Acts 2:17:  “. . . your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

The scriptures are full of visionary dreamers.  The following come to mind:

• OT:  Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Joseph (son of Jacob), Daniel, the butler & baker of Pharaoh, Jacob/Israel, Abimelech, Solomon, Ezekiel, Balaam, Isaiah, Habakkuk, Abram/Abraham, Nathan, Ahijah, Iddo, Hezekiah, Job; plus some false prophets, too.
• NT:  The wise men, Joseph (stephfather of Jesus) a few times, Mrs. Pontius Pilate, Paul, Peter, James, John, Cornelius, Ananias, and many more. 
• BOM:  Lehi, Nephi, Omer, for starters.
• D&C:  Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, to name a few.
• POGP:  Moses, Abraham, Joseph Smith come to mind.

I have found that many converts to the church have similar pre-conversion spiritual experiences (dreams, visions, intuition, etc.).  They seem to be the type of people who are attuned to those feelings and imbue them with personal meaning, whether they are in or out of the church.

Some anti sites dismiss claims of spiritual feeling within the church as being similar to what one might experience watching a romantic movie or a particularly touching long distance commercial.  These comparisons have nothing in common, IME, with an actual spiritual experience.  To me these dismissals sound a lot like Paul’s warning in Timothy 3:5 that in the last days people will have “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”  In our day, it’s much more common to dismiss spiritual experiences as hypersensitivity, superstition, PMS or emotional instability (was that redundant?).

So, if God speaks to people through dreams and visions, how can we derive meaning from our dream life?  There are several key obstacles:

• Remembering dreams is often difficult.
• We work out problems in our sleep, so the source of inspiration is often our own subconscious vs. divine intervention.
• Dream language and meaning differs from waking life and is often more symbolic with parallel meanings about one’s emotional life.
• It’s personal and may not have significance for anyone but ourselves.

But here are a few terms that are helpful to understanding dreams (there are many sites on dream interpretation, but IMO only you can truly understand the significance of a dream you have had; it’s happening in your head after all):

• Recurring dreams.  There are certain themes that are common to many people that can help you understand your stresses and feelings and work through them:
  • Physical constraints – walking uphill and the hill gets steeper and steeper until you are going to fall over backwards, trying to crawl through a space that’s too tight, being too tired to move at a normal speed.  These generally deal with the stress of being exhausted or overwhelmed.  Time to get a massage.
  • Path in life – inability to reach a desired destination, being in a car that can only drive backwards, being driven by someone else, the road beneath you disappearing or being difficult to navigate.  These generally deal with frustration at achieving one’s goals in life or the direction one’s life is heading.  Time to get back on track.
  • Tested – sitting for a test without being prepared, returning to one’s earlier school days and not knowing where to go, forgetting one’s locker combination.  These generally deal with the stress of being found inadequate.  Time to get over it.
  • Exposure - needing to go to the bathroom but not finding a suitable location, being naked in front of people, losing something you consider essential (like your teeth).  These generally deal with stress about loss of composure or how others view you.  Or maybe you should be sure to brush your teeth and go to the bathroom before bed.  Just a thought.
  • Discovery - inheriting a house or property that you find is much larger or grander than expected, finding lost treasure or something of sentimental value, etc.  These dreams relate to personal growth:  discovering a gift or quality within yourself.  These are my favorites!
  • Danger – being attacked by a vicious person or animal, being lost in a place that fills you with fear, trying to protect a child or animal from danger.  These can relate to fear and anger within us.  Time to chill-ax (as my 13-year old would say).
• Emotional parallels.  Most dreams, recurring or not, can be understood if you listen to them for parallels to emotional life.  People usually represent facets of your own personality, sometimes archetypes, and occasionally those people themselves.  Ask yourself:  what is the significance of this person to me?  How am I like this person?  How do I feel about this person?
• Lucid dreaming.  A lucid dream is when you realize you are dreaming while you are in the dream.  Sounds a lot like a vision to me, although most lucid dreams quickly become silly.  There are a few easy ways to tell you are dreaming:  look at an analog watch or clock (you can’t make it work right in a dream), try to read a book (the words will either swim on the page or the pages will be blank, flying (remembering, oh yeah, I can fly), or a really easy one is to just take off your clothes (that almost never happens in real life, but somehow passes without comment in dreams).  Some people like to go crazy with this stuff and live a whole different life in dream-landia, free of the restraints of superego.  To them I say:  don’t ask, don’t tell.
• Sleep paralysis – this is when you become aware that you are sleeping, but you are so deeply asleep that you can’t move.  You may imagine you are lying in your bed and someone is in the house, but you can’t move.  I sometimes imagine that a cat just walked on the piano keys downstairs (which is weird since we don’t have a cat).  Theories exist that this is the basis for alien abduction experiences (vs. actual alien abduction) or the basis for medieval demon encounters.  It just reminds me that I’m glad we don’t have an actual cat.

So, are dreams the same as visions?  When do dreams have religious significance?  Some pre-conversion dreams I have heard of over the years:

• I went to a minister who said he had my name in his book, but it wasn’t there.  I knew it wasn’t true, even though he was insistent.
• I was walking through a wasteland and then I found something of great value (a treasure, something I lost, a tree with fruit).  (even JS Sr. had this one)
• I met a dead relative who told me something important was going to happen to me soon.

So, are converts more susceptible to spiritual dreams and/or visions?  Are all members of the church?  Does this extend to other spiritual gifts?  Have you heard of these types of experiences?  Are they common or rare?  Are they hereditary gifts or are they skills one can develop?  Are dreams the same thing as visions?  Do the same rules apply?  And is it inspiration or just head games for one?  Discuss.

As a child, the story of Moroni visiting Joseph Smith seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on just why. Only later, on reflection, did the mythic aspects of the story stand out more sharply.

First the repetitive structure: The angel Moroni appeared to Joseph three times during the night in his bedroom and tells the same things each time. Joseph comes back each year on the same night to the Hill Cumorah, from 1823-1827. Some accounts, such as his neighbor Willard Chase’s, have him being told to dress in black clothing and to bring his wife.

Each time he is denied the plates, and told to return the same time next year. His words are “at the end of the year”, which is an interesting phrase given that one would assume the end of the year was December 31^st. He repeats the phrase “end of the year” several times in his narrative. Why is this? And why so much preparation time for the plates?

In addition to the repetitive structure, there are remnants of Joseph’s magical/organic/agricultural worldview showing through here. The “end of the year” is not a phrase you would use unless you are tied to the rhythms of the land. The fall equinox is the end of the growing season, and as such the end of the natural year. Nature is beginning to die. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Moroni, revealing a new thing, to have visited Joseph in the spring, have him visit the Hill Cumorah in the spring each year, and then allow Joseph to take the plates in the spring, when life is beginning?

As far as the years of preparation time, perhaps the Book of Mormon and it’s significance needed to “grow” in Joseph’s psyche, where the end of the growing season and harvest time would have impressed very forcefully on a farm boy how things grow, from crops to individuals to societies. It also would be a time of celebration and a reduction of physical activity to a certain extent, allowing time for more contemplation.

Perhaps the story of Joseph’s nocturnal hill visits is about something old, mysterious, and forgotten, something that has died. Certainly the contents of the Book of Mormon reveal that indeed, the narrative is about a death. The death is of Nephite civilization and Nephite righteousness, which are inextricably intertwined. In that sense, the time of year is perfect to discover something hidden and old, a record of a people who have died, perhaps to save it from complete oblivion.

It is interesting to consider a gold book in a stone box in a New York hill about a civilization which no one would have known anything about had not Moroni told Joseph about it. Are there other books, in other hills, about other civilizations history and archeology knows nothing of, awaiting an inquisitive seeker?

Do you believe that God the Father, the Son, and maybe even the Holy Ghost visited Joseph Smith in the spring of 1820?

Or did Joseph have a vision of them?

Does the difference matter? Do you base your testimony, your faith in the existence of God, your continued participation in Mormonism, on a visit of Deity to a young farmboy?

Hearing about the First Vision growing up, I thought if only I had a time machine, I could go back to the spring of 1820 to the grove of trees where Joseph had his epiphany and observe the same thing I saw depicted in LDS paintings, stained-glass windows, and Church films about Joseph’s history: Two Men in white descending amidst brilliant light, talking to Joseph.

Now, after reading accounts of other visions Joseph and others had, I think that if Joseph had this experience as he recounted in his final written version, and if I had been able to time travel back to the First Vision, I would have seen Joseph talking into thin air. Why I still believe Joseph Smith told the truth about what he saw has to do with the understanding I now have not only of church history, but of visions in general.

As regards Church history, every primary account I have read of visions occurring in the first generation of the restored Church, including the Angel Moroni visiting Joseph while his siblings were in the same room, has been an entirely subjective one, where others present report not seeing the phenomenon.

As regards visions in general, scientists have performed experiments to determine that visions can be induced from a variety of stimuli, including lack of food or sleep, stress overload, imbibing liquor or other mind-altering substances, schizophrenia, and of course, meditation and prayer!

So, given the different accounts of the First Vision, it’s apparent to me that Joseph had an experience where he saw spiritual beings around the time he said he did. I believe Joseph entered a forest, knelt down, prayed aloud, had oppressive feelings followed by the overcoming of those feelings accompanied by a vision of heavenly beings, whether those beings were angels, Jesus alone, or Jesus and God the Father. That he remembered his vision differently at different times based on later spiritual experiences and theological reflection is very likely.

Now listen carefully to the varying language used to describe this experience by later commentators, who are usually trying to make a theological point (the Father and the Son are separate, corporeal, look alike, etc.) which Joseph never made in his History. “The Father and the Son appeared to the young farmboy”, “God the Father and the Son came down to Joseph”, “Joseph saw God”, etc. These are not all saying the same thing, although life-long Church members have been conditioned to ignore the differences.

In essence, did God the Father and Jesus Christ ride a celestial elevator downwards from Kolob to Palmyra , or did Joseph have a vision? I have no trouble accepting the latter interpretation, especially since the later accounts of heavenly visions followed the same pattern.

I can even accept the possibility that a naturalistic explanation of Joseph’s visions may be valid, in that his experiences may have had physiological roots. God can still be the ultimate cause of these experiences, no matter their immediate trigger.

What do you think?