--Introduction: Tantalizing, Mysterious Tales from the Secret "Reality Shows" of President Ezra Taft Benson

Over the years, I've various rock-ribbed Mormons contact me, directly or by correspondence, claiming to have been privy to special inside information regarding certain alleged occurences in the life, times and prophesies of my grandfather, Ezra Taft Benson.

These stories have been said by their perpetrators to either be true on their face or to at least be deserving of serious consideration.

Below are some of the tall tales in this vein that have been relayed to me in the dedicated Mormon spirit of awe and conviction.

They are offered here for the purpose of building up Zion in the last days by deepening faith in the wild and wondrous world of Mormon make-believe, as practiced by its desparately-seeking Saints.
_____


--President Benson Was Brutally Bludgeoned by Members of the Quorum of the Twelve When He Wouldn't Go Along with Their Plans, Resulting in Permanent Brain Damage

One Mormon breathlessly phoned me from the Northwest, asking me if the following story was true.

It seems, according to this account, that a so-called "Pink Room" had been clandestinely constructed in the upper reaches of the Salt Lake City Temple during the administration of Mormon Church President Wilford Woodruff.

There, in absolute secrecy, members of the Quorum of the Twelve would gather to perform dark and solemn rituals, dressed for the occasion in hooded cloaks.

President Ezra Taft Benson was supposedly brought into this "Pink Room," where it was demanded of him that he go along with certain evil designs of the the Twelve.

President Benson refused, whereupon he was stuffed into a gunny sack by his hooded tormentors and mercilessly pummeled, resulting in permanent brain damage that kept him from leading the Church.

I told the inquiring Saint that Ezra Taft Benson had indeed suffered severe cerebral strokes, but that there was no evidence they were caused by him having been mugged by members of the Quorum of the Twelve.
_____


--President Benson Was Spotted in a Las Vegas Casino, Where He Held an Off-The-Record Meeting with a Young Mormon Boy, the Contents of Which Were Too Sacred to Reveal

According to this tale passed on to me by an incredulous Mormon, an LDS father and his son happened to be on the main floor of a Las Vegas casino, when they spied Mormon Church President Benson, accompanied by his security detail, walking through the casino.

The LDS father pointed out President Benson to his young son, whereupon the boy said he wanted to meet him. His father took his son and they followed the President Benson entourage up the elevator to a hotel room.

After President Benson and company entered the room and shut the door, the father knocked on the door and asked if his son could meet the LDS Church President. The father was told to wait outside, while the young boy was allowed to enter President Benson's hotel room.

The door closed and the young boy was in President Benson's hotel room for two hours, as the father remained outside in the hallway.

When the boy finally emerged from the hotel room, his father asked him what had transpired. His son told him that President Benson had spent the whole time talking to him and that President Benson had told the child that it was good to be able to talk, since he was not allowed to do so.

However, the boy would not tell his father any more about his behind-closed-doors encounter with the Lord's anointed prophet.

The purveyor of this story asked me if it was true. I replied that I had never heard of any episode involving Ezra Taft Benson being spotted visiting, or staying in, a Las Vegas casino.
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--President Benson Issued an Inside-the-Temple Warning That It Is Too Late to Start Storing a Year's Supply of Food

According to this faith-promoting fable, President Benson was encountered in an elevator in the South Jordan, Utah, temple.

There, a member of the Church told him that he was accumulating his food storage. President Benson reportedly replied that it was too late to begin that task, given that the end of the world was at hand and that time had run out.
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--President Benson Ordered Christmas Gifts from Deseret Book, Proving He Really Wasn't Mentally and Physically Incapacitated at the Time

The faithful Mormon relaying this story told me that they knew a fellow Latter-day Saint who worked in one of Salt Lake City's Deseret Bookstores. The employee was said to have answered the phone at work one day, only to hear the voice of President Benson, who identified himself, and then who proceeded to order books as Christmas presents for family and friends.

My response to this story was that, based on my direct observation of my grandfather's severely deteriorated state of physical and mental health at the time that this phone conversation allegedly took place, he would not have been able to find the phone in his apartment, much less have been able to have used it.
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--President Benson's Private Apartment Nursing Staff Witnessed Him Performing His Prophetic Role but Given The Sacred Nature of These Acts, Has Chosen Not to Talk About What They Beheld

I was told by a devout Mormon that, based on inside information relayed to this believing Saint, one of President Benson's attending domestic nurses saw President Benson do things in his apartment as she cared for him that definitely testified to his calling as God's prophet.

What those things were, however, were never explained.

Personally, I saw my grandfather's nurses patiently feed him by spoon as he sat, stooped over and silent, at the kitchen table in his Church apartment.

I also saw them take President Benson, dressed in a sweatsuit and diapers and wrapped in a blanket, and prop him in a reclining chair so that he could stare out, unspeaking, through the window of his upper-story Eagle Gate apartment toward Temple Square.

I saw his nurses plant him in a soft recliner next to a radio in his aparment studio, so that he could listen to sessions of General Conference he was too weak to attend, as I sat by his side.

I never saw my grandfather do anything remotely prophetic in his apartment.
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--President Benson Appeared in a Dream to a Faithful Latter-day Saint in Order to Pressure Me to Rejoin the Mormon Church

After I left Mormonism in 1993, a Mormon called me anonymously from California and left two voice messages on my phone. This person informed me that my grandfather had appeared to him in a dream, instructing him to tell me that my grandfather wanted me to return to the Mormon fold.

I figured that if my grandfather wished for me to be re-baptized, he could have appeared in a dream to me--or better yet, in spirit person form--rather than to a complete stranger, where he could have told me directly to my face what he wanted and, in the process, cut out the middleman.
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--Conclusion: What Can I Say?

Other than the time is far spent, so get off your backsliding behinds and repent!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOsiXRXhL00



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2011 02:17PM by steve benson.

er...could these FPRs be woven into a coherent story, suitable for ChurchCo firesides?

who's the premier LDS film-maker these days?


Lights....camera...ACTION!

who amplify the delusions they are fed....sad...

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2011 11:46AM by atheist&happy:-).

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2011 02:48AM by steve benson.

like Stravinsky or Turgenev, but to a Russian woman, and a working one at that.

if they were not so brainwashed. The men could too, but most want the power.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2011 02:37PM by atheist&happy:-).

Thanks for this, Steve. I liked the pathos and the feeling of this post. Usually, you are more direct and scholarly. This post was very sensitive and well-rendered.

and the video started to make me feel symptomatic again.

The post was terrific, though!

after spending two hours behind locked doors with an elderly gentleman?

If this was any other cast of characters the mormon friend would not be calling it a FPR.

I've heard lots of members try to outdo each other with tales and rumours about this occurance or that event, like how one of the profits was said to walk up to a person in the temple and say food storage was essential, or another where someone claimed a church bigwig said the MTC had angelic sentries around it.

While it is obvious that people need to church to sound magical and the leaders to be best friends with God, even to a young kid like me it sounded just as far fetched as some of the stuff my mom would bring home from Relief Society. Grown-ups are weird.

Very moving post and it goes to show you how absoluted whacked out some uber TBMs can get.

I witnessed this MYSELF.

Decades ago I was at the Cougareat at BYU. It was not during meal time and the whole place was rather empty but who did I see in front of me but Ezra Taft Benson and his wife Flora.

I watched breathlessly to catch every inspired word. They weren't TOTALLY inspired yet because this was before he was *THE* prophet, seer and revelator; he was just *A* prophet, seer and revelator.

He ordered the FISH SANDWICH and Sister Benson ordered a CHEESEBURGER. I remember these details because I relayed them to my UBER TBM wife who was getting into weird, health-food and herbology fads. She told me that she had heard, from "someone she trusted," that ALL the apostles and members of the FP were vegetarians.

What was really hard for me to swallow was my grandfather's love of buttermilk. He developed a palate for it during his post-grad student days in the Midwest, when those in the ag program got buckets of it for free from a spigot near the dairy. In later years, he used to keep a bottle of it in his fridge and would encourage me to swig it.

It was tongue-curdling awful stuff.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2011 04:48PM by steve benson.

The circular thinking that I was trained to use while a member of the cult says that the voice messages on your phone from the guy in California were in fact, messages from your grandfather, relayed to you through a faithful church member who was contacted by your grandfather from beyond the grave. After all, your grandfather still wants you to learn to have faith, and appearing to you himself would have left less room for the development of your faith.

Of course, this is all BS. One reason I hate the mormon cult is that they teach everyone this circular method of thinking, wherein everything that happens, is proof that the church is true and that if you're not with their program, you better get with it, because these are the last days..... it pisses me off, just regurtating that shit, even to call it out for what it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2016 04:13PM by azsteve.