155,000 people die every day according to official government statistics. That's just over 1 million people each and every week at current population levels.

There are 134 temples currently (I think) operating six days a week.

Assuming no down time for refurbishment and holidays, every single temple on the planet needs to be delivering an average of 1300 baptism's, initiatry's, endowments, and sealing each and every day.

Anyone know of a temple achieving this?

And that is just to keep up, we are falling further behind every day. This always bothered me as a member, I thought, why do any if we can't even do one percent of the world's total population since Adam in even a couple of hundred years? If we have the millennium to do temple work, why not just wait until then? I mean, while we are doing 99.99999% of it then anyway.

It's a waste of time anyway. Why should we be concerned with dead people when the world is in a downward spiral around us? I realize that most sane people don't just sit around in the temple all day, but, even so, temple goers have their priorities all screwed up. And if God was in charge of this all, then he is clearly not concerned with us to some degree. Since he won't do much to help us humans, then we're left to help ourselves. Each one of us is a God on planet Earth to the degree that we can make things happen for ourselves with the right attitude. The saddest part of this all is all of the brainwashing that occurs inside that's only reinforced and the time people could be out and about on the weekends, contributing to a more robust social atmosphere here in SLC. Although, I have no idea to what degree temple going prevents that from happening. I only know that social life is pitiful here in Utah.

Maybe it's all just busywork, intended to keep TBMs so busy that they never have time to question, think about what they are doing, or break any of the million rules.

At least not all the dead. It was originally about saving your kin. It was about bringing select members into the club. Now it's about generating revenue and keeping living members bound to the church.

If you have no reason to go to the temple except for your own ordinances and those of your children, there's little motivation to be worthy of a temple recommend all those other years/decades -- except your own desire to live righteously. So the church created more reasons to go to the temple, and more things for which a recommend is required. Of course, the big measure of worthiness is tithing.

The church can't really tell what's in your head and heart. It can only measure your actions. Do you do the things faithful Mormons are supposed to do? Do you pay tithing?

So, if the church can convince you redeeming the dead is essential -- not only to the dead, but to you as well -- then you have to keep a current recommend. And temple work is one more chunk of time you're devoting to religious things, to the church, instead of something else. Add to that the genealogy and name extraction work necessary to keep the vicarious ordinance machine fed.

Doing temple work is like digging the Panama Canal with spoons. Except it's not really about getting a canal, it's about keeping people busy digging.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2010 08:40AM by Stray Mutt.

Spot on, and eloquently said.

I'm sure I'll be paraphrasing you in subsequent conversations.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2010 12:21PM by jpt.

Temple work is the corporation's way to maintain control of its volunteer employees. The mantra in the temple is "Promise to be obedient, give up your life for the Church, give everything you have to the church." Its the greatest mindscrew that a man has ever invented.

No church is more effective in generating high income than a church which successfully guilts its members into lifelong tithing.

The church says, in effect:

"Your poor, weeping ancestors need YOU to complete their trip to heaven! God won't let them in unless YOU do their dead-dunking! Are you going to fail them?!?

"Oh, and by the way... we will not let you 'save' them unless you BRIBE us first with 10% of your income."

Pretend it's about something spiritual... so they won't realize that it's ALL about money! --It's a perfect solution.

that you pay 10% of your income for the privilege of doing. Oh, and after you finish, could you clean the ward latrine, boy?

Or, it also shows he is not all loving as he has put the salvation of billions in the hands of a group of mormons.

Of course all of it is a handcart load of bullsh*t.

of all mankind in one weekend, but why he doesn't do the temple work the same way. It kind of makes his atonement pointless if people can't be saved without the temple ordinances, doesn't it?

Instead, he supposedly requires many expensive buildings (rather than maybe helping the poor?), countless hours of genealogy and temple attendance for the hopelessly impossible task of baptizing and doing temple work for all of the [mostly unaccounted for] people who have ever lived. Why not just wait until the resurrection and let everyone just come forward and get their OWN work? Then they can be sealed to the correct people, and only the people who actually WANT the work done will show up?

Not a well thought-out plan, if you ask me.

Your plan sounds a lot more reasonable. I elect imaworkinonit to be the next savior.

I also agree on your point about the atonement. Either the atonement was pointless, or temple work is pointless, or they are both pointless.

imaworkinonit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> of all mankind in one weekend, but why he doesn't
> do the temple work the same way. It kind of makes
> his atonement pointless if people can't be saved
> without the temple ordinances, doesn't it?
>
> Instead, he supposedly requires many expensive
> buildings (rather than maybe helping the poor?),
> countless hours of genealogy and temple attendance
> for the hopelessly impossible task of baptizing
> and doing temple work for all of the people who
> have ever lived. Why not just wait until the
> resurrection and let everyone just come forward
> and get their OWN work? Then they can be sealed
> to the correct people, and only the people who
> actually WANT the work done will show up?
>
> Not a well thought-out plan, if you ask me.

Or we could take one couple and have them do the temple work for everyone who has ever lived or ever will live. That way we could get it over with quickly and get on with important things like helping the poor and living our own lives.

for instance, the Ogden temple runs sessions every 30 minutes. from 5am till 9pm. 32 sessions a day, if there are an average of 40 people per session that's 1280 endowments a day.

Hence the need to recycle names...

but since the expired person can choose anyway why do them?

Since most people who have ever lived died leaving no record whatsoever, it's gonna be tough to get everybody in the gate.

It's busy work for the busy bees in the beehive of the Morg! It has nothing to do with saving the dead or extending blessings of the Priesthood to them. It's also a carrot to dangle over the heads of the tithe-paying members so that they can maintain their temple recommends.

If the Brethren really were Heaven-bent on saving the dead according to their doctrine, take the 58,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam War. If there were 1/2 of them who were single, the Brethren should be in constant prayer, asking the Lord to reveal to them to whom those deceased single soldiers wanted to be sealed to in marriage. That's roughly 29,000 prayers for those guys, but the Brethren are too busy building shopping malls, investing in other real estate schemes, & butt-ugly temples in Rome. They don't give a rat's ass about the deceased soldiers of my generation or any other generation for that fact because they don't believe in all of this sealing stuff. They did the sealings for victims of the Holocaust even after being specifically directed to knock it off, but for the Vietnam War generation? Hell, NO! For the Greatest Generation who fought in WW II? Hell, NO! For the 9 million young men who died in WW I? Hell, NO! For the 700,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War? Hell, NO!

It's all busy work and doctrinally a waste of time & energy. If they really believe that people will be judged according to their understanding at the time period in which they lived, then why do baptisms for the dead in basically Christian nations? Most of those dead have been christened or dunked fully already according to their own faiths & what they understood during their lifetimes. Dead dunking is an act of redundancy, doctrinally speaking & a waste of time for the living to participate in. Try explaining that to the Brethren. Again, you'll get the deer-in-the-headlights-stare, crickets cree-creeing in the background! Trust me, I've had that experience with them!

If the Morg ceased with the temple work & directed their efforts to improve their communities & to help the less fortunate throughout the world without conversion obligations, just think of all the people who could be helped. But, Noooooo! Gotta keep building those icons to themselves & control the lives of the drone members with temple work. I burned myself & two cars out driving back & forth to the temple doing that. Never again!

The Brethren ignore the simplicity of the message in Romans 10:9 & in Galatians Chapter 3. I could not make any headway with that message with Elder Scott or the others down the line of Priesthood authority with those scriptures. They're interested in controlling people, not saving the dead or the living with some newfangled doctrine which JS pulled out of his a$$.

I challenged the Brethren about this doctrine & their explanation is, "We don't do those sorts of sealings." However, if one does their research, one will find that such sealings were completed by JS & BY as well under other Morg leaders even through the WW II period when women requested to be sealed to deceased soldiers whom they had known in this life. I found two cases of it because it is rarely done, but it is doctrinal.

So much like Jesus put it when He said that the Pharisees traveled for miles to make a convert out of one person & when that was done, they layed upon that poor fellow so much that he was 10 fold more a child of Hell than before he was converted, as if to say that all of the rules & regs were enough to make the new convert crazy! The Morg hierarchy of logic is to keep the members busy so they won't have time to think about questioning what they are kept busy doing. The temples are icons to the glory of the Brethren & busy work for the drone members in order to control them, not to save the dead.

It's OK for someone to go to the temple multiple times to do work for multiple people. We already know "new names" aren't unique really.

So... the logical extension of this would be for one man to go through the temple on behalf of all men who ever lived one time and name them all George. One sister could go through the temple on behalf of all the women who ever lived and name them all Bertha.

If something is done by proxy by the same people, there is no real reason one session can't represent the sessions for every person who ever lived.

All the Georges and Berthas can decide or not to accept the work. Presto. Work done.

Not to mention how weird it is that God would want or need all the names and tokens in the first place. The whole thing is stupid. Stray Mutt nails it above.

It is simply an exercise to invest people, give them busy work, and link them to the dead. Emphasizing the relationship of the living to the dead makes believers think they will not be forgotten when they die and feel they have "friends" ready to greet them in an afterlife.

And she acted like I was completely insane. I told her that we couldn't possibly do work for everyone, especially the people who died with no record of their lives (such as in the middle ages and so on). She didn't say anything, but I'm sure she was thinking that their work would be done in the millennium.

Not that any part of temple busywork doesn't bother me, but one of the things that really bugs me about the work for the dead is the marriage sealings. We just assume that all these people were happily married and wanted to be for eternity? I would like to think of all my ancestors as happily married, but I know (I have a "testimony" LOL) that it isn't true.

What really made temple work seem so pointless was the reality that very good people died every day, especially in the distant past, who were never recorded as living or dying. TSCC always pressured us to do temple work because people were languishing in the spirit world and needed to be released to do god's work. What an unfair god/system that would put someone who just died within the past year, having their death and birth in public records, ahead of a totally worthy person who died without a recorded birth or death and had been waiting thousands of years to be released ! It sounded horrible to me. What a mean church. What a mean god. You were born in the wrong time period and just had to sit on your and hands and wait for release. Cannot stand that I believed such an illogical belief system.

The enlightenment came when, on the same day, I read an article about how the local food bank was desperate for food donations and I also passed the local LDS temple overwhelmed with parked cars. I just snapped. Why aren't those people picking up food from the totally full Bishop's warehouse and donating it to the needy? Why not take food from your own personal food storage and look for needy, hungry neighbors (some even non-LDS) to feed? Nope. TSCC hadn't sent any directive on such behavior so they were in a large and spacious building babbling mumbo jumbo in the name of dead people who have no earthly needs, especially dead dunkings and blessings.

Think people. THINK !!!!