![\"Donner](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/07\/400px-Donner_Party_Memorial.jpg\")
<\/a>Wikimedia Commons public domain photo by Seano1
The pedestal of the statue is 22 feet high, indicating the depth of the snow in this region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California during the fatal winter of 1846-1847.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here in the United States of America and in more than a few other places, the Halloween season is upon us.\u00a0 So here is my 2021 Halloween offering, in Meridian Magazine<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWays of Remembering the Dead\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n With that in mind, I suppose it was appropriate that my wife and I devoted part of our time today to revisiting Donner Memorial State Park and working our way through the exhibits there.\u00a0 Tragic and sad as the story of the Donner Party<\/a> is \u2014 46 of the 91 members of the wagon train (slightly more than half) died, according to the official brochure that we were given \u2014 it\u2019s also a cautionary tale of the consequences that can follow from rejecting sound counsel and relying, instead, upon untried and foolish advice from people who don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I am, by the way, very late in calling this to your attention.\u00a0 But you still might be able to make some use of it:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNew Resources Help You Share Messages of Faith, Hope During Day of the Dead\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n See also this:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCelebrating D\u00eda de los Muertos\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And here\u2019s a little piece that I wrote for the official Church website back in 2008:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Everyone Else Makes Such Lonely Heavens<\/b>\u00a0[1<\/a>]<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n For these defects, and for no other evil,<\/i><\/span> The New Testament states unequivocally that, besides\u00a0Jesus Christ<\/a>, \u201cthere is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.\u201d[3<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0And yet hundreds of millions of souls, probably the majority of all who have ever lived, were never taught about Christianity and perhaps never so much as heard the name of Jesus Christ. Are these millions of souls lost for the eternities? If so, can God be considered just, let alone merciful?<\/span><\/p>\n The poet Dante Alighieri, upon entering (fictionally) into the next world, was astonished by what he saw:\u00a0 \u201cI should never have believed,\u201d he wrote in his\u00a0Inferno<\/i>, \u201cthat death could have unmade so many souls.\u201d[4<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0Strikingly, despite his obvious admiration for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the great Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averro\u00ebs, and the chivalrous Muslim military hero Saladin, Dante felt obliged to place them all in Hell.[5<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0Even his guide, companion and \u201ckindly master,\u201d the Roman poet Virgil, was eternally barred from heaven.\u00a0 Virgil explains the reason to Dante as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d have you know, before you go ahead,<\/span> The founding Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, proclaimed a much more generous and expansive view of eternal possibilities. He pointed out that even the New Testament itself suggests a hopeful escape from this troubling prospect, citing the Apostle Paul\u2019s reference to a practice long since forgotten or ignored by mainstream Christianity.[7<\/a>]<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead,<\/span> Though vicarious or \u201cproxy\u201d baptism is but briefly mentioned in the Bible, a restoration of this ancient Christian practice became a foundational doctrine of the Latter-day Saint faith.<\/span><\/p>\n Today, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> labor to gather\u00a0genealogical records<\/a>\u00a0and to construct temples[9<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0in which baptisms for the dead and related ordinances can be performed. In striking contrast to the horrific atrocities committed by men and governments in the course of history, this vicarious\u00a0temple<\/a>\u00a0service extends the love of God, with full salvational access, to every human who ever lived.<\/span><\/p>\n Proxy temple work best reflects the foundational Latter-day Saint conviction that the power of the atonement of Christ extends even to those who did not hear: every person who has ever lived is to be individually remembered, labored for and valued, thus vindicating the justice of God and illustrating the breadth of his redemptive love. Any rite performed in a Latter-day Saint temple on behalf of a deceased person, who yet lives as a spirit being, is a rite of\u00a0offering<\/i>\u00a0only, exacting no forced compliance nor acceptance of the rite. There is no imposed change of identity, heritage or religious belief, nor is the individual\u2019s name added to the membership rolls of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/span><\/p>\n Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This commentary is one in a series of brief summaries written in 2005 for the\u00a0200-year commemoration<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Joseph Smith\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0birth. Drawing from Joseph Smith\u2019s writings and teachings, these summaries explain the doctrinal foundation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though far from comprehensive, these summaries provide a brief overview of Joseph Smith\u2019s ideas and beliefs relating to theological, religious and social topics<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Notes:<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>1]<\/sup>Tom McHenry, \u201cMormons Offer Post-Mortem Baptism,\u201d\u00a0The Exponent Online<\/i>, 8 Dec. 2003,\u00a0http:\/\/archive.purdueexponent.org\/interface\/bebop\/showstory.php?date=2003\/12\/08\u00a7ion=columns&storyid=ProxyBaptism<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>2]<\/sup>\u00a0Allen Mandelbaum, trans.,\u00a0The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno<\/i>\u00a0(Toronto and New York: Bantam Books, 1982), canto 4, lines 33-41.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>3]<\/sup>Acts 4:12.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>4]<\/sup>\u00a0Inferno,<\/i>\u00a0canto 3, lines 56-57.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>5]<\/sup>\u00a0Inferno,<\/i>\u00a0canto 4.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>6]<\/sup>\u00a0Inferno,<\/i>\u00a0canto 4, lines 33-41.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>7]<\/sup>Some individual contemporary Christian thinkers have noticed it.\u00a0 See, for example, Stephen T. Davis,\u00a0Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection<\/i>\u00a0(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 159-65, where the author, a philosopher affiliated with Claremont McKenna College in California, cautiously mentions the passage while expressing hope for the unevangelized.\u00a0 Historians have also begun to notice the practice (e.g., Jeffrey A. Trumbower,\u00a0Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity<\/i>\u00a0[New York: Oxford University Press, 2001]).<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>8]<\/sup>1 Corinthians 15:29, quoted by Joseph Smith in a letter to the Church elders in Great Britain, 15 Dec. 1840, Nauvoo, Illinois; in Joseph Smith,\u00a0Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith,<\/i>\u00a0sel. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), p. 179.<\/span><\/p>\n [<\/a>9]<\/sup> Latter-day Saint temples, of which there are 140 constructed or announced worldwide [now, as of the end of October 2021, there are a total of 265 announced, under construction, or dedicated]<\/span>, are distinct in purpose from meetinghouses<\/a>\u00a0or chapels, of which there are thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe now are lost and punished just with this:<\/i><\/span>
\nwe have no hope and yet we live in longing.<\/i><\/span>
\nDante\u2019s\u00a0Inferno[2<\/a>]<\/sup><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n
\nthey did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,<\/span>
\nthat\u2019s not enough, because they lacked baptism,<\/span>
\nthe portal of the faith that you embrace.<\/span>
\nAnd if they lived before Christianity,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\nthey did not worship God in fitting ways;<\/span>
\nand of such spirits I myself am one.<\/span>
\nFor these defects, and for no other evil,<\/span>
\nwe now are lost and punished just with this:<\/span>
\nwe have no hope and yet we live in longing.[6<\/a>]<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n
\nif the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for<\/span>
\nthe dead?[8<\/a>]<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n