Joseph Smith’s First Vision, Kind Of
Fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old Joseph Smith is visited by Dad God and Jesus God, who are both white guys.
Once upon a time, long, long ago in the ancient days of the early 1800s, a farm boy named Joseph Smith lived in Upstate New York.
Like all adolescent boys of every time and culture, young Joseph's thoughts were preoccupied with a single thing: religion.
Caught in the universal teenage struggle of which church to attend, the religious revivals sweeping the area brought Joseph nothing but torment. Just when one minister said something that sounded really holy, another minister would jump up on a tree stump and say something that sounded even holier, but in a more baritone voice. And Joseph couldn't even use Google to get answers, because he was too poor to own a personal computer, plus their farm didn't get Wi-Fi.
So when he was either fourteen or sixteen years old, Joseph went into the woods to pray about his religious dilemma. And God Himself showed up, like a billionaire you invite to your birthday party kind of hoping they'll bring you a brand-new Maserati, but whom you don't really expect to knock on your front door.
We don't know how old Joseph Smith was when this happened. This is because Joseph Smith did not know how old he was when this happened. He might have been sixteen, which is how old he said he was when he wrote about it in 1832, or he could have been fourteen, which is how old he said he was when he wrote about it in 1838.
He was almost definitely for sure one of those two ages.
Joseph Smith could not reasonably be expected to remember how old he was when actual God showed up in physical form and spoke with him directly. If you're thinking that you definitely remember how old you were when you lost your virginity, and that seeing God face-to-face feels like a much bigger deal than your virginity thing, then first of all how dare you compare meeting God to what you did in the back of Trevor's Honda Accord after prom. Secondly, you are only thinking this sort of thing because you aren't holy enough to understand it, and you need to go work on yourself.
Anyway, fourteen-to-sixteen year-old Joseph went into the woods to pray. What, exactly, he was praying about also differs according to Joseph's first-hand accounts of being there, but, depending on the version you're reading, he was either praying because:
He was a spiritual prodigy who had figured out, based on his own research, that all Christian churches were in a state of apostasy so he'd decided to handle his spiritual business directly with the Main Minister in the Sky and went to ask God to ask forgiveness for his sins, OR
He was in no way a spiritual prodigy, and thought there was probably one church out there that was getting it right, and wanted to know which church that was.
It was almost definitely for sure one of those two things.
So there Joseph was, your average fourteen-to-sixteen year-old boy praying in the woods. The sort of praying that involves Major Issues must be done in the woods. If you say this sort of prayer in the kitchen or bathroom, God will probably ignore it.
As he was praying, Joseph was seized by a sinister, ominous spiritual presence, like the Dark Side of the Force, but without light sabers. It overwhelmed him completely, the way a Sith Lord might, and tried to keep him from completing his prayer. Either that happened, or it didn't, again depending on which first-hand account you read.
But it was almost definitely for sure one of those things.
Then the sky lit up like the Bat Signal, and Heavenly Father appeared in a ray of light. He was levitating, like Dua Lipa or your ex-boyfriend who is trying to make a go of it as a magician on the Vegas strip.
Either God the Father showed up alone, then parted the heavens like a stylist parting your hair in preparation for your haircut, to introduce Jesus in his best wrestling announcer voice, or Jesus and God showed up at the same time, together. Sidenote for important facts. First important fact: Dad God and Jesus God are both literally identical. Like, even worse than those twins in your third grade class. Second important fact: Both Dad God and Jesus God are white men. You may see this as unlikely because 1) absolutely no other religion in the world believes that God has a literal ball sack and bellybutton, or 2) because Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jewish man, without a scrap of Caucasian in him. But you only see that as unlikely because your faith is weak, and I'm sorry if it hurts, but you had to hear it from someone.
Joseph is absolutely clear that Dad God showed up first, and then introduced Jesus, which we know because he wrote about it in 1832. But he is also absolutely 100% clear that Dad God and Jesus God showed up together, at the same time, and he told everybody that in 1838.
So we can be sure that it was almost definitely for sure one of those things.
"This is my Beloved Son," Dad God said. "Hear him."
"Okey-dokey," Joseph probably said. This was not the sort of offer you turned down.
Jesus God picked up the conversational thread. "I've got bad news, and good news," he probably said, or something very similar. "The bad news is that there isn't a single church out there that isn't, pardon the expression, shitting the bed on being my Church. So as far as which worship service to attend this coming Sunday, you're screwed. But the good news is, that after more than a millennia and a half of watching humanity get religion more wrong than I can even describe, I am ready to restore the gospel of the One True Church to earth. And you're the person I'm counting on to get it done."
"Wow," Joseph probably said. "Are we feeling sure that I can do this? After all, I'm only fourteen-to-sixteen years old, and a simple farm boy."
"No worries," Dad God or Jesus God probably said. "We're going to hook you up with a whole sequence of angels to help you out, along with some magic rocks. Also the records of Ancient Americans engraved on literal gold plates, because that is for sure what some people did historically, don't believe anyone in the future who might say that nobody anywhere in any time period ever thought carving a history on gold plates was even a slightly reasonable way to do record-keeping. Long story short, you're going to have a whole team, Joseph."
"Oh, good, that's okay then," Joseph probably said.
Then he went home and told his family about seeing actual God and Jesus in person, and they all believed him and supported him right away.
Either that, or he didn't tell anyone about it until many years later, after he had started a religion and published the Book of Mormon.
But one of those two things almost definitely for sure happened.
Either that, or it didn't.