Back when I was 18 I went to visit a dentist. It was after his standard office hours, and he unlocked the door to let me in. He led me to his office. We chatted for a bit, and then he proceeded to tell my fortune give me a Patriarchal Blessing. I recently found my blessing in an old box, and read it for the first time in maybe 20 years.
Mine was very generic, to the point that it could have been given to any young man preparing for a mission (I was to leave in two months to Chile). To the surprise of no one, I am from the “tribe of Ephraim, the son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt.” There is some discussion among biblical scholars if Joseph was really sold into Egypt, along with the whole exodus story. I guess Mormons have put that to bed with the Patriarchal blessing thing.
I was blessed to serve an honorable mission (which I did). I was blessed with the gift of communications. One could say this came true. At my work I was known for my public speaking skills, and even gave lectures on how to give effective presentations. Maybe he was also foreseeing my mad blogging skills!
Then it spoke about my physical body.
Bill, your body is the tabernacle for your spirit, and I bless you to be aware and keep your body clean and wholesome so that you might receive blessings from your Father in Heaven. I bless you to have a physical body that will be whole, and be able to withstand those demands which you put upon it in service of our Heavenly Father.
Unbeknownst to anybody at that time, I was missing a kidney. I was born with only one kidney, and did not find out until I was in my 40s. So much for having a whole body!. (for my dear readers that are worried, my other kidney is twice the normal size, and my doctor said I have no physical limitations, except being a kidney donor!)
Next was the obligatory “great leader” paragraph.
You were foreordained to be a great leader in the church. I bless you to understand this great calling. The Lord will put tremendous responsibility upon your shoulders, for you were one of his choicest sons. Many will come to you for council and direction.
Yes, there was a line outside my office when I was Bishop, so you could say “Many” did come to me for council.
I was blessed to reach the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom, but with a caveat. “if you remain obedient”. Also that I would take a “lovely companion to that sacred house of the Lord”.
I was told that I “made promises to many people in the pre-existence”, and I was blessed to seek after my dead ancestors. This was during the “Saturday’s Warrior” kick in the Church, and a live production from Utah had just come through our town.
Again as if it wasn’t clear, the final paragraph said:
Know that all blessings which you receive, as well as this blessing, are predicated upon your obedience and faithfulness to those commandments and covenants you have taken upon yourself. I seal this blessing upon you, to come forth in the first resurrection of the just, to enjoy glory and immortality and eternal life.
So there you have the highlights. There was many more generic blessings about prayer, education, standing up to the adversary, and finding joy in this life.
I am not worried about somebody in the Church figuring out who I am from my blessing. I figured if they ran a reverse word search on my blessing, they might come up with 2000-3000 blessings with these exact words. If they narrowed it down as given by a dentist, that might reduce it to 300-400 blessing. Mormons love going into dentistry.
One of my daughters got hers a within a few months of her then boyfriend from the same patriarch, and although they were counseled against it, they shared theirs with each other. They were surprised at how much alike the blessings were! Could that be the reason for the counsel against sharing?
So what is your experience with getting a Patriarchal Blessing for yourself or your children? Any surprises?
Wheat & Tares 
I think the principle in D&C 42:43-44 applies to all priesthood blessings, including patriarchal blessings. I think all blessings are the voice of the people assembled, with the priesthood holder given the task of pronouncing the blessing on behalf of the assembly, for the benefit of the receiving saint, and in the name of the Lord.
I do not believe it is necessary for persons giving blessings to channel, so to speak, the mind of God, or to divine the future. Please read D&C 42:43-44. Rather, I see all blessings as exercises in faith.
Patriarchs are selected at least in part because they fit a social pattern that we expect. I think they are generally good men.
After the recent U.S. bombing of Iran, I heard my stake patriarch’s conversation with another member before sacrament meeting wherein he celebrated the U.S. Air Force’s technical and patriotic ability to deliver death to infidels (my words expressing his gleeful sentiment, as I do not recall his exact words). To me, his expression was unseemly for a patriarch, but I remember that a patriarch is still a man, and I still sustain that man as a patriarch.
So in short, and speaking generally, I see patriarchal blessings.(and all priesthood blessings) as words of men, generally good men, speaking aspirationally and in faith, rather than as prophecy or channelling the Lord. That said, I allow that prophecy can occur, but I suppose this is rare. I am mindful that my opinion on this matter may differ from that of other saints, and I am okay with this diversity of thought.
Mine contained things that the patriarch had no reason to know about me, as I had never met him before, and I’ve never spoken to him since. It’s a very powerful part of my testimony.
My youngest daughter has an unusually sharp intellect. She received her PB at age 15 — just as she was leaving home to start college on a full academic scholarship in a STEM field. She would be living away from home for the first time in her life.
She was never an easy fit in the Young Women’s program. She was taking physics by age 12 and her interests from young childhood were always extremely different from the other girls.
A few years later, many of those YW were in dance or cheer. She is interning in a biomedical engineering lab. There is nothing wrong with either path — but those paths are different. None of them had figured out how to bridge the conversation and inclusion gap when interacting with others who are very different from themselves. My daughter was especially awkward in that regard.
As a parent, I expected the PB to reflect the trajectory that my daughter’s life was on. Nope. Her PB was extremely generic. It told her to focus on church, serving a mission, marrying a righteous LDS man in the temple and raising a family.
The Stake Patriarch was especially old, was released a month later and soon placed in a Memory Care facility.
When I think about that PB experience, I find myself angry on behalf of my daughter. The PB felt manipulative.
FWIW, she is half way through a PhD in a STEM field, is commercially published in the game hobby she enjoys and living her own best life.
My patr
My PB was a huge letdown. I was a convert and was getting it prior to being sealed to my husband. The patriarch asked me why I wanted from my life and then blessed me with those exact things. I felt absolutely no inspiration from him and have never considered it important in my life. My husband got his blessing at the age of eight and had a very positive experience…….everything that was said seemed totally inspired. So……is the PB patriarch roulette…….
I completely lost faith in PBs after learning that Patriarchs prior to 1978 blessed black people as belonging to the lineage of Cain!!! (See the article written by Matt Harris).
I no longer believe in any kind of special lineage- neither especially blessed or cursed.
I can’t begin to elaborate on all the wrong and demeaning ways this concept is abused!
The PB is not what we were told. I received mine at 16 y/o from the patriarch, who lived in my ward and he knew me superficially. He stated all the vague frequent statements, but it had a heavy emphasis in future church leadership. I was a “leader” as a youth and in my career in the subsequent years. However, I never progressed past mission district leader or Elder Q. President. When I was TBM, I would re-read my PB and wonder why I was not “progressing” in leadership. Finally, I realized that I was too outspoken and too non-conformist for the Mission/Stake decision makers, and not “promoted”. It took years to finally recognize that the PB had nothing to do with God or the spirit of revelation.
My wife’s PB is a 95% exact copycat of each of her sisters PB, who had a same patriarch. They have considered each getting another one, but it was declined when discussed with SP.
On one of the LDS apologist’s website it states, “Acknowledging ambiguity is an act of humility that prepares us to learn more.” also, “If we attempt to fix the meaning of the blessing narrowly onto a specific detail in our own understanding, then we close our minds and hearts to so much more that God can reveal to us.” In other words, the church narrative always wins, and if your PB does not workout, the recipient was not worthy or obedient to the conditions of the PB.
Another of my TBM family member’s PB states they are of the tribe of Judah. We have zero Jewish heritage or blood DNA. However, they now think they are Jewish and have adopted many of the customs with Seder dinners and being combo LDS/Jewish.
The power of the PB is immense. It can be positive to assist youth/adults to give life some direction. However, it can be manipulative and damaging with people making vital life decisions on this piece of paper. In the end, pulling back the curtain and seeing the Wizard of Oz pulling the levers. The history is interesting. Joseph Smith’s own PB was not fulfilled with errors of “subdue his enemies, enjoy his posterity to the latest generation, and “stand on the earth” to witness the Second Coming”. Also the patriarchs were paid $1-2, until 1902 and obtained a comfortable living.
With the current younger generation and social media I can not imagine how they are not sharing more details, and the LDS church can no longer keep the genie in the bottle and the current youth scoff at the idea. Jesus Christ and the apostles never received or gave PB’s. Myself included, how did we not realize that BP have zero to do with “the gospel of Jesus Christ”, and was another idea hijacked for the church’s control of its’ members.
I got mine at 23, because with inactive parents, it was never even offered until I was married and away from my dysfunctional ward that assumed the worst possible of my mother and ignored the known abuse of my father. It felt more like a curse than a blessing, but then the patriarch did no know my father was abusive, so saying standard things about honoring and serving him in his old age felt like absolving him of all guilt and dumping on me all the responsibility of undoing damage he caused to my family. I tried not to make it happen. The only thing said that was something I would actually want was impossible married to a career military husband and that was obvious at the time of the blessing. So, my vote is zero inspiration and wild guesses and standard phrases.
My blessing was long and detailed and full of specific blessings. I took that as a sign that I was known individually by Heavenly Father and destined for greatness. It said I would be successful beyond my dreams. Interestingly and ironically it said I’d have to decide between earthly success and eternal life. I guess I made my choice – I left the church and am more financially successful than I ever was before that.
This didn’t occur to me until well into my 40s, but what a thing to tell an optimistic, hard working, and promising teenager!
I have never heard of someone receiving a PB at 8! I was 14 and was considered young.
My PB said I would learn a language on my mission, get married, and have kids. Check, check, check. Mine also said I would have loads of callings but since I play the piano those loads of callings were scope limited.
My blessing did not mention that one day as a result of learning church history and getting fed up with my faith traditions treatment of the marginalized that I would choose to leave. Details.
My MIL got her blessing while at BYU and her roommates was the exact same as hers so she got approved to get a new one. Not sure it changed anything for her in that regard.
Boy does this OP bring up conflicting feelings. PB’s and father’s blessings were a big deal in my family. I felt it was a weighty thing to go in for a PB and didn’t go in until my senior year of high school. At the time, I was really struggling with feelings of unworthiness for what in hindsight were very minor things. I was also trying to figure where to go to college and what to study.
During the blessing, I really felt a pouring out of God’s love for me, so my PB felt like a really meaningful experience. And because of some of the things said, I felt like the patriarch knew things about me that even I hadn’t been able to articulate about myself. I subsequently read the PBs of some of my friends and siblings, a number of them from the same patriarch and they were quite different, so he wasn’t just phoning it in like many do. I did see some PB from other stakes and they were definitely generic and quite identical to those given to other individuals, but for a very long time, I felt like my patriarch was different and that he was really directly inspired.
So of course as I got older and the time came to leave the comforts of the LDS church, my original interpretation of this experience was one of the hardest things to let go of. I suppose that one way to reconstruct this experience is to simply say that flashes of inspiration can come from any source and it’s possible that God just used this man to say somethings to me that I needed to hear, but at the time there was no other way for me to hear them. And he was a sincere and humble man, so he was able to be a voice for God to me in that moment. Or maybe it was all just rubbish. But even now I can’t completely let go of that feeling that my PB experience did have some real inspiration from God, even though I doubt that in general any leader in the LDS church has any more insight or authority from God than any other church or person. I think that whatever moral authority a person has simply comes from their own connection to God and is completely independent of any institution. And I doubt that any person has any real insight into what a person’s future holds. But I do think a perceptive person can identify a person’s strengths and can definitely convey the love that God holds for that person in a meaningful, non-generic way which can be of value.
Mixed feelings about PBs. I was told that my abusive father was promised in his that he’d never be hurt in a car accident. He seemed to take this as license to drive like a crazy person, so it was a surprise that he made it to his 70s before getting in a major car accident. Is it bad to say that it was a bit faith-promoting to me (under the logic that the blessing of protection was contingent on righteousness, so it was like the Lord was finally confirming he wasn’t worthy of the protection)? But then, this conflicts with what I’ve heard from older siblings’ PBs declaring them as “having been born of goodly parents.” Since one of those “goodly parents” threw me down the stairs, hit us with 2×4 boards, and dragged us around by the hair — and the other “goodly parent” let him — that caused some cognitive dissonance in me.
My PB gave me a lot of comfort at the time. I was a homely, extremely shy 18YO, so the generic promise of marriage and kids was everything to me. Interestingly, the patriarch’s wording was “[your future husband] will choose you….” So my ears perked up when my future husband randomly said the words “I choose you,” when we were dating. It may or may not have influenced my decision to marry him. But the promise of a posterity who would “give [me] joy all the days of [my] life,” that just wasn’t true, at least not literally; there were plenty of days in their younger years where there was 0 joy.
My oldest “posterity” just got his, and I was blindsighted by how similar his is to mine, not just about the standard marriage and kids. He’s not happy with its generic-ness.
My sister’s has some very specific stuff about marriage and kids, and she is still single nearing her 50s and unlikely to marry, much less have children. I don’t consider her a particularly kind person, but I wouldn’t say she’s unrighteous. Just socially unskilled and clinically obese.
My husband’s was given him by a new convert in a country where the gospel was new and little was understood about what a PB “should” be. It is just a short bit of generic counsel about generic things, could’ve been a sermon to a large congregation and been just as applicable.
So, all in all a mixed bag. I want to believe, but the samples in my personal life don’t always facilitate that.
My blessing is quite prophetic. It mentions things that have become clear to me over time–things that I didn’t understand about myself or my life at the time I received it (aged 16).
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Bill, your doctor gave you a clean bill of health–in spite of having only one kidney–so that’s something, IMO.
In the 55+/- years since I received my PB (as a student at BYU), all I can say is “well, that didn’t go as planned…” Unfortunately, I beat myself up for this discrepancy most of my adult life, assuming that I somehow had lived unrighteously because my life and my blessing didn’t line up. The majority of the details in the blessing applied to my life as a student at the time; once that time had passed, it was too late for a do-over to trigger the cascading blessings contingent on those early years. In all, I find the blessing does not resonate with my spirit.
Do we have any stake patriarchs reading this thread? I cannot imagine the challenges inherent in doing this, knowing that what I uttered could deeply affect people for life, and not always for the better.
One enormous kidney, Bishop Bill? My sister has 4 teeny tiny ones. She discovered that when she had urinary tract infection after infection, the plumbing to her kidneys also being teeny tiny and easily blocked.
For years and years she had requests to donate kidneys. But she thought that, being only marginally functional she probably needed them all in the end.
I’ve come to believe that the revelatory process from God to humans, no matter who it is, is very murky and fallible. And yet, my own blessing has a couple of remarkably specific and ultimately accurate details that I don’t know how to explain. There’s plenty else in there that’s pretty generic and predictable, of course. In my young adult years when I was trying to figure out what I was doing with my life, it was helpful to me, but I’ve not read it in a long time now. Overall, it was a positive for me, but I’m well aware of some of the negative experiences that others have had.
The patriarch where I live now once gave a talk in which he said the whole point of the blessing was the declaration of lineage, that it’s the only part that really matters. That seems like an implicit admission that he feels his own fallibility when it comes to giving really specific guidance, which I actually appreciate. It’s the patriarchs that have 100% confidence in what they are saying that worry me. But if we’re going to admit this is fallible, I don’t really understand why we’re still doing this. We can teach the kids in seminary that we believe all who accept the gospel to be spiritually descended from the Abrahamic covenant; why must we add the laying on of hands to teach this particular point? It’s not meant to be an ordination, nor is it considered mandatory for salvation.
To me, from my current perspective on the church, this all seems like a tradition that arose from Joseph Smith’s belief that one’s lineage had some kind of important spiritual significance. That idea pervades the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Abraham in particular. Brigham Young took the same idea and used it to exclude a whole group of people from the priesthood based on claims about their ancestry. These ideas should be let go once and for all, and by extension, I think it’s time to relegate the practice of patriarchal blessings to the past.
My stepson was called on a mission to Honduras. He decided to get his PB before he left. We accompanied him and spoke with the Patriarch before he gave him his blessing. We told him of his call to Honduras. After that, the Patriarch kept referring to the people he was going to work with as Mexicans. We said they were very different countries. Hondurans had different foods, culture, politics, and issues. He never quit calling them Mexican, saying they were all Mexican for him if they came from those areas. I don’t remember what he said to my son. We’ve never talked about it, but there was nothing remarkable either.
Look time lurker, first time poster 🙂
I was in the unique position of having my patriarchal blessing twice. I got it when I was 17 at the home of a very old man & his sweet wife. After my parents and I got home, they called to say the recorder had not worked, and could I please come back and let them do it again?
I don’t remember much (and I do not have a copy anymore), but I do remember that much of it talked about how I would spend my life supporting my husband and his career. Even to teenage me who still believed everything I was learning in YW, that felt like a gut punch.
Now as a 40-something former Mormon I laugh at it. I am an accomplished executive in the tech space and the last thing my equally successful husband needs is me lifting him up professionally.
Look time lurker, first time poster 🙂
I was in the unique position of having my patriarchal blessing twice. I got it when I was 17 at the home of a very old man & his sweet wife. After my parents and I got home, they called to say the recorder had not worked, and could I please come back and let them do it again?
I don’t remember much (and I do not have a copy anymore), but I do remember that much of it talked about how I would spend my life supporting my husband and his career. Even to teenage me who still believed everything I was learning in YW, that felt like a gut punch.
Now as a 40-something former Mormon I laugh at it. I am an accomplished executive in the tech space and the last thing my equally successful husband needs is me lifting him up professionally.
I had my patriarchal blessing when I was 14, and it was deeply meaningful to me at that time, and later when I met my spouse in the way described in my blessing. I felt that God connected with my under confident 14 year old soul, and reassured me that I would do all the things I didn’t think I could do to conform with LDS culture (such as marry and have children). I read it daily for many many years.
I always saw it with some nuance. My father’s patriarchal blessing promised he would be the father of many sons, but he had only daughters. On the other hand, I had the sons. My blessing was different and more detailed and lengthy than my sisters’ blessings.
Unfortunately, this same patriarch gave a PB to an older, convert, family friend of mine when I nearly 30. It had been a special spiritual experience for my family to attend the temple sealing of our good friends who had been a part member family we befriended in my youth. The patriarch told my friend that he had been forgiven for worshipping Satan and doing Satanic rituals. My friend was devastated by these comments because he had never done any of that. What an awful thing to say to anyone! I have to imagine the patriarch was descending into dementia. This was highly harmful to my friend’s testimony, and to everyone he told about it.
Because of this experience I couldn’t recommend a patriarchal blessing to my children. Perhaps in the end this was good as my children have found it better to leave the church. As we have a transgender family member, this may be the right decision for them.
I received my PB during my senior year in HS. My grandfather was a patriarch and my mom transcribed and typed up the blessings, so I had an idea of what a PB entailed. It was for that reason that I chose to have the stake patriarch give me my blessing rather than Gramps because I wanted to see if the blessing was any different than the standard things that Gramps said because the patriarch didn’t know me at all. I’m glad that I did.
Surprisingly (because I’m out of the church) the vast majority of the blessing was spot on. In several places I was told that because of my good example others would feel loved, especially those who lacked loving parents or other people in their lives. I taught 5th grade at a school lovingly referred to as “Gang Banger and Abused Children” Elementary School where I was on a first name basis with the local police department, the juvenile court judges and parole officers, the child welfare system, the school district’s behavior disorders unit and the Primary Children’s Hospital psychiatric unit by the end of my first year of teaching. While about 1/3 of the school population lived in “normal circumstances” the other 2/3 of my students lived in deprivation and often depravity. So many of my students had no loving, responsible parent, relative or guardian in their life, and I felt strongly that I needed to be the normal, caring adult in their life. Later, after leaving elementary school teaching behind I had become a full time freelance musician/teacher I had the opportunity to teach music classes at BYU and Utah Valley University. I once again stepped into the role of being a person who cared for the welfare of my students. So many of my students, especially at BYU, had unpleasant relationships with their parents or just needed an older adult to listen to them. Perhaps I would already have been that person, but my PB was an excellent reminder to love the people around me and to be there for them. I’m blessed to still be in contact with many of my former students.
On the other hand, my PB told me how much my parents loved me. I never doubted my father’s love. My relationship with my mother was fraught from the time I was born because I was very independent, thought for myself and refused to be her idea of “the Perfect Mormon Female”. Nothing I did went according to her plans, and I was constantly aware of her disappointment in me. She cut off all contact with me for the last 8 months of her life because she somehow heard that I’d left the church.
My blessing told me that I would enjoy perfect health which I haven’t had since age 21 courtesy of being thrown partway through a windshield in a car accident during a blizzard when I was pronounced dead at the scene but later literally resurrected in the ER shocking the doctors so much that they forgot to X-ray my body, and thus I began to live in constant pain. It wasn’t until years later that I finally found a doctor who took my pain seriously and after much testing and imaging I discovered that I had broken several vertebrae in my neck and spine, broken several ribs, torn some muscles nearly off the bone etc. I also found out that my genetic legacy from both of my parents gifted me with depression, a very aggressive and unusual form of osteoarthritis that has caused 5 joint replacement surgeries plus a variety of spinal deformities and other problems.
The one sentence from my blessing that still gives me cause to think is “If you forget the Lord your blessings will cease.” It wasn’t until after I had left the church that I realized just how transactional that sentence is. As a parent I would never do that to my own sons and DIL, so why would loving Heavenly Parents cease to love me because I forgot them for a period of time? Even when I was “in” that sentence bothered me. After a very traumatic experience with my bishop my first year at BYU I gave up on religion altogether and drifted between agnosticism and atheism until the car accident my senior year. Looking back at that time I realize that my Heavenly Parents were loving and blessing me in myriad ways regardless of whether or not I believed in them. So no, that whole idea is just wrong.
My favorite “I will believe my PB is inspired no matter what” story was told at a testimony meeting. A woman said that her PB promised that she would have good health so long as she lived the Word of Wisdom and, “except for cancer and diabetes, that promise has been fulfilled.” That’s a really big “except” but she was totally sincere about her testimony of her good health.
I got my PB at about age 16. I fasted and prayed for an answer to four specific questions. I don’t remember what the questions were. My PB answered none of them. I tried to wring meaning out of my PB for many years. I had a couple of good experiences with guidance. I had some devastating things that caused me a lot of pain. Mostly, trying to find it meaningful and inspired was a waste of time. Yeah, mixed bag, don’t need it.
My children don’t even know what a patriarchal blessing is, so there’s that issue settled. No more blessings.
I got my PB at 21, having somehow managed to put it off from the typical late teen target age. I did it entirely on my own volition, without my parents knowledge, because I knew they would try to hijack it and make it about themselves, which they often did for spiritual milestone events before and since. I was a serious student, but somewhat rudderless about life beyond college, and was genuinely looking for guidance. I wanted to get it from a patriarch who I had never met, who knew nothing of me or my family, as kind of a “test” to see if his pronouncements were truly inspired. I had grown up with stories of all kinds of miraculous foretellings in PBs, so I wanted mine.
On the day, it was just me and the patriarch, a kind grandfatherly type. He and I had a nice long conversation, during which he gave me friendly advice and was very genuine and authentic, and not overly spiritual. By contrast, the blessing itself was rather performative and inauthentic. The declaration of lineage was kind of just hastily inserted into a larger stream-of-consciousness narrative, as if it wasn’t that important (and it didn’t matter to me much then, even less so now). The overall content of the blessing was encouraging and well-intended, and came with some specific pieces of advice, but it could have been applicable to just about any faithful LDS young adult. Absolutely nothing about a mission, marriage, children, career or future church callings, which disappointed me since those were exactly the things I was hoping to learn more about. I spent years afterward studying the blessing line by line, desperately trying to find meaning in it that just wasn’t there.
Many years later, my mom was doing genealogical research and unearthed copies of patriarchal blessings from some of our ancestors. Some of the historical PBs (late 1800s) contained bizarre pronouncements, like unambiguously promising the recipient that they would live long enough to see Jesus return to earth in the flesh. And interestingly, my grandfather, who grew up in depression-era Utah and was a bishop in the 1960s, never received a patriarchal blessing, even though everyone else in his life had, including my adult convert grandmother at some point after they were married. I wonder if he was a nuanced/PIMO in his day, as it tracks with what I remember of his personality, and he had a great career as a respected scientist. Maybe deep down he knew PBs were just made up nonsense.
I am kind of surprised that the main sources that focus on making the Church look bad don’t seem to bring up patriarcal blessings very much. I mean, the blessing part isn’t really much different than other Mormon priesthood blessings. The declaration of lineage, however, is really, really weird (and, in my opinion, really, really nonsensical).
In fact, that’s probably the fastest route to eliminating this archaic practice. If Church critics were to start focusing on and bringing more attention to the ridiculous–and useless–declaration of lineage in a patriarchal blessing, the Church might quickly abandon the practice to avoid the bad publicity. 99+% of members are declared to be either in Ephraim or Manasseh, who, as I understand it, have pretty much exactly the same roles/responsibilities, so even if a patriarch could discern tribal membership (he can’t, and these tribes don’t exist any longer anyway), Church members really don’t do anything differently after learning which tribe they belong to. Bring on the TikTok and YouTube videos exposing this strange practice, and watch how quickly the Church abandons it (my bet is it wouldn’t take all that long).
My guess is that the vast majority of active Latter-day Saints believe their patriarchal blessings to be inspired even though there may be one or two things that don’t line up perfectly with their lives. As I stated above: my blessing is quite prophetic–so much so that I can’t deny that it’s inspired. But that’s not to say that it lines up with my life perfectly. There are still one or two things that have yet to be fulfilled–but I remain open to how that might come about because of how prescient it has been thus far.
That said, I was a bit disappointed for a time that my blessing didn’t mention anything about my creative side–at least not directly. Music is important to me. I studied composition and theory in college–and over the years I’ve developed a sizable canon of original work. But be that as it may, my blessing is silent on that aspect of my life. Even so, as I’ve gotten older it’s become apparent to me that “some things go without saying” so to speak–and that the elements in the blessing that are spoken of needed to be mentioned as a reminder of their importance. And my life has been all the better because of those sweet reminders–the most important of which has to do with marrying my angelic wife.
My PB was generic and based on information that I have him during my interview with him. I don’t believe this fortune-telling one iota.
Was thinking about this essay and wanted to add a tidbit.
My sister received her PB and it was filled with all kinds of warnings. This sister was an especially beautiful YW. The PB was warning after warning after warning.
Two weeks later, about the time the actual PB showed up in the mail, the Patriarch moved out of his family home and into the home of his side-piece. Apparently, he had been having an affair for over a year. He was excommunicated later that same year.
My sister asked if her PB was considered valid. The official answer was “yes.” The chirch considered his priesthood keys still valid during that time in his life.
I find it weird that church culture declares that the Holy Spirit cannot be in a night club or bar —- while the official church is okay with the PBs being given by an adulterer.
@Jack, you said,”My guess is that the vast majority of active Latter-day Saints believe their patriarchal blessings to be inspired…”. That actually would be a very interesting question for a survey. If such a study were done, I’d like a separate question to probe whether members actually think a patriarch is truly able to discern their Israeli tribal membership.
I do wonder if patriarchal blessings are kind of like temple attendance. Yes, there is a substantial part of members that find meaning in temple worship. However, there is also a large (perhaps a majority) portion of members who really don’t like temple worship at all, but either go anyway or at least say all the right things about the temple in public settings. It could be that, like temple worship, there is a significant portion (majority?) of Church members who question how inspired patriarchal blessings are, why/how Israeli tribal membership is declared, etc. It’s just that, as with temple worship, Mormons simply can’t publicly express their concerns about either of these things if they want to be considered an insider in their local Mormon congregations.
You appear to be channeling your inner Quentin Cook with this statement: “My blessing is quite prophetic–so much so that I can’t deny that it’s inspired”. Compare that with Cook’s statement regarding his knowledge of Christ: “I know the Savior’s voice. I know the Savior’s face.” (https://news-ph.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/elder-cook-reminds-youth-and-ysas-of-their-divine-role). You, like Cook, are making pretty incredible claims withough providing any support for those claims. It sure sounds like Cook is claiming that he has seen Christ with his physical eyes and heard Him with his physical eyes. However, we know this isn’t true because Oaks subsequently publicly told everyone none of the current Q15 has actually seen or heard Christ (https://missedinsunday.com/memes/prophet/never-had-that-experience/).
Even if Cook’s experience is only spiritual, rather than physical, in nature, he’s still making a remarkable claim and providing no support for it whatsoever. Yeah, yeah, it’s too sacred to share. Sure, sure. But, but, but…he’s the one who publicly made the incredible claim in the first place, yet he won’t back it up with any detailed justification for his claim whatsoever. He should either tell his whole story, or not say anything about it at all if it’s really “too sacred to share”.
Likewise, you are claiming that your patriarchal blessing is “prophetic”, and like Cook, you are providing very little (zero?) reason that you believe this. I guess you feel like the part in your patriarchal blessing about your wife is prophetic, but I bet 99% of patriarchal blessings mention getting married in the temple to someone wonderful. Mine does. If that’s all you got, I’m not convinced that your blessing is “prophetic”. What else does your patriarchal blessing say, and what has happened in your life, that makes it so prophetic? Sure, sure, I know, I know, it’s “too sacred to share”. Well, you’re the one who made the claim about how prophetic your PB was in the first place, so if you’re going to make such a claim, I think you should either back it up with some details or stay completely silent on the topic (aren’t you violating God’s will about sharing sacred things by stating how prophetic your blessing is in the first place?).
I think my PB is kind of long? It’s 3 pages, single spaced. It uses a lot of Mormon words and phrases to say very little that is unique to me. It basically tells me to pray, read the scriptures, be a good missionary, get married in the temple, keep the commandments so that I’ll have the Spirit with me, follow spiritual promptings, accept callings–you get the idea. The only 2 things (and they’re related, so maybe it’s just one thing) that is anywhere unique to me and wouldn’t just be applicable to absolutely every single 19-year-old male in the Church are:
1. I’m destined for a lot of leadership, with the strong implication being Church leadership. Well, I’ve served in a bunch of EQ and YM presidencies, but that seems to have fallen short of what my PB says. On the other hand, I have been a leader over fairly large groups of people in my career. Maybe that means Satan has found a way to channel my leadership skills away from the Church and into “the world”?
2. I’m to be a “common judge in Israel”. Yeah, it doesn’t say “bishop”, but I think most Mormons would think that means I will become a bishop. That hasn’t happened, either. Sure, the faithful answer is that my descent into unorthodoxy has blocked this from happening. All I can say is that living in the Mormon Corridor has a few advantages, one of which is there are a lot of eligible men to be bishop, so I’ve thankfully managed to dodge that bullet.
So, yeah, the only 2 things in my PB that aren’t just vanilla things that apply to every single young male in the Church haven’t materialized, and honestly, those 2 things don’t seem very prophetic in the first place.
Is your PB really more prophetic than that? Are you not sharing more details because you know that a 3rd party wouldn’t think that your PB seems that inspired if you were to share more? Quentin Cook says he can’t share more because it’s too sacred, but I think the real reason that he doesn’t share more is because if he did, his experiences wouldn’t actually seem so sacred after all. “Oh, you didn’t actually see Christ’s physical body with your physical eyes, but you feel like you see Christ when you see Church members selflessly serving each other? Well, that’s nice, but that’s also something that everyone else experiences and isn’t particularly supernatural. Why is it that you didn’t feel you could share that again?”
Mountainclimber, thanks for the insight that hadn’t occurred to me before: the phrase “sacred not secret” gets used about things like blessings, temple ordinances, or particular spritual experiences, but maybe what is really going on here is “sacred because secret”. This is likely a feature of human nature that is not unique to any particular religious movement. I do not begrudge any leader of the church their own personal sacred space, but I don’t like how references to it are sometimes weilded in ways that seem more like they are intended to uphold hierarchies rather than celebrate something personally meaningful.
Far be it for me to seek to defend Jack’s posts and point of view… he is perfectly capable of speaking for himself. But I find it gross to say that Jack has to tell you his reasons (even personal reasons) and tell his life story in order to express his point of view. That was uncalled for… and really, really not fair.
I love my blessing and refer to it often. Like others, it admonishes me to keep the basics–and of course it would. The basics are the key to unlocking the atonement. Prayer, scripture study, obedience to commandments, fulfilling callings, temple marriage, temple attendance…. that is the key… that is the great mystery! Why someone would denigrate that as a bug and not a feature of their blessing is beyond me. After all, how often did the Savior teach the basics? How often did He explain his doctrine (faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost)? Should we be disappointed with the repetition? That said, even when there is an apparent recitation of the basics–my guess is that there is an implied emphasis on what YOU need (what I need) based on which basics are brought up an which are not.
Also, I have learned by experience (and no, mountainclimber, I am not going to detail all those experiences here) that the Lord blesses us based on (i) our worthiness and also (ii) the desires of our heart. If someone was blessed to serve in a particular calling (common judge in Israel, for example), but that person did not want the calling, then the calling would not ultimately come. In the end, our father in heaven loves us and wants to give us EVERYTHING, but he will force no one into heaven. In the end, we get what we ultimately want. (See our CFM reading this week in D&C 88, for example.) He honors our agency and choice. I choose faith, not because it is easy for me. I am as nuanced as the next W&T reader, but I choose faith. I choose church activity. I choose temple attendance. Etc.!!
I love my blessing. I do not view it as a prediction of my future as much as I see it as a guide for how I should respond to the decisions, trials and opportunities that I will experience in mortality. I am still in awe and even sometimes confused over certain passages, and certain phrases… but I choose to hold out faithful until I understand it all. I invite all everyone here to pull our their blessing, begin with prayer, and re-read it. You will surely be surprised with what it tells you and how you feel bout yourself. And perhaps more so, what impressions you receive. Discipleship is hard. Again, that is a feature and not a bug.
Just my two cents.
@Jason, I genuinely appreciate your criticism. That’s a reasonable thing to say. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this topic over the last few years. In particular, when, if ever, are people making supernatural claims obligated to provide more details about those claims.
I don’t have a good answer to that question yet. I mean, I’m not certain at all that it’s always wrong to make a supernatural claim without providing all the details. Like I said, I’m still mulling this over. However, there are sometimes cases where I do think that people are obligated to share details of the supernatural claims. Quentin’s comment is pertinent here.
One such case is where people are trying to win an argument, establish power or superiority over others, etc. If a person is utilizing a supernatural claim in order to do this, then I think they should share the details of their supernatural claims with those on the other side of the argument or those they are trying to establish power or superiority over. Why? They should share this information so that the other side of an argument can evaluate whether the supernatural claim has any merit, or those who are trying to establish power or superiority based on a supernatural claim really deserve those things.
Now, I’ll admit up front that determining people’s true motives is fraught, but sometimes it sure seems like you can see them pretty clearly. If I’ve misunderstood, then I apologize.
I really can’t see what good thing comes out of Quentin Cook’s carefully worded, yet plausibly deniable, supernatural claims that he’s made a number of times regarding his spiritual experiences, including those with the Savior. I know others think these claims are wonderful and evidence of his apostleship.
Accidentally hit submit..so here’s the continuation…
I however, have a hard time seeing any motivation for sharing things the way he does other than trying to establish himself as more spiritual than everyone else. Like I said, judging motivation is fraught, but that’s what I see when he does this. If he’s going to make these carefully worded, plausibly deniable claims that he knows how members are going to interpret, then I think he ought to provide more details so that members can judge for themseves whether his claims are valid.
Regarding Jack’s comment, I see in his claim that his PB is “prophetic” an attempt to win an argument. It is an abrupt rebuttal of the other comments made on this post by doubters of PBs. Again, judging motive is fraught, but he does have a established pattern of making such comments on other posts on this blog. He is establishing himself as an authority with by referencing a supernatural event in order to squash the doubters, so I think he ought to share more details if he wants to pursue those tacticts. I may be misjudging in this case, but there’s no doubt he’s done that a number of times in the past on this blog.
While I have a ton of doubt regarding PBs, and I’d personally like to see the practice abandoned, I am totally fine with all the other comments made here, including yours as well as all the others claiming that they feel like their PBs are inspired or contain things the patriarch could not have known. I am fine with those comments, and indeed, I appreciate and learn from those comments, because I don’t sense a motive of trying to establish power or win an argument from those commenters. I would be curious to know more details, and I feel much better about them not providing such details since I don’t think they are trying to gain power over me or win an argument with me by sharing what they have.
In any case, this is a very thought provoking topic for me, one I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I don’t have all the answers, but I currently do feel pretty strongly that there are cases where people really should provide details regarding supernatural claims that they make, and one of those cases is where they are attempting to win an argument or establish themselves as an authority or gain power over others. If I’ve misjudged Jack’s or Quentin Cook’s motives, I apologize.
There’s a phrase in my PB which was actually in my patriarch’s own blessing he received as a boy.
Not a big deal but not really original either, and BTW the BOM is a revelation not a translation (Soares Gen Conf April 2020).