Joseph Smith’s First Vision of the Father and the Son
Published October 13, 2026 at 5:23 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
In the spring of 1820, while seeking guidance about which church to join, young Joseph Smith read James 1:5 and prayed in a grove near his home in Manchester, New York. Accounts differ about his age, describing him as fourteen, in his fifteenth year, or in his sixteenth year. Some recount that his tongue was bound or swollen and that, after hearing a noise like someone approaching and finding no one, he knelt again and was able to pray. He was overcome by a dark power that prevented him from speaking or cast him down, but was delivered by a pillar of light brighter than the sun. In the light, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him. One called him by name, identified the other as His beloved Son, and instructed Joseph to hear Him and not join any of the existing religious sects.
In Their Own Words
“I cried unto the Lord for mercy for there was none else to whom I could go and to obtain mercy and the Lord heard my cry in the wilderness and while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord in the 16th year of my age a piller of fire light above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I was filled with the spirit of god and the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph my son thy sins are forgiven thee. — Joseph Smith, History, circa Summer 1832”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), Vol. 75, No. 14 (1913). https://archive.org/details/millennialstar7514eng (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Joseph Smith—History, Pearl of Great Price https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1… The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 68, No. 49 (1906). https://archive.org/details/millennialstar6849eng The Joseph Smith Papers, “Primary Accounts of First Vision,” https://www.josephsmithpapers… The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, 28 December 1905 (Vol. 67, No. 52). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1905-12-28_67_52 The Joseph…
Related Miracles
More accounts involving Joseph Smith, God the Father, Jesus Christ, plus similar miracle types and stories from the 1820s.
Miracle of the Week
One remarkable, documented account in your inbox every Monday, drawn from the full archive.