“As a member of the church, I find it disheartening that fellow members would submit names of unrelated people, including Holocaust victims and President Obama’s mother, for sacred temple ordinances.”
It’s easy to understand, once it’s explained.
Think Celestial Amway.
God used to be like you
Someday, you can be like God
Do enough of the rituals and you can get your own planet -
IF you are male.
Female, best you can hope for is eternal pregnancy to populate
your male mormon god’s planet.
Those new spirit children will become part of your Celestial Downline.
Someday, they may have their own planet, their own worshippers, all under their downline, which is under YOUR downline.
This can happen for eternity.
As your downline of junior gods and eternally pregnant
goddesses grows, it will expand like a pyramid - an eternal
pyramid scam.
But, of course, this isn’t really true. Nothing in mormonism
is true. It is a heresy and a cult.
The Bible:
Never says you can become a god.
Never says you can have a planet.
Never even shows a single mormon temple ritual.
Never talks about spirit children.
Never talks about Mother God.
Never talks about reproducing gods.
Never encourages baptism of the dead, let alone commands it.
Never hints that the Gospel will be taken from the earth.
Never mentions holy, fluffy underwear.
Never talks about God being an exalted man.
Never teaches that there are multiple gods.
NEVER teaches that Jesus Christ was a created
Spirit Creature like Satan.
mormonism is a credible in the truth department as
Scientology, but without the aerobic exercise of
couch jumping.
Not only that, but none of those things are even taught in the Book of Mormon. So you can add to this list of things neither taught in the Bible or BoM:
NEVER teaches that eternal hell or outer darkness is a temporary spirit prison
NEVER teaches anything about a "telestial" degree of the glory -- Smith himself made up the word [and note the BoM says NOTHING about "three degrees of glory"]
Not only is the BoM silent about the degrees of afterlife, but about the alleged Mormon "pre-life" -- the so-called "pre-existence"
And where oh where in the Bible or BoM is it taught that individual family units & marriages are forever?
Oops. Just not there.
(And here the D&C taught that the Book of Mormon was the "fulness of the everlasting gospel" ... looks like it's the emptiness of the perverted "gospel")