Is there a specific calling for Baptism for the Dead clerk? Email Marie at comments@mybookofmormonpodcast.com because she really needs to know.
More on baptisms for the dead. There should always be at least 2 witnesses, ideally 3, for each baptism. The church recorder should record each one, and also record sealings. This book is somehow also created in heaven (not sure why). Know that if your name isn’t in this official holy church record then God won’t find you and be able to let you into the celestial kingdom. Now, go build that temple!!!!!!
Patron Bonus: Miracle of Forgiveness, Part 1
My Book of Mormon 
May 5, 2018 at 4:04 pm
So much to unpack in this section! I’ll just hit the high points:
Marie – Yes, if you can get someone with an LDS Membership number to login to FamilySearch.org for you, you can look up your grandfather and see if anyone has done baptism for the dead or any other temple ordinances for him. There are many instances of people looking up ancestors only to discover that they have some long-lost 2nd or 3rd cousin who is LDS and already did the ordinances for great-grandma Gertrude. 🙂
Bryce – Sorry, but the LDS Church absolutely DOES go through public records and gathers names of people for temple work. The process is called “extraction” and people are called – usually as older missionary couples – to go through courthouse records and get the birth, marriage, and death dates of all the people listed. My TBM parents are currently in the process of submitting for temple work 11,000 names of people going back as far as the 1700’s from the county where I was born.
“Voice of gladness” etc. – Joseph is riffing on Jeremiah. There are at least four instances where Jeremiah uses a similar pattern, for example Jer. 33:11 “The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the LORD of hosts.” And then for good measure Joseph throws in “How beautiful upon the mountains…” from Isaiah 52:7. Nice to have some time on his hands for a free-form scripture/poetry slam (which continues for six more verses!). Or maybe he had refrigerator magnets. 😉
Dews of Carmel – Mt. Carmel, in northern modern Israel, which name in Hebrew means “God’s Vineyard”, is commonly used in scripture as a symbol of blessing and abundance. This is due to the lush vegetation on its upper slopes which grows, not because of rainfall in the desert climate, but because of the dew that condenses there from the prevailing onshore breezes off the Mediterranean Sea because of the cooler temperatures at higher elevations. To a Bronze Age sheep herder, this verdant place surrounded by desert would seem miraculous. See also ‘manna’ in Exodus 16.
Malachi – Jeez, there’s a whole episode or book that could be written about the interrrelationship (and timing) of Malachi, D&C 128, the writing of the Book of Mormon and the visitation of Joseph by the Angel Nephi,,, *ahem* …Moroni (see Times and Seasons, 1842; Millenial Star, 1842; Pearl of Great Price, 1851; Lucy Mack Smith’s biography of Joseph, 1853. Bryce can explain.) 😀
But my favorite part is the end of verse 17, quoting Malachi and also referring back to D&C 2:3 which has the added statement “If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.” This always reminds me of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the Earth is actually an organic supercomputer and all the people on it components in its program. When it is accidentally destroyed just five minutes before the end of its ten-million-year run time, the whole effort was ‘wasted’ (and the earth had to be rebuilt, but that’s the second book). Similarly, if Mormons fail to seal every ancestor and descendant together in an unbroken chain from Adam to whomever the Last Man will be, the the Earth will be “utterly wasted.” Would the Plan of Salvation have to start over on another planet? Based on current rates of temple attendance, we better call the Pan-Dimensional White Mice and get a jump on Earth 2.0! 😉
Finally, my wife says you can call her “Thecla” (or I would say, “Thecla the Patient” 😉 ). This is a reference to the pseudepigraphal book “The Acts of Paul and Thecla.” I won’t spoil it for anyone who might want to read it, but it is a wild ride! (and was quite popular in early Christian churches until about the 4th Century CE). Thecla’s baptism scene in a Roman coliseum is the apex in all scripture for over-the-top theatricality! I’ll just say that it involves feminism, nudity, and “man-eating seals.” 😀 😀 😀
May 5, 2018 at 4:42 pm
Oh, and Bryce, I almost forgot– the LDS church does teach – or at least did teach – that baptism is a similitude of death and resurrection – both the death and resurrection of Jesus and the ‘death’ of your old, sinful self and your rebirth(resurrection) into your new, clean, sinless self.
May 5, 2018 at 4:43 pm
Aw, Jeez! I shouldn’t comment until I listen to the entire episode. Bryce just explained the whole Nephi/Moroni thing. 😛
May 7, 2018 at 12:57 am
One more thing, since no one’s jumped in on it: a “Fuller” is a person who cleans and whitens cloth (especially wool) of dirt and oils as part of the manufacturing process prior to dyeing. Fuller’s Soap is generally a strong lye soap with bleaching action. When used as a metaphor in scripture, whereas the Refiner’s Fire will make you pure, Fuller’s Soap will make you “white and delightsome!” 😉
May 5, 2018 at 5:32 pm
There is a temple recorder. When you go do baptisms for the dead, they have an office. There are temple cards that they scan and date with the day that the work was done. I believe that any temple calling would be through your stake president.
May 7, 2018 at 12:11 am
Just following up on the whole “why do things get removed from the Doctrine & Covenants thing.” I get what Bryce is saying about it being weird for single verses to be removed or added without notations, and doesn’t that mean God is changing God’s mind without being straightforward about it?
But from the CoC perspective (and in some cases backed by historians with no skin in the game), many of the sections recognized as revelations by the Brighamite scriptures were never legitimately part of the Community of Christ’s D&C. This could be for one of three reasons:
(1) they were written by Joseph Smith as letters or personal missives but not added to the D&C during his lifetime, only to be incorporated into the Brighamite scriptures after his death
(2) they were written/given through a prophet not recognized by the CoC (we haven’t run into this yet obviously)
(3) they were published in the D&C prior to Joseph Smith’s death, but had never been voted on. Because they didn’t have the consent of the church, the CoC views them as “things Joseph Smith said, but not revelation.”
The TLDR is that the “missing” passages in the CoC aren’t missing. God never gave them as revelations, therefore they don’t belong in a book of revelations.
I’m an atheist, so all of this is a bit like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. At the same time, I like to be fair to people even if I don’t agree with their worldview. And the “God changed God’s mind and the church tried to cover up the tracks” argument strikes me as an unfair representation of how things work in the CoC, or at least a misunderstanding.
OK, I’ve been pontificating long enough! I’m enjoying the show as always, as well as the opportunity to pontificate in a way I haven’t since those middle-of-the-night impromptu philosophy debates of my college days.
September 11, 2019 at 2:42 am
Shout out to the other creepy family members who are weird but harmless