Baptisms for the Dead

This morning I woke up with a distinct impression that I should write my feelings about one of the sacred ordinances we perform in the Temples of our Church. That of Baptisms for the Dead. Now to an outsider looking in, the phrase "doing baptisms for the dead" may sound quite gruesome, but I think once one has the proper perspective and understands what we are trying to accomplish in our Church, the ordinance of doing baptisms for the dead becomes beautiful, sacred, and just one more indication of the great love our Heavenly Father has for EACH of his children.

As far as I'm aware, most Christian faiths or those that claim to follow our Savior Jesus Christ believe that baptism is an essential ordinance in order to be saved enter into the Kingdom of God. It is something that when studying the Bible one can find many references to such as in John 3:5 when Christ is talking to Nicodemus and says, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." We also learn that Baptism is so important that even the perfect Christ was baptized in order to "fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). Christ was our perfect example and showed us by example what we too should be baptized.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we too believe Baptism is an essential part of our Heavenly Fathers plan and a requirement to returning home to our Father in Heaven. However, (and this is the beautiful part), we believe that Heavenly Father loves ALL his children, not only those that are lucky enough to learn about Christ during their time on this earth and that he has provided a way that we all may return to him, if we so choose.

There are so many people on this earth, and so many that have gone before that never even had the opportunity to learn of Christ. Or what about the baby or child that may have been born into a Christian family, but slipped silently into the arms of death before a baptism could be performed? Are all these children of our Heavenly Father all doomed to spend their days in an eternal Hell?

In our Church we believe that our Heavenly Father through his prophets has revealed a way that we all may return to live with him, whether or not we were lucky enough to hear about and accept Christ in this life or not. And that is through the revelation of Baptisms through the dead. As a Church we believe that finding our ancestors is crucial, because as we do so, we are able to take the names of those ancestors to the temple and be baptized by proxy for them, as well as receive the holy Ghost for them. And currently our church has the largest free online family history center in the world called FamilySearch.org (link on sidebar) where over 1.2 billion records have been scanned and uploaded to help people (whether in our church or not) find their ancestors. We use this information to find our families and then to find out who in our families has not had this important ordinance work done, so that if needed we can perform the ordinance work for them.

When we go to the temple for the first time we go to perform ordinances for ourselves, and then every time afterwords we go to be baptized or to do other ordinance work for someone else who has died. This work we believe MUST be performed so that those who have gone before at least have the opportunity to accept the ordinance work (like baptism) that has been done for them when they are given the chance to learn of Christ in the hereafter. Along with this we also believe that every person that has lived or ever will, WILL have the opportunity to be taught the gospel of Jesus Christ and accept it if they so choose.

So to me, baptism for the dead truly is a beautiful and selfless revelation where I can see the love the Lord has for all his children. He has not forgotten about any of us, and wants us all to be able to receive his promised blessings. Currently our Church has over 130 temples in operation all over the world with 8 under construction and 13 recently announced that will also begin construction soon. Members of our Church volunteer their time to go to these temples to perform baptisms and other ordinances for people all over the world. Sometimes for people who have been dead hundreds of years. Just this last month, I went for a woman down my genealogical line that had been dead since the 1600's. As we do this selfless work our hearts are turned to those who have gone before and we find joy in knowing that we are helping to link our families together for eternity so that we all may live in Heavenly Fathers presence together. So to me baptism for the dead is a beautiful indication that we truly do have a Heavenly Father that loves EACH and EVERY one of us, so much that he wants to make sure none of us are left behind.

How grateful I am for Gods love for me. I know he knows me personally. I know he leads my life. I have felt his protection, his comfort, his forgiveness, his love, and his blessings poured out upon me as I've prayed for his help and tried to live his teachings. I know he is real. And I know that each of us are his children and that he loves each of us more perfectly than we can ever understand.