In the spring of 1820, a teenage boy went into the upstate New York woods to ask God which church he should join. Joseph Smith, in his telling, was shocked by the response. A brilliant pillar of light revealed “two personages.” One pointed to the other and identified him as “My Beloved Son.” Jesus Christ then told Smith that he should not join any church, “for they were all wrong.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds its semiannual conference this weekend, though it will be an all-digital affair. The crowds and even the Tabernacle Choir will be absent thanks to the pandemic. But the church still will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Smith’s vision. For Mormons, that vision marks the restoration of Christ’s true church. Each year, thousands of church members make a pilgrimage to the “sacred grove” on the old Smith family farmstead. On sunny days, light streams through the thin woods and reminds visitors of the brilliance Smith saw.

But Mormonism didn’t really begin this way. Smith burst onto the American religious scene not as a visionary teenager but as the young man who published the Book of Mormon in 1830. As time passed Smith began speaking of an initial vision. He narrated it in different ways, and one of those accounts became scripture.

Over the past two centuries, Smith’s First Vision has steadily grown in importance for church members. It is central to missionary lessons, artwork and the sermons of church leaders. It became the Mormon equivalent of Moses and the burning bush, or Muhammad in the cave of Hira, marking exactly when God intervened in human history. After centuries of apostasy, God called together a people out of churches that had lost truth, godliness and spiritual power.

As the church set aside some of Smith’s teachings—including polygamy—it instead tethered itself to the founding prophet’s first revelation. The First Vision buttresses many of the church’s claims, namely that God still speaks to human beings and calls men as prophets. Through the figure of Jesus Christ, the vision connects the Latter-day Saints to Christianity while insisting that theirs is the one true church.