“Your Baptisms for Your Dead”
Doctrine and Covenants 124:29–36
29 For a baptismal font there is not upon the earth, that they, my saints, may be baptized for those who are dead—
30 For this ordinance belongeth to my house, and cannot be acceptable to me, only in the days of your poverty, wherein ye are not able to build a house unto me.
31 But I command you, all ye my saints, to build a house unto me; and I grant unto you a sufficient time to build a house unto me; and during this time your baptisms shall be acceptable unto me.
32 But behold, at the end of this appointment your baptisms for your dead shall not be acceptable unto me; and if you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God.
33 For verily I say unto you, that after you have had sufficient time to build a house to me, wherein the ordinance of baptizing for the dead belongeth, and for which the same was instituted from before the foundation of the world, your baptisms for your dead cannot be acceptable unto me;
34 For therein are the keys of the holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory.
35 And after this time, your baptisms for the dead, by those who are scattered abroad, are not acceptable unto me, saith the Lord.
36 For it is ordained that in Zion, and in her stakes, and in Jerusalem, those places which I have appointed for refuge, shall be the places for your baptisms for your dead.
President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote:
“So important did the Lord consider baptisms for the dead that He authorized the Saints to be baptized for their dead in the Mississippi River, until a place could be provided in His house for this purpose. He further said He would give them sufficient time to build such a house, and while they were doing so, their baptisms for their dead would be acceptable to Him if performed in the river, but after a place was prepared, then all baptisms for the dead in the river must cease, for this ordinance as well as other ordinances for the dead, properly belongs to the house of the Lord. This revelation was given January 19, 1841, and from that time until the October conference of the Church in 1841, the baptisms in the river were accepted. At the conference in October, the Prophet announced that the time for the discontinuance of the river baptism for the dead had come, and from that time forth they must be performed in the temple. The temple was not finished at that time, but it had in the six months progressed far enough so that the basement could be enclosed, and in the basement a font had been built and dedicated, so that early in November, 1841, under the direction of the Prophet Joseph, baptisms for the dead commenced in the house of the Lord.”
(Church History and Modern Revelation, 2 vols. [1953], 2:267–68.)
