Fifteen (1820)
As Joseph later reported, “Never did any passage of scripture come with more
power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great
force into every feeling of my heart.”^16 He laid the Bible aside, blew out the candle, and
pondered in the dark on the possibility of testing the challenge to ask a God he wasn’t sure
even existed for the wisdom he felt he lacked.
The next morning, Joseph was up before anyone except for his mother. She usually
was awake and had breakfast started before anyone else stirred. Joseph drank a cup of coffee^17
with a little sugar and told his mother he was going to do his chores and then take a walk.
“I heard you and Alvin up until late into the night. What were you discussing?”
Mother Smith inquired.
“Ah, nothing,” said Joseph, with a typical teenage response.
“You’re a good boy, Joseph” were the last words Joseph heard as an ordinary
teenager with a normal understanding and outlook on life. The next time he would see
his mother, Joseph would know much more about life than Lucy Mack Smith would
understand throughout her entire lifetime.
Delivered from “Evil”
The first thing that the advanced human (Christ) had to do before he could make
physical contact with the young boy was to use advanced technology and power to
eliminate any outside influence that might distract the boy’s mind. All human thought,
advanced or otherwise, is a generation of energy that can be subtly felt by the same
brains that produce it. Before descending into the earth’s atmosphere and making
contact with a mortal, advanced humans place a shield, of sorts, around the individual
(in this case, the young Joseph), isolating the person so that no outside energy can affect
the one they are visiting.
When Christ placed this “shield” around Joseph, the boy immediately felt as if he
“was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing
influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak.”^18 (When the adult Joseph
was called upon to make an official disclosure of the incident almost 20 years later, he
was mandated to disguise the experience in religious overtones that the people could
understand and accept.)
Although he never mentioned by name the “actual being from the unseen world, who
had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being,”^19 when he later related the
experience, he allowed people to imagine whatever they wanted according to their
religious beliefs. At the time, as a fourteen-year-old boy, Joseph did not understand
what had happened just prior to the visitation. However, eventually, once he had
received the instruction and intelligence given in conjunction with his calling, he came
to a perfect understanding of what had actually taken place.
If one were placed in a vacuum wherein the energy transmissions of the natural
world suddenly stopped, to the imperfect mortal mind it would seem to be a very
traumatic experience at first—until some other energy replaced it. The direct energy
generated by the thoughts and presence of an advanced human replaced all of the
energies young Joseph was accustomed to feeling. To get his attention and present the
visitation as one of an impressive and important nature, the boy “found [himself]
delivered from the enemy which held [him] bound” by the presence of what he perceived in