At age 14, in the year 1820, a young boy, Joseph Smith was visited by God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. It is very reasonable that the Father and the Son appeared to this boy.
First of all, it is very reasonable that God, the Father of our spirits, is interested in communion with His children. It is natural and reasonable to want to communicate with those whom we love. Parents certainly are more eager than most to want to communicate with their children. It is unreasonable to assume that God the Father, the perfect parent and possessor of infinite love, has no desire to communicate with His children.
Certainly it cannot be claimed that God the Omnipotent lacks the ability to communicate with His children. The scriptures provide ample evidence that God communicated directly with His children throughout the thousands of years of antiquity. Is it reasonable to assume that God has somehow lost that ability and no longer has it in modern times? Remember that for those living in antiquity, those were modern times. God has always had and continues to have the ability to communicate with His children.
Nor can it be reasonably asserted that there is less need today than anciently for God’s children to receive the light, wisdom, and instruction that come with divine communication. As recorded in the scriptures God has spoken with His children about the need for honesty, kindness, diligent labor, peace within the society and proper relations among societies. He counseled on respect for life, the worth of the individual, fairness in financial dealings, marriage and childrearing, care for the poor and needy, and healthy foods and hygiene. Which of these issues are unimportant to modern man? Which are free of controversy today? It is reasonable that man today could benefit from Divine guidance on each and all of these issues, and on many new ones besides.
As happens among human families, perhaps some estrangement has occurred in God’s family, between the Father and His children. There is some truth in that. Again, the scriptures provide numerous examples of the estrangement between God and man, as men have rejected God and turned to idols and other alien loves. The Egyptian captivity of Israel and the Babylonian captivity of Judah are two prominent examples. What the scriptures also demonstrate is that, not unlike human parents, God has been persistent in His efforts to overcome that estrangement, to bring His children back into His presence. That was the mission of many of the prophets. Indeed, foremost of all, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is all about the infinite effort by the Father, through his Firstborn Son, to bring His children back into His presence. Being brought back into that presence has always been accompanied by an increase in direct communication between God and man. It is reasonable that God is as persistent in His efforts with modern man as He was with ancient Israel to overcome the estrangement of man from God and strengthen divine communication.
A major consequence of the estrangement of man from the Father is the enormous confusion that prevails today among the children of God about the nature of their Father. Indeed, the simple knowledge so commonly held anciently that God is the actual Father of our spirits and that we are His children and heirs has been replaced by any number of man-made ideas and speculations. It is reasonable that the Father would want His children to know who and what He is, particularly since it is so important to their understanding of who and what they are. God could tell His children, as He has and does, but it is very reasonable that He would want to show them, as He also has done before. What more effective and reasonable way to break through the web of confusion about the nature of God that prevails in the world today?
It is extremely reasonable and sensible that the Father would choose a young boy to be the recipient of this great vision of the Father and the Son. Joseph Smith was old enough to understand, at the age when young boys’ queries of the Divine and the nature of the universe and themselves can become acute. At that age and with his limited exposure to the world and its ways, he was free of crippling vices and possessed a mind largely free of preconceived notions and indoctrination in human theories. The young boy Joseph was a clean vessel into which the Lord could pour divine knowledge with little fear of it being clouded with evil dispositions or mixed with false notions. The fourteen year old boy Joseph Smith was a very reasonable choice for God to reveal the pure and bright truth of His nature.
Why then and there? It is often difficult for modern man to appreciate that he is living in historic times, when great and historic things happen. It is when someone’s “modern times” become history to a new age of moderns that the mind can give more room to acknowledge a great event. That is why some are more willing to accept that God appeared to the ancients than they are the idea that He might do so today. But it did happen, and the time was right for it.
The religious freedom that prevailed in the United States in the early nineteenth century—which is still so foreign to so much of the world today—was a relatively new and fragile achievement in 1820. There was just enough of it enshrined in the Constitution and generally accepted by the people that God the Father could make a new attempt to restore direct and open communication between God and man without governments or mobs seeking to destroy it and its challenge to their ways of thinking and doing things. As it was, it was touch and go. Those who accepted new direct revelation from the Father were driven by mobs and local governments from town to town and state to state.
But it did survive, and since 1820 the estrangement between God and man that restrained communication between the Father and His children has been receding all across the globe. It had to begin with someone. God had to talk to someone first. For these and many other reasons, God the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to the young boy, Joseph Smith, and God has continued to increase His communication with His children ever since. Today the Father is in direct communication with millions of His children across the world, and more every day. It is very reasonable that He do so.
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