Messengers/Message

[Angrboda]

He is existentially gripped by the question of which church is right. And so with the insecurity that that created in him, and the uncertainty, he decides he needs to find out for himself. And he goes into this grove of trees, and he gets this thundering, spectacular theophany. He describes how intense the light was and how afraid he was that when it touched the trees, they would burst into flame. He was actually scared. And in that pillar of light appear two persons, the father and the son.

When Joseph Smith saw them, he saw embodied beings. He saw men the way you and I would see men, with all the biblical features the way Moses said he saw them, with eyes and ears and hands and faces.

He was blessed, I think, to be visited by God the father and by his son, Jesus Christ. And in that moment, he still had the presence of mind to ask and to fulfill the purpose for which he came, which, interestingly, wasn't to ask "Is there a true church?" I've always been struck, honestly, with the question he posed. "Which of the churches is true?" And the answer was that none of them was, and that was an earth-shaking answer. I'm sure it came as a very big surprise to him.

He came from a tradition of visionaries. And his father had dreams, his grandfather had dreams, and so it was nothing new for him, as well, to feel that he had had some kind of heavenly communication.

In the beginning, Joseph would tell only his family about what happened in the grove. Over the years, he would record several versions of what he saw.

Greg Prince, author:
"The first version of the vision was written in Joseph Smith's own hand in 1832. It was personal. It merely dealt with his sinfulness and his going to the grove to ask God for forgiveness. End of story. Subsequently, over the next 12 years, there were other versions that emerged from Joseph Smith, where the story got more detailed and more colorful. And one of the later versions became the official version."

— from "The Mormons", an American Experience / Frontline special