"Mr. Durant, if you convince me of this, I will have nothing more to say," replied Mr. Williams.
"Very well, then, pay strict attention to the words you have just quoted which contain the promise that in your opinion insures the penitent malefactor entrance to the presence of the Father: 'Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.' Three days after these words were spoken, we discover Mary weeping as she bowed down at the sepulcher where Christ's remains had been deposited, and upon recognizing her Lord, who stood by her side and addressed her, she received this command, 'Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.' Rather a strange and startling declaration for the Savior to make, was it not, when the promise to the thief, made three days previously was to the effect that upon that day they should both be in His presence?"
"Why, Mr. Durant," exclaimed Claire, "I can't understand it at all; He did certainly make the promise, and yet from His words, spoken three days after, it appears that He had not yet been to His Father. Can it be that one of our Savior's promises has really fallen to the ground unfulfilled?"
"Not in the least, Mrs. Sutherland; it is merely another one of those cases where we read but fail to understand. 'The letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life,' you know. Christ kept His word with the malefactor, and He also spoke truthfully to Mary. He and the sinner undoubtedly went on the day mentioned to paradise, but the great mistake, made by many, lies in believing that paradise is heaven."
"Well, if paradise is not heaven, what is it? If they went to some other place, where is that place?" exclaimed Mr. Williams. "I believe it was heaven."
"I do not doubt your statement for a moment. Prof. A. Hindercoper, a German writer, says: 'In the second and third centuries every branch and division of the Christian church, so far as their records enable us to judge, believed that Christ preached to the departed spirits.' This is in harmony with the belief of the Latter-day Saints, as well as in harmony with the Bible. Peter speaking upon this subject answers your question by saying: 'For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit: by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometimes were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.' Christ undoubtedly understood that His mission would not end with His crucifixion, but as He finished His mission to mortals by opening to them the gospel gates, it would be the beginning of His mission, for a similar purpose, with those on the other side of the vail, and realizing that His mission there would begin immediately upon His release here, and that the malefactor would meet him there, He made the promise mentioned: 'Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.' Peter declares that they were visited and preached to in order that they might be judged according to man in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. (I. Peter iv: 6.) Bishop Alford, speaking of the declaration made by the chief apostle, said: 'I understand these words (I. Peter iii: 19) to say that our Lord in his disembodied state, did go to the place of detention of departed spirits, and did there announce his work of redemption; preach salvation in fact, to the disembodied spirits of those who refused to obey the voice of God when the judgment of the flood was hanging over them."
"That seems reasonable, and it has given me a pew idea and something to consider," said Williams, "but how about the ordinances you claim are necessary for all? How can those who did not hear the gospel before they died, receive the ordinances?"
"Now we believe that those who embraced the gospel in the spirit world will be saved; and believe with the scriptures that a vicarious work must be performed for them by the living. This doctrine was evidently understood by the saints in the days of the apostles. Paul informs us that the first gospel ordinance of all dispensations, baptism, was administered by proxy among the former-day Saints. While teaching the Corinthian saints about the resurrection, (I Cor. xv: 29) he asks them: 'Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all?' in other words, of what use is baptism for the dead, if there is no resurrection? showing that the doctrine of baptism for the dead was evidently neither new nor strange to the people to whom the apostle was writing. Christ died for the dead as well as the living: "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and the living." (Rom. xiv: 9.)
"But do you mean that living persons shall be baptized for the dead?"
"Certainly. Before the great day of the Lord shall come 'that shall burn as an oven, and when all the proud, yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch,' (Mal. iv: 1,) an important event is to take place, as we learn from the same prophet, verses 5 and 6: 'Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; 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.' The coming of Elijah, to inaugurate this great work must evidently be to some one who is prepared to receive him. His mission, 'to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers' is very comprehensive, and pertains to the whole family of Adam, there being no discrimination between the living and the dead, between those who have lived in the past and those who shall live in the future. There must be a welding link between the fathers and their children, and that welding link is baptism for the dead. We testify that Elijah has come; that he appeared to Joseph, the seer, and Oliver Cowdery, in the Kirtland Temple, on the 3rd of April, 1836, and said: 'Behold, the time has fully come, which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi, testifying that he (Elijah) should be sent before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse. Therefore, the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands, and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors.' Ordinances for the salvation of the dead require temples, or sacred places, especially constructed for their administration; for this reason, we build temples, and also, that we may perform other ordinances for the dead and the living."