Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus, said: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."
"But," asks the reader, "how shall a spirit be born of water, or baptized in water?"
Very many of those who have gone into the spirit world had never submitted to the ordinance of baptism, while vast numbers of those who had been baptized, had the ordinance administered by persons who had no rightful authority whatever, and whose acts God will not by any means recognize.
They stand in the same position to the "kingdom of God" that a man does, who, as an alien to the government of the United States, has received his papers of citizenship from a man who held no office under government, and, as a consequence, had no authority to confer those rights upon any one.
Paul, writing to the Hebrews, speaks of baptism in the plural: "Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, and of the doctrine of baptisms." (Heb. 6:1, 2.)
Many have supposed this passage to sanction the idea of different modes of baptism, but, by turning to another of Paul's epistles, we learn clearly his meaning. We gain also the information how we may be instruments in the hands of a wise Creator in doing a work for the dead: "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptised for the dead?" (I. Cor. 15:29.)
We here have an explanation as to how their prison doors may be opened, and they set free: by the ordinance of the gospel through the baptism for the dead. Those that are in the flesh can do a vicarious work for their dead, and become "saviors upon Mount Zion."
We here insert an account of the visit of Elijah to the earth, in fulfillment of the promise of the Lord through Malachi.
On the 3rd day of April, 1836, the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, while in the temple at Kirtland, had the vision of heaven opened, and Elijah, the prophet, who was taken to heaven without tasting death, stood before them 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." (Doctrine and Covenants, new edition, page 405.)
Elijah the prophet having come, and conferred the authority to baptize for the dead, the Latter-day Saints are assiduously engaged in erecting temples, wherein this ordinance may be performed. The object of Elijah's visit having been partially accomplished, in causing the hearts of the fathers, dead and gone, to turn to the children here on earth, the children are feeling after the fathers and seeking to open their prison doors, and to bring them through the door of baptism into the sheep fold.