Patriarchal Blessings
Original Air Date: 2023-05-19
This video, Episode 40 of the LDS Discussions series on the Mormon Stories Podcast, features host John Dehlin, Mike from LDS Discussions, and Nemo the Mormon. It serves as the sixth part of a mini-series on revelation, specifically examining the validity, history, and implications of Patriarchal Blessings within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) 1, 2.
Overview and Purpose
A Patriarchal Blessing is described as a personal revelation given to a baptized member by an ordained stake patriarch. It serves two main purposes: declaring the member's lineage in the House of Israel (usually Ephraim or Manasseh) and providing a "roadmap" or personal counsel from the Lord for their life 3, 4. The hosts argue that these blessings, while claimed to be direct revelation from God, function as a mechanism of control and are fraught with historical and modern failures that undermine their divine claims 5, 6.
Historical Failures and the "Second Coming"
The discussion highlights that if these blessings were truly from God, they should be accurate; however, history shows they frequently fail 5.
The "Next Life" Apologetic
The hosts discuss how the Church handles these failed promises today. They analyze a clip from Elder Yamashita (April 2023 General Conference), who states that if a promise is not fulfilled in this life, it will be granted in the next life 11.
Standardization and "Mad Libs"
Contrary to the claim that these are highly personalized revelations, the panel suggests they are formulaic.
Psychological Impact and Harm
A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the emotional toll these blessings take on members.
Scientific and Doctrinal Oddities
The video points out that blessings often canonize incorrect Mormon doctrines.
Conclusion
The episode concludes that Patriarchal Blessings are akin to fortune-telling or cold reading, where vague promises are reinterpreted by believers to fit their lives (confirmation bias) 24, 25. Mike suggests that, like the psychic Miss Cleo, these blessings should essentially carry a "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimer because presenting them as the literal voice of God is unethical and harmful 26. The hosts emphasize that while leaving these beliefs behind can be painful, there is empowerment in reclaiming one's own life and moral compass without the pressure of a "divine roadmap" that often leads to dead ends 27, 28.
To use an analogy suggested by the discussion: Relying on a Patriarchal Blessing is like buying a plane ticket to New York, landing in Boston, and being told by the airline, "Don't worry, the next flight—which leaves after you die—will definitely get you to New York." 12.
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hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast LDS discussions Edition I am one of your hosts for today John delin it's April 20th 2023 that's when we're recording and we are uh here today to talk about patriarchal blessings as part of the LDS discussion series uh th those of you who are listening are probably well aware by now that the LDS discussion series is all about uh our attempt to create a you know 50 60 episode series where we try to discuss the evidence for Mormon church truth claims from an as objective as a lens and uh as a format and as a discussion as we possibly can we're trying to just uh Target this for people trying to learn the truth and discover the truth about the Mormon church and its truth claims so that they can make informed decisions uh under the under the principles of informed consent so that's the spirit of LDS discussions some weeks we probably do better job than others at uh neutrality but today we're we're we're at part six in a minseries within the series on Revelation and personal revelation Etc and that's what we're going to be covering today um and with us uh for the LDS discussion series is Mike from the LDS discussions uh.com website hey Mike hey everybody how's it going it's good to see you Mike good to to be back tackling the final part absolutely and we have Nemo from Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel hey Nemo hey hey got a bit spicy last week I'll I'll rain it in this [Laughter] week well I'm I'm honored to have you both and for those who uh are just brand new will just remind you that this is uh part 40 in uh the series and we really do believe that you'll be best served uh to go back to part one of the LDS discussion series and watch them in order because these episodes build on each other you can access the LDS discussions uh feed in numerous ways there is a playlist on the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel where we've got them all listed uh sequentially you can also go to Spotify there's an LDS discussions uh podcast that's dedicated there in both video and audio and of course your Apple podcast app and uh whever else you get your podcast you should be able to find an LDS discussions dedicated podcast episode and these episodes are woven into the Mormon stories podcast feed as well um but uh yeah and and of course I've already mentioned that Mike has written 50 plus 60 100 essays on Mormon church truth claims and they can be found at ldsd discussions. all right Mike how should we begin today we can just jump right into this one um we've done five earlier episodes on Revelations and we've kind of covered um how Joseph Smith backdated Revelations and prophecies Into the Book of Mormon into some of his own Revelations um we talked about in the first episode then we talked about um Joseph Smith's problematic Revelations his failed Revelations what motivations he might have had for using Revelations as a vehicle to get um the early members to do the things he needed them to do uh we talked about revelations in the church since Smith all the way up till today um and then we talked about personal revelation so now we're on patriarchal blessings which in a lot of ways kind of encompasses a few of those because this is a um a thing that most members of the church get um where it's a considered a revelation from God that is personal to you so it kind of has a little feel of personal revelation and it also has a feel of Revelation within the church itself so it's a really important topic that I know is talked about sometimes but to dedicate an episode I think is important because Pat iCal blessing still in 2023 have some degree of impact on every life of the member who gets it um based on how seriously they take it and the church wants you to take it very seriously which will cover because just this year just this past you know few weeks ago at General Conference they were emphasizing how important patriarchal blessings are so we want to go over um what they are how accurate they've been and the implications um that come with getting one from the church all right well let's just jump into the first slide then and then Nemo and I and maybe you Mike will talk about briefly our own uh experiences with patriarchal blessings but give us the introduction yeah and so um for those who are not aware patriarchal blessings are given to members of the church um by Church Patriarchs and each one of them is going to include Revelation from God um that is given to the Patriarchs that gets given to you so they're kind of like the Patriarchs are almost like a middleman here um and they give you what lineage you're from what tribe of Israel you're from um along with Revelations about the life ahead of you and so this is from um the church's own Gospel topics manual um on patriarchal blessings and it says every worthy baptized member is entitled to and should receive a patriarchal blessing which provides inspired direction from the Lord patriarchal blessings include a declaration of a person's lineage in the house of Israel and contain personal counsel from the Lord as a person studies his or her P patriarchal blessing and follows the counsel it contains it will provide guidance comfort and protection and you know just for me the key phrase in there is that you will receive personal counsel from the Lord because the church is not mincing words they not trying to pull their punches these blessings are considered direct Revelation to you from God through the men that the church has called us Patriarchs and so um this is an area that's going to become incredibly problematic because throughout the church's history these blessings have been riddled with a lot of failed prophecies and a lot of problematic um language and this is a very good indication that these personal Revelations that are given through these Patriarchs do not actually exist within the church with regard to being able to say they come directly from God because of these issues just as we've talked about with the problems with with Joseph Smith's Revelations as well when you can look at historical backgrounds as well as to see if the earlier Revelations are being fulfilled we are again seeing that no they're they're not being fulfilled and they're failing in a lot of key ways yeah and since people are going to find this just through SEO not even tied to the LDS discussion series I'll just give a little bit of background on how I remember my patriarchal blessing and Nemo you can share as well and Mike Mike did you get a patriarchal blessing even though you were a convert I didn't actually what's funny is my wife my my well my so my wife got hers before um before I joined and so after I joined no one ever mentioned it and so it's one of those things where I just kind of I I I just it never came up everyone had already gotten this that's why you fell away Mike you didn't have the iron Rod to help I wish I wish I had gotten it because I would love to look at it now through the lens of you know having that experience and seeing how did it compare how did it hold up but yeah I never got one no worries yeah so for me this is the way I experienced it you know you learn about pigo blessings growing up and then when you're around 12 or 13 they start talking about it and saying hey when you feel ready it's kind of a right of passage in in Mormonism kind of like uh first communion or kin Siera in the Catholic Church you you basically it's usually in your teen years uh you want to be kind of worthy you want to kind of be ready for it but uh the way it works is you you go to your bishop and you say hey I think I'm ready for my patriarchal blessing he gives you an interview make sure you're worthy and then what you do is you know like you mentioned Mike uh there's a you know usually a a um a 60 70 80-year-old man in your stake which is like a dicese where his dead dedicated calling you know is to be what's called a stake patriarch and literally his job is to give these patriarchal blessings to all the members of his stake during the time he is a stake patriarch and so that just means that a lot of 14 15 16 17 18 year olds end up uh you know coming over to his house they're usually encouraged to have a very spiritual home a home that feels sacred and you show up at a dedicated time he may interview you a little bit first uh before you get uh your patriarchal blessing I think you're supposed to kind of go into your patriarchal blessing having fasted having prayed um wanting to make sure the spirit's there and uh you know when you get your blessing like you said Mike you're told what lineage you're from which people are like what does that mean basically Mormons believe that everyone's either in one of the tribes the 12 tribes of Israel bloodwise or they're spiritually adopted into one of the 12 tribes of Israel so it's most common within Mormonism for whatever reason I'm sure there's a scriptural historical basis for this for white Mormons uh to be declared of the lineage of Ephraim um and uh and then often times people of color are have been his historically assigned to the tribe of Manasseh and then occasionally a Jewish person if if they have a Jewish Heritage they might be declared the tribe of Judah I don't know that I've ever heard of anyone being declared of any other lineage than than Ephraim Manasseh or or Judah you guys can correct me on that I knew some people who were in Dan for example okay were they people maybe whose dads were Bishops or something like that or no they just like and and these people thinking about them people in their family had different lineages and I guess siblings had different houses right right and I guess I guess the idea what is that there there were 10 tribes of Israel carried off to the north those are the last 10 tribes so we don't know where those are but the two tribes that remained behind in southern Judea or Southern Israel were Ephraim and Manasseh does that sound right Nemo yeah that's that's that sounds about right to me okay yeah but but really what it is is you you you get your blessing the patriarch puts his hands on your head um and uh he records the blessing on a tape recorder or on a digital recorder and he he basically you know says your name says heavenly father I declare you know this is your patriarchal blessing I I declare your lineage and then he goes on to talk to you as if he is speaking in the voice of heavenly father and he'll tell you things like you'll serve a mission for the church you will baptize thousands of people or you'll be married in the temple and you'll serve in big callings in the church and um you'll have lots of children and a righteous posterity and and uh you know o obviously there are there are frequently coincidentally or not coincidentally lots of Prophecy IES in the patriarchal blessing that the church would would want you to have if you were to sort of separate this whole discussion from just what the church would want what does the church want they want everyone to be be faithful growing up they want everyone to serve a mission they want everyone to get married in the temple they want everyone to have lots of kids they want everyone to serve in the church and they want everyone to stay faithful until the end and lo and behold almost everyone's patriarchal blessing pretty much mentions all those things along with potentially other creative things uh as well um and uh some of the more creative things that I've heard I've heard people promis that they would be one of the two prophets to die in the streets of Jerusalem in the last days I've heard people you know told that they will serve in the highest uh levels of leadership with the church in the church making people think that they'll be an apostle or a member of the you know Church auxiliaries someday the the top levels of leadership um sometimes people are told they'll get married but um you know that sometimes people don't get married or sometimes they're told they'll have kids but sometimes they don't have kids or they're infertile or they experience infertility or they're told they'll serve a mission but then they don't uh for whatever reason and so this is when kind of the rubber ends up meeting the road the last thing I'll say just really quickly is usually at the end they declare your status for you know what you know what your your station in the afterlife will be if you're faithful um and you know for mine it basically said you will you will arise in the morning of the first resurrection um you know to meet our Lord and savior and basically what it's saying there is you will you will be exalted to the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom which means you'll become a god someday at least that's what it meant for me and so if you're told that you'll be rising in the morning of the first resurrection that's supposed to be a really good sign mine also told me that I should obey the law of Chastity and and and uh you know obey the word of wisdom and that I'll be strengthened and fortified if I do those types of things and then you you usually keep your a copy of your patriarchal blessing in your scriptures in the MTC when I was serving my mission we would laminate our patriarchal blessings and then take them with us on our missions keep them with our scriptures and then read them as if they're scripture for us and you're not supposed to share your patriarchal blessing with other people and I think we're going to get to why that is now Nemo that's kind of my Reflections on my patriarchal blessing anything you want to add is it different in the UK well not particularly I've got my laminated copy here um from my scriptures that I that I went through I've just been reading through some of it while you've been talking John it's quite interesting I'll pull some tibits out like later during but um yeah I was promised some special callings and ordinations and uh and other things like that I was told yeah what my status would be at the second coming of the Lord I was told I'd get married told I'd serve a mission told what sort of career to to choose um but what I do remember is that on that day I was 16 and the patriarch forgot to declare my lineage oh oop so I had to go back to his house so we were driving home and I get a call uh oh I forgot to declare your lineage none of us noticed so we had to go back and then the problem is because everyone's from Ephraim you think oh he's forgot to declare my lineage so it's really underwhelming when he just pops his quick hands on the head and goes yep Ephraim and then off you go again kind of ruins some of the the magic in the mystery for me personally um having him sort of forget that uh but you know you just kind of go along with it because the bit before was a spiritual experience and you know there's parts of my blessing that refer to what the weather was like that day maybe that's a specific British thing we love talking about the weather yeah yeah and that's a really that's a really good point Nemo and and if I've if I've noticed patar blessings being problematic because what's not the love about everything we just said other than the fact that for me just the idea of blood lineages is kind of racist um it may not be racist in the sense that we think of but what's implied is a chosen blood lineage that God has selected what about Asians what about Africans like that's a problem but other than that where I've seen it be a problem is if if instead of your lineage the patriarch forgets to mention that you're going to get married or in the temple or forgets to mention you're going to have kids it literally would make a Mormon think oh my gosh I'm not going to get married or oh my gosh I'm not going to have kids and it would it would a simple error in judgment or an Omission would uh could cause a lot of disruption in someone's life we're going to say something yeah I've just looked at where he's declared my lineage and he declared me to be a literal member of the House of Israel um so I was literally in Ephraim uh uh so like not birth but then ancestry DNA disagrees so oh what does that what does ancestry say says I'm 2% Norwegian and then English through and through oh so not Jewish not Jewish okay um the other thing I've noted not and and I I hope I'm not sealing your thunder mic is that uh it turns out that Patriarchs tend to have their own fingerprint for the blessings they give and obviously they they probably come up with some template of the things that they normally say so that they're not having to come up with new original things every single time and also so they don't forget stuff I'm sure so often times you'll read your patrial blessing thinking it's really amazing but then you'll read the blessings uh if if you break the rules and you read the blessings of other people who receive blessings from the same patriarch you'll notice that they're very very very uncannily similar and then you read from patriarch blessings from other Patriarchs and they're very different and you realize that a lot of those similarities are possibly due to them coming from the St patriarch okay so that's my that's my best attempt at kind of summarizing ing it Mike uh let's let's go back to you okay yeah we can go to the next slide okay here we go and so this is one of the um is we do this slide yeah we just did this next okay here we go yeah so this is one of the key things we've been talking about throughout these these overviews which is if patriarchal blessings are truly from God as we are told they are through the the Mormon church then they shouldn't be wrong and um one of the easiest ways to do this is to look at the patriarchal blessings that we have recorded in Joseph Smith's day um they told member after member that they would live to see Jesus Christ return before they died and that of course just never came to pass and so they have 57 known in recorded patriarchal blessings in the 1800s that specifically said that church member would live to see the second coming and 51 of them uh were told that they would see this the last days and so here are a few examples we'll read um of some of the key early members and what was in their patriarchal blessings so there's going to be two prophets in here um Edward Partridge who was one of the I think the First bishop um in 1835 his um patriarchal blessing said the Lord will preserve thy life till a good old age and thou shalt also live to see the heavens opened for thou Hast desired this thing and shalt see the Son of Man In the Flesh didn't happen uh Lorenzo Snow who would be a prophet December 15th 1836 Thou shalt have power to stand in the flesh and see Jesus come in the clouds didn't happen Wilford Woodruff April 13th 1837 Thou shalt stand In the Flesh and see the winding up scene of this generation and that didn't happen and so um these are all from Joseph Smith senior's patriarchal blessings uh book and I think I'm going to cover it in some slides but in the early days Joseph Smith Senor Joseph Smith's father was deemed the church patriarch and so he's giving these Revelations and charging people a dollar to get them and so um in a lot of ways this is kind of a little bit of a money-making um part for um his father who as we've talked about in previous episodes was not a very good businessman and also um had a lot of failed businesses and a lot of other issues and yet he were being told this guy can can receive you know these Visions uh these Revelations from God uh for the low low price of a dollar and as we can see now that what he's giving is completely incorrect can I throw you an apologetic though yeah please do can you pull that slide back up on screen for a second so if you look at the specifics of what was said so you've got for Wolford Woodruff for example Thou shalt stand In the Flesh and see the winding up scene of this generation You could argue that he has been uh resurrected in the morning of the first resurrection and then he's seeing it all kick off the same with Lorenzo Snow he has the power to stand in the flesh because of his resurrection and see Jesus Christ come in the clouds perhaps um do you think there's any wiggle room in there in that language well we'll get to it in a little bit but the wiggle room is going to be that the church today is going to go if it doesn't happen in this life it could happen in the next life which is kind of what I'm saying I guess oh yeah oh yeah I totally get it I think it's it's an apologetic they're going to I just feel like at some point you got to look at that and go really is that really what you're going to say because everything from the church at that point was pointing to the end of the world happening in that generation in that time we talked about that and uh so I mean you could do it I just don't think you could do it and remain kind of intellectually consistent with other issues cool and I'll just say yeah Mike and and I forgot that this was a really big deal as I was a teen growing up asking a lot of questions because not only did you know 57 known people or 51 or whatever were they told in their patriarchal blessings back in the early 1800s that they would would see Jesus like I think multiple patriarchal blessings from every generation between the beginning of the church to my generation that was a teen in the 80s people receiving that in their patriarchal blessings all the time it was just super common to be told in your patriarchal blessing that you would live to see the second coming of Jesus in fact that was probably the biggest thing that I wanted to hear in my patriarchal blessing as a teen was that I you know I was so enraptured by the signs of the times and the second coming of Jesus because after all it is the Church of Jesus Christ of lity saints that I that's the one thing I hoped most other than you know being resurrected in the morning of the first resurrection to be exalted I wanted to think that the second coming would happen during my lifetime and the problem is that that hasn't happened now I remember asking my Seminary teacher about that yet yeah and but I remember asking my Seminary teacher about that and he would say things like well how do you know that Edward Partridge and Lorenzo Snow when they died didn't have kind of an end of life experience where they met Jesus as they were dying as they were being you know as they were U shuffling off the mortal coil or whatever it's called and joining the choir invisible how do we know that they didn't um see Jesus at that moment so for them they did see Jesus it was that sort of apologetic that I heard in addition to you know like you said Nemo maybe they were immediately uh resurrected and we just don't know it so those are the types of ways the church has to kind of um explain failed prophecies right yeah I mean and and again we could look at uh Edward Partridge and his patriarchal blessing and says you're going to live to a good old age he lived to 47 I don't think you could call that a good old age even in that time so I mean that's presentism mic yeah some yeah that's just it it's like sorry being factious no I know you are and but that's the thing like you could keep playing these games like well maybe it didn't happen yet maybe it's going to happen in the next life but at the same time these patriarchal blessings are pretty clear it's going to happen before you die not it's not saying uh you know be it would be amazing if the patriarchal blessing said to Lorenzo Snow you are going to die and then in the second life you're going to see Jesus because you can't prove that one way or the other but they're not they're not even trying to to parse those words we we are now trying to do that for them because we're trying to find a way to make it um plausible uh because of the fact that these patriarchal blessings are very clear and they're getting it wrong right I was told I wouldn't live to see it so there we go I was told I would yeah yeah what happens when a patriarch says you're going to die early or a patriarch says something more severe right you know he said the time will surely come when you'll be caught up to join the host of Heaven as they come down with the Savior when he returns to the Earth like right okay so I'm already going to be up there when it all kicks off so and then when you consider that one of my parents I won't say which one of my parents was told in their patriarchal blessing that they would see the second coming I was like okay great so I'm going to die before one of my parents then yeah because you know I'm going to be up there when it all happens but they're going to live to see it so I had a lot of anxiety um about dying about dying early yeah yeah all right yeah so we could go to the next slide we could kind of look at how we talked about this in our episode about Revelation in the church especially after Joseph Smith but you could see how the Mormon church has watered down patriarchal blessings as well and and this is what happens when you have people being told really crazy stuff like they're going to live to see Jesus or you know like you had mentioned earlier you've got these different promises maybe to be high up in the church or whatever the case might be and so the church is going to come out and basically tell these Patriarchs that you got to calm down and so they even have these directions in their um different handbooks for the Patriarchs and in 2016 um they're telling these these old men you got to stop making these these Grand promises and and the the handbook literally says he the patriarch should avoid Sensational or extravagant promises for example he should not make references to the timing of the second coming and it just is one of those things where you look at that and you go if the Patriarchs of the church are truly receiving Revelation from God for these blessings as we're all led to believe why in the world do they need guidelines from a handbook at all why does the church feel the need to tell the Patriarchs how they have to filter personal counsel from God that they Proclaim patriarchal blessings contain and it's just as we've talked about with Revelation before the only reason the church needs to tell someone not to make references to anything specific is because they know that every time these people have done this in the voice of God before it fails and when it fails it tells that tells us very clearly this is not coming from God but it's coming from these old men and as John had mentioned earlier this is particularly true when you look at how these patriarchal blessings are almost like a boiler plate a boilerplate template um by these Patriarchs which is why they all read very similar with almost like the details swapped out almost like a Mad Lib if you're familiar with those uh where you've got like a template and you're just thrown in nouns and verbs and so now they're you have the church trying to water down patriarchal Blessings by by telling the Patriarchs what they can and cannot say which should not be an issue if they're truly coming from God yeah that's almost in of itself a Smoking Gun challenging the validity of patriarchal blessings if there has to be something in the handbook saying stop making these promises why were they making their promises to begin with and I just have to say this was a thing when I was growing up trying to make sense of all this so I guess it was advantageous for the church to implement this policy but it calls into question the the veracity or the validity of a couple centuries worth of LDS or Mormon patriarchal blessings yeah yeah cu the the over scrupulous teenager can start trying to rip this thing apart word by word and try really hard to work out what exactly it means and what does it mean for my life and you're told to study it and some people can study it to quite extreme lengths yeah yeah absolutely okay all right so what what comes next Mike it's been the next slide and um you know we've talked about this before with other aspects of the church but patriarchal blessings are a mechanism of control over members I talked about this when we talk about the word of wisdom um when you have to wear Church required um underwear when you go through the temple you know you're going to hear and you're going to hear it later in this episode um church leaders are going to tell their members to read the P their patriarchal blessings when they're having times of Doubt or times of trouble and that if they follow the guidelines and the blessing it will will help them get closer to God and in turn the leaders of the church and um I mentioned this at the start of the episode but to some degree every member that gets a patriarchal blessing will have an impact their life to some degree and we all know people who have made life decisions based on their patriarchal blessing whether it's about what job to take you know when to have kids whether to go on a mission when to get married and as we pointed out in the episodes about Joseph Smith Revelations patriarchal blessings ultimately always lead members back to more obedience and loyalty to the church and then the church uses the promises in those blessings to keep the members afraid of leaving and it really is um in my opinion an area where the church is giving you something that they can then use to hold over your head um for the rest of your life because it is basically you're going to get all of these things if you stay with us and it's it's really interesting I don't think anyone's patriarchal blessing has ever said you will you will spend some time away from the church for a season or you know you will you will leave God's flock But ultimately return or any of these things like like which happen to a lot of people or you'll you know you'll marry you'll marry a non-member and they'll never join the church you know it doesn't provide any prophecies that that would actually that be useful and or that would actually come true aside from I guess like what we're saying whatever the church would whatever type of behavior the church would want to encourage yeah and then and then if it does make some sort of dark problematic prediction that's fine if it were somehow divinely inspired but more likely it's like a a bad pastrami sandwich on the part of the patriarch and then they're just like saying whatever off the cuff and it can wreak real havoc in the life of the person who's received the blessing yeah it it it and it does I mean it does and that's the thing like we'll go into it in the next few slides but these things impact people's lives in ways that is intentional these are blessings that are meant to give you a road map to stay on for your life which is ultimately again going to keep you with the church and so it is going to impact your life if you are a member obviously if you leave you're going to leave the patriarchal busting behind with it but I'm just saying like it it will always hover over your head um if you do this then you get this and and I do feel like that has led to people to make bad decisions it's led to people to make decisions they might not otherwise want to make and it's the exact same thing we saw in the episodes of Joseph Smith and Revelation which is when you want me people to do things they don't want to do you give them Commandments and you give them promises in the name of God because it gets people to do things they otherwise would say no to and I just it it bothers me because of the fact that I've seen in my life and I've seen um friends and family who have told me yeah I held on because I was promised this or as we'll get to I was promised this and it didn't happen so I looked and said what did I do wrong why what what do I need to Double Down On In order to get back on track to get those things I'm being promised and when in reality it's just old men who are giving it's almost like a presidential stump speech you're just giving the same thing over and over and you're just changing the details a little bit based on the little bit of info you might have on a member in your uh pre- blessing interview or maybe you know the family already and um you can find a lot of people who have gotten their blessing and they'll say oh yeah my the patriarch was a friend of the family and then their blessing will talk about your righteous family and oh my goodness I think you're going to be a teacher of kids and it's like well yeah because he knew you were going to school to be a teacher it's all of those things where they're not going to tell you um in 30 years you're going to want to change jobs and move to a new state but if do that ultimately it's going to cause you to run into problems with XYZ you don't get spec uh specificity outside of what they already know just like we talked about with Joseph Smith in his Revelations where he cannot give you any information that he doesn't have access to there's nothing specific he or or Russell Nelson today they can't give you a single specific thing they don't already know and you see it in patriarchal blessings over and over again can I just add that um pulling a patri blessing into the broader Mormon context I think it actually points to the underlying sort of transactional nature of Mormonism in that people will say oh well I've been promised this so if I then I will receive you know if I X then I'll will receive y uh and that is fundamental to Mormonism in a way that's slightly unique I would argue because again you have people when they argue about the church's money for example they say well I don't care what happens to my money because I pay tithings so that I get those promised blessings tithing is about receiving those blessings actually no tithing is is really about giving a sacrifice that's what it's about it's not about well if you give that then God will give you the windows of the windows of heaven will be opened and the blessing will be poured out that you shall not have room enough to receive it whatever you know it's not actually about that but in Mormonism there is that transactional uh underlay to basically everything it's if then if I do this then I will receive this yeah and and there's a there's an element of blame reversal that happens when a prophecy in the patriarchal blessing doesn't come true if it comes true then the church is going to claim the credit like see the the patriarch got it right and predicted it if it doesn't come true if you're told that you'll marry in the temple and you don't or you're told that you'll serve a mission and you don't or you're told that you'll have kids and you don't then then we're conditioned to think that maybe it's because we weren't righteous enough and that it's our own moral or spiritual ual failing that led to the prophecy not coming true and in that way uh the house the Mormon House Always Wins and uh that's a problem the only other thing I'll say is something that we've kind of referred to which is it almost seems like just like it's said in in modern times that the Mormon missionary program is more for the missionaries to train and condition them to be lifelong devout members it's more for the missionaries than for the potential converts um I think patriarchal blessings You could argue seem to be more for the strengthening in the and the of the church for the conditioning and the influence over the members than maybe it really is about necessarily the genuine welfare of the members although you know maybe on the flip side there's some value to telling people you're going to be strong you're going to be good you're going to be righteous maybe there's some effect there maybe there's some um you know maybe there's a positive effect to telling people that they're awesome and there's going to be good things that are going to come from their life is that that fair to say Nemo what yeah there's a sense of purpose that comes with it yeah you know some people a a lot of things that some people will report when they have a faith crisis or a trust crisis or they leave the church they'll report that they feel a bit aimless that are not quite sure what to do now because they had the road map they had their life planned out for them until they Di and then even into the next life and now they're like oh okay I'm not sure what to do now so so there is some security those things aren't always healthy that they're going to have you doing until the end of your life but there is some security in knowing that this is the path my life should take yeah in my case I was literally promised that if I obeyed the word of wisdom uh I would have energy and strength and vitality and and live a long time I'm paraphrasing it's been a while since I've read it so I'm 53 to this day I've never tried alcohol um or cigarettes or marijuana partly because uh I just wanted to fulfill my patriarchal blessing and maximize my health and well-being now it's pretty much a fact that alcohol only has a negative impact on your health so the fact that I've avoided alcohol for 53 years uh some would argue is probably a good thing and then in that sense or I'm glad that I married Margie I'm glad that I've had the kids that I've had I guess we're kind of already picking apart patriarchal blessings but we haven't given given enough credit to the fact that maybe these blessings like you say Nemo give a lot of people a sense of meaning and purpose now Mike I know you've got a slide to talk about that so yeah yeah we we'll get to that too I mean it's it's true you know there we do have that balance and and at the early parts of these uh the series was is the church good or is the church I'm so sorry is the church true or is it not true the claims true or false and now we're getting into that um less from a historical standpoint and getting into that gray area of is the church good or not and that is something we have to measure because it's not all good it's not all bad and where you view that is going to come uh based on how you view how the church handles um the areas that are of interest to you like if you are uh if you have a LGBT family member you might look at the church say it's bad because it's marginalizing a family member um but on the flip side like you said if you have someone who reads a patriarchal blessing that says you're going to marry a marry a worthy priesthood holder you're going to have children you were going to hold big callings in the church you're going to pay your tithing you're going to obey the word of wisdom you're going to go on a mission all and and you do all those things and your kids turn out to be pretty good and um you get a good job or your stay at home whatever it is and and things are good you're going to look at that and go because I stayed on this my life is good now I would argue the patriarchal blessing isn't what made your life good but at the same time that is um an arguable defense as you said to say that that there is good that can come from it but um at the same time as we we've talked about there's a lot of harm that comes from it too and so I guess that's where you have to weigh it and say um if you're speaking in the voice of God is it really good to tell people things that aren't really coming from God and and that that's definitely something people have argued about with every religion for a long time right all right let's go to the next slide okay so and this is what we're talking about because in many modern patriarchal blessings you're going to read that these young women you know cuz you a lot of times you get it when you're in your you know late late teens um they they're told they're going to have children and then all of a sudden they find out that they have trouble conceiving children whether it's from them or their spouse they never get married or they get married and get divorced before they have kids or they have tragic miscarriages to where it just doesn't happen and I can tell you from people I've known the amount of pain that this causes women and men in the church to not be able to have children after getting patriarchal blessings telling us that they're going to have kids it it it causes a lot of problems and it it really is um it it just is one of those things where you know you think of Mother's Day and you have people in the stands on Mother's Day and you hear all these talking about the importance of mothers and all of a sudden you're sitting there going my patriarch of blessing said I was going to have a bunch of kids and I don't have them and I I just I feel like that is um a lot of of pain that has caused on them because these patrial blessings are making promises that they have no ability to fulfill and um it's one of the things I talked about early on that in the Mormon Church Revelation and prophecy only really can be fulfilled when they have complete control over the situation and in patriarchal blessings they're giving you a road map except they have no ability to control what they're telling you and so it just really feels like um it can lead to a lot of pain a lot of confusion um a lot of harm and and as I said earlier it really feels like we're in a bit of a Mad lip style format um where they just kind of throw out little different customizations based on the you know the little bit they know of the person and that can cause harm because not every person is going to be in that same boat and and as I said it's dishonest it's unethical it's immoral to tell these members of the church that you can see their future that they that you can know what their life is going to be like when you get it wrong time and time again ever since um Joseph Smith Senor was charging people a dollar for what is effectively you know a psychic reading rebranded as Revelation yeah Nemo anything you want to add uh I was just looking at my patriarchal blessings seeing if it mentioned whether I'd have children and and it does uh so you know you've got you've got that where uh I now I was determined then to have children um I don't have any children currently um but you know there's that promise in there and then that can put stress onto a to a marriage um particularly like you said if someone would be infertile uh or have fertility issues yeah yeah okay yeah so now if we go into this next slide it's going to kind of illustrate what I'm trying to to point point out about how this can cause pain and so this is a patriarchal blessing that was given recently and it was someone had posted it and I saw it and I thought this quote was was actually one that kind of illustrates this point and so this is from a a woman's a woman's blessing and it says your father in heaven will send you Choice children that have been reserved to come in this time to your home for you and your Eternal companion to raise them in a home a family home evening family prayer studying the scriptures and attendance to church wherever you are in life always attend church partake of the sacrament and remember the Savior and all that he did for us and you know just to point out again this is given to someone before they're married so imagine that you either never get married or that you get married and you're unable to have kids for whatever reason and and it happens all the time and i' I've been around people who have dealt with this and I cannot tell you how much pain it causes people to see that you're supposed to have Choice children um sent to you and then all of a sudden you can't have them because all of a sudden you you know you're you're you're looking at yourself and go what did I do wrong or or you also have people who will say what is my spouse doing wrong I'm doing everything right yet we can't have kids so is it my spouse that that's messing this up and when you pair um this idea of choice children which I also think is a really arrogant way to say that in the church all of your kids are going to be awesome um with this idea that it has to be paired up with family home evening and all this other stuff you can no longer say that this might take place in the next life unless you really want to pretend that in you know the eternities we're going to be doing family home evening and and all this stuff it this is written to say that in your lifetime in this lifetime you are going to have Choice children sent down and so when it doesn't happen when these blessings fail and they fail all the time as John said it really does put almost a blame reversal where you're blaming yourself because you clearly have to be the reason that this is failing it can't be the fault of a 70-year-old man who's giving the same blessing over and over again it has to be you and I I just I feel like that is so um painful and harmful and I think it's really immoral of the church to continue to do this under the premise that this is coming directly from God I just looked up uh infertility rates and it says in the United States among married women aged 15 to 49 years with no prior births about one in five or 20% are unable to get pregnant after one year of trying also about 1 in four 26% women in this group have diff difficult difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy term it's called impaired facundity and there have been several Mormon stories episodes that convey the the pain and the suffering of many of these couples who experience infertility within a Mormon context and we can't do it justice just by yapping about it you just have to hear these uh mothers and fathers or husbands and wives SOB over how difficult it was to have this expect ation planted by a patriarchal blessing to carry it for years and then to to have a different outcome Nemo is there anything you want to add uh just looking at my patal blessing I'm going to be doing a lot of that this episode uh sorry um but I think it it adds a personal touch you know it tells me that children will be a source of joy and your family will be strong and example to others so what does that do when say one of these children even if you're able to have children then Le the church then you're like oh well I failed then so what did I do wrong so that my family isn't strong and example to others what if my children don't bring me joy if I was a woman I was reading this what if I get postnatal or postpartum depression and then it's like okay well my children aren't bringing me joy so what's wrong with me um it at many turns normal ordinary human emotions and experiences can be turned into a rod with which we beat ourselves because when things aren't the the the normal emotions and happenings of Life aren't compatible with the the sort of Perfect Image that's often portrayed hope that makes sense no it's true and I I I don't want to to hammer this point too much but as Nemo is saying he's got this blessing and saying your kids are going to be a source of joy and say your kids get into some horrible stuff and it's really stressing you I mean my goodness I know people where their kids getting you know arrested and you know you're you're sitting there having to find ways to get them help to get them out of of legal trouble all this stuff and then you might have some Bishop say why don't you go read your patriarchal blessing it'll help you and you read it and you're like holy crap it's making me worse because this blessing is telling me there's supposed to be a source of joy and yet it's causing lot stress and that happens and I just it's it's that's why I just I feel like when you're you're doing what is effectively a psychic reading and you're telling these members this is a road mapap for your life I just feel like it is so unethical and when you look at how many times it's failed in the past for so many people in such big ways to continue to portray in 2023 as if this is direct uh personalized Revelation from God I I just I feel like there's no excuse for the leaders to continue to do this outside of wanting that element of control over members because it does force you to constantly look at that blessing and say what did I do wrong to make this not happen what do I need to do I.E how do I need to double or triple down in the church to get back to where I need to be to get these blessings and it's just it's awful all right let's go to the next slide yeah and so this next slide is from that same blessing that we just referenced and I just want to point out so this blessing is from 2013 and this this is in the early part I believe of the of the blessing it says you had a marvelous premortal life you were among the sons and daughters of God that shouted for Joy when the Earth was created you were reserved for 6,000 years for this day and your father in Heaven Was mindful of you for you were to be born into the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints and to the parents that you have that you have that love with you that love you with all their hearts you rejoice in your sisters and your brother and your family so just want to again this patriarchal blessing which we're told is coming directly from God says you were reserved for 6,000 years for this day which is telling us once again that in the Mormon church we need to believe that humans have only existed for 6,000 years which is just horribly Incorrect and right off the bat is telling you that these patriarchal blessings are not from God but from men who are these old men who are trying to cement these old long-standing incorrect doctrines of Mormonism into a claimed road map for your life and it's on one hand it's comical because yeah we all know that this is just I mean we have um study after study showing the America's first had people at 30,000 years ago and there's no um research showing that humans have been in some form for what like a million and a half years now and so to to Pedal this in 2013 is laughable but it's not funny because it is also impacting our lives in a lot of big ways go on the apologist hats come out now I'm like well what if they were only given their assignment 6,000 years ago and they were waiting for all the time before then to get their assignment about where and when they would come to Earth you know there's a lot of people to get into body there's that big Eternal queue waiting but but aams Razer and everything tells us that the most likely thing given the background of Mormon doctrine that we know would be that that patriarch believes he 6,000 years old and he's pushing that on yeah because that was a Mormon well it's still canonized 6,000 6,000 you were preserved for 6,000 years right just years we haven't really done much on like the premortal existence Doctrine in the church but it's like basically saying that you were created 6,000 years ago by your heavenly father and someone's heavenly mother one of the Heavenly mothers and then you were just told wait for 6,000 years until you get your turn that you know the the queue finally got there and you get to come out it's just one of those things where as Nemo said the apologetic I've heard is that there were humans here before 6,000 years but they didn't have a soul and and that is something that um church leaders have kind of propose to try to make sense of the fact that we now have way too much evidence to say that people have been here for a lot longer but as again as what does Adam and Eve think of their parents then yeah exactly here are weird yeah exactly it's just it's it at some point you just got to look at this all together and go and and as we said at the beginning John said that's why you watch these in in order because if you watch our Adam and Eve episode you can kind of look at how the church has bought into this literal Adam and Eve story and every Bible scholar that's especially any secular one and most non-secular ones um Dan mclen was on Mormonism Live this week um with radio fre Mormon and Bill real and even he you know he's an active member of the church who is a Bible scholar and he will tell you without any hesitation the Adam and Eve story are late editions they were not created until I think like the 7th 8th Century BC um it's just it's not a historical story it's a myth it's an ideological myth and so to have this cemented into a patriarchal blessing as if this is coming from God is laughable it's just it's so bad and this is from TW this is from 10 years ago it's not this is not a patriarchal blessing from 20 you know 200 years ago this is a recent one it's just I don't know what else to say okay all right let's go to the next slide yeah and so this one I think might rub some people the wrong way if you're a believing member but I I think um so I was a teenager uh in the in the early 9 or I guess late 90s uh saw I watched a lot of TV and MTV and all that and back when they showed music videos and there was this commercial you would see all the time of this woman named Miss Cleo and she was uh would give you a psychic reading and you'd call her and um she you know basically they charge you per the minute she got sued to Oblivion because of all the fraud practices within it but in every single one of her commercials and you can see it on the screen if you're watching on the bottom right it says for entertainment only so even though she's telling you she could tell you your future and all this other stuff every time there's a disclaimer that this is for entertainment only it's not meant to guide your life and I honestly think that the Mormon church needs to have at the end of every patriarchal blessing something to the effect of for entertainment purposes only not from God this is just a blessing to give you comfort and hard times because right now they are absolutely telling you this is from God we know it's not from God because it keeps failing they need to have something on there so that members don't have as much pain that comes from these things failing as they do and and until they do I just I feel like they're being knowingly dishonest about what these blessings really are yeah because my patriarch tried to put a little caveat in um he said you have shown great promise and if you remain faithful for this is vital no blessing that the Lord has promised to bestow upon you uh will be denied you so this idea that well if I remain faithful then all this will happen and so that is their get out of jail free card it's like well you weren't faithful enough therefore but what you're suggesting if I'm understanding you correctly is that we need to go further than that and stop claiming that this is in the voice of God when the things that God is supposedly saying are inaccurate and and problematic yeah I mean that's just it at some point um as we talk about with just being open and honest the church needs to be like look these blessings are meant to give you comfort they're meant to be there for you when you're in a hard time but they're not coming directly from God they're not a uh you know the patriarch's not receiving this direct line from God this is just the patriarch giving you a blessing as someone who's been in the church for for a long time and therefore um it's just for Comfort it's not meant to be taken as a literal Revelation from God and until they do that I just I feel like they they they they have the same access and more to the early patriarchal blessings and we do and so if we can point out over and over again that that they're falling they're failing what Comfort do someone sorry what Comfort does someone get from a pat blessing if they don't believe it's from God this is the the value sell of it is that it's from God the thing that makes it comforting is that an omnipotent deity is telling you these things about yourself and your future so where's the value proposition of that if you take that away it's like when you go to a psychic the idea that they have access to some sort of spiritualistic element of of their lives and their existence that can help them guide you and and they can pass this information on that's what the person going to them believes in order to get out of it so so you have you almost have to have God involved otherwise you can't say it's just for Comfort because how does it come for someone oh yeah I get it and and this is one of the problems of modern Mormonism because there's kind of the literalistic version of modern Mormonism which is this is God's one true church on the earth with exclusive Authority Jose Smith was God's Prophet next to Jesus and righteousness uh prophets from Joseph all the way down to Russ Nelson speak for God the priesthood heals people um pedal blessings are real we can speak to God and get our own Revelation the scriptures are you know literally the the words of God and that's that's all very compelling and we're literally The Chosen blood of Israel saved for the last days to to usher in the Millennium of Jesus like that entire story is super compelling what we find though is with the rise of information with the rise of science with the rise of the valuing of evidence and specifically with the rise of the internet you'll just find the church having to walk back some if not all of those distinctive absolutist truth claims because uh none you know pretty much few to none of those truth claims really bear the light of full scrutiny and and that what it does is it ends up watering down the church which ends up causing a bunch of people to either not take it seriously or leave it so that's the Dilemma yeah yep all right so let's go to the next slide yeah and this is why we mentioned this earlier but you know let's we're going to watch some clips from a talk of the April 2023 um General Conference and it's all about patriarchal blessings and this is a good way to kind of see how the church frames them in 2023 and so you're going to see a little bit about how the church nuan is what they are um but you're also going to see how they also continue to portray them as being from God and so um this is Elder Yamashita and he gives a talk and he gives you two reasons that you need to get your blessing uh the first one is that you get a personal personalized road map from God in your life um but then of course it could be in this life or in the eternities if the promises don't come to pass and to find out which tribe of Israel you belong to and so when you watch this clip I just want you to listen to How much kind of waffling um Elder Yamashita does when trying to explain that this is a road map while also trying to make sure that you need to not expect it to actually get where you're supposed to go it's I'm what I'm anticipating is and I haven't seen this talk yet is for you know they're trying to lower your expectations so you never lose your faith or beat yourself up or get discouraged if uh patriarchal blessing doesn't come true and it wants you to fully believe and embrace all the all the prophecies or the utterances that you know have you doing the things the church wants you to do that's what I'm guessing it's going to say yeah all right let's roll let's uh let's go and roll the tape let's consider two purposes for patriarch blessing one a patriarchal blessing contains personal counsel from the Lord to you two a patriarch blessing declares your lineage in the house of isra your patriarchal blessing is a message from your heavenly father and will likely incude promises and Inspire the counsel to guide you throughout your life a patri blessing is not going to map out your life or answer all your questions if it doesn't mention an important life event do not take that to mean you w't have that opportunity likewise there is no guarantee everything your blessing will come to pass in this life a PCH blessing is eternal and if you live worthy promises that are not fulfilled in this life will be granted in the next yeah well there it is we could have just started with that what what are we going to say anymore that it's it's like saying well if it's not mentioned in there doesn't mean it won't happen if it is mentioned in there but doesn't happen don't worry so what's the point other than saying well it'll happen in the next life but honestly what we need to stop doing is saying oh well the next life will sort it out we need to stop teaching people to live for after their death we need to start teaching people to live for this life to serve others here now to do good here now stop being like well uh it' be fine because when I die it all get sorted out because otherwise you have people just essentially sleepwalking through life waiting for death because they've been promised that things will be better after they die it's not good for people the other the other problem I have is I I some people who are kind of free speech absolutists don't like it when I say this but I literally believe that it should be illegal for anyone to claim that they speak for God just because that it it it involves too much power if you can convince someone that you speak for God you can have close to full control over them if they're gullible Andor just really believing or if you're too persuasive and what he just said is it's literally the words of God to you and I'm just saying really really Elder Yamashita like what if the patriarch is abusing children is God still using him as a voice M as a voice what if he's just scile what if he has dementia what if he's like I said had a bad pastrami sandwich or he's in a bad mood what if you wrote the template wrong like are you really going to be teaching all your members that every word coming out of a patrial blessing is the direct word of God to you and with the caveat that if it doesn't come true it's going to come true in the next life like it's just problematic on and if ASO yeah sorry and and if uh God's words to you don't conform to the handbook for church Patriarchs then you should change what God's words say to you so that you don't make certain promises so like God's words in this are under the control of church bureaucracy G mic sorry yeah no it's just it we've talked about this a lot in the last few episodes and it really is like heads we win tails you lose because it says if it doesn't happen and it wasn't mentioned in the blessing well what are you going to do if it does happen and it doesn't take place well it might happen in the next life it just feels like it's like this all get out of jail free card it's like whatever it says live by it but like don't expect it to work it would be like giving some like you hop on on a plane that's going to say uh New York City and all of a sudden it lands and like welcome to Boston and you're like what the crap I bought a ticket to New York like well the next plane may get there dude don't worry about it it just feels like it's just this this blank statement to tell you anything might happen just keep sticking with us as the leaders of the church I just I it it just feels right off the bat like it's a very it's like an honest way of saying this is not going to work but just stick with us right all right let's go to the next SL yeah and so this is now is we all anyone who's watched um General Conference knows that a big part of it is basically just constantly quoting leaders and so Elder Yamashita is going to quote uh former Prophet Thomas Monson uh to reiterate that getting a patriarchal blessing will provide you with a very personalized road map from God um as we talked about is problematic when you read all the blessings of all the people that had things promised that never happened or things that we know should have happened in their lifetime and didn't and is you're going to notice here monson's quote which is from a previous generation you know he he was prophet what like uh well it wasn't that long ago but you know he was 2008 2018 I think so yeah this I don't know I don't know exactly when this quote is from so this could be from a couple decades ago but the point is nmon is not going to use the same loopholes and the same exit ramps uh that Elder Yamashita was using in the first clip we showed all right let's roll the tape president Thomas mon train the same same Lord Who provided the aona for lehy provides for you and for me today a rare and variable gift to give direction to our lives to Mark the HS to our safety and to CH the way even safe passage not to a Promised Land but to a Heavenly home all right Mike yeah I mean there's not a ton to say there I'm just pointing out that they're trying to quote these early leaders and you can kind of see a little bit of the change in the way it's framed from Monson to 2023 so the waffling that you often hear now about um especially when they say if it does if you don't have a blessing fulfilled it really just means a good example is kids of course so say if you were promised to have kids and you didn't because of infertility issues you'll get them later on once you die all that will be fixed and you'll get that in the attorneys and you're starting to see how the further back you go the more concrete the promises are and now they're already starting to water it down because they want members who are starting to realize that this these are not working out so well to have something to look forward to in the afterlife got it all right uh should we go to the next slide yeah we can go to the next one all right and you know this uh I'm kind of riffing off of another quote from this past general conference but you know patriarchal blessings uh age much better than past profets and so um Elder Yamashita States uh that P patriarchal blessings take on new meanings as you grow older and that the meanings will evolve as you can look back on them and reread them through the lens of belief and so now he's going to quote donon Oaks who is the next who will be the next prophet of the Mormon Church who is saying that the blessing should be read line upon line and will be revealed by The Same Spirit that inspired the original blessing which again is problematic when you realize just how cartoonishly bad these patriarchal blessings have been throughout the church's history so to say that for example that it will be revealed by The Same Spirit that inspired the original if you go back to the early days it' be like saying well your blessing will be revealed to you in the same spirit that Joseph Smith's father did when he said you know Jesus would come back in the flesh it it just doesn't work but it's obviously a good quote to understand how the church is framing it today so are we rolling this tape yeah let's go for it okay times M has a different meaning now that it did when I was 30 and when I was 50 it is not that the world change but we see them in a different way presid daring H Oaks declared that the patriarch blessing is given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and should be read and interpreted under the influence of that same Spirit the meaning and significance of a patri blessing will be taught line upon line in the cause of time by the power of the same spirit that inspired it all right Mike or Nemo yeah Nemo you could definitely go I already kind of said my point on that surely what he said is kind of just self evident that when you read something that was making predictions about your life after some of those events have happened then yes it will have different meaning to when you were reading it looking forward to those things so for example about getting married once you've been married in the temple it was take on different meaning that you married that sister that you were told you would marry or that brother you were told you would marry that's already happened now so yes your patriarchal blessing will take on there's nothing magical about that it's not extra revelatory it's not the new spirit or or that same Spirit revealing new things to you it's just kind of confirmation bias that with hindsight you're looking at your blessing going oh yeah the Lord did make this happen because here's that promise that now I can find a thing in my life that fits it to say that it then came true it's you know it it's quite obvious really yeah let's just say it's like um when you have people go like I'll go I'll say the Book of Mormon doesn't have any prophecies in it past Joseph Smith's lifetime which we talked about it doesn't so you know it mentions Columbus it mentions The Book of Mormon coming forth it mentions Revolutionary War and then people will go oh yeah it does it has rum wars and rumors of wars and clearly there's wars and rumors of wars in 2023 so Book of Mormons got a hit and you're like that's so generic and so to Nemo's point it's almost like they're telling you uh you get your your patriarchal blessing when you're say 18 and then when you're 40 and you read it again you can now find places where it came true because you can now look at very generic phrases and go holy cow they got it right because it said I was going to have children and I had two kids so you know point for the blessing it said I was going to get married to a worthy priesthood holder and I did and and so you it's the whole mindset of confirmation bias like Nemo said where you look at the hits and you ignore all the misses and not only are you doing that but you're going to redefine the words on the page line upon line to make them fit got it okay all right let's go to the next uh let's go and go to the next SL just one sec let's go to the next slide here it is uh back one back one okay yeah back one slide so this is the final clip from Elder Yamashita and this is I think a really important one cuz he's going to tell members that patriarchal blessings are individ ual promises from God that are custom for every member receiving it and so again the reason this is problematics we've talked about is when you begin to compare um patriarchal blessings that are given by the same patriarch um they don't read as custom Revelations they read as like a mad lip style script where they're using the same phrases and just throwing out you know obviously your different name if they know your family they might mention a brother versus a sister um if they know what you want to be when you grow up they might throw that you know particular um line of of work in there something like that and so they're making these little adjustments but the overall shell of the blessing is going to remain the same and so when they talk to you as if every patriarchal blessing is this personalized counsel from God they're ignoring the fact that it has to go through a patriarch that is basically working off of a script and so I think this quote is important because I don't think that what he's saying here really Rings true should we play it yep let's play it all right patriarch blessings a secret gift from them when you receive your blessing you will realize and feel how they love you and how they focus on you individually all right Mike yeah I'm here app TR I don't know if Nemo has anything to add no nothing to add really to be honest we've done that point to death yeah I think we have two okay all right so uh let's go to the next slide yeah and so this is one um that we've talked about how they use the same style and we don't really have time to read a whole ton of um patriarchal blessings to you because obviously it' be pretty boring but you know as you hear the church continue to tell you in the year 2023 that they are directly from God and customize to each member I highly recommend that you check out um there's a website called Fuller consideration and they have a patriarchal blessings Revelator on their website um and you can read them for yourself you can look to see how similar the blessings are when they're given from the same patriarch and so the link is on there we'll hopefully can put it in the show notes um they have almost 400 patriarchal blessings on their website that you can can read through and um you can also read earlier blessings that make promises that not just fail but are so embarrassingly absurd um such as telling members they would see Jesus in the flesh before death retake Zion or even preach to people on the moon and so this is a patriarchal this is a a remembrance of a patriarchal blessing um that was in Obi Huntington's journal and it talks about um someone going through their own patriarchal blessing and it says in my patriarchal blessing blessing given to me 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 and so it just you know it goes to show that you know it I I don't know what to say when the six foot Quakers on the moon did need the gospel M yeah and when the the church leaders today they'll go oh when Joseph Smith said there were people on the moon that were dressed like Quakers he was speaking as a man but you see them in patriarchal blessings that are claimed to be from God and so then all of a sudden you go well how can you say Joseph speaking as a man when either he's getting claiming to get it from God or he's relying on patriarchal blessings that are claimed to be from God and it just it really adds more and more layers of problematic issues to these topics which you know I I I don't if once you start talking about preaching to people on the moon you you've lost the the plot here I'll just I'll just give a quick plug for the um for the Fuller consideration. comom website in addition uh to having uh the patriarchal blessing Revelator it also has the temple name Oracle uh a lot of us received our Temple names which we thought of as being very personalized and very sacred uh when we uh you know went through the temple for the first time what it's been discovered is that uh for the past several decades the church has just had a big old list where basically first day of the month if you're a woman you you were named Ruth if you went through the temple between January 22nd 1993 and December 28th 2013 if you were born you know if you went through the temple on the second day of the month your name was UN Third Day Lucy fourth day Judith and then if you're a guy you know uh you know they've got similar lists uh and it basically just shows the the Fuller consideration. comom website has a way for you to go back and see and verify that the granting of your sacred personalized Temple name that you thought came from God came from literally a grid of paper that uh the Temple ordinance workers were were handed um so anyway the Fuller consideration. comom website we'll put a link to it in the show notes the other thing I'll just mention is uh my dear friends Martine Smith and Laya tuler did an episode on Mormonism live where they both they both realized that they had been given patriarchal blessings from the same patriarch and so I think they actually share their patriarchal blessings and even though martine's from Belgium and uh Laya was um was the daughter of uh I want to say the Gran Richards one of the general authorities for the church they have apparently very similar if not almost identical patriarchal blessings just because of uh the the patriarch that they shared I'll make sure and include that in the show notes as well all right Mike uh what's what's next yeah and this is one point um when we did our first episode on Treasure digging and Mormonism uh I was noting how the church itself was an outgrowth of Joseph Smith's Tre treasure digging because what we talked about in that episode is that Joseph Smith would have people pay him to dig for treasure he claimed he could see but every one of those digs had to end because at some point Joseph Smith could had to go the treasure sunk into the ground the guardian Spirit took it away because obviously there's only so long you can dig before the people paying you are going to realize that they're being scammed and the Mormon Church allowed Joseph Smith to keep the members was paying him to dig forever because all of the treasure he was promising them he never actually had to produce there was no tangible treasure because everything is in the next life and with patriarchal blessings I see a lot of those same elements this is like a treasure map that is given to members to keep them as a lifelong customer of the church and there's nothing within the patriarchal blessing that is tangible or real it's only a list of promises you will receive if you remain loyal to the church and as we mentioned more importantly the leaders of the church and I realized to a believing member this is going to sound hard um but this is a thread that we have looked at throughout all of these episodes in the series where Joseph Smith is able to mix folk magic and religion and in this case he's doing it in a way that not only um gives you a patriarchal blessing that keeps you tied to the church but also made a good amount of money for his father Joseph Smith senr because he was charging a dollar per blessing which was a lot of money back in you know the 1830s yeah yeah yeah it's it's really it's probably going to be a ensive for believing Orthodox Mormons to hear patriarchal blessings framed as kind of like fortunetelling crystal ball tarot card reading kind of folk magic but the truth is that's kind of what it appears to be and more importantly we're not too far off if we know again if you start back at the very beginning of the LDS discussion series you'll you'll learn about how Joseph Smith literally was a folk Magic treasure Digger uh scrier peep Stone follower carrying a Jupiter Talisman you know paying attention to the the Pagan kind of holiday kind of person and that's not only him but his parents and his ancestors and so to say to say that uh Mormonism is rooted in kind of weird folk magic it it may feel insulting but I think it's just just factual Nemo anything you want to add there yeah I want to throw in a point about patriarchal blessings and how the idea of them is biblical in the sense of the patriarch of the family so the father so uh you know uh Esau and his father and and all that that went on with the stealing of the birthright um the father of the family gave a blessing to his children and so this idea of a patriarchal blessing is is that your father the patriarch would bless you uh and you know declare birth rights lineages all those sorts of things but the idea that it was done for money that feels wrong to me you know we're constantly talking in this church and this should be concerning to active believing members that we're constantly told in this church that we have volunteer clergy and that we give our money in Tides so that we can give to the the poor and the sick and the needy and we can build up the kingdom of God and all these sorts of things it's weird that your Patriarchs charging you a dollar AO for what it makes it easier to look at it as a as a fortune telling device rather than a genuine he is the patriarch of the church he is the father figure in the church and he is blessing God's children on God's behalf those two things don't look similar there there's also the story of uh you know that there was a Mormon church patriarch not just local stake Patriarchs but there was uh there was a churchwide patriarch that that start started I guess with Joseph Smith dad but continued Through Blood lineage through I don't know the first 150 years of the church and there's this story that I think we've told elsewhere where one of the descendants of Joseph Smith who became the churchwide patriarch turned out to be gay and uh and was was even acting on his same-sex sexuality in the mid 1900s and the church facing the embarrassment of having the churchwide patriarch turn out to be gay I think they literally killed killed that calling and there's no longer a churchwide patriarch and that's just a weird thing that that was a position originally created that was churchwide that the church kind of inconveniently mothballed be because of the the gay Menace so to speak well there's also there's an episode I think it's from Radio free Mormon where he talks about the Office of the patriarch being kind of dissolved after whoever was holding it was kind of like the uh was it What's the phrase they use when they're too old to really do it um and so yeah Meritus status and so I think once they made that person a merit of status they just left it open and then just kind of dissolved it and um one of the arguments he made pretty sure it's Radio free Mormon was that the office of the patriarch held a level of authority that was really high in the church and so by eliminating that position it also eliminated um someone else that had access to being able to have a higher input in decisions and so I haven't listened to it in a very long time but it was a really interesting one because it t I think it might have been his episodes the uh oh my goodness it's there it's like a two-parter it's about how they restructured power in the church it's like um something cigra or something like that but Apostolic CA kudagra or something and anyways the point is it does feel like part of the reason they got rid of that position was because they wanted to eliminate a position that would CH could challenge the authority of the 15 yeah and I'll just I just pulled it up on Wikipedia it's Joseph Fielding Smith not the same Joseph Fielding Smith that that became a prophet of the church after David omay died who was the church historian for many many years a different Joseph Fielding Smith was church patriarch and um it basically says in this Wikipedia article that all include in the show notes Joseph Hing Smith was patriarch to the church and the general authority of the church Jesus Christ L Saints from 19 1942 to 1946 and then it's got a section called homosexual Affairs at the age of 43 Smith was ordained a high priest and a patriarch to the church by President Hebrew J Grant he served only four years because it was reported by the church that he had resigned for reasons of ill health in quotes it says ill health but he was actually released due to the uncovering of his same-sex sexual activity um yeah so I wasn't making that up um and will'll include that in the show notes all right so should we go to the final slide Mike yeah all right um you know and this has been you know effectively a six episode miniseries on Revelations because obviously it's one of the key selling points of Mormonism as Nemo mentioned earlier there there's a huge value add to being able to get Revelation from God and and that is something that keeps us I I would argue as a more uh loyal uh attendance based than some other religions because you believe that you are truly receiving Revelations today as opposed to um most churches that believe that Revelation kind of ended a long time ago and so when the church makes these claims um about getting Revelation from God that we're supposed to have the ability to discern truth from fiction and when you see those things start to fail that that's a huge problem and so um as we covered in these these six episodes we have a number of Revelations for Joseph Smith where he speaks in the name of God and they fail we have prophets from Joseph Smith until today that have been fooled by those who are seeking to fool the church church and we saw that with the Kinder hook plates we saw that with the mark Hoffman forgeries and absolutely no Revelations about specific events have ever happened to stated uh we talked about the Civil War prophecy in our earlier episode and how even that has a lot of key details wrong and we also know the source of where Joseph Smith got the idea and and so when you can show The Book of Mormon the book of Moses the book of Abraham are all 19th century Productions and then you look at the revelations that fail the spirit of discernment that fails at the same level as literally anyone else on Earth I guess my point is what is left um in the special kind of selling value proposition of Mormonism when everything they claim to have has been shown to fail over and over again yeah and it's kind of sad because you you want to I think the value proposition as we're kind of repeating of Mormonism is that God still speaks to man today and I think there's a lot of people that want to feel like there is a God that God loves us and that God speaks to us so we're kind of in a sense a bummer about this episode is that we're riging on everybody's parade saying hey you all had this awesome belief that God loves us all that God communicates with us all is you know through his church and through personal revelation and through Patriarchs and basically Mike you're just riging on everyone's parade saying none of that's true how how does that make you feel Mike well it sucks I mean the thing is and and this is one of the things that drive me nuts is when someone says you left the church and you're so happy that you think it's not true and it's like no there is nothing I would love more than for Mormonism to have been able to live up to the claims it makes because if that were the case we would know what we need to do with our life we would know um what happens after we die it would actually be extremely comforting and I'd be more than willing to do whatever they need me to do if they could show in just one area that they're receiving Revelation from God so it really does suck um that we could show that these Revelations are failing that patriarchal blessings are wrong over and over again I mean there's nothing happy about it not to mention the fact that it's really painful when it happens so yeah I mean it's just it's a horrible situation that we all have to accept at some point yeah Nemo what do you want to add I would I I would throw in there that like like we said about the value proposition of Mormonism that if when you get to all this that God's still not speaking to people he's he he's not speaking to them with any accuracy so either it's in his design that he's misleading people on purpose or people just aren't able to get what he's saying but but then the value proposition disappears from Mormonism if those that are charged with hearing him and disseminating that message can't hear him or can't understand him properly or can't accurately portray that message so it's a it's a big problem that that patriarchal blessings are seemingly so uninspired and it's it just compounds the further issue of God not properly speaking to people but it's not a very fun message is it people people like the hope they like the excitement they like the personal nature and it it leaves a lot of people feeling like there's less meaning purpose and excitement in life now having said that I will just say that that doesn't have to be the way that you look at life uh there is a lot of empowerment and a lot of uh positivity and excitement that comes from being cut free from let's just say the tyranny of Mormon prophets or the tyranny of patriarchal blessings or the tyranny of what we believe is you know what what we were taught was personal revelation or or divine revelation because um you know what Jesus said uh you know in his ministry was that the kingdom of God is within so instead of you know believing that a patriarch knows what God wants for you that a prophet knows what God wants for you that the scriptures know what God wants for you um e even though you can sometimes confuse your own wishes and your own desires with what might be a a sense of the Divine speaking to you there is a sense of Liberation that can come when you're able to just kind of like get quiet get peaceful meditate and figure out what's right for you and to not be burdened by um the priorities of a a you know quarter trillion dollar corporate entity that has its own interest in mind but instead to be led by your own conscience your own values your own inner voice and or um you know the wisdom of people around you who love you um combined with the learning of good books and and of um you know uh the wisdom of of good authors and writers all around us Nemo you want to add anything to that yeah I think when when they say that where will you go what will you do as em Russ balad says you know the side these stay in the boat type talks where they tell people don't you dare leave Mormonism because there's nothing out there for you um it doesn't have to be nihilism you don't have to just go oh well life has no meaning anymore and become nihilistic you just find your own meaning and that's difficult and that's that's that is it is difficult because you as Mormons you're so used to being given it on a plate and so you have to go out and find it but I I firmly believe that a lot of what Christ taught was about finding that uh you know finding that inner voice and and letting yourself be guided by that and putting in the hard work to actually developing and growing your own moral compass based on those values yeah all right Mike I think it's time to wrap up any final thoughts no just like you know you guys were saying what I just said you know I think this is a a miniseries within the larger series that's really important because it impacts our our lives today if you're in the church or if you have family in the church and it it does it sucks when it's not what it claims to be especially if you've lived uh a chunk of or your whole life um believing that it's true um you know but at the same time as Nemo said and as you were saying there's something great about learning um once you're through that that Dark Knight of the Soul however you want to phrase it that we get to then make choices uh based on our own conscience based on trying to do good not because we're told we have to to get special promises but because we want to and so um there there's good that comes out of the the pain there's good that comes out of the transition to realizing it's not what it claimed to be but it's going to suck when you first encounter it so for anyone who's going through these episodes and and you're still trying to figure it out and I know there's a lot of you CU I've talked to some of you um I feel for you because it sucks and it takes a long time um but hopefully this little Series has helped because like I said you know the history is very important but this is something that impacts us all in in current day so that's why we wanted to really try to do uh a good Deep dive into kind of all aspects of Revelation not just looking at Joseph Smith's Revelations to to really give a fuller picture of it and I hope it was helpful to people all right so what's uh anything you want to say about what's coming next Mike um our next episode is going to be um an overview of all of the Mormon Doctrine and where Joseph Smith could have received the inspiration for them um so we I don't even know if we've settled on a title yet but basically I always looked at it as like because I grew up in the 90s as I mentioned and we were using mixtapes you'd make a mixtape uh off the radio you'd pick your favorite songs and then you'd have a tape of your favorite stuff and I think Joseph Smith did something similar um Anthony Miller uh likes the phrase eclectic aggregator so um I think that's going to be a really good one and then the episode after is one I am so excited about uh which is about the Transfiguration of Brigham Young And I think that one I honestly think that's one of the most important events in modern religion of any religion I think it's so important and really not talked about a lot so I'm very excited about that one what a tape you know what Nemo you're young we get it get out of here what's a tape all right I love it uh Watch Guardians of the Galaxy and you'll all know tape is and what a mixtape is yep all right well Mike thanks for your amazing work in this series and on the LDS discuss.com.hk any final words Nemo no just all the good things uh I'm really grateful to be here it's good fun okay all right thanks Nemo thanks Mike thanks everybody and uh you guys please be good to each other be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast and on the LDS discussion series take care everybody