When I was growing up my Grandpa was the stake patriarch. When I turned 17, I got my patriarchal blessing from him. I remember it as being a great opportunity to have some Godly wisdom tailored and given justp to me. It was such a great experience for me then. When I was given the printed version, I read it all the time, so that I could remember all of the wonderful wisdom and council it contained.

A few years later, a young man in the stake was killed in a tragic accident. He was pulling some farm equipment with a tractor on a road at night when someone in a car ran into him. He killed by the tractor being pinned on top of him, and he left behind a young wife that was pregnant with their first child.

I went to the funeral to support the family. This young man's older brother got up to speak and in his speech he quoted from his patriarchal blessing, one that my Grandpa had given, "You shall live upon the land as long as life is sweet and purposeful unto you. Then you will pass sweetly from this life to the life in the interim of time between death and the resurrection." I remember sitting there bewildered because this was an exact phrase in MY patriarchal blessing.

I was thinking two things. Why would his brother mention that, because in what twisted up world was being pinned under a tractor, sweetly dying. I didn't think it was sweet and purposeful and the way my Grandpa worded it made it clear to me that the blessing holder had some choice in the matter of dying. I'm sure that this young man's life was still sweet and purposeful to him, he had a new wife that was carrying their first child. I'm sure that he didn't want to die then. My Grandpa was a good man and I loved him a lot, but in this case, Grandpa, you got it wrong.

I was also thinking, how come this phrase was in his blessing. My blessing had the same exact phrase, I thought each blessing was a unique gift from God. What the hell, Grandpa. I was really upset about this. I was thinking, that if his blessing contained such beautiful words and he died in such a terribly tragic and awful way, I didn't want to have anything to do with my blessing.

In the end this became a huge item on my shelf that I never got over.

From lds.org:

Q: May I share my blessing with others?

A: Handbook 2 states: “Each patriarchal blessing is sacred, confidential, and personal.” Further, “Church members should not compare blessings and should not share them except with close family members. Patriarchal blessings should not be read in Church meetings or other public gatherings” (20.12.2). They should not be distributed or shared through electronic means such as FamilySearch, social media, websites, or blogs.

And now you know why...

Bingo!!!

Same thing with the masons. Don't become a Mason - you might see J Smith copied the temple stuff from them

It's a cult.

Don't you know about the PB throat slitting and disembowelment ceremony ?

My dad was a patriarch. He kept a notebook full of his PB's. I read through it once and found each every blessing to be uniquely....the same. Almost a boiler plate format. If those folks compared blessings, I'm sure they would have a WTF? moment wondering why their oh so special blessings say the same things as everyones elses.

She said the same thing, that the patriarch used the same phrases in each PB. It was one of her reasons for questioning and she is out, too.

Mine has the LDS fail safe phrase of "as long as you remain worthy."
So I can't complain.

My PB said amongst other things, "that I would recognize my wife when I met her".

I actually believed it, furthermore, I met someone a few months later that I believed to be the one mentioned in my PB.

Of course, she didn't recognize it, and married someone else while I was on my mission.

I was obviously not worthy or righteous enough.

rebeljamesdean Wrote:
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> My PB said amongst other things, "that I would
> recognize my wife when I met her".

That didn't appear in my PB, but I did receive a blessing where I was told that I would recognize my spouse when I met him.

I've never even been on a date in my life. LOL

My PB does say that I will marry a righteous man in the temple. Nope.

Maybe we were supposed to meet, aside from the fact I am married and unrighteousness.

Mine said I'd be protected from the illness of the world. That's a bunch of crap. I was diagnosed with cancer about 10 years ago and have on going issues still, because of it. That's when I started wondering about all this crap the church dishes out. I was TBM at the time and doing my best to live the church rules/regulations. So don't tell me that the things in a PB are based on righteousness.

Mine says I'm not afraid of the truth. He shoodna said that!!!!
Hahahahahaha

:D

He was a nice guy but he couldn't come up with enough material to make every blessing unique.

The answer? I guess mormons should stop wasting their time on these little fortune telling exercises. They'd have better luck with a palm reader.

I give better readings with my tarot cards than those idiots!

I would love a reading.

Mine said I was going to be one of the most beautiful women in the first resurrection.

It also specified that tithing was to help us learn not to be selfish because God knows where all the riches of the world are so he doesn't need our money.

My last few years pretending to believe, I still donated a lot of money (not 10% but a reasonable amount I could afford), but the church didn't see a penny of it. If the purpose was to teach us not to be selfish and "inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me," then why would helping others with my money not count as giving it to God?

Mine said my family would be so righteous that we would be lifted into the heavens together.

That freaked me out. To me it sounded like we were all going to die at the same time. Either that, or we were going to be translated. The joke is on them. None of us are mormons anymore. Also, none of us were ever so righteous that we'd be translated.

It also said that i'd be married in the temple to Mr. righteous himself, and we'd have a lot of kids.

I got married in the temple. We didn't have any kids, and I divorced him less than two years into that nightmare.

I would be a shame if your family was mistranslated.

Okay, this may sound crazy. I am an apostate of the LDS church, but I still believe my patriarch was inspired to give my patriarchal blessing. Maybe he just got lucky. There were many things mentioned in my blessing that were unique to me that the patriarch could not have known without inspiration. It blows my mind to this day how he understood my future. He was perhaps the only true prophet in the LDS church. My brother and friends had their blessings from the same man, The blessings were all unique and many things "came to pass".

It just goes to show you that LDS men, despite being deceived, can actually receive inspiration from time to time. This is one of my hang-ups about leaving the church but I recognize that all priesthood holders cannot be evil! Some patriarchs must be able to channel something.

My other hang-up is Jacob chapter 5 in the BOM. I still love it despite my apostasy. Hey, I can take a few good things that were okay with the LDS church and keep living my life! The historicity of the church is something I will never get over, however.

I am a scientist, an educated man, but I recognize that I have a few hang-ups still. My patriarchal blessing and Jacob chapter 5 may be the only two divinely inspired writings to ever happen in the LDS church! Hah!

I am only 39 years old so my feelings may change with time...(please don't make fun of me).

aren't you going to tell us about your pre-blessing "interview" ?

1. Research "cold reading." Shysters have been using that technique since conning people was invented.

2. I betcha I could give you a tarot card reading that you would find "inspired." We read things into generalized statements so that the statements sound tailor made to us.

My blessing had no mention of temple marriage or life with my future wife. My mother was concerned so she called the patriarch and spoke with him. He said not to worry, that I will get married. On the evening of the day of my civil marriage ceremony, my thoughts turned to my patriarchal blessing. There is no way that the patriarch could have promised a temple marriage because it was never meant to be.

There are three other things proclaimed in the blessing that are very spooky because they are so specific. They have nothing to do with my teenage self or pre-interview. He got the blessing right. What else can I say? Regardless of the affiliation with the church or not, the patriarch was an inspired man.

I will think about whether or not I want to share more on this topic. Nothing in my blessing is remotely similar to other blessings from the same patriarch that I have seen.

This is the only thing that reaffirms my belief that clear inspiration from God is possible, although an absolute rarity. And inspiration is not exclusive to the LDS church.

I didn't get my PB until I was a freshman at BYU. Growing up I just never felt the need for one but decided to get it with a friend of mine who recently joined the church and wanted to get it together with me.

I remember being scared shitless to get it. I had been banging my girlfriend for months and was positive the Patriarch's hands would blister and burn when he put them on my head. Or that he would be "inspired" to stop his blessing and call me to repentance. Nope...didn't happen. I received my PB as if I were the purest member alive.

That was a big red flag to me when it came to the "Power of Discernment". I kept my PB in a "Book of Remembrance" until I left the church. I told my TBM daughter that I would be throwing everything out unless she took it. She did.

THAT was an epic test and FAILURE of the (supposed) power of discernment in MORmONISM. I liked hearing about it !

I had a similar pb experience. I was in institute class, just finishing up a lesson that had something to do with missions. A female student blurts out a phrase from her pb
'you are required of the lord to serve a mission'.
She then fishes around in her scripture bag, pulls out her pb, and reads the whole paragraph.
It was word for word identical to mine. The entire paragraph.

It's then my turn to blurt out, 'hey, that's the same as mine',
while the institute teacher starts shushing us with a panicked look on his face.

I can't believe I still packed up and went on a mission on the basis of that blessing.

Thank God for patriarchal blessings.

My daughter got quite a long, verbose PB. I was still a member at the time, but had long quit believing there was anything inspired about them. I sat there almost rolling my eyes as she was given this blessing. The guy was obviously just trying to show off and/or make her feel super special. She was so touched by it and called both her grandmothers who cried too and told her how amazing it was. She read it all the time.

Then about 6 months later, her best friend in the church got hers and couldn't wait to come over and tell my daughter about it. She read it and at least 80% of it was almost word-for-word the same thing my daughter had, even the same "unique and specific" stuff that would happen to her. I was not at all surprised but felt so bad. It really crushed her. She folded her blessing up stuck it away and said she never looked at it again and that it was the first crack in the door to realizing what a hoax TSCC is.

So I guess I have to be glad it happened that way. In fact my daughter left the church before I did and was the one who told me about this site.

It ain't easy being a cold reader and psychic. Sometimes you just have to rinse and repeat - just change the names.

Mine also caused the first huge crack in my shelf.

It said that I should prepare myself to receive the Melchizedek priesthood.

Problem was, I had received the MP several weeks before, and had even been through the temple at that point. It was a special circumstance so that I could attend my brother's wedding.

My PB was so generic--so "one size fits all"---that it made me feel like I had to be the most ordinary, least special, person on the planet. That should have tipped me off that something was rotten in Denmark.

What I noticed, though, was it mostly sounded like one of the droning on and on Sacrament meeting prayers. Seemed like the spirit always talked in that same voice. I can't stand it now. Someone says a prayer now at a family reunion and I just want to vomit.

Yep. One of my callings was to transcribe Patriarchal Blessings. It did cause me to do some questioning for that very reason. The sameness.

Mine was so generic. I was so disappointed. Nothing at all of interest or unique or true. A big fat zero. I wasn't sure what had gone wrong.

In Joseph Smith Sr.'s time, Smith (the patriarch) charged $2 apiece for them, and you could get as many as you wanted.

kathleen Wrote:
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> In Joseph Smith Sr.'s time, Smith (the patriarch)
> charged $2 apiece for them, and you could get as
> many as you wanted.

Yep. The "office" of "patriarch" was created to provide Joe Sr. a way to make money from his son's church.
Hyrum Smith took over when Joe Sr. died. Joe Sr. was experienced as a fortune-teller and "cold reader," and had a fertile imagination, which is where the "predict the future" aspect of a "patriarchal blessing" came from.

Stake "patriarchs" started to be called after the move to SLC, when mormons across Utah and in other countries were too far away to get the paid blessings from the one church "patriarch."

The calling continued to be a money-making venture for the "patriarchs" until the early 20th century...the church officially prohibited charging for the blessings (though 'tips' were often still given until around the 1940's) after it was learned that "patriarchs" were traveling door to door soliciting people to be "blessed," and outbidding any other "patriarchs" in the area.


http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/patriarchal_neon.jpg



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2017 10:26AM by ificouldhietokolob.

I had mine in the late 70's at about 20 in Michigan. Mine was pretty specific in parts and there was no way he could know some of the information. We became good friends until his death. In fact, people would come from across the country to have PB from this man. The church had to stop the members traveling for his blessings. But he had my back when things were bad and sometimes I wish he was still around.

Two of my teenage kids got patriarchal blessings the same day. Both blessings were nearly identical. What did he think, that we were not going to read them with our children? This really bothered my wife, who is TBM to this day. She has never been able to reconcile this.