THE FIRST VISION~1820 Revival Anti-Mormon Claim: Joseph Smith claimed that there were religious revivals in Palmyra in 1820 which led him to ask God which of the churches were true, but the religious revival in Palmyra was in 1824, four years after his purported first vision, which only shows that he was not telling the truth.

MORMON ANSWER

Mormon historian Richard Bachman did intensive research on camp-meetings and religious revivals in the Palmyra New York area and discoverd the following:

*There were revivals in or just outside the township of Palmyra in 1817, when Joseph Smith was 12.

*There were no revivals in 1819 or 1820 in or around Palmyra township, but there were huge religious camp-meetings near Palmyra during those years.

*Joseph Smith NEVER SAID the revivals were in the year 1820! He said his vision was in the Spring of 1820.

*There were church revivals in the township of Palmyra in 1816 and again in 1817, when Joseph Smith was 12.

*There were HUGE religious "camp-meetings" in 1819 and 1820 within 30 miles of Palmyra, which Joseph Smith could have attended because his family had a "beer and sweet-cake concession" (i.e. a tent where root-beer and sweet-cakes were sold).

Professor Bachman writes:

Joseph Smith, Jr., began to be concerned about religion "at about the age of twelve years." That would have been in late 1817 and early 1818, when the after-affects of the revival of 1816 and 1817 were still felt in Palmyra. "My mind became seriously imprest with regard to the all important concerns for the welfare of my immortal Soul." he reported later, "which led me to searching the scriptures." A few years later, in July, 1819, the Methodists of the Genesee Conference met for a week in Vienna (later Phelps), a village thirteen miles southeast of the Smith farm on the road to Geneva. About 110 ministers from a region stretching 500 miles from Detroit to the Catskills and from Canada to Pennsylvania met under the direction of Bishop R. R. Robert to receive instruciton and set policy. If we are to judge from the experience at other conferences, the ministers preached between sessions to people who gathered from many miles around. It was a significant year for religion in the entire district. . . . The Geneva Presbytery, which included the churches in Joseph's immediate area, reported in February, 1820, that "during the past year more have been received into the communion of the Churches than perhaps in any former year." Methodists kept no records for individual congregations, but in 1821 they built a new meetinghouse in town. (Bushman Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism,1984, p.53)