Did anyone here receive a patriarchal blessing that said that they would live to see the second coming of Christ in mortality? As I understand it, that particular promise was very common in the 19th century, less common (but certainly not unusual) in the 20th century, and I have no idea what people are being promised now.

My PB had no mention of the second coming, but it did say a few things that caught my attention:

I was told that I would “labor with those who hold high office in the church.” The closest I ever came was when I had a stake calling that included a monthly one-on-one meeting with the Stake President. I think that it’s beyond a stretch to say that came true.

My PB also said that I would “assist in the building of temples and houses of worship.” Well, I guess my tithing money helped build temples and chapels, but realistically, this was another swing and a miss.

I was also promised that I would “travel to many lands and see the Lord’s work progress and advance.” I served my mission in Thailand. While I was there, the baptism rate was extremely low, and inactivity was a serious problem. Since my mission, I have traveled to dozens of countries, and other than seeing a Mormon chapel once in a great while, I saw no evidence of the “Lord’s work.” Strike three.

If there are any TBM lurkers here who are tempted to say that it’s my fault that the promises didn’t come true because everything in a patriarchal blessing is contingent on righteousness……well, I spent the first 50 years of my life as an active, devoted member of the church. I think I showed more than enough patience.

Yes. Easy promise for an 75 year old Patriarch to make to a 19 year old, though.

I had the most generic patriarchal blessing ever given in the history of PB's. It could have applied to a dog or cat or eve a iguana.

A lack of specificity is an essential element for patriarchal blessings (or palm readings or horoscopes) that aren't "wrong."

Mine said I would "come forth on the morning of the first resurrection" I think I was told that meant I would live to jesus return, but I don't know.

I was also told I would serve my mission in "one of the 4 corners of the world"....I went to the Caribbean....what corner is that in? And spheres don't have corners anyway.

Haha. Love that. I think even Orem or East Cupcake are in one of the four corners of the world.

East Cupcake is in the Nether Regions.

Would that be Inner Darkness then?

My PB did not.However, I distinctly remember several older members of the ward I grew up in making this claim almost every Fast Sunday. They have all been dead and gone many years now. As a teen, hearing that claim paled in comparison to old Brother Fitzpatrick who claimed his PB promised he would preach the gospel to people living on the far side of the moon!

“ ‘Inhabitants of the Moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the Earth, being about 6 feet in height. They dress very much like the Quaker Style & are quite general in Style, or the one fashion of dress. They live to be very old; comeing [sic] generally, near a thousand years.' This is the description of them as given by Joseph the Seer, and he could ‘See' whatever he asked the Father in the name of Jesus to see.”

- Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., in Journal of O.B. Huntington, Book 14, p. 166

“Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon?... When you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the ignorant of their fellows. So it is in regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain.”

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 271

“In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet, in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel before I was 21 years of age; that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants upon the islands of the sea, and – to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can now behold with your eyes.”

- O.B. Huntington, The Young Women's Journal, v. 3, pp. 263-264 (1892)

Mine said I would "come forth in glory on the morning of the First Resurrection." So, jury's still out on that one.

God the same promise. I figure I will do better than Joseph Smith. I never slept with u de rage girls or other men’s wives and used some made up hocus pocus to justify it.

I figure I will do better than the church leadership who told lies to protect the church against damning historical evidence.

Mine also said I would come forth in the first resurrection. Well, I was brain dead and now I’m an apostate so maybe maybe it was right.

The only interesting thing that mine said was about my calling and election made sure.

A couple of my close friends’ blessings said that they would be changed in the twinkling of an eye at the second coming. I’m assuming that they are still mortal since the Second Coming hasn’t quite occurred yet.

Oddly enough most my patriarchal blessing has turned out to be pretty accurate. I always thought patriarchal blessings were the Mormon equivalent of fortune telling. I only got one because I has to in order to serve a mission. The only reason I served a mission was to see if the church was really true. I figured serving a mission would give me my answer. So I was a skeptic but figured I could always leave the mission early if I didn’t like it and move on without the church or finish if I felt the church was true.

My blessing mostly focused on my marriage and my kids. It said little actually about the church. It went into a lot of detail about finding my wife and what our relationship would be like and what our family life would be like. It’s been pretty accurate there.

Nothing about seeing the return of Christ in my life. No real specifics on anything about church callings either.

> My blessing mostly focused on my marriage and my
> kids. . . It went into a lot of detail about finding my wife
> and what our relationship would be like and what
> our family life would be like. It’s been pretty
> accurate there.

I don't know you, but one of the keys to successful fortune telling is offering generalizations and generalized principles that are plausible. Assuming that your marriage and family are successful, which I hope is the truth, your patriarch may have stumbled on Tolstoy's observation that "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

What I mean is the patriarch may have said something like "your marriage will be the most important choice you make in life. Look for a woman who is X, Y, and Z. If you make the right choice, your marriage will be A, B, and C. As for your children. . . " Then if you fared well in the lottery of love, you would look back at the blessing and be surprised at how accurate the patriarch had been whereas if your marriage turned out badly you might think, "well, I failed to find the right person and didn't lay the right foundation."

Either way the patriarch is right. It's just fortunate (I hope) that you made decisions that vindicated the positive half of the patriarch's prognostication.

that I wouldn't be called upon to suffer unduly at any time, that I would be found in holy places serving the Lord (makes me wonder who horrible I was living to end up where I did).

My daughter has my PB. I almost threw it out, but she had just received her's, so I gave it to her to keep. She had also requested a copy of my mom's and had that. I was so worried about getting married that I reread that thing so many times as I was getting "old" and no worthy husband in sight.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2020 11:55AM by cl2.

My moms has some second coming stuff, it's been a long time though so I don't recall what it was or if she needed to live to see it or whatnot.

Most of my families PB's that I've read (siblings) was pretty accurate to be honest. Was actually a testimony builder for me as when they were teenagers how could you know what would happen. I may have picked up on the things that turned out to be true and totally ignored the other things. I read them once like 20 years ago.

No, but my father's did and he has been dead now for 17 years. I have known many people who's blessings have not been true and it has caused them lots of self doubt and loathing. I guess if at least this one promise is not kept you aren't around to beat yourself up about it.

The man who gave me my PB was excommunicated for some sort of sexual misconduct. He had been engaging in immoral conduct for years and giving blessings at the same time. I'm not sure how I feel about it but it's at the very least a sad comment on churches and religion in general.

The dude said that a lot of people would be envious of me, for being so strong in faith and being so prosperous.

Yeah right.

I was never "strong in faith" – or very prosperous either. I always thought J Smith was disgusting, even before I found out about what a womanizer and fraud he was.

         It was very comforting to me and
         I prayed that I would be worthy...

Mine said I would rise on the morning of the first resurrection, though it didn't say I would come forth in glory, as Anziano Young's did. Mine also cautioned me that although a strong body was important, so was a strong mind, and I needed to take my academic studies seriously. Either the patriarch or Gawd must have thought I was more brawn than brains, and whichever one it was might have been right . . . and might STILL be right.

The rest of you have to be resurrected in mediocrity. Don't worry, you'll still go on the first day. Not like those plebes flying economy who didn't pay their tithing hard enough.

Mine stated that I would freely rule from a throne.

Twice a day, I sit on my throne in the restroom and issue edicts.

Yes, silent edicts! They're the worst!

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, silent edicts! They're the worst!





Silent but deadly, as they say.

My mother's patriarchal blessing said she would live to see the Second Coming. She died in 1988.

In my Stake, when I was a teenager, we had a 16-year-old boy who some of my friends had been spending the day with. They were all swimming in the family swimming pool when he drowned. They weren't doing anything bad so they couldn't blame his death on that. I say that because people will make up all kinds of excuses as to why a Patriarchal Blessing doesn't come true. If they had been doing something bad, or illegal or dangerous, or even if someone had been drinking I'm sure his death would have been blamed on that and True Believers would say that he died because he or someone he was with broke the commandments and therefore his Patriarchal Blessing couldn't come true.

At his funeral one of his family members mentioned his Patriarchal Blessing had said he would serve a mission for the church. This family member decided that he had been called to serve his mission in the Spirit World to the Spirits in Prison.

However, since we are all told that we lived a Pre-existence life before being born as mortals and that we all knew the Plan of Salvation in the Pre-existence, and that when we die our memory of the Pre-existence returns, why would any of these spirits therefore need to be taught the Plan of Salvation in the Spirit World? Hence, why would there be a need for missionaries in the Spirit World?

Nope. Mine was pretty unremarkable and nothing promised has “come to pass.”

Man, I remember being so excited to get mine and then spending the next few years trying to figure out what it meant, splitting hairs over the words and what else they could mean. What a waste of time.

I posted about PBs a while back, because I was trying to get a feel for how common it is to be promised a front row seat at the apocalypse, and how seriously average Mos take their PBs. My in-laws take them as holy writ.

My MIL says that she will live to witness JC 2.0, that she has special gifts of the prophet-y kind (but she must remain humble with them) and that essentially, whatever goodies she wants she can have, and God will pay the tab to the people she takes from with blessings.

She's not humble with the prophesying. When she gets on a roll about her PB and how HF has promised not to punish us exmos too much, she can really work a room

She's worried JS will be really mad at me for all the mean things I've said about him. So mad that JC will have to agree and banish me with the Sons of Perdition. I hope they're at least good looking.

Her TBM children will freely admit how Mom's thefts and increasingly histrionic demands for time, money, and attention are so draining and irritating, yet they stand all amazed at Mom's "touching testimony" and "awesome, uplifting" PB. They consistently refuse to take her to the doctor because they are worried that medical staff will "misunderstand" the spiritual stuff Mom loves to talk about. No, I'm not making this up.

I personally think my TBM relations are "misunderstanding" reality, but hey, I'm an exmo, so my sibs-in-law use that as a way to blow off concerns about MIL. They honestly don't trust me to tell the time of day because of my apostasy, so obviously I'm wrong about their Mom too. Convenient.

I wish I knew what the Patriarch had been smoking right before he pronounced the "blessing".

It's all so absurd, that these beliefs can create such intense family drama. If they're going to live in a magical fictional mormon fantasyland instead of crazy ol' (still not as crazy as rural 1830s America) life, can't they take their advice from Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda instead? Or The Dude from The Big Lebowski?

She's apparently boosting sodas and hotdogs from 7-11 again, and nobody is willing to step up and do the right thing, and we exmos do have standards of conscience,so we are taking steps to bring her to the attention of adult protective services.

She's couch surfing and has no permanent address, steals food when she doesn't have to as she eats 3X a day at various TBM in-laws' houses, is getting lost around town, won't sign any Medicare/Medicaid or SSI papers, get food stamps or utility benefits or sign up for low cost housing because HF tells her through special messages each day not to take charity because he's got the tab. Again, the PB says she just ought to "put forth her hand", so that's what she does. Except it's always into her kids' wallets.

I caught some traffic on Facebook a few days ago about how HF has told her that wearing red nail polish will attract the coronavirus because it's a communist demon. I don't know if the posting bro-in-law was joking or not, and he generally is a doofus who makes incredibly obtuse jokes and has since taken it down. Still, MIL thinks hummingbirds are commie spy birds due to their affinity for red. So if it's true, if THAT doesn't make MIL a vulnerable adult, I dread having to watch more drama unfold until she meets state requirements.

My PB doesn't say anything about the Second Coming. It's totally generic about talents, fate, and character, so far. It also never mentioned how I would have to call adult protective services because this woman I can't stand is being failed by the people she's manipulating because all of them have been mindscrewed by a cult, and that I only care because it's what I'd do for a stranger I found mumbling incoherently in the street, not because I have any true affection for her at all.

My PB did say I'd grow confident as a mother of a multitude. I hatched some sea monkeys once when my kids were little, does that count?

I can't believe the things she does. And she is couch surfing. Wow!

I just had to comment on sea monkeys. My little sister always wanted some of those. She never got any. Now I'm going to have to ask her about them.

For sure. She's always been a narcissist with delusional features, but it's obvious these past three months that her marbles have rolled out of the reality circle in a profoundly fast and permanent way.

I'm actually kind of worried about it in the humanitarian sense. She's really just been lucky so far and is so difficult about everything that I can't see the current situation ending any way but badly, but it all just illustrates reaping what one has sown, or karma, really is a naturally occurring thing in life.

The sea monkeys were a fun project. They actually get to be decent-sized and are interesting to watch. They start reproducing after a while, too. We gave them away to the kids' science teacher for classroom use after we had them for almost a year.

Yeah, I'm still waiting.

Ohhhhhh yeah. For sure. My parents made me get my blessing when I was 12 years old. The partriarch was nye unto death..in his 90's. He was a transplant from Utard and just so blessed to be living in the garden of eden. In my blessing he promised that I would assist in the 2nd coming of JC himself, a noble spirit I am, and would be given special priesthood abilities to fight the efforts of the adversary. Ma and pa were just so giddy as all hell after that. I pictured a light saver sword from star wars as my special ability to take down demons and devils. Alas, it's all bull shite in the end, but as a 12 year old - I was a Mormon Luke Skywalker.

Hey, don't give up hope!

It's not over till the fat angel sings!!!

I was just thinking about indoctrination phobias today like the jesus and millenium one. Everyone will burn except the tithe payers in the group. This phobia was implanted in me heavily in the 90's of course. Of course i had to be a teenager right before the year 2000. They played me like a fiddle with the year 2000 jesus is coming and will reign in the millenium. Now its 2020 and still no jesus or millenium. I figured not to try to build a life if jesus was just going to burn the world anyways. Now i am like "well sh#t pretty sure i got fooled by an indoctrination phobia on that one"

Jesus' Second Coming is like the race horse that is lagging so far behind the others that by the end of the lap he's in front again.

Nearly 2000 years and he still hasn't bought a ticket back to earth on Kolob Airlines. Needs a better travel agent.

That whole millenium thing was the biggest horse they used over and over and over thats all i know. It was the answer to all unknown questions. In the millenium jesus will answer that or he will fix that in the millenium. I never got a real answer to any question in that operation. It was pointless to even ask any real question. You'd just get the millenium response.

Enough people were scared to pay up.

I was annoyed that males got cooler PBs than females.

No.

Mine was the cookie cutter PB. Tribe of Ephraim. Check the boxes & endure to the end.

I don't even know where it is anymore. Oh well, I guess I've returned it to the store anyway.

I listened to my son receive his PB, and the patriarch said in the blessing that his mother (me) had gone to the very brink of death to give birth to him. Well, that definitely caught my attention, cuz he was my fourth kid, and I just kinda popped him out. I was TBM, but I thought " what a load of BS."

  

Great question. When I’m home again I’d like to post my entire PB verbatim.

Mine didn’t say any such thing explicitly. But there were always rumours and mentions of others in the family and Stake who were promised such things, always meant to foster a feeling that this was indeed the last days and we best be prepared (be good, pay tithing, food storage).

Just like the Temple name call out, which revealed the system of same day name giving, it might be fun and useful to make a post of all our PBs.

Mine said that I would come down on that day with Jesus, which upset me because I was hoping to be lifted up to the clouds to meet him. I guess I was basically hoping to avoid death.

One thing I have learned about a promise, is that it never is held to its own word. A promise is basically a lie.

I would amend this to, "A promise can be a lie-in-waiting."

You want to believe, but death is the only sure thing, so here's the one promise that will be kept: "You will die."

But thankfully, there are some people who are true to some of their words. To be true to ALL your words... Shit, not even ghawd has managed that feat.

Mine said that I would "rise to the highest level of my profession" and what do you know I did. Coincidence.

And not a sandwich specialist at Subway. But I realize it was not unlike a psychic makings a guess.

I don't suppose planning carefully and working hard for a decent period of time were involved with reaching the top, were they? I have heard that a suspicious number of non-Mormons who planned carefully and worked hard have also reached the top of their professions. Must be coincidence, nothing to do with character or whatnot.

The Patriarchal insight amazes me with the uncanny way it can foresee things like newly-engaged women becoming mothers, or business majors becoming materially successful. I bet it often reveals a future GA calling for certain children of royal or royally wealthy lineage.

Yes, lol, it was a lot of hard work. The only benefit being a Mormon gave me was learning Spanish on a mission. For all the crap rules they put on me (us) that made no sense, and for how long I put up with endless meetings during the week, that was the one thing that benefited me.

A very white looking man, with a Spanish surname, having fluency in Spanish is a good thing.