Question for Mormons: Explain your practice of 'sealing' the departed?

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NewSeeker said:
LOL! Wow. This is hilarious. I’m another who used to be a handcart-pullin’, Johnny Lingo-watching, sacrament-takin’, tithe-payin’, temple-attendin’, seminary graduatin’, mission-a-goin’ Mormon of multi-generational pioneer and polygamous ancestry (the latter on my dad’s mom’s side). Johnny Lingo, My Turn on Earth, Saturday’s Warrior. I know all of them. I have the song My Turn on Earth running through my head right now and it won’t leave! Dang you to heck, Lex de Azevedo! :mad: How many of you former Mormons remember the BYU made for tv movie called “The Sacrifice” about the dad who lets his boy get run over by a train filled with people rather than derail the train to save his boy? They showed that to us in seminary and sunday school to help us understand the meaning of the Atonement and how Heavenly Father must have felt. Pure manipulative, emotional drivel and analogically wrong on so many levels. I got to watch quite a few of those manipulative films in school and seminary. That’s right, in school, too. I first saw Johnny Lingo in sixth grade in the school library. Plymouth Elementary, on the corner of 53rd South and Canal Road in Taylorsville. This is really bringing back Mormon memories. Did any of you participate in stake road shows??? Is that even done anymore?
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LOL. Reminds me of the book “He Took My Lickin’ For Me”.

Road shows were around when I was a kid, but the Mormon church has since banned them. Don’t know why. The Mormon church when I was a kid was a lot more community oriented, now, community oriented=church meetings all the time. The Mormon church I knew as a kid, is gone. I have a lot of good memories from those times. It all changed in the later 1970’s to nothing but business.

Johnny Lingo. :rolleyes: I can’t count the number of times that movie was shown. I always thought it demeaning to women. That, and “Cipher In The Snow”…always made me cry as a kid. But I think that was the idea!

By the time I was in high school I wanted OUT. Conveniently, I had seminary right after lunch, and so would just extend my lunch hour. That was awesome, until the seminary teacher ratted me out to my bishop, who then contacted my dad. Needless to say, I sat in the back with no intention but to give that seminary teacher the evil eye. 😃 I would have rather been in school.
 
Cipher in the Snow was filmed at my Elementary school and my older sister was one of the extras.

And thank you very much. “It’s my turn… it’s my turn” is running through my head too.
Steph:eek:
 
Say…someone at CAF referred an Evangelical’s book revealing the ‘heresy’ of the prosperity gospel and its roots.

The author even put the Apostles and Nicene Creed in there, albeit catholic with a small ‘c’.

He then brought up the story about the father who operated the train bridge, how his son ran after him but fell down and the father had to get the train on the bridge in seconds, so he looked down the hole and saw his son there soon to be killed.

Is this story for real???

And I don’t see how Catholic priests would just hand sacramental records over unless for a family relative who was deceased…you would have to hand pick them one at a time…and it gives me the impression that Mormons were able to get more than one at a time…

Really, the behavior is off the top. I know the ceremony has no effect…but it goes really off marrying deceased priests with imaginery women…

The Mormons care too much… some times people can become addicted caring too much for others…especially the dead.
 
KathleenGee said:
He then brought up the story about the father who operated the train bridge, how his son ran after him but fell down and the father had to get the train on the bridge in seconds, so he looked down the hole and saw his son there soon to be killed.

Is this story for real???
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In the version I heard, it was “bring your child to work” day. Son is playing around, wanders off into some gears (even though he was told not to), and gets crushed because dad doesn’t see where he is until its too late to go get him. (I think he shouts a warning, but the son doesn’t hear because the train is coming). Dad must make a heartwrenching ethics decision - pull a lever and kill his only son, or not pull the lever and let hundreds of innocent passengers on the train crash and burn? He decides that he must save hundreds of lives by sacrificing one. He shakes his fists as the train goes by - “If only you knew! My son died so that you could live! And you don’t even care!”
Then he prepares to deal with the next problem - explaining to Mom why he’s coming home alone that night.
 
Is this train story true? It greatly effected the author of the book…I never heard this story until I read the book 2 months ago…
 
StephenKent said:
I have noticed on these boards that it is about 98% Roman Catholics speaking to 98% Roman Catholics. Although the topics are directed at asking a question about the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if anyone who is a Latter-day Saint answers a question, the response is personal attack and vituperation.

What I see going on in these threads is (1) post a topic about something to do with the Latter-day Saints; (2) condemn the practice or doctrine; and (3) if someone who is Latter-day Saint posts anything in response to the question, bash the poster, too.
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Heads up…
If you have a thin skin… you are in the wrong place.
Mormons around here have shown that they are very cordial … until they are asked a direct, hard question. At that point they show a tendency to become verbose and evasive. Alternatively they simply choose to ignore the question and move on to another question.
That can get frustrating for people that expect forthright honesty.
 
tundramom said:
Cipher in the Snow was filmed at my Elementary school and my older sister was one of the extras.

And thank you very much. “It’s my turn… it’s my turn” is running through my head too.
Steph:eek:
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One of the people that ignored the cipher?

I still have Saturday’s warrior on vinyl. I played it over and over until my dad asked me to stop. He was tired of hearing it. So,I learned some of the pieces on piano!
 
StephenKent said:
I have noticed on these boards that it is about 98% Roman Catholics speaking to 98% Roman Catholics. Although the topics are directed at asking a question about the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if anyone who is a Latter-day Saint answers a question, the response is personal attack and vituperation.

The statistics about the town Tremelo actually work against the poster. Even if the town had only 1,000 inhabitants, that is much more than sufficient for two or three or fourt families with the same surname to have a child named Joseph. Take the little hamlet of Tasso in the community of Lumarzo in the province of Genova in Liguria region of Italy. In 1840, the population was approximately 400 people. Yet between 1820 and 1850, thre were nineteen marriages of men with the Ferrera surname. Eight children named Giuseppe (Joseph) were born to those families. Four of them were grouped in the period from 1827 to 1831. Someone researching in American records could easily have an ancestor named Giuseppe Ferrera who is said in the 1860 census to be age 29, in the 1870 census to be age 42, in the 1880 census to be age 50 and in the 1900 census to be age 62 (this happens). And his 1902 obituary could say he was at the time of death age 62. None of the births occurs in 1830. No American record names his parents. An inexperienced researcher might just pick one of the four and be done with the research. Joseph is a very, very common name. Multiply that small population to make it a town of 13,000 and you can see what the difficulty is with your statistical analysis.

But beyond that. There indeed are people who have submitted names inappropriately and did so on purpose. I once saw in the database the name “Mickey Mouse.” I reported it and it was deleted. Non-Mormons have in the past had the ability to enter the database and submit names. Some Latter-day Saints have violated the Church’s expressly and repeatedly stated conditions that names be well researched and that extractions of names (such as extractions of names of Holocaust victims) not be submitted.

When you’re talking about millions upon millions of names, there obviously are going to be hundreds and even thousands of violations, giving posters near endless opportunity to complain. And you’re right about Ancestry.com (which is probably contributed to by Latter-day Saints to the tune of perhaps 2% of what it has in its databases, if that): lots of people invent names. A popular one, just like “Mrs. De Veuster,” is to take a man at the end of someone’s research line (let’s call him “John Doe”) and conclude that, obviously, he had a wife (else, there would have been no child), name her “Mrs. Doe.” That’s done a lot in genealogical “research.” That works its way into some of the “research” done by some Latter-day Saints
.

What I see going on in these threads is (1) post a topic about something to do with the Latter-day Saints; (2) condemn the practice or doctrine; and (3) if someone who is Latter-day Saint posts anything in response to the question, bash the poster, too.
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No one has been bashing.

I just go by what I know about my own genealogy. My mom is careful in hers, but also has believed anecdotals stories that can’t be confirmed. I have a very large extended Mormon family, all sharing their genealogy. They share the well researched as well as the “assumptions”. People like to get connected to European nobility, or famous Mormon names. Mormons need that completed five generation chart. So what if its fudged a little? Some dead person is getting temple work done. Does it matter if they aren’t 100% verified?

I messed around at ancestry.com for several months. Very distant relatives contacted me from the UK just to inform me that connections could be shown to be erroneous, because they had researched in the UK. Anything back more than 3 or 4 generations becomes questionable at that point. I found it pointless, really, and tedious, but that’s me. I realize there are many people who find genealogy a fun and interesting hobby.

At one point I found someone had linked up to the fictional Norse line that goes back to mythical demigods/goddesses…all in a genealogical record. I’m sure there are people who have no idea and honestly believe their genealogical record goes back 1000 years. I got a kick out of it…I’m descended from gods!

At any rate, there comes a point where it’s all just more nonsense and wasting time. I can’t for the life of me see how knowing where your ancestors lived, what their last names were, etc. has any bearing on my life. None, whatsoever. Made even more pointless and nomsensical when the information is just made up.
 
RebeccaJ said:
No one has been bashing.

I just go by what I know about my own genealogy. My mom is careful in hers, but also has believed anecdotals stories that can’t be confirmed. I have a very large extended Mormon family, all sharing their genealogy. They share the well researched as well as the “assumptions”. People like to get connected to European nobility, or famous Mormon names. Mormons need that completed five generation chart. So what if its fudged a little? Some dead person is getting temple work done. Does it matter if they aren’t 100% verified?

I messed around at ancestry.com for several months. Very distant relatives contacted me from the UK just to inform me that connections could be shown to be erroneous, because they had researched in the UK. Anything back more than 3 or 4 generations becomes questionable at that point. I found it pointless, really, and tedious, but that’s me. I realize there are many people who find genealogy a fun and interesting hobby.

At one point I found someone had linked up to the fictional Norse line that goes back to mythical demigods/goddesses…all in a genealogical record. I’m sure there are people who have no idea and honestly believe their genealogical record goes back 1000 years. I got a kick out of it…I’m descended from gods!

At any rate, there comes a point where it’s all just more nonsense and wasting time. I can’t for the life of me see how knowing where your ancestors lived, what their last names were, etc. has any bearing on my life. None, whatsoever. Made even more pointless and nomsensical when the information is just made up.
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One of the reasons I started researching was that my dad always talked about spending summers with his grandmother. So I became intrigued as to my great grandparents. Sometimes I remember them and their many children in my prayers for the repose of their souls. I could dig deeper, but as you say one does not know what is and what is not true. For the Catholic, I think praying for our deceased loved ones is important. As well as clinging to the legacy they passed on. For me, and for many people on this forum, that legacy is found in the Church. And I think that is what our deceased family would request.
As for the Mormons, their rituals mean nothing to me or to the deceased. It is, as you say, a royal waste of time. If our Mormon friends find that harsh, well so be it. The ties belonging to families is strong, and should not be exploited by those who do not belong to that family.
That is why this thread at times has lapsed into dark humor.
 
At one point I found someone had linked up to the fictional Norse line that goes back to mythical demigods/goddesses…all in a genealogical record. I’m sure there are people who have no idea and honestly believe their genealogical record goes back 1000 years. I got a kick out of it…I’m descended from gods!
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I have seen one that goes back to Adam and Eve. It might have been a parody, but it was available on a genealogical website.

One of my TR-holding friends (on the way out) looked up my ancestors who were in the Nauvoo area beginning in 1837. Mormons had proxy-married them. I just laughed.
 
RebeccaJ said:
What is the point of these train stories?
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I’m sorry, I’m not sure if you are hinting that train stories are off-topic (which they are), or if you really want to know the point of them. I’m guessing the former, but in case its the latter:
The train story is used as an illustration of the Atonement. God was willing to let his only son die an ugly death to save us from crashing and burning. Unfortunately this analogy involves total ignorance on the son’s part and total negligence on the father’s part. The atonement is a horrific accident that could have been prevented. The people on the train never know that they were “saved” and the father certainly isn’t going to go out and find them, explain the situation (how he chose to save hundreds of passengers by killing his son), and do something god-like. The son was not sacrificed in love, honor, knowledge, etc., for eternally fruitful purposes; it was just an ugly accident, designed to create an emotional response.
 
anodos said:
I’m sorry, I’m not sure if you are hinting that train stories are off-topic (which they are), or if you really want to know the point of them. I’m guessing the former, but in case its the latter:
The train story is used as an illustration of the Atonement. God was willing to let his only son die an ugly death to save us from crashing and burning. Unfortunately this analogy involves total ignorance on the son’s part and total negligence on the father’s part. The atonement is a horrific accident that could have been prevented. The people on the train never know that they were “saved” and the father certainly isn’t going to go out and find them, explain the situation (how he chose to save hundreds of passengers by killing his son), and do something god-like. The son was not sacrificed in love, honor, knowledge, etc., for eternally fruitful purposes; it was just an ugly accident, designed to create an emotional response.
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The latter. Thanks for the explanation. :confused:
 
I understand the train story, but in my Catholic tradition, I never heard of it until I read this evangelical book. So I wondered if it was a true story.
 
Thanks…I think the father was pretty foolish…I found it incredible to believe…and I think I would have heard of it anyway just how true stories come about in time…
 
StephenKent said:
I believe Latter-day Saints would simply read that scripture for what it states and not read into it what it does not state. The word “marry” is an active verb and the phrase “given in marriage” is an act (“given” being an active verb). The Lord did not say there would be no people in the married state in the resurrection, but only that there would be no marriages made or entered into in the resurrection.

According to Dummelow’s A Commentary on The Holy Bible, “The point raised by the Sadducees was often debated by the Jewish doctors, who decided that a ‘woman who married two husbands in this world is restored to the first in the next.’” (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927, p. 698.) Most Jews at the time believed in a material resurrection, and so the question had some importance to them. (Ibid.) But the Sadducees, of course, did not believe in the resurrection; so their question was, simply put, one by which they sought to bait the Lord.

Latter-day Saints would simply respond that Jesus was stating that marriages are to take place prior to the resurrection and, in fact, he did not state anything about any non-existence of marriages beyond the resurrection.
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How then is there going to be temple work being done during the millennium if no NEW marriages are being entered into after the resurrection?
 
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