Joseph returns to Hiram, Ohio, and continues translating the New Testament with Sidney Rigdon as scribe. While translating John 5:29, they wonder if there isn't some sort of gradation in rewards in the next life because of people's varied degrees of righteousness. In response to this question they receive a series of visions, known as D&C 76. About this vision Joseph writes, "The sublimity of the ideas; the purity of the language; the scope for action; . . . the rewards for faithfulness, and the punishments for sins, are so much beyond the narrow-mindedness of men, that every honest man is constrained to exclaim: 'It came from God. "'According to Philo Dibble, this vision was given in the presence of about 12 others. Joseph and Sidney would stare into space. One would say "What do I see?" And then he would say what he was seeing and the other would say "I see the same"; and then they would repeat the process. At the end of the vision, Dibble reports that Joseph sat calmly and firmly while Sidney was pale and limp, and that Joseph remarked with a smile, "Sidney is not used to it as I am." Sidney stayed up that night recording the vision.
[Conkling, Christopher J., Joseph Smith Chronology]
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