Tim Frodsham
20 April 2022
The Lord has required a massive effort on the part of His Saints to complete ordinance work for those on the other side of the veil. Why?
A question I have long pondered is, “Why are we performing temple work for the deceased when it seems to make sense that they take care of that work themselves on the other side of the veil?”. I don’t have a specific answer to that question, but there are two concepts that have helped me, if not to fully understand, at least to accept.
First, for whatever reason, God has required that the essential ordinances found in the temple can only be performed by those of His children who currently possess physical bodies. I don’t understand why, but it certainly elevates the importance of our physical bodies and why we have gone through the trouble and hardships of this mortal existence to obtain one. Other religions, even our Christian brothers and sisters, eschew the physical body, looking for the day when we can cast off this mortal frame and rejoin our Savior in the spirit. We as Latter-Day Saints look forward to the day when the spirit and body are united.
“I say unto you that this mortal body is raised to an immortal body, that is from death, even from the first death unto life, that they can die no more; their spirits uniting with their bodies, never to be divided; thus the whole becoming spiritual and immortal, that they can no more see corruption.” (Alma 11:45)
The need for a body to perform essential ordinances gives us a glimpse of the importance of spirit and body united in God’s plan.
Second, God has deemed it important that we form family bonds that will survive when we cross the veil. The most quoted scripture demonstrating the importance of genealogy and temple work is Malachi 4:6. “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Our Heavenly Parents have ordained that the only place where essential ordinances and covenants can be recorded is on earth is the Holy Temple, and They have said that these ordinances can only be completed by those with a physical body.
“Now, the nature of this ordinance consists in the power of the priesthood, by the revelation of Jesus Christ, wherein it is granted that whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Or, in other words, taking a different view of the translation, whatsoever you record on earth shall be recorded in heaven, and whatsoever you do not record on earth shall not be recorded in heaven; for out of the books shall your dead be judged, according to their own works, whether they themselves have attended to the ordinances in their own propria persona, or by the means of their own agents, according to the ordinance which God has prepared for their salvation from before the foundation of the world, according to the records which they have kept concerning their dead.” D&C 128:8
Our Heavenly Parents have made it abundantly clear that the only place we can perform all living and proxy ordinances is at a dedicated Temple. The only exception to this is baptisms for living individuals.
A question I had as a youth was, “Why proxy ordinances at all?”. The notion of proxy is imbedded in our culture and society. Courts, judges and government agencies understand accept the concept of a proxy. The check we write is a proxy for the money tabulated in our bank accounts, and money itself is proxy for the work we performed to earn that money. A credit card is proxy for the work we promise to do in the future to pay back the money borrowed. Christ served as proxy for us in His infinite Atonement, and Old Testament sacrifices were a prelude and example of that heralded event.
Additionally, why do those spirits in the next life have to wait for proxy ordinances, sometimes for millennia, before they can progress? Most are still waiting because their records are lost or otherwise unavailable. One may also ask why those who have been held in the pre-existence until the last days had also to wait millennia before they were able inherit their second estate and progress. Though not an answer, it makes sense to me that we are all afforded avenues of progression, no matter our status and timing in the overall plan of salvation. No matter what state we are in, in God’s plan, we are provided continual ways to learn and progress. Our imperfect understanding of His plan is part of our test of trust in Him.
Proxy ordinances fulfill the requirement that all essential ordinances be performed by those with a physical body and requires a massive effort on the part of the saints in mortality. Inequities created by this requirement, time required to wait in any of the states of the Plan of Salvation, are fixed by an infinitely powerful God who provides avenues of progression in every state. Why this is a requirement, and why God requires cooperation across the veil will never be fully understood until we ourselves have crossed that chasm, but proxy ordinances give us a bridge, a means by which those on the other side of the veil can change and bless our lives, and we on this side can do the same for them. This bridge is so vitally important that exultation is impossible without it.
Latter-Day Saints 