Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn calls the garment a magical amulet.
     • D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 276.

A year after the death of Joseph Smith, members of the Quorum of the Twelve stated that Apostle Willard Richards survived the attack on Carthage Jail (where Mormon found Joseph Smith and this brother, Hyram were killed) because he had been wearing his garment. (The Smiths had removed their garments "on account of the hot weather.")
     •First Presidency letter of November 5, 1996, quoted in Sorensen, 56. The same phrasing is used in a First presidency letter of October 10, 1988, quoted in Asay, 19. Similarly, Boyd K. Packer writes, "For many Church members the garment has formed a barrier of protection when the wearer has been faced with temptation" (The Holy Temple, Salt Lake City. Bookcraft, 1980, p.79).

Hotel magnate Willard Marriott told Mike Wallace (of 60 Minutes of a boat fire that had consumed his pants yet left him unscathed above the knee, where his garment was.

One returned missionary said:
"I read a typescript account about an elder from that same mission who had been the victim of a drive-by shooting a year before (during the 1990 Gulf War): according to his mother's account, bullets shredded his shirt without piercing his garments, while the only wound he received was from a bullet that hit him below the knee."