Joseph Smith stated in his testimony he was on the receiving end of malicious rumors, and great persecution beginning in 1820 because of the vision had.
Let’s look at the evidence –
PoGP JS-Hist 1:22-23; “I soon found, however, that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase…and this was common among all the sects—all united to persecute me. 23 It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very strange it was that an obscure boy, of a little over fourteen years of age, and one, too, who was doomed to the necessity of obtaining a scanty maintenance by his daily labor, should be thought a character of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the most popular sects of the day, and in a manner to create in them a spirit of the most bitter persecution and reviling…”
