Baptisms for the Dead

1. Baptisms for the Dead Doctrine & CovenantsSections 127 & 128

3. Sections 127 & 128 Origin • Early Christians believed that the Lord had planned a “rescue for the dead,” as one scholar called it. Only later, largely influenced by Augustine, did Christianity apostatize from the doctrine of redemption for the dead. Put simply, early Christians baptized each other for their kindred dead, as the apostle Paul noted at 1 Corinthians 15:29 and Hugh Nibley has shown. • On a summer day in 1840, Joseph Smith chose the funeral sermon of Seymour Brunson to restore the doctrine of baptism for the dead. Joseph read most of 1 Corinthians 15, in which Paul refers to the early Christian practice of being baptized for the dead in anticipation of the resurrection “and remarked that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brought glad tidings of great joy.” Noticing a widow in the congregation, the mother of a child who had died before receiving baptism, Joseph gave her the good news “that people could now act for their friends who had departed this life, and that the plan of salvation was calculated to save all who were willing to obey the requirements of the law of God.” One witness called it “a very beautiful discourse.”

4. Sections 127 & 128 Origin • Joseph taught baptism for the dead again at October conference in 1840 as the Saints eagerly performed the sacred ordinance in the Mississippi River in lieu of a temple baptismal font. One witness wrote that “during the conference there were some times from eight to ten elders in the river at a time baptizing.” But in their understandable zeal they were without knowledge. No one recorded the ordinances. A year later Joseph taught the doctrine in conference again and announced, as Section 124 had declared in the meantime, that the Lord would no longer accept baptisms for the dead performed outside the temple (D&C 124:29-35). The Saints thus pushed the temple toward completion, and just over a year later in November 1841 performed the first baptisms for the dead in the unfinished but rising Nauvoo Temple. • In the midst of teaching the temple ordinances to the Saints, Joseph was charged with masterminding an attempted murder of former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs. There was no evidence for the charge, and Joseph regarded it as another attempt by his enemies to get him to Missouri and lynch him. He hid instead. Joseph was finally arrested in August 1842 but then released and the charges were finally dismissed a few months later. • Meanwhile, as Joseph moved from house to house in and around Nauvoo, protected by friends, he pondered the newly restored doctrines of the temple. There was something missing. He sought revelation while he was hiding and learned more about the nature of the ordinances. He looked for the first safe opportunity to teach the Saints. In August he taught the Relief Society that “all persons baptiz’d for the dead must have a Recorder present, that he may be an eye-witness to testify of it. It will be necessary in the grand Council, that these things be testified.” The next day Joseph dictated a letter to the Saints, Section 127, in which he shared some of what he had recently learned. • Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants, Sections 127 & 128.

9. Sections 127 & 128 Outcomes • Wilford Woodruff wrote that “Joseph has been deprived of the privilege of appearing openly & deprived of the society of his own family Because Sheriffs are hunting him to destroy him without cause Yet the Lord is with him. . . . Joseph has presented the Church of late with some glorious principles from the Lord concerning Baptism for the dead & other interesting subjects, he has appeared occasionally in the midst of the Saints which has been a great comfort.” • Historian Richard Bushman wrote that “baptism for the dead made the scriptural insistence on being born of water before entering the Kingdom of Heaven reasonable. Otherwise either the command to baptize or the justice of God was compromised. Under the new doctrine, everyone would have a chance, if the Saints were diligent in performing the ordinance.” That if “united the human family.” Joseph emphasized baptism for the dead’s power to fulfill the purpose of the earth’s creation by welding generations together. “Locating names and baptizing vicariously created the welding link.” • The Saints were thrilled with the restoration of baptism for the dead for these very reasons—its perfect justice and its power to weld generations. “There is a chance for all. Is not this a glorious doctrine?” Vilate Kimball asked her missionary-husband Heber, then serving in England. Wilford Woodruff remembered how, when the apostles returned from England, Joseph called them “together and told us that the Lord had revealed to him a principle whereby we could go forth and redeem our dead. It was like a shaft of light from the throne of God to our hearts. It opened a field wide as eternity to our minds.” Sally Carlisle wrote to her mother, “what a glorious thing it is that we believe and receive the fulness of the gospel as it is preached now and can be baptized for all our dead friends and save them as far back as we can get any knowledge of them. . . . O Mother, if we are so happy as to have a part in the first resurrection, we shall have our children just as we laid them down in their graves.”

10. Sections 127 & 128 Outcomes • Sections 127 and 128 restored in part the order of sacred ordinances, without which they would not be valid. Joseph’s role in restoring these truths can hardly be overstated. Having proven that baptism for the dead was practiced by the earliest Christians but not since, Professor Hugh Nibley asked, “where did Joseph Smith get his knowledge? Few if any of the sources cited in this discussion were available to him; the best of these have been discovered only in recent years, while the citations from the others are only to be found scattered at wide intervals through works so voluminous that even had they been available to the Prophet, he would, lacking modern aids, have had to spend a lifetime running them down. And even had he found such passages, how could they have meant more to him than they did to the most celebrated divines of a thousand years, who could make nothing of them? This is a region in which great theologians are lost and bemused; to have established a rational and satisfying doctrine and practice on grounds so dubious is indeed a tremendous achievement.” In awe, Nibley summarized the significance of these Sections. “Work for the dead is an all-important phase of Mormonism about which the world knows virtually nothing.” • It is impossible to estimate the results of these revelations, these glad tidings. Because of them innumerable spirit prisoners have gone and continue to go free (See Section 138). “Shall we not go on in so great a cause?” (D&C 128:22). • Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants, Sections 127 & 128.