Free Republic

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Nearly 50 years after Mormons opened small churches here converting Buddhists, animists and other Thais, they have now announced plans to construct their first big temple in Thailand, enabling their families to be "sealed" together for eternity, posthumous weddings for dead ancestors and other "highest sacraments."

People who have died are very important to members of the Mormon Church. The dead are a very important aspect of the Mormon gospel. The sixth President of the Church, Joseph F. Smith, taught, “We will not finish our work until we have saved ourselves, and then not until we shall have saved all depending upon us; for we are to become saviors upon Mount Zion, as well as Christ. We are called to this mission. The dead are not perfect without us, neither are we without them [see D&C 128:18]. We have a mission to perform for and in...

The Church completes 100 million endowments for the dead (August) Ezra Taft Benson urges members to flood the earth with the Book of Mormon [Source: Madsen, Truman G., The Presidents of the Church]

A new mobile device app called “BillionGraves,” which combines GPS location data with the pictures users take of gravestones...

Contrary to claims made on HillBuzz and the twitterverse, Free Republic is NOT reporting Larry Sinclair is dead. An "article" written at a blog website (that has 3 articles in its entire history) was linked to on Free Republic. Thats it. It is not written by Free Republic and is not a claim made by Free Republic.

Halloween, 1918. The then “prophet” of the Mormon church, Joseph F. Smith, submits a “vision” of the dead he has “to the counselors in the First Presidency, the Council of the Twelve, and the Patriarch, and by them unanimously accepted…”(Gospel Doctrine, 2:277, published by The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1971) Joseph F. Smith, the nephew of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, had claimed that he saw “the hosts of the dead, both small and great...an innumerable company of the spirits of the just” (Lds Doctrine & Covenants, 138:11-12) -- and these spirits were just...

…the dead have always played a major role in the practice of Mormonism. Both Smith and many subsequent leaders in the Mormon Church were in regular contact with the spirit world…A sermon delivered by Elder Parley Pratt in 1853 (five years after the celebrated spiritist movement began in America) indicates early Mormon acceptance of Joseph Smith as a “divine” medium… …the Mormon church erects a false division between ‘godly’ and ‘satanic’ spirit contact. They allege that all Mormon contact with the dead is ‘godly’ practice. But biblically, there is no such division, nor can Mormonism justify one. There is no...

Single until your dying day? Want to be married for eternity beyond death? Perhaps you could contact a temple Mormon who could arrange a “matchmaker” religious temple ritual for you "for eternity." “Perhaps the most unique thing about our temple ordinances," wrote BYU professor Daniel H. Ludlow, “is that they can be performed for the dead…Such ordinances as…temple marriage are performed in our temples for the dead and the living. The ordinances for the dead are performed by proxy-a person living on this earth stands as a proxy and receives these ordinances ‘for and in behalf’ of the deceased person....

3/30: The Dead and Bill O'Reilly on The View It's The View Like You've Never Seen It! Whoopi, Barbara, Joy, Elisabeth, Sherri...and The Dead! Don't miss this rare TV appearance as the boys get ready to hit the road. - when: Monday 3/30, 10am Eastern/Pacific, 11am Central - where: Your local ABC station - what: Interview & Performance Click here for more details.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Life!) - The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday. Band leader Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Surviving members have played together occasionally since then, most recently in 2004. On Monday, original members Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will play at a San Francisco theater a day before California's primary. "They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in...

(IsraelNN.com) Ultra orthodox Satmar Jews and police clashed violently in Jerusalem today following Satmar members' road block protests against building of Highway 6. The protestors want work to stop until ancient graves are relocated. Video films showed that Satmar residents threw blocks and metal objects at police, who burst through a synagogue and violently beat several people in order to free a policeman who was trapped in the synagogue. Filmed pictures showed police overturning tables in the synagogue and kicking people even after the policeman had been rescued.

German widows and widowers who want to take the ashes of their loved ones home with them have to cross the border to the Netherlands and organize cremation there. Since the 1930s, German law stipulates that urns must be buried at a cemetery. Displaying ashes on the mantelpiece or scattering them over a cherished plot of earth, long possible in the United States and several European Union countries, was ruled unconstitutional in Germany in 1979. The first initiative aimed at abolishing mandatory cemetery burials since the 1979 ruling is now being debated in North Rhine-Westphalia's state parliament. The draft legislation,...