You:
"macabre setting", really? Necro-baptism? No where in the LDS scripture does the word "necro" appear anywhere.
So you're suddenly hypersensitive about a word that just means "the dead?" What? Lds never use the word, "dead?"
But, hey, thanks for reminding me that I actually did a "break-out" broader on this subject two years ago: Smith used Lds funerals to introduce necro-baptism, 'becoming gods' [The OTHER World Series: Vanity]
Me:: Joseph Smith becomes obsessed with the dead:
Your response: Joseph pondering on dead, in your words makes him "obsessed with the dead".
Well, it helps if you don't wrest my commentary away from the content: Lds "apostle" Boyd Packer, 1980 book, The Holy Temple:
"The Prophet Joseph Smith...had received the revelations (sections 124, 127, 128, and 132) which pertain directly to this work. [Re: the dead] And during the last part of his life he said, 'This subject was upon my mind more than any other.'"
So the supreme attention-getter of ANY subject of Joseph's last 2 or 3 years becomes in your mind mere "ponderin'"...
And so the fact that he was more fixated upon the dead (ya know, those 'necro-ized' ones) than ANYBODY alive makes it sound like the image of Joseph you would like to portray...
...was simply a flesh-and-blood Auguste Rodin statue version (we've seen "The Thinker" statue...hand on chin)...
...philosophically ponderin' away...
...not realizing that what he was overly fascinated with happened to be more "stiff" than the marble Rodin's statue was made out of!
#3 example of Abraham...also covered in post #20.