ClydeR
02-05-2009, 10:06 PM
This may be old news to some of you, but I just learned about it today. Everybody knows that Mormons collect genealogy records. But I bet you don't know what they use them for. The Mormons are using those records to convert dead people to the Mormon religion.
That should be illegal! Soon as they finish the stimulus law, Congress needs to jump right on this issue. It should be a felony.
On any given day, in more than fifty Mormon temples around the world, thousands of faithful Mormons are baptized vicariously for the dead. Most non-Mormons are dimly aware that the Mormons are interested in genealogy, but they are not sure why. While there is nothing wrong with being interested in genealogy as a hobby, this is far from a hobby for Mormons.
They believe people who have died can be baptized by proxy, thus allowing them the opportunity to become Mormons after their death. The idea behind baptism for the dead is this: God wants each of us to be with him in glory. To effect this, he allows us to accept the Mormon gospel here on earth. If we do not, he sends us to a "spirit prison" until the Mormon gospel has been preached to us there and we convert.
Mormons believe that their church has missionaries in the "spirit world" who are busy spreading the Mormon gospel to dead people who have not yet received it. Should any of these dead people want to convert to Mormonism, they are required to abide by all its rules, one of which is water baptism. Hence the need for proxies to receive the corporeal waters of baptism.
You might be surprised to learn that the Mormon church has teams of men and women microfilming records of Catholic and Protestant parishes, cemetery records, birth and death certificates—virtually any sort of record pertaining to past generations. Temple Mormons hope, in time, to have all of the dead of previous generations baptized posthumously into the Mormon church.
More... (http://www.catholic.com/library/Mormonism_Baptism_for_the_Dead.asp)
In 1995 the Jews got really mad when they found out that Mormons were converting Holocaust victims to Mormonism. They made a big stink about it, and the Mormons agreed to stop. But they didn't keep their promise.
Despite the guidelines, some members of the Church have submitted the names of Holocaust victims, and prominent Nazis, such as Heinrich Himmler, for vicarious baptism without adequate permission. In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that, following a 1995 promise from the church to remove Jewish Nazi victims from its International Genealogical Index, the Church's database included the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance of having "the potential to be Holocaust victims ... in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria."[19][20] Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the International Genealogical Index, and discovered that many well known Jews had been vicariously baptized, including Maimonides, Albert Einstein, and Irving Berlin, without family permission.
Church official D. Todd Christofferson told the New York Times that it was not feasible for the Church to continuously monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear, and that the agreement in 1995 did not place this type of responsibility on the centralized church leadership.[21]
More... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead)
That should be illegal! Soon as they finish the stimulus law, Congress needs to jump right on this issue. It should be a felony.
On any given day, in more than fifty Mormon temples around the world, thousands of faithful Mormons are baptized vicariously for the dead. Most non-Mormons are dimly aware that the Mormons are interested in genealogy, but they are not sure why. While there is nothing wrong with being interested in genealogy as a hobby, this is far from a hobby for Mormons.
They believe people who have died can be baptized by proxy, thus allowing them the opportunity to become Mormons after their death. The idea behind baptism for the dead is this: God wants each of us to be with him in glory. To effect this, he allows us to accept the Mormon gospel here on earth. If we do not, he sends us to a "spirit prison" until the Mormon gospel has been preached to us there and we convert.
Mormons believe that their church has missionaries in the "spirit world" who are busy spreading the Mormon gospel to dead people who have not yet received it. Should any of these dead people want to convert to Mormonism, they are required to abide by all its rules, one of which is water baptism. Hence the need for proxies to receive the corporeal waters of baptism.
You might be surprised to learn that the Mormon church has teams of men and women microfilming records of Catholic and Protestant parishes, cemetery records, birth and death certificates—virtually any sort of record pertaining to past generations. Temple Mormons hope, in time, to have all of the dead of previous generations baptized posthumously into the Mormon church.
More... (http://www.catholic.com/library/Mormonism_Baptism_for_the_Dead.asp)
In 1995 the Jews got really mad when they found out that Mormons were converting Holocaust victims to Mormonism. They made a big stink about it, and the Mormons agreed to stop. But they didn't keep their promise.
Despite the guidelines, some members of the Church have submitted the names of Holocaust victims, and prominent Nazis, such as Heinrich Himmler, for vicarious baptism without adequate permission. In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that, following a 1995 promise from the church to remove Jewish Nazi victims from its International Genealogical Index, the Church's database included the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance of having "the potential to be Holocaust victims ... in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria."[19][20] Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the International Genealogical Index, and discovered that many well known Jews had been vicariously baptized, including Maimonides, Albert Einstein, and Irving Berlin, without family permission.
Church official D. Todd Christofferson told the New York Times that it was not feasible for the Church to continuously monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear, and that the agreement in 1995 did not place this type of responsibility on the centralized church leadership.[21]
More... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead)