Topic: Patriarchal Blessings and Programming
It's always a trip to learn something deep and new about long-time friends.
A friend of mine, who only in the last couple of months has begun questioning the Mormon church, shared his patriarchal blessing with me last night.
A "partriarchal blessing" in the LDS church is a coming-of-age blessing and prophecy session administered by a priesthood holder. They say a blessing over you and read your future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchal_Blessings
I declined to do it when I was a young, and still LDS, because I thought it would be like a randomly-generated horoscope and I wasn't interested.
They encourage you to keep the information to yourself and not to share it lightly. Now that my friend is making separations from the church, he's come to the conclusion that it was bogus.
The majority of friends who've shared their patriarchal blessing with me were told stuff like: "you'll be married to a righteous man, and you will bear him healthy children," or "you will be beset by temptations, but will remain faithful."
Then there are the occasional exceptional ones...My friend was told: "you will be one of the two prophets of the end times, who will stand at the right hand of God." And he was told that he would personally resurrect his own family. His sister was told she would never suffer a human death if she remained faithful, but would be directly translated into Heaven.
My friend was given his patriarchal blessing at age 12. It both frightened him (scared the shizz out of him!) and flattered his ego. He searched the scriptures for a reference to two prophets of the end times and found such a reference in Relevations:
Rev. 11
[3] And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
[4] These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.
[5] And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
[6] These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
[7] And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.
[8] And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
[9] And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.
[10] And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
[11] And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
[12] And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.
My friend, at 12, believed it was his fate to fight demonic legions, be killed by them, and then be resurrected three and a half days later. He's more or less believed it since then--15 years. He was fully aware of the fact that he didn't have the gift of prophecy (let alone the ability to issue fire from his mouth), and never pretended to. He has, however, always been sensitive to ghosts--and has seen them and talked with them. He had experienced "psychic" and "mystical" stuff and so concluded that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that he would develop into a super-prophet.
Interestingly, another childhood friend of ours also believed he was one of the two prophets. This other friend was not told this in a patriarchal blessing, but was told about my friend's by my friend. He began to believe he was the second prophet based on what the greys told him during his abductions. They told him he would play a special role in the future of mankind, would be a hero-warrior.
In the last year, the first friend has decided that the prophecy was bogus as he's found out that the LDS church is bogus. The second friend rejected the idea because he's been seeing a psychologist and decided that he never was abducted, but that those memories of his were all really, really, really bad nightmares.
What's fascinating to me is how my first friend is now discovering choice. He's believed, since the prophecy, that his path was pre-fixed and that no matter what he did he would be tapped one day and would be killed by the beast's minions.
It's like a spell has been broken...
but you can avoid its teeth.
