First Vision

The First Vision (also called the grove experience) refers to a vision that Joseph Smith, Jr. said he received in April 1820, in a wooded area in Manchester, New York, which his followers call the Sacred Grove. Smith described it as a personal theophany in which he received a forgiveness of sins. Smith's followers believe the vision reinforces his authority as the founder and prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement. According to an account Smith told in 1838, he went to the woods to pray about which church to join but fell into the grip of an evil power that nearly overtook him. At the last moment, he was rescued by two shining "personages" (presumably Jesus and God the Father) who hovered above him. One of the beings told Smith not to join any existing churches because all taught incorrect doctrines.

Smith wrote several accounts of the vision beginning in 1832, but none of the accounts was published until the 1840s. Though Smith had described other visions, the First Vision was essentially unknown to early Latter Day Saints; Smith's experience did not become important in the Latter Day Saint movement until the early-20th century, when it became the embodiment of the Latter Day Saint restoration. The vision also replaced polygamy as one of the defining elements of Mormonism and corroborated distinctive Mormon doctrines such as the bodily nature of God the Father and the uniqueness of Mormonism as the only true path to salvation.

Critics hold varying opinions about the true nature of the First Vision, believing it to be a dream, a hallucination, a self-deception, an intentional fabrication, or some combination of these.