I once asked a Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) missionary what would happen if their Mormon doctrine was rejected, not accepted, if they did not succeed in their attempts to convert. The answer was that upon death, in the afterlife, a Mormon missionary would approach and offer one last chance to convert—posthumously.
Great news! You can do whatever you want your entire life and after you die you can still be saved!
The details and quotations of that which follows have been gleaned from:
Helen Radkey,“The Mormon Church Attempts to Conceal Temple Records for Adolf Hitler,” Web Citation. They used BBC Knowledge magazine Oct. 2008 #1 as a source.
Bob Mims, “LDS Struggle to Keep Proxy Baptisms Appropriate,” The Salt Lake Tribune, October 9, 1999 AD
Peggy Fletcher Stack, “Q&A about Mormon baptisms for the dead,” Salt Lake Tribune, Mar 08 2012 AD
Mormons are known for their meticulous genealogical / ancestral recordkeeping. But did you ever wonder why? It all goes back to their belief in baptism for the dead. They determine their genealogies (and, as we will see, those of others) in order to have posthumous baptisms preformed for their entire lineage.
How do they get the names to baptize? LDS members have been collecting their ancestors’ names, countries of origin, birth and death dates since the 1840s. That led to the creation of its vast genealogical holdings, which houses billions of census records, church registers and vital records from across the globe.
Mormons believe proxy baptisms give the dead an opportunity to join the church in the spirit world. Similarly, dead spouses and their children can be “sealed” for eternity, just as living Latter-day Saints enter into eternal marriages and families are “sealed” together in the faith’s temples.
Well, via the performance of posthumous baptisms, baptism for the dead, performed in Mormon temples who can you expect to see in the Mormon heaven(s)? Arguably, (and we will get to why it is arguable—within the Mormon context) the following personages are examples: Adolph Hitler (sometimes listed as Hiedler) Eva Braun Adolf Eichmann Paul Joseph Göbbels Hermann Göring Rudolf Hess
Heinrich Himmler
And a vast array of other Nazi leaders: Reinhard Heydrich (“The Father of The Final Solution”) Alfred Rosenberg (“hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes”) Ernst Röhm (“thuggish leader of Hitler’s Storm Troopers”) Erwin Rommel (Field Marshall and “the famous Desert Fox of World War II”) Baldur von Schirach (Hitler Youth leader) Alfred Jodl (“Chief of Operations, supreme headquarters…was hanged in 1946 but posthumously exonerated by a West German court in 1953”) Franz von Papen Diplomat (“former Deputy Chancellor to Hitler. Acquired at Nuremberg”) Arthur Seyss-Inquart (Reich Governor) Albert Speer (Reich Minister for Armaments) Constantin Freiherr von Neurath (Reich Foreign Minister) Hans Fritzsche (Head of Wireless News in Göbbels’ Propaganda Ministry) Hermann Wilhelm Göring (“Chief of the Luftwaffe, Adolf Hitler’s nominated successor”) Rudolf Hess (Deputy Leader of the Nazi party) Joachim von Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister) Wilhelm Keitel (Chief of Staff of High Command of Armed Forces) Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Head of Reich Security main office and the Gestapo) Alfred Rosenberg (Nazi theorist) Hans Frank (Governor General of occupied Poland) Wilhelm Frick (Minister of Interior) Julius Streicher (“Editor of the notorious anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer who advocated annihilation of Jews) Hjalmar Schacht (“Economics Minister and Director of the German Central Bank”) Walther Funk (took over for Schacht) Fritz Saukel (Reich Director of forced labor) Erich Räder (Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy)
Karl Dönitz (“Submarine Arm Commander. Commander-in-Chief at the German Navy 1943-5 and briefly Hitler’s successor as German president”)
Also, very many Jewish Holocaust victims including Anne Frank.
Plus Roman Catholic popes and saints: Joan of Arc Ignatius Loyola Francis Xavier
Padre Pio
Gabriel Lalemant
Some of them are “now listed as married, or sealed, despite lifelong celibacy” married in Mormon terms, meaning in the afterlife.
Some Communists made the list: Karl Marx Joseph Stalin Mao Tse-Tung
Ho Chi-Minh
Also, the Fascist Benito Mussolini.
And various others of interest: Christopher Columbus (“sealed to a Beatriz Enriquez Harana — the explorer’s mistress”)
Buddha (“and the mysterious ‘Mrs. Buddha’”)
King Henry the VIII (“along with several of his six wives”)
Now, the Mormons (aka “LDS” for Latter Day Saints) have had some ‘splainin to do not only with regards to the fact that temple services in the form of baptisms for the dead were performed for these personages but with regards to denials, cover-ups and deletion of records.
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