Did you have to shelve any experiences that made you start to believe the priesthood you had was fake?

Giving PH blessings was always a big eye opener for me. Never had any magical powers/feelings/inspiration come over me and never had any magical healings occur from them. Hmmm

I should add, I had a BIL that was addicted to cigarettes, wanted to quit, bishop gave him a blessing that he would quit, next day, he was still smoking and never did quit.

So much for magic powers to make you quit smoking. lol

One more.

My wife has a chronic illness. I prayed/fasted, was uber-righteous, did everything right. Used my magic PH powers to take it away. Didn't work. Each time she had do deal with a medical issue, I blessed her, didn't make a difference.

Guess it was probably my fault. I'm sure I was a sinner, or maybe she was the sinner? Or, maybe it's all make believe?

Of course, the TBM answer to that is she chose to have this "trial" in the pre-existence, so, it is just meant to be, and aren't we lucky to have all this suffering now cuz we will just be better people in the next life because of it. I always wanted to be a martyr for the cause.

Riiiight



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2015 01:25PM by eternal1.

I'm a girl, so I didn't have it, but I was very suspicious. Especially when my mom was very ill, and we were poor (after my dad left the military), she couldn't afford to go get medication and our Home teachers came to give her a blessing (my dad was inactive) and she only got worse and finally she went to the doctor and got antibiotics and healed up very quickly....

so yeah.

All the old prophecies and teaching.

When I was 15, I was really ill for about a month. The doctor wasn't sure what was going on, so he did a few tests, one of them being mono. While waiting for the results, my mom insisted on a p-hood blessing and they told me the lord confirmed it really was mono.

The tests came back and it wasn't mono. My doc never figured out what was going on, but I started feeling better a few weeks later.

Elder Scott visited my mission and gave a very young stake president that had cancer a blessing. He was a great guy, had a young son and a pregnant wife. He was very poor, but very generous with what he had. I thought if anyone deserved to be miraculously healed, it was him. His situation didn't improve and he passed before I even left the area...within a month or two.

I didn't give many blessings until I had kids. Nothing came to me when giving names and blessings in church. I never felt impressed to say anything specific when blessing sick kids. I just faked it. When my daughter was sick in the hospital and I thought she actually needed a blessing, nothing came and I couldn't even do it...I knew it was BS and I didn't want to promise anything when I thought, for the first time, I might be wrong. Later, when she was 4 or 5 she was sick with some minor bug and my wife asked if she wanted a blessing. She said something like "No, they don't work." I knew she was right, and I haven't given another blessing.

Being female, I had to settle for doubting the power of my prayers. When I came up for air from the ocean of brainwashing, I realized all answered prayers were the result of my own thoughts and efforts or random chance.

The priesthood was easy to see through--so why didn't I see through it earlier? My 34 year old TBM BIL with terrible cancer was given multiple priesthood blessings promising complete recovery--didn't turn out that way.

I turned down a "spirit-confirmed-to-me" homemaking calling that would have been impossible--I was pregnant and working full time nights. The calling went to my visiting teaching person word for word. Two weeks later her hubby got transferred to Japan.

My dad believed the priesthood gave him the right to control my mom's every thought, word, and action. Unrighteous dominion anyone?

The problem is when something good does happen it is attributed to the magic priesthood.

I’m grateful for smart, aggressive doctors that cured my wife’s skin cancer. Her father gives god / the priesthood the credit.

Those who claimed to have it used it to control others and force them to give unquestioning and unearned adoration.

I never questioned any of the blessings I gave because every one of them was ended with the words, "Thy will be done." That way no matter how things turned out it was by God's will.

After twelve-year-old Ziller got the Aaronic Priesthood pressed into him, some suited Melkezidick Priesthood holder shook his hand and said,

“Congratulations. Ziller now has more authority than the President of the United States of America.”

Ziller pictured President Ford sitting there in the Oval Office, his finger on the button controlling the U. S. American nuclear arsenal, surrounded by Secret Service, with the red hot-line telephone to Moscow sitting on his desk and thought,

“No. Not really.”


ziller

Yes. Blessing someone to live and having them die on me on my mission.

I hope this isn't out of place... I somehow, no doubt lead by the spirit, came across this minor essay about the true nature of what is termed in the essay, "the X-tian ghawd" (rather weird, eh, what?) but it does seem to make a point that bears on the issue of some priesthood blessings working and other priesthood blessings being utter shit. I did contact the author to ask for permission and it was granted. I asked from whence the inspiration for the essay had come and his answer was, "Piss off, mate!" What a wanker! And now without further ado:


"One of the attributes of the X-tian ghawd is that he is All Knowing. You could think up the most obscure, arcane, inappropriate questions regarding data and ghawd would know the answers:

1. During the calendar year 1935, within the city limits of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, how many women between the ages of 18 and 25 went crossed-eyed during an orgasm?

2. At this exact instant in time, how many human hair follicles are clogged by octopus feces?

3. If a woodchuck could chuck wood, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if he were being paid three times the minimum wage of an apprentice ottoman empire? (I threw this in just to see if you're paying attention.)

The point being that if a statistic exits, the X-tian ghawd has it filed away somewhere... Like in a memory bank, like maybe in an external hard drive... so thusly, ghawd as a computer!

Which makes sense when you consider that the X-tian ghawd, who knows all, is a complete shit head when it comes to how he deals with individuals!

So I now postulate the X-tian ghawd to be this infinity-sized computer that sees all and knows all and can grind out the most obscure of data points, but can't use what it knows to effectively deal with human beings and their individual paths in life. It keeps track of all their dealings, but never applies itself to their individual futures!

Because while having all the statistics in the universe at his beck and call would allow ghawd to answer questions, and also to generally predict trends and outcomes, statistics can't tell him the future actions of individual atoms, only the likely actions of the atoms of that class, similarly situated!

Ghawd is a ghawd of statistics, not of individuals! Which is why he doesn't really 'care' about individuals (even in large groups), thus explaining the disparity in the answering of prayers. This is why the tests on the effectiveness of prayers keep showing that, generally speaking, praying and not praying have the same outcomes.

So were I an X-tian, I would be proud that I knew who was keeping track of me, but I'd realize that my future wasn't dependent on keeping ghawd pleased with me, but rather on the concept that the odds will always be in my favor that oxygen will be present the next I inhale.

Life isn't deterministic, it is random within a deterministic frame work. (This last sentence is utter and complete bullshit, but yet I remain inordinately proud of it! Were I a lecherous old man with uncontrollable carnal desires and a desire to be rich while avoiding work, I would pretend the sentence meant something and I would found a religion, like any other self-respecting egomaniacal rat bastard.)"

The priesthood could not given to me unless the bureaucracy at Salt Lake could find my records.

When I was ordained to the Aaronic priesthood, I was promised that everyone around me woukd eventually join the church. All I ended up getting was the ward harassing my family.

As a woman, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt (gag) that my priesthood was fake!

I was clothed in "the robes of the holy priesthood" in the temple and I was always wearing "the garment of the holy priesthood" as my underwear - but my priesthood was nothing more than a name for that ugly white cloth! Priesthood was bunk and that's how I knew it.

I was told things like "a Deacon has more power than the Pope".....and as I got older...and was eventually ordained an elder...I felt NOTHING!

Ron Burr

You mean besides the fact that its ultimate family Sealing power is supposedly facilitated by a STUPID secret handshake?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Z3YSRogyo

and besides the fact that it really does not do anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSMqp1sU49U

That's what I don't get. So many women know it is BS, yet they feel offended they don't get that priesthood "power".

maybe the women who know its BS are different from the women who feel offended?

well here is the deal, here is the trade off that is worth while for them. LDS inc holds out the hoops and good member men dutifully jump through them. It seems only natural that when the woman holds up her additional hoops that the well trained MORmON man is just going to keep right on jumping through the hoops in front of them, and most of them do. THAT is well worth 10 % of the families gross income for MORmON woman.

I never wanted the priesthood. I wanted the equal RIGHT to have the priesthood.

Only whenever I tried to use it.

I had little wallet cards with the proper wording for all kinds of blessings on them. For sacrament, annointings, sealing of annointings, consecrating oil, dedicating graves, all that trash. Reading off that always felt fake... then imposing my own particular brand of BS in each blessing was a cherry on top.

No- because it was always presented as dependent on my worthiness, and somebody somewhere could always come up with something that I was supposed to do better. If I only would do X (after doing a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h...) then I would be able to wield the full power of the priesthood.

I must have thought all along that it was fake. I tried desperately during my tenure in Mormonism to never give a "blessing." I hated my children's baptisms and ordinations, and the like. I turned down every opportunity to "lay on hands."

I wasn't raised believing the priesthood was much of anything. Never had blessings, etc. Then when I ran into "gay," I just knew that if I was worthy enough and got a blessing from the bishop, then I'd find my answers. I was willing to try ANYTHING. I would fast for days and finally ask the bishop once again (every 6 months or so) if I could have a blessing. I got 3 blessings. All I ever got was a "stupor of thought." I felt worse coming out than I did going in. Dealing with the leaders during that time proved to me they had no power.

I must add--as others have stated above, I never did understand the women wanting the priesthood. It isn't something I cared to have. I never wanted to pass or bless the sacrament or home teach or gather fast offerings. I never saw any benefit to having the priesthood. It was just more busy work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2015 10:07AM by cl2.

That I couldn't move mountains when I got it. And I never felt different once I received it.

When I was a young boy I contracted pneumonia. I was febrile, hacking green sputum, malaised - in the early stages. My mom phoned the Home Teachers. She was poor and had no money for antibiotics apparently, so she relied on the penishood for it's magical healing powers. I received a mighty Jehovah-like blessing from the top High Priest in our ward (and also the leading insurance salesman in the area). I also received another blessing from a stake high councilman. Nada. Nothing. Not even a smidgen of improvement. My temp finally soared to 108, I was unconscious and barely breathing. I was near death. Her SIL, a non-member, happened to pop by one evening and realizing the seriousness of the situation - immediately took me to the ER. With antibiotics, I was better in a week. So, uh, nope, the penishood doesn't work - at all.

I have never in my life, 79 years, witnessed anyone healed by a "priesthood blessing" of an illness that they would not have otherwise recovered from!

Thinking about the other 7 million penis holders watching across the world, the absurdity of it all struck me,
"All these guys think they're going to be God's someday?"
That was the begining of the end for me.
As an architect, I couldn't believe that the Designers of the World's Largest Conference Center chose as their inspiration, the Great and Spacious Building out of Lehi's dream.
When I got back people asked me what I thought of the new conference center. I had to say, "It's great and spacioius allright!"
Complete with the running stream coming down the front of it?
Wow.
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/brotherofelijah/media/min22-1.jpg.html?o=1

I was a fully deluded TBM, so my expectations were high until...

* I gave a judgmental blessing to an inactive sister and friend of the family who had been ill for more than a week. I implored her to embrace the Church and be obedient, and also assured her that she would be healed. She did not get better until several days later when she started getting treatment for Hepatitis B, which she had gotten nearly 2 weeks before eating at a restaurant.

* As EQ president I actually tried to command the winds to stop blowing while on a father's and son outing and our very-high-on-the-water canoe containing 1/2 dozen youth was mercilessly blown off course. No effect. Fortunately, my 1st Counselor came to our rescue 20 minutes later in a canoe better-suited for the conditions.

* The brother of a woman I home taught got very sick from some kind of strange fungus he got while walking barefoot on the lawn. He was in the ICU in a Utah hospital, but she was certain he would recover because a General Authority had given him a blessing promising him that he would recover. He was dead within a week.