Vision of the Plates
“I could see the place where the plates were deposited, ... so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it.” — Joseph Smith Jr.1
When Angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith Jr. for the first time, he spoke to the young boy of a record on golden plates buried in a hill nearby,2 now known as the Hill Cumorah.3 He even showed Joseph a vision of where they were buried. The next day, Joseph set out for the hill and dug in the place he had been shown. There, he found a stone box buried beneath a boulder with the golden plates, seer stones, and a breastplate inside. Joseph was not permitted to take the plates that day.2 Instead, Joseph needed to wait until 1827 to finally retrieve them.4
