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The fact that none of the available contemporary writings about Joseph Smith in the 1830s, none of the publications of the Church in that decade, and no contemporary journal or correspondence yet discovered mentions the story of the first vision is convincing evidence that at best it received only limited circulation in those early days. James B. Allen, “The Significance of Joseph Smith's First Vision in Mormon Thought,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1 (Autumn 1966), 30.
Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 30. The first extant account of the First Vision is the manuscript account in Joseph Smith, "Manuscript History of the Church" (1839); the first published account is Orson Pratt, An Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records (Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Hughes, 1840); and the first American publication is Joseph Smith's letter to John Wentworth in Times and Seasons, 3 (March 1842), 706-08, only two years before Smith's assassination. (Jan Shipps has written that the vision was "practically unknown" until an account of it written in 1838 was published in 1840.)
I would like to suggest that it fits well into the scenario already painted, supporting the thesis that to avoid further enmity and so as not to "cast pearls before swine", Joseph deliberately with-held the Vision's details from the general public, and even most of the Saints. (My emphasis)
...it took some time for the Saints to realise the vision's full import, and at least some members converted in the 1830s remained confused in regard to the chronological detail. This is evident from later comments by church leaders, even in Utah, and from the reminiscences of family members such as William Smith and Joseph's mother, Lucy Mack Smith....With the efforts of church leaders in the mid to late 19th Century (Orson Pratt, John Taylor and particularly George Q. Cannon) the vision began assuming something like the important role in Mormon History and theology that it holds today, and the 1838 account was canonised in the Pearl of Great Price in 1880. (What Mormonism Isn't, Pioneer Books Auckland, 1981.)
(2) In 1953 LaMar Petersen wrote that Levi Young has discovered, in the LDS archives, documents revealing another First Vision account. Young "was told not to copy or tell what they contained" (Petersen). Mormon scholars now admit that leaders had suppressed several First Vision accounts, written or dictated by J.S., for 130 years. (Hugh Nibley wrote that he himself was "refused" permission to see his own great-grandfather's journal even though he was the one who donated it to the archives!) In one of the newly-found accounts (1835), J.S. said that when he was "about 14...many" personages appeared to him and that he then "knew not who was right or who was wrong." In his earliest account (1831-32), J.S. said that in his "16th year" only one personage, who said nothing about other churches being wrong, appeared to him. Still another account has turned up. "There are four official accounts of the First Vision" (Richard Anderson).
It is true that we have little in writing from Joseph Smith before 1832, when he wrote his earliest account of the First Vision, and it is true that the main account we use of the 1820 First Vision was written in 1838. We must remember that the stories of heavenly visitations were both sacred, private, and controversial, so he had little incentive to publish them at the time. His first experience telling a minister about them in public led to immediate persecution, persecution which persisted throughout his life. However, we do have evidence that he had told others of this experience long before 1832, including ample evidence that his story of angelic and divine visitations were a major reason for the persecutions he faced before 1832. (See, for example, Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Circumstantial Confirmation of the First Vision through Reminiscences," Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 9, Spring 1969, pp. 373-404.)
He did not even tell his mother about it for a long time.Mahonri wrote:"we do have evidence that he had told others of this experience long before 1832, including ample evidence that his story of angelic and divine visitations were a major reason for the persecutions he faced before 1832."
Angelic and divine visitations sound nice. But they don't square with what the Church teaches today. The First Vision answered many questions about the nature of God and his son. Nothing is said about a gradually morphing story that grows from one angel to the Father and Son. Nothing is said about it being 'too sacred' to tell anyone. The story as now told, taught and believed is one of a specific visitation of two personages, one saying 'this is my beloved son'. This is the message being taught to the world today and for some time. If it really happened that way why was it not used by the early missionaries in their work? If it is powerful now, wasn't it powerful then?
If Joseph saw this why would he not tell his closest associates? Why not tell the membership after baptism at least to cement their understanding of God and his son? If it is the most powerful missionary tool possible any stories of 'too sacred' just don't hold water. If it is true, you tell it, preach it and teach it.