The Gospel According to Jeffrey

One of the most beautiful practices of The Church of Jesus Christ  is that of performing ordinances for the deceased, by proxy. Latter-day Saints believe that baptism is essential to salvation, and that other temple ordinances ( e.g. endowment , sealing , etc.) are essential to exaltation. We also believe that, since God is just, absolutely everyone will have the opportunity to accept those ordinances. A just God, for example, would not damn one of His beloved children just because that child was unlucky enough to be born in, say, eighth-century China, and go his entire life without even hearing the name of Jesus Christ. Because this practice is so beautiful to us, it confuses us to no end when people react so adversely to it. An extreme example of this occurred in the late 20th century, when a Holocaust-survivors group objected to somebody having submitted the names of hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism. The Church’s response was to issue an official...

A few days late, I realize, but I’ve just discovered that Liam Hoare (sorry I misspelled your name, by the way; I’ve fixed it in the original) has responded to my earlier post,  I Believe… . As my regular readers know, brevity is not my strong suit, but I will attempt to deal with his complaints succinctly. Liam’s response deals with the Church’s position on race—an issue which I asserted, and continue to assert—has been a non-issue from the start (see previous post). I will thus deal with his arguments in turn. 1. “Jeff makes the assertion in his reply that Joseph Smith was some kind of Lincoln before there was a Lincoln.” I actually didn’t say that, but it’s a good point. Joseph Smith, Jr., actually did run for President of the United States on an anti-slavery platform, in 1844. His position was that the United States government should outlaw any new slavery, then sell all federal lands and use the money to purchase the freedom of all existing slaves—which, by the way, wou...

Those of you who follow me on Facebook may have seen my status update, some 36 hours ago, in which I stated that I think I’ve finally decided on a new family history program. This status led to a rather humorous discussion of what I meant by that, but the point is that I’m finally ready to move into the 21st century, when it comes to tracking my genealogy and family history. So here’s a little background, so you can understand just where I’m coming from. Back in 1991, I accepted Christ as my Savior and became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . One of the basic tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ is that God loves all of His children, not just those that are lucky enough to learn His plan during their short time on Earth. However, we also know that Christ taught that baptism is essential for entrance into the kingdom of God (see John 3:1-5 ). So what about all those that died without ever having the chance to be baptized, or even to accept Christ as Savior...