Anyone expect to see a dead relative or something? I remember expecting to see a miracle or something.

I guess like most naive 19 yr olds going through I expected a lot.

I just remember thinking, holy crap! Why am I only wearing a sheet?

But I believed so I stuck with it for another 13 years before I got fed up and decided to see what the church was all about.

Anyone have similar expectations?

Yes I had the exact same feelings....where's the miracles? Where's the great knowledge? WTF am I wearing a sheet and getting oiled up by an old guy?

I know! I hated the touching. I always wondered who did it for the women after that. I guess other women did.

I thought it would be possible to see or at least feel the spirit of those whose work I was doing. Didn't happen. I also expected to feel a lot more spiritual. Disclaimer: I only did baptisms for the dead and was sealed to my parents. I suspect I would have been really disappointed by the whole endowment thing.I always thought that missing out on a big wedding and having to wear garments was lame. I also was not that impressed with the temple interior.I toured the Provo temple and have seen pictures of the others. It looked like a hotel to me although the baptismal font was kind of cool.

I'll tell you what I was not expecting, the stupid baker's hat.

You are now ready to officiate in the order of the dough boy.

Sorry, that should be holy order of the dough boy.The donut grip or the sure sign of the donut hole.

I thought it would be a clean church, that's it.

I have to admit that I thought to myself afterwards, "Man, do I seriously have to come back and do this again? Over and over and over?"

I expected to be in the presence of holy beings, or at least feel their presence. I expected to experience the Heavenly Father who I believed loved me, and I halfway expected to see my dead relatives in that place where the veil between these worlds is so very thin.

I expected to see Patrick Swayze.

If I had I would never had left the COJCOLDS.

I expected it to be a spiritually enlightening experience.

I was surprised at how spiritually dead the whole ritual was. Nothing. It was weird and useless information. I believed that God was smarter and more in touch with his own children than what I saw at the temple.

I could never get over the feeling that the ones who said it was so special, were just B Sing everyone including themselves.

I thought I would learn the mysteries to what it takes to be a god or how the cosmos were built. Pretty much, I thought I would find out how the universe came to exist and how creation was done. I expected some sort of science lesson. I got nothing of the sort; just a letdown.

I was only in long enough to do baptisms for the dead, then I jumped ship after 3 years. I knew that the endowment ceremony was bazaar, based mostly on "anti-mormon" research I had done as well as the missionaries in the ward confiding in me one night that they were seriously creeped out after the endowment. I guess I was mostly expecting to feel closer to God while I was in the temple - I had been taught that the temple was the closest you could get to God on earth, so I sort of expected to feel that while I was doing baptisms. I didn't - I felt that the whole process was not at all personal or special (some non-believer in the spirit world was getting baptized, for Christsake! I at least went out to eat after my baptism!) and very cold. I didn't feel anything remotely spiritual.

I also expecting the temple to be absolutely breath-taking, both inside and out. While I have to admit that I do enjoy the architecture of the Chicago temple's exterior, all I could think of when I saw the interior was that it looked eerily like the lobby of a Marriott. Since leaving the church, I have looked at pictures of other areas inside the Chicago temple and that opinion hasn't changed.

I knew there was a video involved, I knew there were some "special" clothing you wore, I had been through several temples during open houses, and I'd seen pictures of the interiors of lots of other ones. So, apart from the ridiculousness of the costume, I wasn't too surprised by anything I saw. (Eve was hot. I guess I didn't expect that either!)

What I did find surprising was how uncomfortable and cultish the whole ritual felt. I just expected a nice video with some guys (maybe the prophet or someone) giving us information that would help us live good lives and explaining some mysteries of God, or whatever. What I got was just a strange, incredibly repetitive version of the first few chapters of Genesis, interspaced with silly dress-up games and some secret handshakes and passwords. I was freaked out by all the cultishness and constantly worried about wearing the costume correctly, or the doing the handshakes right, or remembering the passwords. It was all rather disturbing, and not in the least bit useful to my daily life. I received no "further light and knowledge." The only things I did learn were certainly nothing I would ever refer to as "light!" I tried to avoid going back to the temple as much as possible after my first time through.

These read like bad reviews for infomercial products. Totally let down after expecting what was promised.

I expected to find out all the secrets of God and The Creation. I thought I would be edified and uplifted. Instead, I felt depressed and sick. The first thing I saw was--swear to God--cash registers! We rented our clothes. I had my shoes stolen, and had to walk out barefoot. Oh, the irony! The only other-worldly connection I had was with Satan, who told me to put on an apron, and a robe, and take it all off, and put it all on again over the other shoulder and whatnot, and to smother myself with a veil over my face. It was impossible to feel spiritual, when the old ladies next to me were snoring. The man ("God?") at the veil had onion breath, and I felt his knee, and his chest mashed my breast, and I couldn't see who he was. It was not just disappointing, it was creepy. The old lady touching me and whispering in my ear was creepy. When I wasn't thinking of Satan, I was thinking of Liberace in Las Vegas! I thought Mormons took pride in the simplicity and frugality of their church buildings--but this monstrosity of a hotel was downright gaudy, and occupied acres of prime view real estate in Oakland. When the MC or Satan or whoever told us we could leave if we didn't feel ready, I wanted to run. I never, for one second believed the temple and its rituals to be of God. Never.

Wow! That was funny! Thanks for the reminder of the temple ceremony...hilarious.

I too was expecting to see dead people floating around...ready to thank me for what I had done for them!

I thought I would feel special, close, and loved by a god who knew me personally. Instead god plays a minor role as some remote, aloof guy who doesn't even know what's going on on his own planet. Satan has the best role in the play. And they told me Satan could not enter the temple. Well, there he is, front and center, manipulating and threatening.

And why does the audience obey Satan when he commands us to put on the green fig leaf aprons?

***And why does the audience obey Satan when he commands us to put on the green fig leaf aprons?***

Because endowment is a role-play "drama" and participants act as if they were Adam (men) and Eve (women).

I was expecting a very spiritual experience, to feel god's presence. I never expected to be felt up by some old lady. I did not expect the handshakes and the movie. It should have been a huge clue to me that satan was the star of the temple movie and the most interesting character there.

I was expecting to be told some big secret. Something like Jesus is alive and is hanging out in SLC, or the we're actually in the Telestial kingdom already and working our way up, or something like that.

I was disappointed because it was overly boring and strange.

My Mom claimed that she saw angels during my marriage to my DH in the temple. My Mom is also a master manipulator and a proven liar. I've never seen or experienced anything, even when I tried hard to feel the spirit. I thought that maybe one of those times someone would connect with me from the other side. Makes sense now that I know it's all a hoax.

just as alive and real as anybody else there. She also said her daughter who was with her asked her if she felt his presence because she had. My friend replied that she actually saw him, which helped the daughter to be very happy. After fasting all day I'm sure she was able to see just what she wanted.

I always wondered why people saw deceased people in the temple and realized they expect to see them and can make it happen.

The first temple experience I had wasn't what I thought it would be. It never was and I was pretty disappointed that they changed the minister in the movie. I thought he was the only one who looked normal to me.

We were all left to our own devices in imagining the ceremony because no one told us jack. I thought it would tell about the eternities and mysteries. I even wondered if I should wear my watch because it seemed so temporal. Instead, while wandering around naked under my poncho, holding the sides securely, I was wondering, What th'...??? The I was treated to an evening (the endowments were about 4 1/2 hours back then) of old people play acting, forgetting their lines, some old guy in a black suit being a minister and leading us all in the Protestant hymn "Somewhere the sun is shining" and working with his buddy Satan who was wearing a Mason's apron as an emblem of Satan's priesthood. Just too weird. I was pretty disappointed. Yet shortly afterward I became a temple worker on a path to understanding it all better. That didn't work either.

I can't imagine 4.5 hours of that. Must have been brutal.

When they came out with the new endowment that had huge parts chopped out they said it was in the interest of time. Now you could do twice as many endowments in the same amount of time and save even more people. True enough that with more temples and an endowment presented in an evenly timed movie, it moves along at a better pace. There is no sitting in a queue in the terrestrial room for 30 minutes to be called up to go to the veil, or having to take 15 minutes to figure out how to accommodate the 30 couples who enthusiastically come forward to help in the prayer circle. (Imagine big noisy chants of Pay! Lay! Ale! No cult going on here. No sir.)

I was in the mode of trying to convince myself that Mormonism was true, having not been BIC, but from a jack background. I found it upsetting and irrational, but tried to assume some sort of mystery was there that had to be practiced to be understood. (That's exactly what they want you to think, of course.)

Over the years I moved away from it, reverting back to my jack mormon way of thought that probably made it's way into me from my parents. In the last couple of years, the shelf has collapsed and I now realize the temple ceremonies are a total fabrication of a sick mind, that of Joe Smith.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2012 01:29PM by rationalguy.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Min.jpg/300px-Min.jpg

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff171/sirlitebulb/25MinSketch.jpg

Boy was I disappointed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2012 02:09PM by baura.

I asked my mom once if there were golden toilets in the temple. She scolded me for mocking the house of the lord. I was eight years old, so I was completely serious.

Didn't expect the lobby of the Dallas temple to look like a hotel.

I was interested in what I was supposed to learn. People always talked about how they learned something new every time they went. I just learned that the temple was as creepy as I suspected...

My dad claims he did an endowment, and the guy appeared to him in the celestial room and thanked him. Sigh..

I was raised in the church (in the shadow of the Logan Temple) but didn't have any idea of when went on there. I didn't become a TBM until after getting married. My best experiences came in a ward full of professors and grad students, so to me, the gospel had a significant intellectual content. I loved the "casual" nature of Sunday meetings: families together, a lay ministry, untrained speakers speaking from the heart....

So, given all of that, when I went to temple (in 1972) to be sealed to my wife, I expected a deeply spiritual and intellectually satisfying experience. We went through the Provo temple first and then a day later, the Salt Lake Temple to get the full experience of the live presentation.

I didn't expect to see a movie starring Gordon Jump, I didn't expect blood oaths and throat slitting pantomimes, I didn't expect bakers hats and aprons and lastly, I didn't expect that I would be taught that getting into heaven would be alot like getting into a secret club (not unlike the ones you were in as a child) with passwords and secret grips!

I left shaken to the core feeling like I had just witnessed a satire of the "Emperor's New Clothes." But, I put it all "on the shelf and stuck with the church for a few more years. Then the shelf broke and I got out.

Something resembling Christian beliefs...

I expected a nude Adam and Eve in the film. Such a disappointment!