Russian Orthodox question Mormons use of russian names
A mere snippet :
Discuss.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
What are they playing at?
Sweet mother of god.
What the ever loving fuck do the Mormon’s think they’re doing???
Baptizing dead people? How disgustingly disrespectful, arrogant and just plain sleazy.
I can’t even think straight, I’m so fucking floored.
I’m dying (no, not literally, Mormons. Don’t bust out the wading pool just yet) to hear what Monty thinks about this.
“My invisible sky pixie!”
No, my invisible sky pixie!"
Who gives a shit?
Hey, hey, hey! I’m a non-mormon genealogist, and I for one am very happy the Mormons collect all those records, and so generously make them available to all interested parties. The LDS people are, by and large, collecting either public records or private ones which are being shared by the custodian’s permission.
And so what if someone is using an LDS copy of a public vital record to get great-great-great grandpa Mercotan into the books of the Mormon church? Grandpa doesn’t! He’s still dead!
Mormonim is just another cult, why would anyone be surprised to see them doing this sort of thing?
/off to look for my magic glasses.
It’s just disrespectful, Quadgop.
Well, I’ve had distant cousins who converted to the LDS church do this to some of our mutual ancestors. To them it seems to be a sign of respect, rather than disrespect.
So which descendants get to decide how the ancestors are treated? I am curious.
(I don’t have a dog in this fight, I hold my ancestor’s faith in as much esteem as I do the LDS church)
Ok, let me do my best to explain…Though it’s been years and years…Time flies.
The Church believes one of the necessary covenants with God is that of baptism. This is one of the things that must be done. The Church also knows that obviously there are billions of people in the world who never got this oppurtunity because they are born in the wrong time and place. Instead of shrugging and saying “Tough for them!” they have established a baptism-by-proxy.
You must understand that the Mormons don’t believe you go right to Heaven or uh…Heaven…since there is no hell. There’s a time of waiting, because nobody goes to the FInal Destination until after the Second Coming. Some people are hanging out in Paradise, some people are being ministered to by…missionaries…I guess, and some people are paying for their own sins in “Hotel Hell”. Now, in this waiting area, you don’t have a body (obviously). Your body isn’t restored until the second coming. Therefore, you can’t be Baptized. Therefore, you can’t accept one of the first and important Covenants with God.
So that’s how Baptism-by-Proxy comes into play. The members use their bodies do it in the dead people’s names. Then the people in question have the chance to say “Yes, I accept these convenants.” Or “Thanks but no thanks.”
There is an important scripture that reminds the members…and I can’t remember where it’s at othe rthan Nephi 2 because it’s been so long…that dying is like going to sleep, and when you wake up in that world, you are exactly the same as in this world. You don’t somehow change and become more or less likely to accept the covenants.
Now, what happens to people who don’t? shrug I don’t know. Maybe they pay for their own sins before the second coming, maybe they don’t. But in the Mormon belief system, the people who are being “baptized” have a choice to accept it or not. It does not automatically convert them to Mormonism.
The Mormons are really good about sharing their info with non-Mormons, for free, IIRC. All they ask is you share your info with them. My family tree would be stuck in the 20th century if it weren’t for them.
Thank you for the explanation pepperlandgirl.
I still think it’s disrespectful, in the way that the church is, in a way, disregarding what the deceased’s religion was before death.
Kind of like they’re saying “well, now that you’re dead, you know you should’ve converted to Mormonism, so we’re going to be really kind and give you one last chance.”
It just seems the very height of arrogance.
Also, IMHO, it could be equated with witnessing people on their death beds in the hospital.
Please tell me they don’t do that.
Why wouldn’t people do that, lezlers?
It sounds like a plum opportunity for proselytizers, doesn’t it? I bet some people do.
I’ve never heard of the Mormons witnessing to people on their death beds, lezlers. But then, I don’t know every single Mormon who ever lived…
If they’re going to baptize dead people from Russia, why don’t they just make up people and baptize them … what difference would it make.
Or why don’t they flip through the phone book and baptize people at random?
Fuck, why don’t they just declare that everybody on earth has just been baptized a Mormon?
I think Nametag hit the nail on the head … who gives a shit?
Hell, after I’m dead baptize me into the Church Of The Holy Asparagus if you want, my rotting flesh won’t care.
When my Dad was in hospice care they kept a TV in his room tuned to a hospital channel of what was supposed to be peaceful images - landscapes, playing children, wildlife, reminded me a LOT of the euthanasia center in Soylent Green. I realized it was actually a pretty good idea, if he did happen to wake up confused it might occupy his attention until he fell asleep again.
Since I doubt my Dad was conscious much during those last few days and his mental state when conscious didn’t matter much, it probably didn’t matter, but one time while I was over there there was this sequence that showed footage of storm clouds and such while a narrator read the Ten Commandments and then some other Bible verses. That REALLY bothered me. Here was a doped-up confused old man (who was an agnostic back when he was still a brilliant man) being exposed to the same religious crap he rejected in life right before he died. I imagined what might go through his head if he woke up to that while waiting to die - might he think he was wrong and the commandments he had broken were being read to him before he was sent to Hell? Who knows.
Oops, brain fart…sorry, I was really emotional while posting about that.
“Since I doubt my Dad was conscious much during those last few days and his mental state when conscious didn’t matter much” should have been “Since I doubt my Dad was conscious much during those last few days and his mental state when conscious was seriously deteriorated”.
Put me in the “So what?” camp. It helps that I’m an atheist, and therefore view all religions as equally meaningless, but I don’t see myself feeling any different if I were, say, a devout Catholic. Because I’d still feel that the Mormon religion was a “false” religion. Go ahead and baptize me after I’m dead, it’s not going to change anything about my spirtual path because I’m already a member of the One True Religion and blahdy-blah-blah. Is there any non-Mormon religion that would see this as being in any way spirtually binding? And if not, then so what?
As a Russian Orthodox Christian, I have to say that I’m honestly not that offended by what the Mormons are doing. I find it kind of amusing, actually. Obviously I think the Mormons are wasting their time putting all this effort into trying to baptize the dead, but if they want to do it, more power to them. It’s not hurting my ancestors any. I can see how some people would find it disrespectful, though.
I must ask, though, what do Mormons plan to do for those individuals for whom there is no historical record of them existing (like most inhabitants of pre-Columbian America, or anybody before the invention of writing)?