like that?

33:45

Yes. Previous to 1820? Sure does. Does it show it after 1824? He's examined all of them.

33:53

Why don't you hold those questions for him next week because he'll be able to give you a whole lot more information than I do. He's gone into a lot of research into doing a number of other different years and things like that to make sure that his research was accurate.

34:04

And we'll make sure to talk about that next week. Craig, I'm not cutting you off. I just simply have to go because I'm out of time.

34:09

Okay? Okay, thanks a lot. Bye -bye. We appreciate all our callers today. Remember, next week, 3 o 'clock on the nose, we talk with Rev.

34:17

Wesley Walters. He will complete our subject as he brings up the new information concerning the First Vision and his research into it.

34:24

We hope that you will be with us. If you would like to contact Alpha and Omega Ministries, you can do so by writing to Alpha and Omega Ministries, Post Office Box 47041,

34:32

Phoenix, Arizona, 85068. And this afternoon, we continue our series on the subject of Joseph Smith's First Vision.

34:42

Today, joined long distance by Rev. Wesley Walters, who will be talking to us about his recent discovery of documents relating to the supposed historicity of the subject of the

34:51

First Vision of Joseph Smith. We invite you to stay tuned as we talk with Rev. Walters right after this. Last week, we began to discuss the subject of Joseph Smith's First Vision.

35:02

We looked over a number of the documents that relate to the First Vision. We looked at the personal diaries of Joseph Smith and the writings of the early

35:11

Mormon Church. We looked at Brigham Young's statements on the subject. And we sort of closed things off by looking at the first bombshell that our guest today dropped on the whole subject of the

35:21

First Vision. And that was Rev. Walters' research article from back in about 1967, as I recall.

35:29

And that was published. Isn't that right, Wesley? That's correct. Okay. And that was entitled New Light on Mormon Origins from the

35:35

Palmyra, New York Revival. And today, we're going to move on into some more research that Rev.

35:41

Walters has done on this subject. But before we do so, I wanted to wrap up some subjects from last week, now that we have the expert on the phone in this area.

35:50

And that is, at the end of the program last week, Wesley, we had an LDS caller call in.

35:56

And basically, what he said was that he had found evidence, and in fact, photocopied out some books at the library here in Mesa, some comments to the fact that there were revivals in the

36:09

New York area in 1820. Your research indicated there were no revivals in the specific area of the

36:16

Palmyra, Manchester area in 1820. Could you maybe help that person understand what it was you were asserting in your original study?

36:24

Certainly. There was no question but that there were revivals that were going off like popcorn all over New York State.

36:36

We would never attempt to deny that. In fact, when I started my research on the

36:42

First Vision story about the revivals, I started because I was challenged by a Mormon. I said the First Vision story had been changed.

36:50

And that led me into looking for revivals, and I actually tried to prove the story was true.

36:58

But what I discovered was that there was actually no revival of any kind during that 18, 19, 20, 21 period within a 15 mile radius of Joseph Smith.

37:12

Now, beyond that, there were a few gains in church membership.

37:19

And so, like the Presbyterian Church saw some signs of revival about 18 miles away in the

37:26

Post Corners Church. But that kind of dwindled out, and it really never came across as a full - fledged revival.

37:37

There were several people that joined the church back in the same time, and it looked like it was going to spread, but it really didn't.

37:45

Joseph Smith's story where he talks about revivals, the one that they made scripture in 1880 and incorporated it into the

37:52

Pearl of Great Price, it very clearly shows that Joseph Smith was close enough to the revival to be able to drop in on it.

38:02

Now, when you're on foot and revivals take place at camp meetings lots of times, or in evening meetings there, all done, you don't just walk 15 miles down the road in the black of the night with no streetlights in order to drop in on a revival.

38:20

You have to be close enough to do that. And of course, since then, I have found that Joseph Smith's mother, in her unpublished preliminary draft of her book, her book was published called

38:33

Biographical Sketches, but the preliminary draft places the revival as being in the local village in the meeting house and after Alvin's death,

38:42

Alvin died in 1823, so that there's no question now that that's so, and even

38:49

Dr. Marvin Hill at Brigham Young University has conceded that the revival that Joseph spoke of really took place in 1824.

38:57

But of course, that throws off his whole story, the official story, out of kilter. It does indeed.

39:03

Now, for quite some time now, I've been waiting and impatiently writing about phone calls and all waiting to find out when all of your most recent research could be put together and presented, and now we're very happy to have you on the line and you can explain to us your most recent findings relevant to actual historical documents that relate to the various moves the

39:29

Smith family had, but a lot of our audience is probably not familiar with the

39:35

Mormon assertion concerning the movements of Joseph Smith and his family when he was a young man.

39:41

Do you think it would be possible, very briefly, to explain to our audience what the Mormon Church says the history of Joseph Smith was between about 1814 or so and 1824?

39:55

What do they currently say happened during that period of time? All right.

40:00

The Mormon picture that's presented in Joseph Smith's official account,

40:08

I keep calling it that because they made a scripture unless they want to throw it out and decanonize it or uncanonize it, whatever be the correct word, take it out of their canon of scripture, they're stuck with it.

40:20

And in that account, Joseph claims that he moved, his father came to Palmyra, he doesn't say whether he was with him or not, he just says his father moved to Palmyra in his tenth year.

40:32

Now, if, as most Mormons understand, the tenth year means he's ten years old, that would be the year he moved from Palmyra to the joining township on the south of them, which was at that time called

40:51

Farmington, but in just a couple of years later it was changed to, the name was changed to Manchester, so we call it

40:58

Manchester, you'll know what we're talking about. Well, he says that four years they moved to Manchester, which would mean 1820.

41:06

Then he says in the second year after their removal to Manchester, there was a great excitement on the subject of religion, and he goes on to say how he was stirred up by this and led to go out to the woods and prayed and had his first vision.

41:18

Now, that would make the first vision story occur in 1822, when he was 16.

41:26

But then, having mentioned all that, he says, therefore he went out to the woods in a beautiful spring day in the year 1820.

41:34

So there is an inherent problem of chronology in his story, because the he has the revival that stirred him up occurring in the first instance, two years after he removed to Manchester, which would be 1822, because he has himself moving there four years after arriving in Palmyra.

41:55

Now, Mormons have handled this, and to get the revival back to 1820 and to fit it in with his statement that it was a beautiful day, a clear day in the spring of 1820, they had to they have said that he moved to that farm in Manchester in 1818.

42:15

And practically all Mormon scholars that I know of, all the leading BYU scholars, anyone that's written in the ensign, is all gone with 1818, because they see that it's a problem.

42:26

Now, a good Mormon friend of mine has said to me, I wonder when the property went on the tax rolls to Joseph Smith.

42:36

Well, since he didn't really own the property, the property was And he simply contracted for it.

42:44

I thought, well, there probably wouldn't, he wouldn't be on the tax rolls, and I doubt that the tax rolls existed. Nevertheless, I called the county, and being sent from one person to another,

42:53

I finally wind up in talking to their newly hired archivist, who had been searching out all the county documents he could find anywhere all over the whole place.

43:05

And, oddly enough, he had come upon, in the basement, a letter to Joseph Smith, and he had come upon the assessment tax rolls for that very period.

43:19

So, when I asked her if I could work with those, and she said, So, when

43:25

I flew there, and looked at the tax rolls, what I discovered was that the property was still on the tax rolls, all 300 acres of lot one, because that's the lot that was subdivided which

43:40

Joseph Smith had carved out his 100 acres and contracted for. All 300 acres of lot one were all taxed in July of 1820 to the heirs of Nicholas Everson, and Joseph's mother, in her history, mentions that they've contracted for this

43:59

Everson land. So, we're right on the right property there.

44:05

And, the following year, 1821 in July, when I hear for the first time that the name of Joseph Smith appears on the tax rolls as paying taxes, or property taxes, on 100 acres on lot one.

44:19

And, when you look at the Everson entry, the Everson property holdings on lot one had dropped to 200 acres.

44:29

So, that the Smiths did not go on the tax roll until July of 1821.

44:35

And, there's no way they could have been on that property in 1818 or 1819, or even later. in 1820, unless it was later in the year, after the summer taxes had been assessed.

44:47

So, that seemed to suggest very strongly that it was either late in 1820, and certainly not the spring, or even the fall, or early in 21, before they even contracted for the property.

45:03

Now, the second thing that happened, a friend of mine in Salt Lake City talked to me about talking to a

45:11

Mormon researcher, had learned that the Brigham Young University had come across, in 1970, when there were microfilming records in Palmyra, had come across the road tax records.

45:25

So, all of this got me into looking into the whole tax structure of that period, and into how the road taxes were handled.

45:34

Now, what is a road tax? We're not familiar with that. All right. Now, the way they maintained the road in that time, they divided the whole township into road districts.

45:47

And everybody living on a given road district that was age 21 or older, was required to put in at least one day working to maintain the roads, building in chuck holes, clearing brush, clearing trees, repairing bridges, in the wintertime, clearing the snow.

46:10

So, they could get through. And if they failed to pay that in terms of labor, now, they could hire somebody else to work in their place.

46:21

But if they failed to fulfill the tax requirements, their property could be assessed, and they could be fined and even jailed for their property put up for sale.

46:30

So, that's the way they maintained the roads. And the state law in New York required that the town meeting for each of the townships, each of the townships be held on the first Tuesday in April.

46:44

And that's when all the people were elected. And three road supervisors were to be elected, and all the overseers of the different road districts were to be elected.

46:53

And it goes on to specify that each overseer in his district was to make a list of all the people that were required to be taxed at his 21 years of age or older.

47:05

And that was submitted then to the three township supervisors of roads and highways.

47:12

And a composite list was made, and the clerk of the town was required to record this.

47:18

Now, this list, starting in 1804 and going through to the 1840s, had been consistently kept throughout the years.

47:28

And this was one of the items that, a type transcript of that, was microfilmed by Brigham Young University.

47:35

And this researcher had discovered that in 1870, Joseph Smith's name, and of course, it would have to be

47:43

Joseph Sr., because Joseph Jr. was still under 21 years of age at the time, that Joseph Smith's name first appears on District 26 of these highway tax rolls.

47:56

And so he is living in Palmyra, and there is a road book still extant, which they also microfilmed.

48:05

And the road book shows where the road districts went. And the road book shows District 26 started in about the middle of the village of Palmyra, on Main Street, and ran west almost to the western edge of the present township of Palmyra, and then went south.

48:24

And at first, Joseph Smith's name appears at the western end of Main Street, because if you know where people's property were, and you can tell that from the tax assessment rolls, as well as by looking at the individual names and looking up the property in their deed books, you find that the names are listed just about in the order that you'd follow if you went down Main Street and then turned south.

48:51

And Joseph Smith Sr.'s name appears at the west end of Main Street at the time. His name appears again in District 26 in 1818, again in 1819, and then in 1820,

49:04

Alvin's name shows up along with his, because Alvin had become 21. And so he is living in then in the following year, in 22,

49:13

Alvin Hiram, I mean in 21, Alvin Hiram and Joseph Sr.

49:18

all appear, because Hiram had turned 21 that year. So then the following year,

49:24

Hiram isn't there. He may have been working on some other farm in some other township, hired out as a hired hand someplace.

49:33

But Hiram isn't there, but Alvin's still there, and so is Joseph Sr. And they're still on District 26.

49:39

So as late as April, when these lists were made up, of 1822, you have

49:46

Joseph Smith still living in the township of Palmyra, but now down the south end of the road district, which would put him fairly close to the dividing line between Palmyra township and Manchester township.

50:02

So all of that agrees very decidedly with Joseph assessment records for the township of Manchester, which shows that Joseph didn't even contract for the land in Manchester until sometime after July of 1820.

50:24

Now, the further thing about the assessment records, jumping over to Manchester again, those tax records, the further thing is that when the property went on to the tax rolls of Joseph Smith, for Joseph Smith in 1822, 1821, the assessed value was $700.

50:45

Now, I spent quite a bit of time looking at land prices from that period. I went through the Phelps and Gorham papers, and they were selling property all over the place, all around there.

50:55

They were the first land office in the United States, was just 13 miles from Palmyra, down at Canandaigua, and Phelps and Gorham had opened a land office there, and before the turn of the century, before 1800, and they continued on for a number of years beyond that selling property, and you have property being sold by Phelps in 1819, 1820, 1821, all around in that area.

51:24

So this gives us an idea of what raw, uncultivated, unimproved land was selling for, and land there sold anywhere between $6 and as high as $10 an acre for unimproved land about the average that a person would pay for just raw land.

51:45

Now, the trees had to be cut, and then you had to put up your cabin and get your crops started and so on.

51:51

So, knowing the slowness of the process, and noticing that $700 was assessed for 1821 and the same amount for 1822, it would appear that nothing had been improved on the land by the summer of 22.

52:08

But the tax records for July of 1822 were that the assessed value had jumped by $300 to $1 ,000.

52:18

So that's when their cabin went up and they finally got enough land cleared to move on to the property. And that agrees perfectly with the

52:25

Palmyra Road tax records, which shows they were still in the township of Palmyra until after at least

52:33

April of 22, and the assessment records would push it to after July of 22.

52:39

So they didn't have to move on to the property until sometime after the summer of 22.

52:45

Okay, now let's make sure everyone understands that the Mormon story says that they moved on to this land in 1818?

52:54

Well, that's the way the historians tried to harmonize the difficulty in Joseph's account. Okay, and yet the information that you have uncovered makes it look very clear that they did not actually move on to that land until four years later, which would be 1822.

53:09

Okay, so that's the Okay, we need to take a brief break right now, and when we come back,

53:14

I want to ask you about some questions about what the significance of warning out is, and a couple more questions on this subject, and then we'll open up the phone lines and maybe talk to some folks who might have some questions for you about this subject.

53:30

278 -5555. And welcome back to Dividing Line. My name is James White. I'm the director of Alpha Omega Ministries, along with me,

53:36

Mike Beliveau, the president of Alpha Omega, and on the phone, Reverend Wesley Walter, the director of Alpha Omega We are talking about historical research into the background of the first vision of Joseph Smith as contained in Joseph Smith's history in the

53:49

Pearl of Great Price, part of Mormon Scripture. And we are talking about the differences between the, basically, the historical scenario that the

53:58

LDS Church is forced into by Joseph Smith's own statements. His claim that the revival took place in 1820 and that he had the first vision in 1820, the differences between that and the story that Joseph relevant to the actual facts of the matter, when the

54:14

Smiths actually moved from one place to another. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about,

54:19

Wesley, was the subject of warning out. Tell us about what's it meant to be warned out of a town and what significance this has to the subject we're discussing today.

54:30

The term warning out was a common term that was used in New England throughout the

54:36

New England states up until about the mid -1800s. 1818 -1819, around then, when it went out.

54:43

It stems from an old English understanding that the local town was responsible for its poor.

54:53

Now, in an area that is experiencing the migration of peoples into the territory, some of whom are not well funded, there was a danger of dozens of people coming into the town and being unable to make a living and becoming destitute.

55:14

In which case, the local towns were expected to care for these. Now, if the burden got too great, it could bankrupt the people of the town that already were living there and established.

55:27

So, right in the late 1780s, the

55:33

New England states began to pass laws that if you warned out a town, if you warned out group of immigrants, any particular family that moved into the area, within three months of their arrival, that you and they became destitute.

55:51

You weren't responsible for them. You could just charge the town they came from with the cost of transporting them back there and they would be their liability.

56:01

Now, they found that three months wasn't sufficient time, so most all of the states went to within a year.

56:07

That doesn't mean they were to wait a whole year. But it meant they had given up to a year to find these people if they moved into the hills of Vermont some place and settled down, squatted on land or whatever, that they would have up to a year to find them.

56:22

If they hadn't warned them out within a year, they became a part of the settled community and they became citizens with voting rights in the town.

56:31

Of course, they could get voting rights earlier if the town elected them to some office or voted to have them have voting rights.

56:39

But, they didn't have that. They became official settled citizens if a year had elapsed. Now, what's interesting is that a number of these books where the records were kept, first they were kept at the town minutes, but it was hard to find them that way, so then after somewhere around 18, eight or nine or ten in that period, most of the towns just kept a separate book of warning out.

57:04

Practically everybody that came into the community, unless he was very well -fixed, was knew the guy wasn't going to become destitute, but practically everybody that moved into the community was warned out of town.

57:17

So it wasn't a disgrace. It was simply a precaution. It does not speak to any, you can't infer that they were undesirable characters from that.

57:29

It simply was the regular procedure that all the communities in that area used. And, when they were warned out, they had to be warned out therefore within the town.

57:39

Most communities would have warned them out as soon as they found they were present.

57:46

So, consequently, as the book by Benton, which is a classical book called

57:52

Warning Out of New England, as he points out, these lists are excellent lists for determining when people arrived in a community because they would have warned them out just as soon as they found out that they were there.

58:04

Now, in Norwich, Vermont, the Smiths moved there. We don't, in the

58:09

Smiths account, we don't have any specific date, but Joseph's mother, in her account of their early life, mentions that they had been living in Lebanon, New Hampshire, which is just across the river from Norwich and down maybe a mile and a half, and that when they moved from there, they moved to Norwich, Vermont, which is on the

58:34

Connecticut River that runs north and south and divides Vermont from New Hampshire.

58:40

And this river town had kept the book, and in the book, on the date of March the 15th,

58:50

I believe, or 16th, somewhere around there, the Joseph Smith family was one of the families that year that was warned out of town.

58:59

Now, that means that it would have been an exercise in futility if they had arrived there, say, in 1814, and the town waited until late

59:10

March of 1816 to warn them out. It would have been pointless, because more than a year would have expired.

59:17

They had to have been warned out. In other words, they had to have arrived after March the 15th of 1815, and probably they didn't arrive until somewhere around February of 1816, and the town would have warned them out as soon as it became aware that they were there.

59:34

In any event, what this does is that Joseph Smith's mother spent mentions that there were three crop failures that took place, and then they moved, after the third crop failure, to western

59:48

New York, to Palmyra. And the Mormons understand that Joseph Smith's family got into Palmyra in 1816, and therefore they have to have the

59:59

Smiths in Norwich in 1814, and 1815, and 1816, and they leave in the fall of 1816.

01:00:05

Well, now, that won't hold up any longer, because, for one thing, they're going to have in Lebanon in 1814.

01:00:14

And while they could have been there as early as April of 1815, they would have had to still have been in Lebanon in 1817 in order to make the thing work out to three years.

01:00:26

What I think really happened was that they didn't get there until 1816, around February or the early part of March, and were warned out shortly after they arrived there, and the three years of crop failure would have to be 1816.

01:00:40

1819. And therefore they wouldn't have left for Palmyra until over the winter of 1818, 1819.

01:00:51

And so, while the father certainly could have been there in the tax roll, so he was, the rest of the family,

01:00:58

I don't think, came on until 1819. And the reason I say that, Alvin turned 21 in February of 1819.

01:01:07

And yet, in the April list of road tax records, looking at the whole of Palmyra, there is no

01:01:19

Alvin Smith listed, and he would have been 21, as I said, in February of 1819.

01:01:26

So he should have appeared on the tax rolls. Now, there's always a possibility that the guy goofed, the overseer forgot to record him, but it does not seem too likely, since the overseer, through those years, was

01:01:39

Alvin Smith. James White. He was one of the local storekeepers, and certainly would have known people that were doing business with his store.

01:01:51

His was the most prominent store in Palmyra. So, therefore, I think that the

01:01:58

Mormons have again another chronological problem getting the Smiths into Palmyra before they really got there.

01:02:06

The father's there, but I don't think that the family comes. So, I don't think that I might add one more thing.

01:02:13

The weather report for the New England area was faithfully kept by the Farmer's Almanac, and each almanac for the ensuing year had a page in it which rehearsed and reviewed the weather for the previous years.

01:02:29

So 1814's weather appeared in the 1815 almanac, and 1815's weather appeared in the 1816 almanac, and these are still active in the

01:02:38

Farmer's Almanac, and the company has a complete file all the way back to the beginning.

01:02:44

Well, when you look at those, you find that 1814 and 1815 were very good growing years.

01:02:50

But 1816 was when they had that snow in the middle of June, 18 inches of snow that wiped out nearly everything.

01:02:58

1816 and froze to death was the great slogan that bandied around.

01:03:03

But then in 1817, in the summer, they had an eighth of an inch of ice in all the crops in the middle of June, and 1818 started off with such a cold spring that they had late planting, and then they had over three weeks of drought in August, which ruined a lot of crops.

01:03:21

So I think those are the three years of crop failure, and dismissed if you credit Rosa Smith's mother with any accurate memory at all, which may not be the case, but if you credit her, and Mormons have always done that and built their whole story on her, then

01:03:39

I think then you cannot get Joseph Smith's family out of Norwich to go into Palmyra until sometime late in 1818 or early 1819.

01:03:54

And how long did they stay in Palmyra, according to the story? Well, according to the story, Joseph has them getting there, at least had his father getting there.

01:04:03

He doesn't say we, he just said his father moved to Palmyra when he was ten years old, which would be 1869.

01:04:09

And then he said in about four years, the family moved to Manchester. Okay, so if they arrived in Palmyra 1818, 1819, four years later, you're looking at 1822, 1823, which is what the assessment records indicate for their move to Manchester.

01:04:25

Right. Exactly. And the thing that you have to remember is that Joseph Smith's story reads a straightforward way if you start at the right point.

01:04:38

The thing that they messes it all up is this thing about a beautiful clear day in the spring of 1820.

01:04:45

If you leave that out, the rest of the story fits fine with the historical facts, namely that after they get to town, they get on the farm in 1822.

01:04:55

And then in the second year after arriving on the farm, he says there was a great excitement on the subject of religion, which puts you up to 1824, 1825, which is when the revival actually occurred.

01:05:08

So all of the evidence is completely consistent with each other, but it does havoc to Joseph Smith's first vision story.

01:05:16

What it looks like is that Joseph decided to make up a story that's going to really wow everybody and see the father and the son, and he's going to drop that into a historical context where it doesn't fit.

01:05:30

And as long as you don't have any factual historical data or records to compare with, everything works out fine except for that minor discrepancy about the father and the son.

01:05:40

whether the revival was 1822 or 1820. But once you begin to correlate it with actual historical documents, there's no way that you can fit an 1820 revival into the whole context of his story, given the points of correlation with known historical documents like the

01:05:59

Palmyra Road Tax Records and the Palmyra Assessment Records. Okay, now let's, for everybody's benefit, let's construct a chronology then of Joseph Smith's So let's start with without necessarily having to refer to each fact upon which we base it, but let's start with the family in Lebanon.

01:06:19

From your research, what is the chronology that would take us up to the revival of 1824, 1825?

01:06:26

I believe it started in September of 1824. Tell us where the Smiths are in a fairly concise way during that period of time.

01:06:34

Okay, we know that we're in Lebanon, New Hampshire in 1813 and 1814. We know that the weren't out of town in Norwich, Vermont in 1816, which means that they arrived there probably shortly before March of 1816 when they were warned out.

01:06:51

They spent three years there before the family moved to Palmyra. It was late in 1818 or early 1819 that they moved to Palmyra and they stayed in Palmyra until 1822,

01:07:07

I suppose, with the road tax and the assessment records indicate. In 1822, they move on the farm for the first time and build their log cabin to move into.

01:07:15

Then the following year, as Lucy's story points out, they start to build their frame house that Alvin was in the process of building when he died.

01:07:25

The second year after moving into their log house on the farm, then the revival takes place, which puts you in 1824.

01:07:36

That correlates with all the known facts about of the contemporary data that there was a revival in 1824.

01:07:45

There wasn't one in 1820, not within at least a 15 or 20 mile radius of Palmyra.

01:07:53

Too far to just walk down the road and drop in occasionally as he could, the way

01:07:59

Joseph puts it. He says in another newspaper interview that it was in his neighborhood.

01:08:06

That's even more restrictive than in the part of Palmyra where he lived. Mormons have said, well, he's in Illinois when he's writing his history, and he's talking about the part of the country, and they just make it the whole of western

01:08:18

New York. But Joseph specifically called it his neighborhood, and the neighborhood doesn't consist of territory 25 to 15 miles away.

01:08:26

It consists of people within a mile or so of you, which is where he was within about a mile of the meeting house in the village of Palmyra.

01:08:35

Yes, and he even says in his history that he attended there several meetings as often as occasionally. I think everyone should understand, especially if you're just now tuning in, this spring of 1820 date given by Joseph Smith became a part of Mormon Scripture in 1880.

01:09:03

It is not a part of Scripture that is ignored by the LDS church. You tend to think that you can, for example, watch the missionary films, the missionary film strips, read the testimony of Joseph Smith, which is, of course, one of the first things the

01:09:17

LDS missionary is going to talk to you about, and it is part and parcel of their entire message.

01:09:24

In the spring of 1820, these two beings appeared to Joseph Smith in this vision, in that beautiful clear day in the sacred grove there in upstate

01:09:35

New York. So we're not talking here about something that is easily dispensable from the Mormon position.

01:09:42

That's correct. As early as Heber Grant's time,

01:09:49

Heber Grant, one was put out a recording of Heber Grant, a little extract of the

01:09:54

Mormon prophet speeches, and on that tape, Heber Grant is saying, if he who did not have that first vision, then the whole thing is a fraud.

01:10:06

Now, he made a Freudian slip, but he meant if he did not have that first vision, what he meant was, if he didn't have that first vision, then the whole of Mormonism is a fraud.

01:10:24

And that concept of it being pivotal, the foundation stone, has been echoed by Joseph Fielding Smith, by Bruce McConkey, and even the book that just recently came out this month,

01:10:38

The First Vision of is good if, compilation of essays,

01:10:44

Milton Backman in there, a BYU professor who has written a book on the first vision, he maintains that this foundational is crucial.

01:10:53

And if it falls, Mormonism has no foundation, because they have rested upon the truth or falsehood of this whole first vision story.

01:11:03

Now, let me ask you something else. According to Mormon history, the first vision or the visitation of Moroni, Nephi, whoever you want to call him, whatever his name might be, occurs on September 21st, 1823.

01:11:19

So if what you have said concerning the dating of the first vision is correct, then the second vision is now left hanging in mid -air someplace.

01:11:28

That's right. It's like a set of dominoes. Because Joseph hung them together, if you knock the first one down, date -wise, then the second one goes down as well.

01:11:38

And it just throws the whole thing off all the way down the line, and you don't have him visiting the hill over a four -year period, because you can't do that.

01:11:46

He only visits really two times the most. Everything gets out of kilter. Wesley, before we take our first phone call, let me ask you, has there been any response yet, any type of feedback to your information?

01:12:04

No, because I haven't published it yet. Well, I mean, it's sort of been published. Right. Well, yeah.

01:12:10

But it's just about a month ago that a summary came out. The Mormons haven't had a chance to respond to it.

01:12:18

Well, we'll do everything we can to try to find some place to publish that. We'll do a good job with it, because I think it would be very good to find out just what the

01:12:27

LDS Church, how it responds to this type of a question. Wes, I'm going to put you on hold just a moment so that you can hear our first caller, and then we're going to take a few questions out in Mesa, and this is

01:12:41

Craig. Go ahead, Craig, and state your question. Okay. I've been doing some of the studies, you know, since I got the information, as I called it last week, talked to you about.

01:12:49

Uh -huh. Okay. And before I talk about, you know, like the road repairs or the land tax,

01:12:56

I just want to make sure that, you know, if, you know, once I tell, you know, what

01:13:01

I found or what I've come across, then if, you know, he'd be able to respond, will I be able to get back on and then tell about the land tax?

01:13:08

So I wanted to separate them into two categories, you know, the road tax, road repair is one thing, and the land tax is a separate thing.

01:13:15

Well, if you have to do it separately, I suppose we can. It would be easier if you just presented your case and allowed him to respond to it.

01:13:21

Well, it's because they're two separate issues is why I wanted to separate them. Okay, that's fine. Go ahead and present your first one.

01:13:26

We'll put you back on. I wanted him to make sure or at least specify the reference of where Marvin Hill agreed to that the revival being in 1824.

01:13:35

Where is that published or where is that found if he knows that? And then, okay, then about road repair.

01:13:42

Turning the tax record road repairs, if Joseph Smith, Sr., you know, signed in 1817 that he maintained roads in District 26, is there first of all, a specific boundary to these references or these maps?

01:13:57

Do they show the boundaries of District 26, where it entails, you know, to specify where Joseph Smith was living at the time?

01:14:04

And, you know, and if it crossed over counties, if it just went in, you know,

01:14:09

I was trying to figure out. Also, when he signed it in 1817, he told his name,

01:14:15

I guess, in 1818, 1819, and those other things. But I'm trying to question this. This information or these signatures is the way it seems like it appears.

01:14:25

Does it show the boundaries? Okay, not But then when he moved from Palmyra to Manchester, which there again, it really wasn't

01:14:34

Manchester yet, it was Farmington. Do you know did that require a change of road district?

01:14:41

Yeah, well, he did mention that, Craig, but I'll let him respond to that. Is that the first section you wanted to ask?

01:14:48

Yes. It was about where did Dr. Hill admit the revival took place in 1824? And secondly, what were the boundaries to the road tax assessment area, right?

01:14:57

Maps showing the district boundaries. Okay, hold on just one second. Wesley. Yes. Did you hear those?

01:15:03

Yes, I heard both the questions. Marvin Hill mentioned that in a talk that was given at the

01:15:10

Mormon History Association about 1983, 4, somewhere around there. And it was subsequently published in Sunstone Magazine.

01:15:17

I can't give you the issue and the, you know, the month, the year and the month.

01:15:23

I'd have to look my notes, but you will find it in Sunstone Magazine, and you could probably write

01:15:29

Sunstone or write you and I could look it up and give it to you. But that's where that is.

01:15:35

Now, as to the road tax, I don't know if you're familiar with Each township had its own commissioners of highways, its own road tax districts, and the

01:15:48

Farmington minutes of the township of Farmington are still extant, and the little village of Farmington owns, the township office owns the records, and these were lost for a long time until the archivist that I mentioned at the found the assessment records, also found these records of the

01:16:11

Farmington, and they all have their road districts numbered, and they're not the same, you know, they use one, two, three, four, five, but they're not the same road districts that are in Palmyra.

01:16:24

Now, fortunately, in Palmyra, there still is in the township office a highway records book that starts in the 1870s, 1990s, and one has to start at the beginning and read through, and it's a laborious task, but I've done it, and what they would do, as more and more people moved in, and the areas became settled, they would divide road districts, and they would put some road from one place to another, you know, move it, it was part of district seven, now it's going to be part of district nine, but what you find is that road district 26 stayed the same throughout the whole time that we're concerned with, but one has to read the whole record in order to do that, but the whole book is excellent.

01:17:17

The whole book has been microfilmed by the New York State Archives, and the type transcript of the whole book has been microfilmed by BYU, whichever is easier for you to read.

01:17:27

I'll tell you, it's really easy to read the type transcript. I bet it is. Now, in reference to Craig's question, then, did the boundaries that you're talking about, what

01:17:36

I got from his question was, could Joseph Smith have moved from Palmyra to Manchester and still stayed in the same road tax boundary area?

01:17:45

No, because you have a different set of road districts in Manchester, and in fact, they were so guarded about their own road tax district, you know, even today, people in the township next to you don't want you going over and taxing their people to support your schools or whatever's in your district.

01:18:06

They would fight like everything, you know, against that, the township would.

01:18:11

Exactly. Okay. So what you have is, like, sometimes the roads ran down the township line.

01:18:17

In fact, in most cases, they did. And so they would have, there are, in the town minutes of Farmington and in the town minutes of Palmyra, you will find dual entries where, say, the road ran down 150 feet down the township line between Palmyra and Farmington, and the they would come to an agreement that maybe the first 75 feet would be maintained by Palmyra, and the next 75 feet would be maintained by Farmington.

01:18:49

And that would mean that the Farmington people were at liberty to require the people living along that road who really lived in Palmyra to work on the road that ran down the township line and vice versa.

01:19:05

But what they would find any arrangement like that where Smith is living over the township line and is required to work the roads in Palmyra, had there been such a situation, if you envision such a situation, living in Manchester and having to work the roads in Palmyra, there would have to have first been an entry in both sets of town records.

01:19:30

And the town records are expensive, so I've been through both sets, and there's just not anything there.

01:19:36

And it's very, you know, as jealously as people regard their own tax base, they're not going to let some other group come in and tax one of their guys without reciprocation or agreement, at least.

01:19:53

Right. Okay. Now, I told Craig that I'd give him a second question here, so I'm going to put you back on hold there, Wesley, and go back to Craig.

01:19:59

Yes, Craig, do your second question. Okay. I didn't find out, though, if there was a map showing the boundaries, but I guess that, you know,

01:20:08

I don't think there really was. And also, I was trying to find out, too, if his name was written by himself or was written by just the recorder saying that he lived there.

01:20:17

The recorder did that, as I recall from what he said. And so, therefore, you know, somebody wrote his name saying he's in that district.

01:20:23

And also, there's no, or, you know, at least... Well, wait a minute. Now, Craig, if... But you've got to remember, he also said that if the person whose name was written there didn't fulfill their duties, then their land could be assessed and they could be jailed.

01:20:35

So, obviously, a person would not let their name be put down there if they weren't actually living there, as he just explained. All right, but do you know every time someone writes his name down in a county record?

01:20:43

Well, when they come to try to collect from me, yeah, you better believe I know when they write my name down for taxes.

01:20:49

You better believe it. That's only once a year when they check the taxes or they would let you know. But I'm saying, okay, proof of town boundaries, again,

01:20:56

Farmington, you know, the boundaries for that. Manchester wasn't created until 1822, the town of Manchester.

01:21:02

Well, the name was changed. Right, it was Farmington district or area that we know of, but we still don't have the actual town boundaries that are showing that, you know, for districts.

01:21:12

But anyway, if they wrote land tax, the tax assessment, okay, then, you know, you say that, okay, all of a sudden, when 1821, that his name shows up as on the tax records, okay, with his name on the tax records, that means that the land must be in his name, evidently.

01:21:31

But, you know, there still is no really proof of ownership. Assessment taxes and stuff like that are no real proof. Wait a minute,

01:21:36

Craig, let me ask something. What you're saying is you'd be willing to pay taxes on land that you don't own. Is that what you're telling me?

01:21:42

No, I'm just saying that by the time some records, I have some information, you know, just like my own construction business where we have construction.

01:21:50

We have been taxed recently by the county tax assessor and also by the county treasurer for information for land that was deeded back over a year ago.

01:22:03

And so, therefore, someone else is going to also get the tax hit to them, too, because we're not going to pay it because we don't own the property.

01:22:10

We deeded it away. So if the quarter's office is different than the tax office people, there is a difference in there.

01:22:17

And because I still show that, you know, I got my brother's name on a tax record saying that the assessment is going up on his property.

01:22:23

Okay, now we're running out of time, but make your point. It's very clear from the tax records themselves that the, for example, the increase in the valuation of the land and things like this, that this ties in completely perfectly with the rest of the chronology.

01:22:36

What is your specific question on that? In 1822, when he built, they started construction of the mansion that's still sitting there now, where, do you read the history of Joe Smith and the information?

01:22:48

They immediately, when they put their first down payment on the land, the first three payments, they immediately built a small shack on it and lived in it with nine kids.

01:22:58

And they added a second bedroom, and it wasn't until 1822 to 1823 that they built a mansion, and therefore, now, this big gigantic house, which is still standing, is now being taxed the higher amount.

01:23:11

And that's why the jump in the tax. Okay, hold on just a second, Craig. Let's see what, Wesley, you got any response to that?

01:23:18

Yeah, the New York law required any improvements to cause the tax amount, if there's such value, to be raised.

01:23:25

If you built a shack, you had to raise the taxes. So, any kind of improvement at all, according to the

01:23:32

New York law, required the amount to go up. The remaining land that the

01:23:37

Eversons owned was also taxed at a rate of $700, well, it was $1 ,400 because they had 200 acres, but it's $7 an acre.

01:23:46

So, we're talking about unimproved land, both for Joseph Smith and the remaining 200 acres of Eversons land.

01:23:56

Furthermore, I think you have to keep in mind that all of this was a real improvement legal tax.

01:24:03

The assessor was elected in each township and collected the tax money so that records were eventually turned over to the county, but the local people kept track of the taxes and they would know who was there and who wasn't.

01:24:19

The final thing I want to say is that when the land was purchased, it was innovated by Phelps and Gorham.

01:24:30

They had what they call articles of agreement and the land was articles to people. We'd say it's buying it on an installment plan.

01:24:38

In a number of these articles that are still in Albany's state library, from the

01:24:46

Phelps papers, you will find that the guy, even though he didn't own the property, was required to pay the taxes on the property and the property was taxed to him in his name, even though he didn't own the property.

01:24:58

So, the fact that Joseph Smith doesn't own the property doesn't prove anything. It's just in accordance with the procedure of that period.

01:25:08

Okay, one other quick question, Wesley, relative again to what Craig said concerning the boundaries. Were not the boundaries very clearly laid out in the documents that you examined?

01:25:17

Oh, yes. In 1793 or 1796, James Smedley surveyed that whole area and his whole survey, maps and everything, are all in the

01:25:27

Albany State Library. You can go there and check them and everything. He may have been off a few feet here and there going to rugged terrain, but the boundaries are essentially the same as they are today.

01:25:42

Okay, Wesley, I'm going to have to put you on hold just a moment because we're basically out of time. I really appreciate you being with us today and talking to us about this information.

01:25:52

If it all went by you just too fast for you to figure it out, why don't you go ahead and contact

01:25:58

Alfred Meaghan Minister of Ministries. We make these tapes available to individuals and ask for the series on the First Vision and you'll be able to stop and start the tape more than once to figure out exactly what it is we were saying and we really appreciate