Below are the quotes that were used in the video.
Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision:
Saints: When the light faded, Joseph found himself lying on his back, looking up into heaven. The pillar of light had departed, and his guilt and confusion were gone. Feelings of divine love filled his heart. God the Father and Jesus Christ had spoken to him, and he had learned for himself how to find truth and forgiveness.
"Too weak from the vision to move, Joseph lay in the woods until some of his strength returned. He then struggled home and leaned against the fireplace for support. His mother saw him and asked what was wrong.
“All is well,” he assured her. “I am well enough off.”
"A few days later, while talking to a preacher, Joseph told him about what he had seen in the woods. The preacher had been active in the recent religious revivals, and Joseph expected him to take his vision seriously.
"At first the preacher treated his words lightly. People claimed to have heavenly visions from time to time. But then he became angry and defensive, and he told Joseph that his story was from the devil. The days of visions and revelations had ceased long ago, he said, and they would never return.
"Joseph was surprised, and he soon found that no one would believe his vision. Why would they? He was only fourteen years old and had practically no education. He came from a poor family and expected to spend the rest of his life working the land and doing odd jobs to earn a meager living.
And yet his testimony bothered some people enough to ridicule him. How strange, he thought, that a simple boy of no consequence in the world could attract so much bitterness and scorn. “Why persecute me for telling the truth?” he wanted to ask. “Why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen?”
Joseph puzzled over these questions for the rest of his life. “I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me,” he later recounted, “and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true.”
“I knew it, and I knew that God knew it,” he testified, “and I could not deny it.” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/saints-v1/02-hear-him?lang=eng)
1832 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph was so deeply wounded by the Methodist minister’s rejection that he didn’t tell anyone else, then tried to write an autobiography twelve years later at age 26, still hurting from the rejection, and a few months after being physically beaten and covered in hot pine tar and feathers?
That same year (1832), he wrote a friend that he felt imprisoned by “paper pen and ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect Language.” He called the written word a “little narrow prison.” (Joseph Smith to William W. Phelps, Nov. 27, 1832, Joseph Smith Collection, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; www.josephsmithpapers.org)
1838-39 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph—age 33—started writing autobiography after being driven from Ohio by enemies, then, before he could write more than a few pages, he’s jailed in a cramped, cold, stinking dungeon cell in Missouri while his wife, children, and followers flee governor’s order to militia to exterminate or drive them from the state?
And what would happen if he started dictating history again months later on the other side of the Mississippi River, having finally escaped Missouri hell?
What would happen if he wrote his history after the worst, most persecuted year of his life?
1841 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph looked at his history a year or two later in a different setting: living peacefully in Nauvoo, Illinois, surrounded by faithful followers gathering by thousands and beginning to carry out vision for a new temple. Fawning legislators had given Nauvoo a protective charter. Missouri was fading into the distance and Carthage was not yet on the horizon?
1842 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph—age 36—received a letter from the editor of a Chicago newspaper, or a historian from Philadelphia, asking kindly if he would furnish them with his story so they could accurately inform their readers?
Stephen Prothero: "Critics of Mormonism have delighted in the discrepancies between this canonical account and earlier renditions, especially one written in Smith’s own hand in 1832. . . . . Such complaints however, are much ado about relatively nothing. Any good lawyer (or historian) would expect to find contradictions in competing narratives written down years apart and decades after the event. And despite the contradictions, key elements abide." ( American Jesus, 171).
That same year (1832), he wrote a friend that he felt imprisoned by “paper pen and ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect Language.” He called the written word a “little narrow prison.” ( Joseph Smith to William W. Phelps, Nov. 27, 1832, Joseph Smith Collection, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; www.josephsmithpapers.org).
References
- 1832 Account -- Earliest account from Joseph written by Fredrick G. Williams
- 1835 Account -- Written by Warren Cowdery, given to Joshua traveling minister
- 1839 Account -- Written by James Mulholland (official account)
- 1840 Account -- Published by Orson Pratt – missionary tract
- 1842 Account -- Wentworth letter
- 1842 Account -- Written by Orson Hyde – German missionary tract
- 1843 Account -- Printed in New York Spectator – David Nye White
- 1844 Account -- Written by Alexander Neibaur, Joseph Hebrew teacher
- 1850 Account -- Written by John Taylor in Millennial Star (newspaper)
Saints: When the light faded, Joseph found himself lying on his back, looking up into heaven. The pillar of light had departed, and his guilt and confusion were gone. Feelings of divine love filled his heart. God the Father and Jesus Christ had spoken to him, and he had learned for himself how to find truth and forgiveness.
"Too weak from the vision to move, Joseph lay in the woods until some of his strength returned. He then struggled home and leaned against the fireplace for support. His mother saw him and asked what was wrong.
“All is well,” he assured her. “I am well enough off.”
"A few days later, while talking to a preacher, Joseph told him about what he had seen in the woods. The preacher had been active in the recent religious revivals, and Joseph expected him to take his vision seriously.
"At first the preacher treated his words lightly. People claimed to have heavenly visions from time to time. But then he became angry and defensive, and he told Joseph that his story was from the devil. The days of visions and revelations had ceased long ago, he said, and they would never return.
"Joseph was surprised, and he soon found that no one would believe his vision. Why would they? He was only fourteen years old and had practically no education. He came from a poor family and expected to spend the rest of his life working the land and doing odd jobs to earn a meager living.
And yet his testimony bothered some people enough to ridicule him. How strange, he thought, that a simple boy of no consequence in the world could attract so much bitterness and scorn. “Why persecute me for telling the truth?” he wanted to ask. “Why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen?”
Joseph puzzled over these questions for the rest of his life. “I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me,” he later recounted, “and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true.”
“I knew it, and I knew that God knew it,” he testified, “and I could not deny it.” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/saints-v1/02-hear-him?lang=eng)
1832 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph was so deeply wounded by the Methodist minister’s rejection that he didn’t tell anyone else, then tried to write an autobiography twelve years later at age 26, still hurting from the rejection, and a few months after being physically beaten and covered in hot pine tar and feathers?
That same year (1832), he wrote a friend that he felt imprisoned by “paper pen and ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect Language.” He called the written word a “little narrow prison.” (Joseph Smith to William W. Phelps, Nov. 27, 1832, Joseph Smith Collection, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; www.josephsmithpapers.org)
1838-39 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph—age 33—started writing autobiography after being driven from Ohio by enemies, then, before he could write more than a few pages, he’s jailed in a cramped, cold, stinking dungeon cell in Missouri while his wife, children, and followers flee governor’s order to militia to exterminate or drive them from the state?
And what would happen if he started dictating history again months later on the other side of the Mississippi River, having finally escaped Missouri hell?
What would happen if he wrote his history after the worst, most persecuted year of his life?
1841 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph looked at his history a year or two later in a different setting: living peacefully in Nauvoo, Illinois, surrounded by faithful followers gathering by thousands and beginning to carry out vision for a new temple. Fawning legislators had given Nauvoo a protective charter. Missouri was fading into the distance and Carthage was not yet on the horizon?
1842 Account - What would happen if . . .
Joseph—age 36—received a letter from the editor of a Chicago newspaper, or a historian from Philadelphia, asking kindly if he would furnish them with his story so they could accurately inform their readers?
Stephen Prothero: "Critics of Mormonism have delighted in the discrepancies between this canonical account and earlier renditions, especially one written in Smith’s own hand in 1832. . . . . Such complaints however, are much ado about relatively nothing. Any good lawyer (or historian) would expect to find contradictions in competing narratives written down years apart and decades after the event. And despite the contradictions, key elements abide." ( American Jesus, 171).
That same year (1832), he wrote a friend that he felt imprisoned by “paper pen and ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect Language.” He called the written word a “little narrow prison.” ( Joseph Smith to William W. Phelps, Nov. 27, 1832, Joseph Smith Collection, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; www.josephsmithpapers.org).
References
- Saints, Chapter 2: Hear Him, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/saints-v1/02-hear-him?lang=eng
- https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/awakenings-burned-over-district-new-light-historical-setting-first-vision
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/video/2017-01-0100-ask-of-god-joseph-smiths-first-vision?lang=eng
- https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-vision-accounts-synthesis?lang=eng
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/first-vision-accounts?lang=eng