Replies

From the article: The only instance where the church sanctions such activity is if a Jew was an ancestor of a Mormon, he added. Paredes explained that Mormons are required to research their own ancestors and, if they had not accepted the Mormon faith, perform “temple ordinances” for them that will allow them to do so in the after-life. However, these ordinances do not confer church membership, he said. They were NEVER permitted to do this for anyone else’s ancestors, he stressed.

Say what? This Mormon leader claims that Mormons have “never” been permitted to “baptize” the dead beyond their own ancestors? Why, even Lds “presidents” of the church have done that!!! Even Woodruff baptized 100 different people from John Wesley to all but 3 U.S. presidents and 56 Declaration of Independence signers.

“The dead will be after you, they will seek after you as they have after us in St. George. They called upon us, knowing that we held the keys and power to redeem them. I will here say, before losing, that two weeks before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, ‘You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized for it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God.’ These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights…I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.” (Wilford Woodruff, Sept. 16, 1877, JoD 19:229)

Note how Mormons continually talk about the dead seeking after them. Demons, masquerading as ghosts, wanting them to zero in on the graveyard. In fact, Lds “prophet” Joseph F. Smith (a relative of original Mormon “prophet” Joseph Smith) claimed a vision of the dead to the degree that later Mormons put into Mormon “scripture” (D&C 138).

Also, in chapter 34 of the recently published Teachings of the Presidents: Joseph F. Smith, Smith said:

Not a soul that has ever lived and died from off the face of this earth shall escape a chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they receive it and obey it, the ordinances of the gospel will be performed for and in their behalf, by their kindred, or their posterity in some generation of time after them, so that every law and every requirement of the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be carried out, and the promises and requirements fulfilled for the salvation of the living and also for the salvation of the dead. (Original citation: “Latter-day Saints Follow Teachings of the Savior,” Scrap Book of Mormon Literature, 2 vols. (n.d.), 2:561–62.)

That’s why the mainstream Lds curricula book, Gospel Principles, “Jesus has provided for EVERYONE to hear the gospel, whether on earth of after death.” Gospel Principles, 1997, p. 104

Well, imagine that: Despite the fact that the vast majority of Dark Ages & before will never have their genealogical records found, how can the Lds church turn around and say this is MANDATED for EVERY spirit before they can be judged? Joseph Smith taught that "ALL those who have not had an opportunity of hearing the Gospel, and being administered unto by an inspired man in the flesh, MUST have it hereafter, BEFORE they can be finally judged. (Teachings of the Presidents: Joseph Smith, p. 471)