Solomon Chamberlain's Vision of the Night — Jesus Christ Appears to Him Face to Face (c. 1816)

Solomon Chamberlain (1788–1850), a restless religious seeker from Canaan, Connecticut, who had joined the Methodists at nineteen and later the Reformed Methodists, remained dissatisfied with the churches of his day and prayed earnestly for further guidance. In a vision of the night around 1816, he experienced one of the most striking personal manifestations of the Savior recorded in the early Restoration era. In his autobiography he wrote: "It seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face." He described the manifestation with vivid, physical specificity: "It seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man." He recorded beholding the Savior in visible, bodily form: "Below him stood Jesus Christ my Redeemer, in perfect shape like a man—His face was not ablaze, but had the countenance of fire, being bright and shining." The appearance of the Redeemer to Chamberlain in this night vision became one of the formative experiences of his life, preparing him to recognize the restored gospel when, guided by the Spirit in 1829, he was led to the Smith family in Palmyra and became one of the very first to receive the printed pages of the Book of Mormon. Years later, in a more rationalist age, Chamberlain would reflect on the experience as "a mental state"; yet at the time of the vision he insisted he had seen the Savior as plainly as he would see any other man. Historian Richard Lyman Bushman has cited this account as evidence of the vibrant visionary culture that prepared early Saints such as Chamberlain to receive latter-day revelation without doubt.