Decrees of God Fixed in the Spiritual as in the Natural
Universe--Ordinances Essential--The Living may be Baptized for the
Dead--The Principle of Proxy--The Place for the Administration of
Vicarious Ordinances--Revelation of Elijah, the Prophet--Connection
with the Spirit World--True Order of Communication--Blessed Results of
Work Done for the Dead.
The divine fiat has gone forth that "Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." This is a
fixed law. The same certainty that is exhibited in the government of
the material universe obtains in the spiritual domain, and is as much a
necessity in one as in the other. As man cannot change the revolutions
of the planets nor alter the principles that underlie all motion and
regulate all matter, so he cannot turn aside the decrees of Jehovah,
nor modify, in the least degree, any rule or commandment pertaining to
the everlasting gospel. Neither will He who reigns in the unseen world,
as well as in the sphere perceived by the senses, swerve from His
established laws in the former any more than in the latter.
Baptism, or the birth of water in the form and mode already described,
is an essential ordinance. There are others equally necessary in their
time and place in the divine plan of human redemption. They must be
rightly received and administered, or the blessings that spring from
them, as their natural fruit, cannot be enjoyed. As aliens cannot be
admitted to the rights and privileges of citizenship in an earthly
government, without complying with the naturalization laws in such
case made and provided, so aliens from the heavenly kingdom cannot
be received into its dominion, nor be adopted into the family of
the Eternal King, without obeying the laws set as the conditions of
admission.
These laws and ordinances will be made known to the inhabitants of
this planet, either in the flesh or in the disembodied condition. They
will have the opportunity of receiving or rejecting them on the agency
given to man, that a just judgment may be rendered in the great day
of accounts. But ordinances, such as baptism, the laying on of hands
for confirmation, ordination, marriage, etc., belong to the corporeal
sphere. They are set for the state of probation.
Water is an earthly element, or compound of elements, and the blessings
ordained to flow from the death, burial and new birth, typified by
authorized baptism therein, cannot be secured in any other way.
Millions of earth's sons and daughters have passed out of the body
without obeying the law of baptism. Many of them will gladly accept
the word and law of the Lord when it is proclaimed to them in the
spirit world. But they cannot there attend to ordinances that belong
to the sphere which they have left. Can nothing be done in their case?
Must they forever be shut out of the kingdom of heaven? Both justice
and mercy join in answering "yes" to the first and "no" to the last
question. What, then, is the way of their deliverance?
The living may be baptized for the dead. Other essential ordinances
may be attended to vicariously. This glorious truth, hid from human
knowledge for centuries, has been made known in this greatest of all
divine dispensations. It is indeed light in the midst of darkness.
It shines in the depths of the shrouded past, illuminates the mystic
future, and reveals the infinite love of God and His tender mercy
over all His works. It explains the meaning of scripture texts long
considered difficult and obscure. It links by loving ties the living
with their dead. It shows why the fathers "without us cannot be made
perfect." It opens the way of redemption for the hosts of departed
heathens. It brings together in one all who are in Christ, even though
parted by the vail that is drawn between the physical and spiritual
spheres. It gives men and women the power to become "Saviors on Mount
Zion," Jesus being the great Captain in the army of redeemers.
In God's house all things are done in order. There is a right way and
a proper place for the administration of ordinances for the dead. The
living relatives of those who have departed without an opportunity of
obeying the earthly requirements of the plan of salvation, if they
have themselves been born of the water and of the spirit, stand in
the name and place of the departed and receive the ordinances to be
placed to the credit of the dead. Either sex represents its own. Men
are not baptized for women, nor women for men. The first-born son in
each family has rights of priority connected with this vicarious work
if he has proven himself worthy. The ordinances must be administered by
those having authority, being set apart for the work, and must be duly
witnessed and properly recorded. The books on earth must tally with the
records in heaven.
The place for these administrations is in a temple built to the Most
High God, after the pattern revealed. The baptismal font, like the
brazen sea in the temple of Solomon, is placed in the basement, under
the place where the living are wont to assemble, typifying the place
for the dead, all things spiritual having their correspondence with
things natural. That which is done on earth, according to the divine
instructions, is acknowledged in heaven, and is of force and effect
in the world to come. Herein is manifested the power of the Holy
Priesthood, loosing or binding on earth, and it is loosed or bound in
heaven, all according to the commandments and revelation of the Most
High through Jesus the anointed.
This principle of proxy runs like a thread of gold throughout the
entire robe of salvation. Christ is the proxy of blood for the whole
race of sinners. The Spotless One died in the place of the impure. He
is the offering for the deadly sin of Adam. He is the propitiation for
the evil deeds of a world. The lamb on the smoking altar, the scapegoat
turned into the wilderness, the sprinkling of atonement, all the
sacrifices of the old covenant, as well as the infinite one of the new,
are based on the doctrine of vicarious action and the divine acceptance
of authorized substitutes.
The manifestation of this truth in the last dispensation came from the
Prophet Elijah in the temple built to the Almighty by the Latter-day
Saints in Kirtland, Ohio. On the third of April, 1836, he who was
caught up to heaven without death, appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver
Cowdery, and committed the keys of the power to "turn the heart of
the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their
fathers," that the earth might be saved from a curse. The living are
thus authorized, under prescribed conditions, to act for the dead, and
the fathers in the spirit world look to the children in the flesh to
perform for them the works which they were unable to attend to while in
the body.
Here is the peculiar blessing upon the heads of the Saints in the
grand, culminating and completing dispensation of the fullness of
times. To labor for the redemption of their progenitors until every
lost link in the line of their ancestry, back to the Abrahamic stock
from which they originally sprang, shall be taken up and welded into
the perfect family chain. Herein is seen one of the blessings attending
the perpetuation of a man's name in the earth; to die leaving no seed
being considered in olden times, among the people of God, one of the
greatest of calamities. Indeed the glory and dominion, and joy and
rapture of the future state will be found to have intimate relation
to the family condition, and the promise to Abraham of a numerous
posterity was not merely of earthly portent, but reached into the
exaltation and beatitudes of eternal existence.
This glorious doctrine bears the key to the sphere within the vail. It
regulates the communion of the living with the dead. It saves those who
receive it from improper and deceptive spirit communications. Tidings
to the living from their friends who have passed away do not come
in disorder and confusion, nor by the will of men or women, whether
corrupt or pure. Order is maintained in all the works and ways of God.
Knowledge that is needful concerning the spiritual sphere will come
through an appointed channel and in the appointed place. The temple
where the ordinances can be administered for the dead, is the place to
hear from the dead. The Priesthood in the flesh, when it is necessary,
will receive communications from the Priesthood behind the vail. Most
holy conversations on all things pertaining to the redemption of the
race, belong in the places prepared in the temples.
The Saints in the flesh are required to use all due diligence in
obtaining their genealogies by the means at command, and a spirit has
moved upon men in the world to collect and perfect and publish the
records of their ancestors, by which, thousands upon thousands of
acceptable names have been obtained, and the work of vicarious baptism
already done is immense. But that which remains to be accomplished is
so vast, that no mind, unless illuminated by the light of God, can see
how it can ever be performed and perfected. Yet it will be done, and
blessed are they who aid in the heavenly labor! With what joy will they
be greeted by the spirits of their progenitors when they meet them
in Paradise! What honor will crown their brows in the day of reward
and compensation! They will stand among the saviors, and shine among
their kindred who are redeemed, like glorious suns in the heavenly
constellations!
This divine plan of vicarious action, is one of the broadest, brightest
and loveliest leaves in the blessed tree of life. It bears a healing
balm for millions upon millions of earth's sons and daughters who have
passed away without hearing the only name whereby man can be saved, or
who, having heard, were never taught the way of salvation as ordained
through Jesus Christ. It is redolent of the love and mercy of the
Eternal Father, and bears the sweet perfume of charity and gratitude of
the children reaching out after the fathers, of the fathers blest in
the works of the children, and of kindred affection enlarged, cemented
and perpetuated for ever and ever. It parts the vail between the
physical and the spiritual, it softens the heart, and brings the living
and the dead nearer to God, and it sanctifies the soul to obedience,
worship and devotion, filling it with reverence and adoration of Him
who has devised this broad and universal plan for the redemption of the
human race.