LDS Quotes on Baptisms For The Dead
The work of remembering one who is dead is a work of the utmost unselfish love. If one wants to make sure that love is completely unselfish, he eliminates every possibility of repayment.
“A man who has not paid his tithing is unfit to be baptized for his dead. … If a man has not faith enough to attend to these little things, he has not faith enough to save himself and his friends.”
| History of the Church, 7:282.
“One of the major missions of the Church is to uniquely identify these individuals who have died and perform the necessary saving ordinances in their behalf, for they cannot do it for themselves. Once these ordinances are performed, if the individual accepts the gospel in the great world of spirits, then this work will be effective.”
| “Moral Values and Rewards,” Ensign, May 1981, 68.
“The wisdom and mercy of God in preparing an ordinance for the salvation of the dead. . . . Those Saints who neglect it in behalf of their deceased relatives, do it at the peril of their own salvation.”
| History of the Church, 4:426.
Some years ago, a priest in Central America told me he was studying Latter-day Saint “baptism for deceased persons.” “It does seem just,” the priest said, “that God would offer every person opportunity to receive baptism, no matter when or where they lived, except little children, who ‘are alive in Christ.’ The Apostle Paul,” the priest noted, “speaks of the dead awaiting baptism and resurrection.” Vicarious temple ordinances promise all nations, kindreds, and tongues that no one need “remain a slave of death, of hell, or of the grave.”
| "All Nations, Kindreds, and Tongues"
“How are [the Saints] to become Saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointing, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfills the mission of Elijah.”
| History of the Church, 6:184
“Whereby all his children, be they alive or dead, might have the privilege of accepting or rejecting the gospel of his beloved Son.”
| Conference Report, April 1945, 69, 71.
“How did we feel when we first heard [that] the living could be baptized for the dead? We all went to work at it as fast as we had an opportunity, and were baptized for everybody we could think of, without respect to sex. I went and was baptized for all my friends, grandmothers, and aunts, as [well as for] those of the male sex: but how was it? Why, by-and-by, it was revealed, through the servants of the Lord, that females should be baptized for females, and males for males.”
| Journal of Discourses, 5:85
“[The keys] will be given to those who have passed off this stage of action and have received their bodies again. . . . They will be ordained, by those who hold the keys of the resurrection, to go forth and resurrect the Saints, just as we receive the ordinance of baptism then receive the keys of authority to baptize others for the remission of their sins. This is one of the ordinances we can not receive here [on the earth], and there are many more.” (JD, 15:137)
| “Our Great Potential,” Ensign, May 1977
“Here and now then, we move to accomplish the work to which we are assigned. . . . We gather the records of our kindred dead, indeed, the records of the entire human family; and in sacred temples in baptismal fonts designed as those were anciently, we perform these sacred ordinances.”
| “The Redemption of the Dead,” Ensign, November 1975, 99