Know someone baptized for a dead Man?
A Great Tempest in a Teapot over Scripture,
Grossly Misinterpreted by the Mormon Church,
Make Jews protest over a man they say is Dead!
Mormon interpretation of this verse is absolutely taken out of context in amazing disregard for the question Paul is addressing in the verses that precede it. Please consider the verses which precede it, before you give your answer to it!
I Corinthians 15:29 – 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 15:12-29 – Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? [13] But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: [14] And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and y
our faith is also vain. [15] Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. [16] For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: [17] And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. [18] Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. [19] If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. [20] But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. [21] For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. [22] For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
[23] But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
[24] Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. [25] For he must reign, till
he hath put all enemies under his feet. [26] The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. [27] For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. [28] And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. [29] 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?
Paul’s inspired discourse in context leads him to ask the two questions of verse 29. His answer is this: Why were all these people baptized after they received Christ, if they did not believe he was alive
? Do you think they were baptized for a dead man
? No, they were baptized for a living Christ while they were still alive! To believe a dead human being can be saved by a living one’s baptism for them after they die, is taking verse 29 totally out of context, and is a great example of ungodly heresy.
The whole point Paul is making is simply that when a living person goes into the water to picture the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, he or she believes Christ was resurrected from the dead and is very much alive. If Christ did not rise from the de ad, then wh
at good does it do the believer to be baptized for a dead Christ who cannot resurrect the one being baptized at the first resurrection.
November 11, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Excerpt from Jerusalem Post
Jewish group wants Mormons to stop proxy baptisms
November 10, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database to make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.
But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must “implement a mechanism to undo what you have done.”
“Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable,” said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.
“We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion,” Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. “We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough.”
Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, are over.
He said his group will not sue, and that “the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion.”
In 1995, the church agreed not to perform baptisms or other rites for Holocaust victims, except in the very rare instances when they have living descendants who are Mormon.
Church spokesman Mike Otterson said Michel’s decision to publicly denounce the church seems like a unilateral termination of the discussion.
“Those steps by Mr. Michel on behalf of the American Gathering were both unnecessary and unfortunate and belie the long and valued mutual respect that we have had in past years,” Otterson said in an e-mail.
Posthumous baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.
Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.
Only the Jews have an agreement with the church limiting who can be baptized, though the agreement covers only Holocaust victims, not all Jewish people. Jews are particularly offended by baptisms of Holocaust victims because they were murdered specifically because of their religion.
Michel suggested that posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims play into the hands of Holocaust deniers.
“They tell me, that my parents’ Jewishness has not been altered but … 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?” Michel said Monday.
Under the agreement with the Holocaust group, Mormons could enter the names of only those Holocaust victims to whom they were directly related. The church also agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims already entered into its massive genealogical database.
Otterson said the church has kept its part of the agreement by removing more than 200,000 names from the genealogical index.
But since 2005, ongoing monitoring of the database by an independent Salt Lake City-based researcher shows both resubmissions and new entries of names of Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews.
The researcher Helen Radkey, who has done contract work for the Holocaust group, said her research suggests that lists of Holocaust victims obtained from camp and government records are being dumped into the database.
She said she has seen and recorded a sampling of several thousand entries that indicate Mormon religious rites, including baptisms, had been conducted for these Holocaust victims, some as recently as July.
“I’ve seen a steady procession of Jewish Holocaust names, especially names with camps linked to them, going to the International Genealogical Index,” said Radkey, who acknowledges that she has limited access to the records. “There’s no possible way of knowing exactly how many names, but it’s substantial.”
Church officials say a new version of the database – called New Family Search – will fix the problems. In the works for six years, the new database will discourage the submission of large lists of unrelated individuals. It will also separate names intended for temple rites from those submitted purely for genealogical purposes, the church states in a letter sent to Michel on Nov.
6.
“The names of any Holocaust victims we can identify in the database are to be flagged with a special designation – not available for temple ordinances,” the letter states.
The church also proposes jump-starting a monitoring committee formed in 2005 to review database entries.
The committee has met just once since 2005.
In May, the Vatican ordered Catholic dioceses worldwide to withhold member registries from Mormons so that Catholics could not be baptized.
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