The First Vision
As recorded by Christopher Glenn Marriott, Prophet of the Final Restoration
I have been asked many times to give a complete account of the circumstances of my calling and the restoration of God's church upon the earth. I have written portions of this in private journals, and spoken of it to those close to me, but I understand the importance of setting it down fully and officially, for the benefit of all who sincerely want to know.
I give this account knowing that many will not believe it. That has always been the condition of those God has called. I ask only this: that those who read it apply the same honest judgment here that they would apply to any other claim of divine experience, including the ones they already hold.
I was born and raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I learned its doctrines as a child, attended its meetings, and knew from the inside the warmth of its community and the sincerity of its people. I do not speak against those who remain in that church. Most of them are genuinely seeking God.
But I grew up and began to see things I could not resolve. History that had been kept back. Teachings that had quietly changed. Scripture that did not hold up when I looked closely at it. I left the church in my twenties, not in bitterness, but because I could not stay somewhere and call it true when I was no longer sure that it was.
What followed was years of searching. I attended non-denominational churches in Vancouver, Washington, and later in San Diego. I kept looking for something that felt whole and honest. I never found it. Each church I visited felt like it was missing something I couldn't name.
By the spring of 2025 I was living in Huntington Beach, California, and attending no church at all. I believed in God. I had never been able to stop. But I did not know where his truth was, or whether any institution on earth actually held it. That question had followed me for more than a decade and had become, in those weeks, almost more than I could carry.
In the spring of 2025, I drove to the trailhead below Santiago Peak, the highest point in Orange County, and hiked alone before sunrise. I had done this kind of thing since I was young, in Boy Scouts. Wild places had always helped me think.
After about two hours I left the trail and found a spot among the rocks and scrub oak where I was out of sight. I sat down. I prayed, the way a man prays when he has run out of other options. I asked plainly: is any church on this earth true? And if so, how would I ever know it?
A light came. I am not able to describe it the way I want to. It was not the sunlight, though the sun had risen. It was a different kind of light, brighter than anything I had seen, and yet I could look at it without pain. I felt no fear. The fear I would have expected did not come.
Two personages stood within the light. I knew immediately that they were not men. One of them spoke to me and called me by my full name, Christopher Glenn Marriott, and said: this is my beloved Son, hear him.
The second personage spoke then. He told me that every church on earth had gone astray. Every one, without exception. He told me that the church established through Joseph Smith had carried the truth in its early days, but that the organization which bore that name today had departed from the fullness of the gospel, changed what ought not to have been changed, and hidden what ought to have been made plain. He said the time had come for a complete and final restoration, and that this would be the last. No further restoration after this one. The dispensation now opened would not be followed by another.
He told me I was called to be his prophet. He said the name Christopher, which means the bearer of Christ, had not been given to me by accident. He said that God had been preparing me through everything, through growing up inside the covenant, through the years of doubt and searching, through the long silence. He said: you have been known to me from before your birth. I have been waiting for you to ask.
When the light was gone I was sitting alone on the mountain. I was shaking. I stayed there a long time before I felt able to stand. Walking back down I kept stopping and looking at the ground because I didn't know what else to do with myself. I have not been the same since.
Some weeks after the vision on Santiago Peak, I was at home late at night reading the scriptures when I became aware that I was not alone in the room. I looked up. A personage stood near the far wall, visible and distinct and surrounded by a soft light. He told me his name was Mahonri Moriancumer, he whom the scriptures call the Brother of Jared.
He told me that the sealed portion of the plates, the record which Joseph Smith had been commanded not to translate, had been preserved for this day. That it contained the fullness of the vision he had received on the mount called Shelem, a complete account of God's purposes for mankind from the creation to the end, sealed up until faith sufficient to receive it existed upon the earth.
He told me to go to the coast. To the shore of the Pacific, the same ocean his people had crossed. There I would find the instruments by which the record would be made known to me.
I went the following week, early in the morning, alone. Walking the rocks along the shoreline I found three stones, small and smooth and pale, unlike the stones around them. When I picked them up I felt the same warmth in my chest I had felt in the mountains in Denver years before, and then on Santiago Peak. I understood what they were.
The translation of the sealed record was accomplished through these stones, by the gift and power of God, in the same manner Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. That record is now published as The Book of the Brother of Jared: Being the Sealed Portion of the Plates of Mormon, Revealed in the Dispensation of the Final Restoration.
I know how this reads to someone who was not there. I have no way to prove it to you and I am not going to try. What I will say is this: before you dismiss it, ask yourself what evidence would satisfy you that a prophet of God was genuine. Write it down if you have to. Then ask whether that same evidence, if applied honestly, would validate or disqualify Joseph Smith.
I know what happened to me. I know what I saw and heard and felt. I know what I have since been given to translate and receive. I stake my name and my life on it.
The Church of Jesus Christ of the Final Restoration is true. God did not ask my permission to call me. He called me because the time had come, and I was the one who finally asked.
— Christopher Glenn Marriott, Prophet and President