Question
Dear Gramps,
The thought came to me when I was reading about The First Vision. My question is:- If God and Jesus were resurrected beings with flesh and bone bodies and were not spirits. When they visited Joseph would they not have come with their bodies of flesh and bone and not as spirits? If this be the case should not “The First Vision” be changed to read “The First Visitation”?
Robert
Answer
Robert,
In our scriptures, we are informed that Jesus and Heavenly Father appeared, in person, to Joseph Smith as he declared, “I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description standing above me in the air.”
The idea of changing “The First Vision” to “The First Visitation” is a matter of semantics, and both are equally true depending on the connotation used for “vision.” A vision offers more than one definition. In this case, your question entertains the definition of a vision as a dream, or a trance, a supernatural appearance through our cognitive senses.
The Church’s description entertains the definition being our “special sense by which the qualities of an object (as color, luminosity, shape, and size) constituting its appearance are perceived through a process in which light rays entering the eye are transformed by the retina into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve.”
The Church referring to Joseph Smith’s experience as “The First Vision” appears to be an appropriate reference for this visitation of the Father and Son.
Gramps