I can't currently recall a personal experience to share, but just wondered if anyone had a situation where their own supposed personal revelation/prompting was completely ignored or dispelled by a church leader who claimed that their own conflicting prompting or superior knowledge was more correct?

My assumption is that while members are told of the importance of the spirit and personal revelation, such supposed 'direct communication from God' would mean nothing to a leader if it didn't align with their own views.

For example: I reckon that if one wrote on the missionary application form that you once had an extremely strong prompting from God that you needed to serve in a particular country, that this would just be ignored anyway. Forget it that God has spoken to you directly just like the church teaches he can - you'll go where we tell you.

Any experiences?

Oh yes, that was something I came across all my mormon life, & it never made any sense to me in view of the fact we were told to pray about things & we could get personal revelation.
It always seemed a waste of time when the answers to your prayers were always "trumped" by someone higher up the chain, which in my case as a woman meant any man as they held the oh so important priesthood, so they always knew better.

yorkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh yes, that was something I came across all my
> mormon life, & it never made any sense to me in
> view of the fact we were told to pray about things
> & we could get personal revelation.
> It always seemed a waste of time when the answers
> to your prayers were always "trumped" by someone
> higher up the chain, which in my case as a woman
> meant any man as they held the oh so important
> priesthood, so they always knew better.

As sunday school president, after prayerful consideration, I was always asking for certain people to be teachers.

"Nah, we're going with so-and-so."

So much for prayerful consideration.

+1

that used to bug me so much!!

It is consistently taught in church that if you ever have a revelation that conflicts with the brethren it is your revelation that is wrong (which of course is circular logic since the way you are supposed to know the brethren are right is through the spirit.)

Here's the most direct example I can think of. When I was a secretary in an elder's quorum we would meet with a member of the stake presidency every 3 months.

The guy we met with was really into home teaching interviews. He wanted us to have an interview with every home teacher every month to nag them to go home teaching.

In one of these interviews he told us this:

I just had a meeting with an EQP in another ward. He told me that they had 80% home teaching and that he thought that was good enough and that he disagreed with me and didn't think monthly home teaching interviews where necessary for his quorum. So I took his temple recommend away.

The leaders say the leaders are always right. You should defer to them, even when they are wrong. Otherwise, what's the f#<*ing point of leaders?

There was a convert who had been baptised about two months previously. He was an ex-drug addict who had been clean for 20 odd years and prior to joining the church a very devout Christian. Anyway, in EQ meeting one Sunday he told us of a near death experience he had which was the catalyst for him getting clean. He said he was taken up to heaven and baptised by the holy spirit. This guy wasn't your usual run of the mill weirdo that so many adult converts seem to be, he was quite lucid and intelligent, and also a fine musician.

The EQ president basically poo-pooed his entire experience and told him it was of Satan, to which he replied 'well I haven't done heroin for over 20 years', needless to say the EQ president couldn't answer that remark!

All experiences of this kind are subjective and therefore have no empirical proof, and the topic of another thread, but I just thought this was relevant to the topic.

Well, I had a personal revelation and disagreed with the leadership and .... I won. Twice. TSCC decided on a temple for Hartford and I prayed against it and it failed. TSCC decided to put a temple in Harrison, NY and I prayed against it and it failed. TSCC never did get the correct understanding of where the temple should be placed. The best site is now lost. Of course, this is a good thing. BTW, I told the "Love Council" about this.

Just like the Goly Host (a term which I now like to use following the accidental but humourous recent slip of the tongue from our local bishop) - you've all inspired me and brought all things to my remembrance.

I've sat in Bishopric meetings where emails from RS/Primary presidents have been read out requesting certain names to serve... and often gushing about how inspired they have felt after fasting/prayer/temple visits etc. Many times these were ignored by the bishop since he'd make his own decision anyway.

It didn't really seem to matter too much that someone specifically claimed to have received direct revelation for their own auxiliary (heck, often multiple leaders would be inspired to request the same person anyway / or request someone that the Bishop knew was moving in a couple of weeks) and there was seemingly no cog dis from other members of the Bishopric as to why there was often conflicting revelation.

As priesthood leader of my family, I made a decision about our family participation in an activity cooked up by the bishop. I told him we would not be participating, that I felt strongly that his idea was not for us. He didn't challenge me directly, he just went behind my back and recruited my wife, who then broke our family agreements and followed the bishop.

I went to the bishop first. He gave me all kinds of advice over the months. He asked me to give it a 3 month experiment of "saving him." It included experimenting first with french kissing. He just asked me if I would be willing to try. I didn't know what that entailed. The first thing he assigned was for my gay boyfriend to french kiss me without telling me, but my boyfriend told me because he knew how uptight I was about anything I thought I had to confess. I always thought it was something I had to confess for. Anyway--I could go on for pages and pages what I was told by the bishop and by church leaders and lds ss therapists--one being that no matter what we did except for intercourse would be overlooked--and the one thing I REMEMBER so very clearly is I would pray and fast and beg for answers--and I would go to the bishop and say, "I don't feel that 2 wrongs make a right. I don't think we should be experimenting." To this day, I can still see him shaking his head slowly saying, "We have to do it this way."

After I married him and I found out he was cheating, I went to my VERY GOOD friend who was a bishop and he told me the reason my husband was cheating is because I wasn't giving him enough sex. I don't know--let's ask MJ--how much sex with a woman does someone gay need to not need sex from a man?

Again, I could go on for pages how many times the leaders were wrong and I was right, but I was so mind fucked, I was suicidally depressed and thought they knew better than I did (well they kept telling me so).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2013 09:19PM by cl2.

I thought that was the most popular part of being a Mormon. Everybody's feeling it.

Whaaaa...that bishop was out of line in SO many ways! Was he getting his personal jollies out of the situation? In any case, I'm so sorry that this happened to you and glad you're out now.

God damn those sob's. Your whole story is so heartbreaking. The men of the church were sexually abusing you and getting their superiority high while doing so. They didn't give a $hit about destroying your life and your future children.

Disgusting ass holes. And i'm being kind. I know it won't make you feel any better, but there are bish's out there doing this kind of stuff and worse. If all the abused mormons told their stories the gig would be up.

The rule of never saying anything bad about the leaders should send a red flag up in every mormon mind. Sadly, it doesn't.

Oh...I had completely forgoten this. On my mission, some elders had been gicing rides in their car (FL and GA) to investigators, this quickly became pseudo dates for some elders and they got into big trouble, like going out of the mission to sight see with girls trouble. Well an area GA came and ripped the MP a new one. We had a whole conference on just car rules, the main speech was that under NO circumstance was anyone to ride in our cars, ever, ever. Fast forward about a week. I am teaching this very frail 60 something single woman who is getting baptized and she is realyl strugling with quitting smoking. Suddenly she starts to hyperventilate and falls down, we go help her and she says that her chest really hurts, she can barely talk. I inmediately think- we have to take her to the hospital, I called it inspiration, looking back was common sense. My companion is freaking out, not that she is dying, but that we are about to break the mother of all rules, we are giving a non-member a ride!
we took her to the ER, heart attack. I called the MP from the hospital, who told me that I did the right thing. We left her there for her familiy to come get her, we drove to the mision home the next day to exchange missionaries. The MP called me in. He told me that what I did was wrong. I told him that I felt the spirit, that I should take her to the hospital. He told me the following, I guess he called the GA and reported the incident...he SAID: THE LORD WOULD NEVER INSPIRE YOU TO BREAK A COMMANDMENT! I was like oh, of course, sorry. About a week later I had a "jerk store moment", I wish I would have said "of course, that is why is must have been legal to decapitate people and ransack their home in Jerusalem!

The Lord would never inspire you to break a commandment?

I guess Nephi didn't get the memo.

Well done. I am glad you did the right thing. I like it when there are examples such as yours shared here of earnest people trying to do the right thing and finding it in conflict with the cult.

This is how I believe a lot of us made it out prior to the Internet. I hope people realize how difficult it was to learn of the true history and doctrine of the Mormon church prior to the Internet.

The worm has definitely turned and the ability of the Mormon cult to control information is diminished greatly. This makes it much more difficult to understand the stubbornness of cult members supporting the cult, but there is evidence such as this story the confirms that existing cult members are getting even more powerful evidence of the fraud and choosing to ignore the lies.

Good to see that there are people out there who were raised Mormon that can see the fraud when it manifests itself to them. The fact that you defied your assigned partner, your MP, and a GA with a hard on oly confirms your determination to do something good. You risked what you thought was a lot at the time.

Good idea for bishop's bumper sticker: "My personal revelation beat up your personal revelation."

As a youth I recall receiving many of the same promptings of the spirit as the prophet Joseph, ie. I wanted to get it on with some of the comely sisters. Alas, sadly my personal revelations were too often left unfulfilled

While I was in the EQ presidency we tried three time to fill a position and the bishop veto'ed it everytime until we just finally accepted the person he was strongarming us to pick anyway.

The rule for filling vacant calling seemed to be "Find somebody who doesn't already have a calling. I don't want to keep playing musical chairs."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2013 11:45AM by peregrine.

As far a personal revelation went while I was TBM, it was mostly don't ask, don't tell -- I didn't ask for any, and he didn't give me any.

sherlock Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For example: I reckon that if one wrote on the
> missionary application form that you once had an
> extremely strong prompting from God that you
> needed to serve in a particular country, that this
> would just be ignored anyway. Forget it that God
> has spoken to you directly just like the church
> teaches he can - you'll go where we tell you.
>
> Any experiences?

I know of an instance where almost exactly this happened. One of the guys in my mission filled out his mission papers while he was at YBU. He got called to the Sapporo Japan mission. He was from Sapporo Japan. He called the COB and they said that he didn’t have a choice. He wrote letters telling them there had been a mistake. He finally got a personal call from Elder Hinckley telling him that the church needed him to serve in the Sapporo Japan mission.
He told me this story while I was on a split off with him and I asked, “How do you know everybody here? You’ve only been on your mission two months.”

My mission call was also a little strange. When I got the call in the mail, it was to Japan, a place I very much did not want to go to. Then when the travel papers came the next day, they said I was going to France, a place I very much did want to go to.

I called up the missionary office and told them that I felt inspired that I had indeed been called to France. They looked into it and called me back. They said I had been on the list to go to France, but the Mission President there had told them he didn't want any more missionaries that month. So they put me on the list for Japan, where they were always willing to have more. The travel papers for Japan soon came in the mail.

I must admit I begged and pleaded not to go to Japan, but the man I talked to brushed it all off. Your call is to Japan, he said, and that is where you are going. A final blow was when I went to the Missionary Training Center and found I had been put in a district of missionaries going to France. For a moment I thought there was still a chance. But that was soon sorted out.

In short, I felt inspired that my place was in France. The Church assigned me to Japan, and it became clear that that choice was far from inspired, but merely bureaucratic. I guess no one received any revelation, me or those assigning missionaries to countries.

What if the missionary said? I’m a voluntary and if I go, than to France. If I’m not going to France, than I’m not going at all.
What would happen?
Just asking.

Good question. I wish I had found the nerve to try that. Although as it turned out, I'm glad now that I went to Japan.

My personal revelation occurred when I studied freemasonry and stumbled across a long list of familiar parallels - temple building, first vision account, brass plates hidden underground, etc.

It prompted me to overrule every "priesthood" holder and give TSCC the middle finger.

Felt good to take the power back.

When I was YW pres. I had a very strong feeling that I should call a certain woman as an advisor. My husband was the bishopric counselor over me and I told him about this. He passed this on to the bishop. I learned the other counselor
had told someone else about this and made the comment inspiration-sminsperation. I was told he said this and he admitted to it. The woman was getting married to someone in the ward and would be moving. However....they married and moved into the ward....ha, ha. I was released shortly after, that counselor's wife was put in as YW pres., it was a coup. He and the bishops wife wanted me out and his wife in.

My sister told me a funny story from her ward.
A friend of her had multiple callings in a row. Somehow exhausted was he glad not having a calling at all and therefore more time with his family and he enjoyed it very much.
So he knew that the next calling will come.
He told first his Home teacher and than one of the Bishops counselors that he had a very scary dream.
He said he had seen a angel like person 4 nights in a row. This person had told him that the Bishop will talk to him for a new calling very soon, but he should not take any calling in the next 12 Months because if he takes the call it will turn out terrible.
So he ask the home teacher and the counselor if he should tell the bishop. They said no he shouldn’t. The counselor meant that if this would be true, the Bishop will have also a revelation and he should not be worry about it.
Needless to say the Bishop didn’t ask him for almost 10 Months before he asked for a new calling.

How very awful that you were made to feel bad about doing the (obvious) right thing. "Don't break a commandment"---whose commandment?!

What did Jesus say about healing on the Sabbath? Whose commandment should the faithful follow, God's, or man's?

Yeah, I got my first taste of this at 12. I was "called by revelation" to be the Deacon's quorum president. I was so excited because my position of greatness & nobility in the pre-mortal life had FINALLY been validated.

I immediately set out to praying about who I would call as my counselors & secretary, a very important task since there were only 3 other deacons in the entire elder's quorum ;).

When I'd finally decided who would be who, I prayed about it and felt good that my decision was god-approved. So I called them up on the telephone, extended the callings, and got everyone's acceptance. Everything was going so smoothly.

That is until my mom told me the bishop was on the phone for me. I was thinking this is great! The bishop is calling me at home now? He probably has some really important information to share with me since we were both running the ward, right?

No. He told me that he found out I'd already called the other deacons about their positions, that I should call them back and tell them I'd jumped the gun and that I needed to submit my recommendations to him for approval and he'd let me know when I could extend the callings.

I told him I'd already prayed about it and Heavenly Father had prompted me that the names were good. He said no.

Long story short, the next week he told me the names had been approved, so I extended the exact same callings, again, and they were set apart that week.

My personal revelation was not good enough, even though I had a penis.