Members are often under the impression that each new Stake President is called by the inspiration of God. That God whispers the anonymous name of the new Stake President into the ears of the Apostle assigned to the reorganization. However, like many other general Mormon misconceptions, reality is quite different than general perceptions.
Prior to my interview, a special meeting was held by the departing stake presidency and the current stake high council. In this meeting the Stake President announced that his tenure as Stake President was coming to an end and that [L Tom Perry] would be attending our next stake conference to reorganize a new stake presidency. He then asked each member of the high council to write down names of potential stake members that we thought would make good candidates for the next Stake President. WTF? OK I was naive, but this procedure blew me away. Cr@ig P@xton, board post 8th November 2006, ‘My Meeting with L Tom Perry’
How Diana Has Been Baptised A Mormon ... This bizarre project is still going on, and the sheer scale and audacity of it almost beggars belief, as I discovered while watching Radkey scroll through the vast cast of dead people chosen to be admitted to the Church, regardless of the beliefs they had held in life.
This list of those who have already been posthumously baptised includes film stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth.
They have also baptised Diana Frances Spencer, whose address was listed as the family seat of Althorp, Northamptonshire. Her file also includes her birth and death date.
And within two hours of her death, Whitney Houston’s name had been entered into the computer, too, without thought for the feelings of her grieving Baptist relatives.
The Mormons believe that in the afterlife no one is beyond redemption, no matter how evil their earthly deeds – the list also includes notorious figures such as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchman Joseph Mengele, serial killer Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people and injured 800 more in the Oklahoma City Bombing – and even one of the 9/11 hijackers.
How would Romney explain that to the electorate, one wonders?
In the early Nineties, Jewish genealogists found more than 300,000 Holocaust victims had been listed for baptism. Shame-faced Mormon authorities promised to remove the names, but then in 1999 Radkey discovered that they had failed to keep their word. Mail online article David Jones 28th February 2012
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead? I Corinthians 15:29
We are astounded and dismayed that after assurances and promises by the Mormon Church, Mr Wiesenthal’s life and memory, along with so many other Jews, would be trampled and disregarded ... [Wiesenthal] proudly lived as a Jew, died as a Jew, demanded justice for the millions of the victims of the Holocaust and, at his request, was buried in the State of Israel ... It is sacrilegious for the Mormon faith to desecrate his memory by suggesting that Jews on their own are not worthy enough to receive God’s eternal blessing. Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the Wiesenthal Centre, Urgent Request to the Mormon Church
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes another attempt to address concerns of Jewish groups who complain that Holocaust victims are showing up on Mormon baptism rolls. Mormons believe that after death, baptisms save souls. Ten years ago, Mormon leaders agreed to try to stop this practice. Now, they vow to try again. National Public Radio’s Morning Edition 12th April 2005
And there in the St George Temple I saw what I had always hoped and prayed that someday I would see. Ever since I returned as a humble missionary and first learned that the Founding Fathers had appeared in that temple, I wanted to see the record. And I saw the record. They did appear to Wilford Woodruff twice and asked why the work hadn’t been done for them. They had founded this country and the Constitution of this land, and they had been true to those principles. Later the work was done for them. Ezra Taft Benson, address Sandy Utah 30 December 1978, cited Benson, ‘The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson’ p60
After Alvin Smith’s death in 1823, the Smith family was forced to worry about his eternal status when a minister implied that he had gone to hell because he was unchurched and probably unbaptized ... Seven years later, on 21st January 1836, Smith received a revelation that ‘all who have died without a knowledge of this Gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God’ ... Later, in 1840, when Smith instituted the doctrine of baptism for the dead in Nauvoo, his brother Hyrum was baptized for Alvin. Dan Vogel, Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism pp162-63
There is overwhelming evidence of the continuity between Masonic and Mormon symbolism. The sun, the moon, and the stars, the ‘lesser lights’ of the Masonic symbology, had long been woven into the Mormon cosmology of three heavens, and the sun and the moon were to be prominently displayed on the Nauvoo temple. The Masonic beehive, All-Seeing Eye, and the phrase ‘Holiness to the Lord’ would be ubiquitous symbols in Mormon Utah, where temples would reflect the Mormon encounter with Freemasonry both in their sculpted ornamentation and in their east-facing orientation, following the traditions of Masonic temples, which Mormon Masons closely observed when they built a lodge building in Nauvoo. Planned before this immersion in Freemasonry, the temples at Kirtland and Nauvoo did not reflect the Masonic priority of the east. In the Kirtland temple, which opened onto the east, the pulpits of the Melchizedek, the senior priesthood, were at the west end of the temple; the Nauvoo temple faced the town and river, which were to the west of the bluff on which it was built. The Utah temples face east, and the east ends of the buildings are devoted to the Melchizedek, mirroring the eastward orientation of Masonic lodge buildings. Both were intended to be replications of Solomon’s temple, a connection that Joseph Smith made when he began to call the Nauvoo temple the ‘Holiest of Holies’.
Throughout the temple rituals themselves there were striking similarities with Masonic symbolism, especially those of the York Rite, which was established at the Nauvoo Lodge. The temple garments, very similar to Masonic ceremonial garb, included an apron with the Masonic compass and square, which was also among the emblems on the temple veil. The language of the tokens and penalties of the Mormon priesthoods had exact parallels in Freemasonry, progressing from parallels with the first three degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason to parallels with the Royal Arch and the higher degrees. Among these parallels to the first three degrees were the signs of the ‘five points of fellowship’, the penalties for disclosure of secrets, and priestly handgrips and bodily signing, including the ‘Sign of the Nail’. Parallels with the Royal Arch included the use of the temple veil as the site of ritual discourses and catechisms and the role of a ritual actor representing God. Brooke on Temples & Freemasonry, cited Anonymous, August 2005
Baptisms for the dead satisfied an important need in the historic Mormon culture. It offered the surviving Saints assurance that their loved ones, left behind in graves from Kirtland, Independence and Far West, as well as those buried in Nauvoo, were secure in the afterlife.
And, as in Alvin’s case, the Saints were comforted in their concerns that deceased loved ones who were not affiliated with the church could now join them in the Celestial Kingdom. Mark A Scherer, ‘Through the Mists of Time: Chats with the Church Historian’, February 2001
Current IGI TM Addendum temple ordinance entries for Mr [Adolf] Hiedler (Hitler) show that Hitler was ‘baptized’ by Mormons on September 30 1993, and ‘endowed’ on April 27 1994 in the Jordan River Temple, Utah ... Eva Anna Paula Braun, born in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, on February 7, 1912, was ‘baptized’ by Mormons on October 16, 1964, and ‘endowed’ on February 5, 1965 in the Los Angeles Temple. She had been ‘sealed’ to her parents some time prior to 1970. Helen Radkey, board post 29th March 2006, ‘The Mormon Church Attempts to Conceal Temple Records for Adult Hitler’
Despite a 1995 signed promise to discontinue the improper Mormon proxy baptisms of deceased Jews – especially wrongful baptisms of Jewish Holocaust victims – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has broken its word to Jewish organizations. The LDS Church has unquestionably failed to prevent Mormon zealots from adding many tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust names to LDS temple lists since 1995.
In recent years, a substantial number of names of Greek Jewish Holocaust victims have been fed into the Mormon temple pipeline. Proxy baptisms for Greek Holocaust victims occurred in LDS temples in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. There is evidence that hundreds of Greek victims have been subjected to LDS temple rituals in 2009 – further increasing the number of concentration camp victims on Mormon lists. LDS Church databases list additional Greek Holocaust names that are in the process of receiving Mormon rites.
... Why are Mormons continuing to baptize Jewish death camp victims in blatant violation of the official written agreement the LDS Church made with Jewish groups in 1995? Mormon ‘redemptive’ rites for Jewish Holocaust victims, and for any deceased Jew, are woefully misguided attempts to invariably depreciate the wholeness of Jewish worth. Helen Radkey, board post 23rd July 2009, ‘Mormon-Jewish, Auschwitz 2009 LDS Baptisms of Jewish Holocaust Victims Continue Unabated’
The LDS Church claims to be the one and only divinely mandated church on Earth – a wholesome, family-oriented religion. Yet the ghoulish Mormon practice of baptizing mass murderers and psycho killers presents an ungodly and debased standard. When Mormons think they have the power to offer salvation to mass murderers and serial killers, essentially, they are attempting to assign redemption to a dark and unholy place. Helen Radkey
Mary Mother of Jesus, the spouse of Joseph of the House of David … was baptized and confirmed a member of the LDS Church by proxy on December 9, 2009 in the Idaho Falls Idaho (LDS) Temple. She was subjected to initiatory temple ordinances on December 16, 2009; an endowment ceremony on December 26, 2009; and a sealing to parents on January 7, 2010 – all rites occurred in the Idaho Falls Idaho Temple. Helen Radkey, KTMW Radio interview September 2010
Jan 2nd 1844 – An English court acquits the first Mormon missionaries to accidentally drown a convert during baptism by immersion. Baura, board post, ‘On This Day in Mormon History’
A former mission president to the Chile mission, BYU Professor Dr Ted Lyon, has gone on camera and quite candidly talked about the completely dishonest practices of the church in that mission.
He admits that the activity rate there is 10-11%!!!!!