Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision: What Was Cut Out, Who Hid It, and What the Historical Record Actually Shows
Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account remains one of the most debated documents in Latter-day Saint history. According to historical records, the earliest written account of Joseph Smith’s vision was removed from Letter Book A. It was later stored in an apostle’s personal safe and remained out of public view for more than a century. As a result, questions continue to surround both the contents of the document and the way it was handled.
This analysis examines what the 1832 First Vision account actually says, how it differs from the official 1838 narrative, what the documentary evidence reveals about its custody history, the Church’s 2022 FAQ response, and what the apologetic responses can and cannot explain.
About This Episode
Mormonism Live’s episode, Joseph Smith’s First Vision: What Changed Over Time?, examined the history of Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account. The discussion responded to the LDS Church’s 2022 FAQ article about whether the account was removed and restricted from public access. The episode covers several topics. These include the contents of the 1832 account, its differences from the 1838 version, the evidence of excision, the suppression timeline, the Church’s 2022 response, and LDS apologetic explanations. The episode draws primarily on Stan Larson’s 2014 article in Dialogue Journal — the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of the subject — and on the Joseph Smith Papers’ own source notes.
What This Rebuttal Fully Concedes — The Historical Facts Are Not Disputed
Before evaluating the controversy, it is important to establish what facts are broadly undisputed. Multiple independent sources—including the Joseph Smith Papers project and the Church’s own 2022 FAQ—confirm that the three leaves containing the 1832 First Vision account were physically removed from Letter Book A. Furthermore, the pages were stored in Joseph Fielding Smith’s personal office safe and were not publicly available for approximately 133 years. Furthermore, Levi Edgar Young later reported seeing the document under conditions of confidentiality. Ultimately, the account entered public discussion through academic and critical publications rather than through an official Church release.
The 2022 Church FAQ article itself is the most remarkable part of this story: its statement that “there is nothing about the 1832 account that would merit cutting it out and hiding it” is made in the context of a document that the Church’s own historian did in fact cut out and hide. Moreover, the statement is directly contradicted by Levi Edgar Young’s own testimony — which the FAQ does not mention.
What the 1832 Account Actually Says
The 1832 account describes one divine being — Jesus — with no mention of God the Father, a different purpose for prayer, and a different pre-vision knowledge state
Confirmed by Joseph Smith Papers Primary Source.
The 1832 account, written into the front of what became Letter Book A, begins with Joseph describing years of personal spiritual anguish from age 12 to 15, during which he read the scriptures extensively and concluded for himself that “mankind did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatized from the true and living faith.” He describes no church as being built upon the gospel as recorded in the New Testament. Crucially, this conclusion is reached before the prayer — from his own study and observation.
He then describes entering the woods to pray. However, his purpose differs significantly from the later 1838 account— not to ask which church is true (he already knows none are), but to cry unto the Lord “for mercy.” What follows is a vision described simply: “the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord.” The being who speaks identifies himself as Jesus Christ through the words “I was crucified for the world.” No introduction of a second being occurs — because there is only one being. The message is personal: “thy sins are forgiven thee” and a call to repentance. The account ends with Joseph describing his soul being filled with love.
Key Differences from the 1838 Account
| Element | 1832 Account | 1838 Official Account |
|---|---|---|
| Divine beings | “I saw the Lord” — one being, identified as Jesus | “Two Personages” — Father introduces Son |
| Purpose of prayer | Forgiveness of sins | “To know which of all the sects was right” |
| Prior knowledge | Already knew all churches had apostatized from his own study | “It had never entered into my heart that they were all wrong” |
| Age at vision | “In the 16th year of my age” (age 15) | “In my fourteenth year” (age 14) |
| Core message | Personal forgiveness; world lies in sin; Christ comes quickly | Do not join any church; all creeds are abomination |
These are not variations in emphasis or detail — they are contradictions in the core elements of the narrative: the number of divine beings, the reason Joseph went to pray, and what he knew before he prayed. The LDS Church’s own Gospel Topics Essay on First Vision Accounts acknowledges these differences while framing them as complementary rather than contradictory.
Joseph Smith Papers — 1832 History (full text) ·
LDS Gospel Topics Essay — First Vision Accounts
The Suppression Chain — What the Documentary Record Shows
The leaves were excised with a penknife after 1930 (dated by cellophane tape) and kept in Joseph Fielding Smith’s personal safe — not in general archives
Confirmed by Joseph Smith Papers and Stan Larson’s Dialogue Article.
The physical evidence is documented in the Joseph Smith Papers’ own source notes and by Stan Larson’s forensic analysis in his 2014 Dialogue Journal article. The three leaves (six pages) containing the 1832 account were cut from Letter Book A. The cut marks match the remaining stubs. A torn corner of the third leaf was repaired with clear cellophane tape. Because cellophane tape was not available until 1930, the excision must have occurred after that date. The excised pages were found not in general church archives but in Joseph Fielding Smith’s personal office safe.
However, the Church’s 2022 FAQ states that the pages were “likely” in Smith’s safe. It also says they were removed sometime between 1930 and 1965. It attributes the excision to “someone likely a member of the historian’s office staff” without naming Smith — a framing Larson’s article directly addresses: “Because we know that the missing pages were kept in the office safe of Joseph Fielding Smith, it is unlikely that the leaves were removed simply in accordance with the archival practice of separating collections based on content.”
Importantly, the pages were in his personal safe — not general archives. The Church’s own FAQ confirms this. The suggestion that an unnamed junior staffer cut pages from a founding document and deposited them in an apostle’s personal safe, without that apostle’s knowledge or direction, is not a serious historical argument.
Stan Larson — “Another Look at Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” Dialogue Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2014) ·
Joseph Smith Papers — Source Notes for 1832 History
Levi Edgar Young — senior president of the First Council of the Seventy — described the account as “a strange account concealed for 120 years in a locked vault” and was instructed to keep it secret
Confirmed by Larson’s Dialogue Article and LaMar Petersen’s Records.
— LaMar Petersen, recounting Levi Edgar Young’s words, 1952 (recorded in Petersen’s notes and later published in The Creation of the Book of Mormon: A Historical Inquiry, 1998)
Importantly, the Levi Edgar Young/LaMar Petersen chain of testimony is the most important single piece of evidence for deliberate suppression. Young was at the time the senior president of the First Council of the Seventy — the highest position in that body, one step below the Quorum of the Twelve. He was shown the account by Smith and explicitly told “not to copy or tell what they contained.” Despite those instructions, Young disclosed key details to Petersen during six meetings in 1952. He stated that the account existed, was kept in a locked vault, and differed from the official version. He also said it described Jesus alone, without mentioning God the Father.
Nevertheless, Petersen honored Young’s request for confidentiality until Young’s death in December 1963. In early 1964, he told the Tanners. They wrote to Joseph Fielding Smith requesting access. Smith refused. Shortly thereafter, Smith transferred the pages from his personal safe back to general church archives and authorized Paul Cheesman to see them for his master’s thesis — but only after the Tanners knew the account existed and had written to request it.
Timeline of the Document’s Release
Importantly, Young’s testimony is not anonymous or secondhand speculation. He was a senior Church leader, he described the account’s contents accurately (since confirmed by the document itself), and he reported explicit instructions for secrecy. The timeline shows pages were released only after external pressure — not proactively by the Church.
Dialogue Journal — Stan Larson, “Another Look at Joseph Smith’s First Vision” (full Young/Petersen documentation) ·
A Careful Examination — Full suppression timeline with sources
The Church’s 2022 Response — Evaluated
“There is nothing about the 1832 account that would merit cutting it out and hiding it” — the statement that requires the most scrutiny
Contradicted by the Church’s Own Documentation.
Tensions Between the FAQ and the Documentary Evidence
This statement requires careful evaluation because it appears in a document that simultaneously acknowledges the pages were cut out and kept in Smith’s personal safe. The logical structure of the statement is: “nothing merited cutting it out and hiding it — therefore, it wasn’t cut out and hidden to hide it.” But the premise and the conclusion are both asserted without engagement with the contrary evidence.
What the FAQ Leaves Unaddressed
The Church’s FAQ does not mention Levi Edgar Young, LaMar Petersen, or the documented instructions for secrecy. It attributes the excision to “someone likely a member of the historian’s office staff” without naming the person whose safe the pages were then found in. Additionally, the FAQ suggests the pages may have been separated for organizational purposes.However, it does not explain why such filing would require a personal combination safe. It also does not address modern archival standards, which emphasize preserving original order.
Moreover, Larson’s Dialogue article is widely regarded as the standard scholarly treatment of this question. It was published eight years before the Church released its FAQ. FAIR LDS, in its own treatment of the question, is more candid than the official FAQ: it acknowledges “the history of denying researchers access to the account suggests some uneasiness about its contents” and notes that Smith “could possibly” have been responsible for the excision. The official FAQ is more defensive than the Church’s own apologetic organization.
Notably, the FAQ acknowledges the pages were in Smith’s safe. It does not mention the documented secrecy instructions. Asserting “nothing would merit cutting it out” in the same document that acknowledges it was cut out and kept secret is not a serious engagement with the historical evidence.
FAIR LDS — Did Joseph Fielding Smith hide the 1832 account? (more candid than the official FAQ)
The LDS Apologetic Responses — Rated
1. The accounts serve different purposes and audiences — personal forgiveness vs. institutional founding narrative
Partially Valid. Explains Tone and Emphasis, Not the Core Contradictions.
The most common LDS apologetic response is that the accounts served different purposes. This explanation appears in the Church’s Gospel Topics Essay and in the work of scholars such as Stephen Harper.The 1832 account is personal and devotional. It focuses on Joseph’s spiritual journey and his need for forgiveness. By contrast, the 1838 account is institutional and focuses on the Church’s founding narrative. Different audiences, different details highlighted.
Where this works: It genuinely explains the difference in tone. The 1832 account does read more intimately; the 1838 account does read more formally institutional. It is not unreasonable to note that people describing the same event for different purposes emphasize different elements.
Where it fails: Different purposes don’t explain why the number of divine beings changes. If two personages appeared, the institutional account wouldn’t omit one of them — that’s the central theological claim the institutional account is establishing. The 1835 account also mentions two beings; the 1838 account also mentions two beings; the single-being 1832 account stands alone. Different emphasis would produce different amounts of detail about the same event. Different numbers of beings describe a different event.
The different-purposes argument is legitimate for tonal and emphasis differences. It does not adequately explain why the number of divine beings differs, or why the stated motivation for prayer — what Joseph knew before he entered the grove — is directly contradictory rather than complementary.
2. Stephen Harper’s “mind vs. heart” argument — Joseph knew intellectually that no church was true but it “had never entered into his heart”
Linguistically Strained. Requires Reading a Distinction the Text Doesn’t Make.
To reconcile the 1832 account’s statement that Joseph already knew all churches had apostatized with the 1838 account’s statement that “it had never entered into my heart that they were all wrong,” LDS apologist Stephen Harper proposed that Joseph was making an intellectual vs. emotional distinction: he knew it mentally (1832) but it hadn’t settled emotionally into his heart (1838).
As Reel and RFM note, Harper himself acknowledges this is an attempt to reconcile a discrepancy — which means he acknowledges the discrepancy exists. This explanation depends on a distinction between the mind and the heart. However, the 1838 text does not explicitly make that distinction. By contrast, the ordinary reading of “it had never entered into my heart that they were all wrong” is a statement about the overall state of his knowledge and conviction — not a statement that he knew it mentally but not emotionally. If Joseph meant to distinguish between intellectual and emotional knowledge, the text gives no signal of that distinction.
Therefore, Harper’s argument works only if you bring the reconciliation need to the text in advance. The plain reading of both passages describes the same pre-prayer knowledge state differently. The apologetic response requires more interpretive work than the contradiction it is resolving.
3. “Lord” in the 1832 account could refer to both Father and Son — God the Father may have been present without being named
Not Supported by the Text. The Word “Lord” Appears Five Times Consistently.
Some apologists suggest that “the Lord” in the 1832 account could encompass both Father and Son, with God the Father present but simply not separately named. The 1838 account’s explicit identification of two personages, on this reading, clarifies what the 1832 account left implicit.
However, the problem with this argument is textual. In the 1832 account, “the Lord” is used five separate times — “I cried unto the Lord,” “the Lord heard my cry,” “while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord,” “the Lord opened the heavens upon me,” and “I saw the Lord.” All five uses refer to a single being who subsequently speaks in the first person as Jesus Christ. The being who speaks gives no indication of another’s presence and introduces himself without reference to any other being. If God the Father were present, there is no natural reason for five first-person references to a single being with no acknowledgment of another.
Levi Edgar Young, who read the account in the 1940s or 1950s with no critical agenda, immediately understood it as describing Jesus only. His summary to Petersen — “Jesus was the center of the vision, but God was not mentioned” — reflects the account’s plain reading.
The text’s consistent singular use of “the Lord” with a speaker who identifies himself as the crucified Christ gives no opening for an implicit second being. The most natural reading is that one being appeared.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account?
It is the earliest known written record of the foundational visionary experience of the LDS restoration — the only one partially in Joseph Smith’s own handwriting. The account was written into the front of what later became Letter Book A. It describes Joseph’s spiritual struggles between ages 12 and 15. It also records his conclusion that the churches had apostatized and his later vision. The vision was in his 16th year in which he saw one being — “the Lord” (Jesus Christ) — who told him his sins were forgiven. It was never published or publicly referenced for approximately 133 years.
Why is Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account controversial?
Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account is controversial because it differs from the official 1838 account in several important ways. Critics point to differences involving the number of divine beings, Joseph’s stated purpose for prayer, and what he claimed to know before the vision. In addition, historians continue to debate the significance of the document’s removal from Letter Book A and its restricted access for more than a century.
How does the 1832 account differ from the official 1838 version?
Four substantive differences: (1) number of divine beings — 1832 describes one being (Jesus only); 1838 describes two personages, one introducing the other; (2) purpose of prayer — 1832 says Joseph went to ask forgiveness having already concluded all churches had apostatized; 1838 says his purpose was to ask which church was right; (3) prior knowledge — 1832 says he had already concluded no church was true; 1838 explicitly says “it had never entered into my heart that they were all wrong”; (4) age — 1832 says 16th year of age (age 15); 1838 says 14th year (age 14).
Was the 1832 First Vision account deliberately hidden?
The physical and documentary evidence strongly supports deliberate restriction. The pages were physically excised from Letter Book A (confirmed by the Joseph Smith Papers) and found in Joseph Fielding Smith’s personal office safe. He showed them to Levi Edgar Young in the 1940s–50s with explicit instructions not to copy or tell what they contained. Young described the account to LaMar Petersen as “a strange account concealed for 120 years in a locked vault.” The pages were only transferred back to general archives in ~1964 after the Tanners wrote to request access. Critics — the Tanners — published the text before the Church did.
Who cut the pages out of Letter Book A?
The Church’s 2022 FAQ attributes it to “someone likely a member of the historian’s office staff” without naming Joseph Fielding Smith. Stan Larson’s 2014 Dialogue article — the scholarly standard — concludes: “Because we know that the missing pages were kept in the office safe of Joseph Fielding Smith, it is unlikely that the leaves were removed simply in accordance with the archival practice.” Larson states the decision was likely Smith’s, “but could possibly have been Earl E. Olson or A. William Lund.” Even on the alternative reading, someone with access to Smith’s personal safe — and authorized to deposit material there — made the decision. The Church’s 2022 FAQ does not explain how a staff member deposited material into an apostle’s personal combination safe.
What did the Church say about the excision in its 2022 FAQ?
The Church’s 2022 FAQ acknowledges: the pages were in Joseph Fielding Smith’s safe; they were removed “sometime between 1930 and 1965”; the volume was “a valuable historical artifact.” It offers two explanations: organizational filing based on subject, and the assertion that “there is nothing about the 1832 account that would merit cutting it out and hiding it.” The FAQ does not mention Levi Edgar Young, LaMar Petersen, or the documented instructions for secrecy. FAIR LDS, the Church’s primary apologetic organization, is more candid than the official FAQ — acknowledging the history of restricted access “suggests some uneasiness about its contents.”
What are the eight missing leaves from Letter Book A?
Eight additional inscribed leaves were also removed from the back of Letter Book A. Evidence suggests they were excised around the same time and likely with the same instrument. These eight leaves (16 pages) have never been found. Writing is visible on the remaining stubs, confirming the pages contained text. The Church’s historians acknowledge they are missing but offer no explanation for their disappearance. Unlike the three First Vision leaves, which were found in Smith’s safe and returned, the eight leaves have simply vanished from the historical record.
When was the 1832 account first made public?
In 1965, through Paul R. Cheesman’s BYU master’s thesis — 133 years after it was written. Later that same year, the Tanners published the text in print. The Church-affiliated publication did not come until Dean C. Jessee’s 1969 BYU Studies article. BYU historian James B. Allen noted in 1966 that no contemporary church publication from the 1830s and no journal or correspondence then discovered mentioned the First Vision at all, suggesting it had minimal circulation in the early years of the Church.
The Honest Summary
Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account is authentic. Portions are written in his own handwriting. The complete document is available through the Joseph Smith Papers project. Its existence and the basic facts of its custody history are not disputed by the Church, by LDS apologetics, or by independent scholars. What is disputed is the interpretation of those facts.
The Evidence Behind the Controversy
The physical evidence — pages excised from a founding document, deposited in a Church Historian’s personal safe, dated to after 1930 — is consistent with deliberate restriction. The testimonial evidence — a senior Church leader describing the account as “a strange account concealed for 120 years in a locked vault” with instructions for secrecy — is consistent with deliberate restriction. The release pattern — pages returned to archives only after critics knew the account existed and had requested access, published first by those critics, not the Church — is consistent with deliberate restriction.
The Remaining Contradictions
Ultimately, the substantive contradictions with the 1838 canonical account are real. Moreover, the number of divine beings differs. Likewise, the stated motivation for prayer differs. Furthermore, what Joseph knew before entering the grove differs directly and explicitly. LDS apologetic responses — different purposes, the mind/heart distinction, the inclusive use of “Lord” — are more laboured than the contradictions they attempt to resolve. The 2022 Church FAQ’s assertion that “nothing would merit cutting it out and hiding it” is made in a document that simultaneously acknowledges it was kept in a personal safe and shown only to select individuals under oaths of secrecy.
Ultimately, truth seekers deserve to engage this history directly rather than removed and interpreted. Additionally, the 1832 account is available on the Joseph Smith Papers. Then, read it alongside the 1838 account. Next, apply the most reasonable interpretation. Consider how the account was handled over time. Then decide whether that history supports the institution’s claims of transparency.