As church commemorates bicentennial, it's time to go back for a new update:
An overlooked text supporting Joseph Smith’s First Vision consistency
Joseph Smith’s early Biblical translation efforts provide overlooked evidence that his view of humankind’s ability to see God was consistent
alt=Don Bradley
alt=Walker Wright
Joseph Smith’s early Biblical translation efforts provide overlooked evidence that his view of humankind’s ability to see God was consistent
In an exact echo of John 1:18, the KJV of 1 John 4:12 reads, “No man hath seen God at any time.” Smith again qualifies this with a proviso in his translation: “except them who believe.”
In both alterations — made several months before Smith’s earliest recorded account of the First Vision in 1832 — God the Father is made visible. And in each alteration, a condition is presented on which the Father can be seen — a condition met by Smith in his own First Vision account: Before he saw the Father, he exercised faith and became one of “them who believe,” meeting the condition specified in JST 1 John 4:12. He also heard the Father bear “record of the Son,” meeting the condition specified in JST John 1:18.
Given Smith’s changes to these passages — in each case qualifying the apparent absoluteness of the statement “No man hath seen God” — it is intriguing that he imports this very phrase into the beginning of his revised Psalm 14, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no man that hath seen God. Because he showeth himself not unto us, therefore there is no God.”
Having revised the two New Testament passages to stipulate conditions on which human beings can see God the Father, the “fool” who denies God in Psalm 14:1 now becomes one who denies any possibility of theophany. This would include the preacher who treated Joseph’s own theophany with “great contempt, saying it was all of the devil, that there were no such things as visions or revelations in these days” (JS-H 1:21).
The topics of laziness, greed and the use of plural marriage as a way to excuse adultery are addressed through many songs. “Joseph never said he was perfect, but in so many ways, people have expected him to be. Our show confronts those themes,” Nelson said.
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