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Video of alleged Mormon temple endowment ceremony


artmama

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I am interested in how they got the records of certain relatives of mine. I have Mormon relatives by marriage and they are not related to the relatives I found on that site. I searched for a great-grandmother with a very unusual name. It is definitely her. She had zero patience even for her own religion and would not be amused.

All I can say is God help them if they proxy baptized her because she has come around to every member of my family she was close to. And she was one of my favorite relatives, but boy could she be a bitch if someone pissed her off. :lol: Not the dead old Jewish lady you want to fuck with.

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I did a search of a few of my ancestors on the familysearch site by adding location and one of them came up on that site. As another poster said, that search site doesn't indicate if the people were baptized by the LDS. But I feel that it is likely that they have baptized at least one of my relatives or ancestors. If one of my friends or relatives ever becomes a celebrity, I might end up worrying that they would be baptized posthumously.

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I'm a pretty irreligious person, but by and large, even though I have Mormon friends, I think it is one of the most dishonest of religions. This whole bullshit about secret ceremonies just pisses me off. And the Mormon presidents changing the spin and doctrine so they can keep collecting tithes. Naturally their choice to change garments, who can become priests, polygamy and a multitude of other messages handed down from god are only aimed at keeping the tithes going and the sheeple following in lock step.

I do not believe that they only baptize the dead, I do believe their leadership lies to their members about such things. And I think they have one hell of a data mining operation going on with their genealogical enterprises and 'research'.

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I have mentioned Heather the quadriplegic Mormon blogger from paralyzedwithjoy several times here on FJ. Sometime back on her blog, Heather posted videos of her family and there was one video in which Heather's mom was at a computer and one of Heather's sisters asked the mom if she was doing indexing(genealogy stuff) and the mom replied that she was reading emails. The sister said something like, "Oh mom isn't furthering the work of the Lord" and the mom replied that she would be doing that later. Looking back on that, I get the feeling that Heather and her family love doing genealogy stuff as way of collecting names for posthumous baptisms.

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Just wondering, if the temple is all so secret and you have to have a temple invite to go there for the first time, what's with the secret service agents with the Romneys? Will they be pre-approved Mormons who work as agents anyway? Or would they be just ordinary agents who the church has had to allow in because Romney was there?

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There are probably Mormon secret service agents already (the secret service does a lot more than just guard the president). There are a lot of Mormons working in DC in government. Not drinking/no drugs/not getting arrested makes it a lot easier to get a security clearance, plus knowing a foreign language because of serving a mission helps too.

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Just wondering, if the temple is all so secret and you have to have a temple invite to go there for the first time, what's with the secret service agents with the Romneys? Will they be pre-approved Mormons who work as agents anyway? Or would they be just ordinary agents who the church has had to allow in because Romney was there?

I imagine he would be able to request Mormon secret service agents, but I don't know if that's how it works. This video supposedly shows Mitt and Ann in the celestial room after an endowment ceremony accompanied by three SS agents dressed in temple clothes. Impossible to tell if it's really them though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1WpFoYstmQ&sns=e

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Re the temple ceremony scene in "Big Love": For all the brouhaha it excited among Mormons when it was aired, I thought it was presented quite sensitively and reverently, and gave insight into Barb's spiritual side. This actual footage, though, makes the proceedings look about as spiritual as a trip to the DMV.

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That was a bizarre combination of creepy and boring. The voiceover describing what would happen at the veil was about as interesting as those unattended baggage messages you hear that the airport. I find the secrecy of it all very creepy and the talk of other planets is just a bit odd to me. The after death baptizing of non-mornons pisses me off so much. It is one thing if people chose to be baptized while they're alive, but don't do it after their dead and have no say. So gross.

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There are probably Mormon secret service agents already (the secret service does a lot more than just guard the president). There are a lot of Mormons working in DC in government. Not drinking/no drugs/not getting arrested makes it a lot easier to get a security clearance, plus knowing a foreign language because of serving a mission helps too.

I have a memoir by a former FBI Agent who alludes to the "Mormon Mafia"...he mentions that the ranks of Federal law enforcement agencies have many Mormon men. And for the reasons you stated.

Btw.....love the username. I'm going to have to dig out Zooropa for a listen. It's my favorite album of all time.

I'm with others, the whole pre-recorded voice is strange. To me it makes the ceremony seem very impersonal.

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I imagine he would be able to request Mormon secret service agents, but I don't know if that's how it works. This video supposedly shows Mitt and Ann in the celestial room after an endowment ceremony accompanied by three SS agents dressed in temple clothes. Impossible to tell if it's really them though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1WpFoYstmQ&sns=e

Apparently he has footage in which the Romneys are identifiable.

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The government in general has a pretty high percentage of Mormons working for it (in comparison to their representation in the general population). I work with quite a few Mormon folks; on the one hand, I don't get the appeal of things like the temple ceremony at all (it seems particularly difficult to me to glean much from it spiritually when you can't even discuss what any of it means in any kind of open way), but all religions have weird shit in them, so part of me feels like I'm not really in much position to judge. On the other, the Mormon church's history with posthumous baptism, black people, women and gays (not to mention things like the Mountain Meadows Massacre or the Equal Rights Amendment) is so recent and so ugly, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask Mitt Romney about some of this stuff. People start going, "Ooooh, that's not fair, it's his religion!" like that makes it off limits, but what is your religion if not a reflection of your most closely-held morals and beliefs about how society (and, by extension, government) should work? People didn't seem especially scared of asking Joe Lieberman how his Jewishness would affect his policy toward Israel, or asking Obama how Jews should take his involvement with Reverend Wright. Frankly, if Romney has been paying literally millions of dollars in tithes all these years and held relatively high standing in the church and couldn't articulate how it currently influences his worldview and if/how it might impact his presidency, I'd either think he was lying or wonder what the hell he's been doing in church all this time.

As far as the video, I don't know of any other religion, off the top of my head, that deliberately masks some of its most important rites from not only the general public, but a significant chunk of its membership. It strikes me as very bizarre, like Scientology with added Jesus. Any old person can walk into the average synagogue; the ones I know that restrict entry are doing it for security reasons, not secrecy (they've all been overseas, actually), and you can just contact the synagogue office or something to arrange to attend services. Even the mikvah, which is private because people are naked while using the thing, is well documented online, and anyone can answer questions about it or whatever. Particularly with such an aggressively proselytizing religion, it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth that they're so forward about talking people into conversion, yet so unwilling to share any details of some of the most basic aspects of their religious practice.

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I believe familysearch.org just tells you if you're in their genealogical records, not that they've actually baptized you.

That is correct...BUT if you're living, familysearch.org will not list you. However, despite all assurances to the contrary, if you're dead, you're fair game. The general assumption is that if a person ended up on the familysearch.org website, you can be 99 percent certain someone has done the ordinances for you--maybe even seven times.

I knew someone who I would describe as a "liberal Mormon" and she was quite proud of the fact that she'd done the temple work for the female members of the Bloomsbury crowd--you know, Victoria Woolf, Vanessa Bell, etc. She was NOT related.

ETA: I was quite a bit younger then and I was more of a stickler for the rules and remembered thinking to myself, "I know she's not related, how could she...?" And years later, realized the Church was looking the other way because, well, the work was being done and the temples were being kept busy. There's a persistent rumor that names get recycled through the temples because the church has run out of names, but who knows the truth of that?

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I have a memoir by a former FBI Agent who alludes to the "Mormon Mafia"...he mentions that the ranks of Federal law enforcement agencies have many Mormon men. And for the reasons you stated.

Btw.....love the username. I'm going to have to dig out Zooropa for a listen. It's my favorite album of all time.

I'm with others, the whole pre-recorded voice is strange. To me it makes the ceremony seem very impersonal.

It IS very impersonal. After your first time, you're going through for someone else as a proxy. And it is very much like an assembly line.

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Can someone clear this up. It was mentioned in the thread that some people go to the Temple several times a week. Does that mean that every time they go it is to represent some dead person who is not Mormon?

And when they go do they sit through the same cruddy movie and repetition of the process each and every time?

I can't imagine that many people have the time, energy or patience to do that more than once a month (if that much). Just watching the same movie over and over again would make me go batty.

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That is correct...BUT if you're living, familysearch.org will not list you. However, despite all assurances to the contrary, if you're dead, you're fair game. The general assumption is that if a person ended up on the familysearch.org website, you can be 99 percent certain someone has done the ordinances for you--maybe even seven times.

Then why are my very much alive parents, inlaws, and grandparents listed on the site...?

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Can someone clear this up. It was mentioned in the thread that some people go to the Temple several times a week. Does that mean that every time they go it is to represent some dead person who is not Mormon?

And when they go do they sit through the same cruddy movie and repetition of the process each and every time?

I can't imagine that many people have the time, energy or patience to do that more than once a month (if that much). Just watching the same movie over and over again would make me go batty.

From what my LDS-friends have been willing to share with me, you go through the temple-ordinances once for yourself either when you get married or when you go on your mission which ever comes first, every time you go from then on you go through them for a deceased who had not had the opportunity to make the choice for themselves while on earth.

You can do genealogy and submit names from your own family or they have lists of names at the temple of people who are "waiting".

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The government in general has a pretty high percentage of Mormons working for it (in comparison to their representation in the general population). I work with quite a few Mormon folks; on the one hand, I don't get the appeal of things like the temple ceremony at all (it seems particularly difficult to me to glean much from it spiritually when you can't even discuss what any of it means in any kind of open way), but all religions have weird shit in them, so part of me feels like I'm not really in much position to judge. On the other, the Mormon church's history with posthumous baptism, black people, women and gays (not to mention things like the Mountain Meadows Massacre or the Equal Rights Amendment) is so recent and so ugly, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask Mitt Romney about some of this stuff. People start going, "Ooooh, that's not fair, it's his religion!" like that makes it off limits, but what is your religion if not a reflection of your most closely-held morals and beliefs about how society (and, by extension, government) should work? People didn't seem especially scared of asking Joe Lieberman how his Jewishness would affect his policy toward Israel, or asking Obama how Jews should take his involvement with Reverend Wright. Frankly, if Romney has been paying literally millions of dollars in tithes all these years and held relatively high standing in the church and couldn't articulate how it currently influences his worldview and if/how it might impact his presidency, I'd either think he was lying or wonder what the hell he's been doing in church all this time.

As far as the video, I don't know of any other religion, off the top of my head, that deliberately masks some of its most important rites from not only the general public, but a significant chunk of its membership. It strikes me as very bizarre, like Scientology with added Jesus. Any old person can walk into the average synagogue; the ones I know that restrict entry are doing it for security reasons, not secrecy (they've all been overseas, actually), and you can just contact the synagogue office or something to arrange to attend services. Even the mikvah, which is private because people are naked while using the thing, is well documented online, and anyone can answer questions about it or whatever. Particularly with such an aggressively proselytizing religion, it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth that they're so forward about talking people into conversion, yet so unwilling to share any details of some of the most basic aspects of their religious practice.

That is how I kind of view Mormonism. During the whole Kate/Tom divorce, Scientology was pushed into the spotlight for awhile and I read articles about the horror stories of people who left. With Mormonism, there have been horror stories about some of the people who have left. I have read several Mormon blogs and I have gotten the feeling that the Mormons who live outside of Utah seem a bit less conservative and don't play up the perfect Mormon images that some of the Utah Mormons do.

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I believe familysearch.org just tells you if you're in their genealogical records, not that they've actually baptized you.

That's what I'm hoping ... I found my paternal family line, and it would creep me out hard if they had baptized them. :?

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I found my mother in their list. Maybe it is silly but it would piss me off if they baptised her. It shouldn't matter. She is dead, after all. But that just seems wrong to me and contrary to what she would have wanted.

However, my husband's last name is not common and I am finding a lot of deceased people from the 1800's with his last name. So, I don't like the thought of my mother being baptized but darn it, I admit it would be a good source for research.

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I have heard a lot of stereotypes about "Utah Mormons" versus those who live "in the mission field," as it were. On the one hand, it doesn't surprise me that someone living in a state that's heavily Mormon (and in some places, almost exclusively Mormon) would be more sheltered and less aware of how Mormonism can appear to non-Mormons. On the other, I work with some Utah Mormons who shatter the stereotype, but if you're living in China, you're probably not going to fit that particular mold, anyway.

I've definitely heard a number of pretty disturbing stories of people who have left Mormonism, ranging from creepy love-bombing to outright stalking. I personally know people who converted, got married in the temple and whose own parents were unable to attend the wedding, since they weren't Mormon. That whole scenario, which isn't at all uncommon, is particularly jarring when it comes from a church that emphasizes family values, family togetherness, et cetera. My mother wasn't thrilled when I told her I was converting to Judaism (she has since adjusted and is relatively supportive now), but she's not going to be barred from my wedding, God forbid. I'm not really down with any religion that actively divides families up the way Mormonism does. And I know that any religion can come in between family members, but to me there's something very different between having a falling out because person A identifies with, say, Judaism, and person B is a Baptist, and saying, "Well, your family is barred from our place of worship (and, by default, your temple wedding, without which we're telling you you won't have a 'forever family') because they aren't Mormon/haven't paid their tithing/have other issues keeping them from being Mormons in good standing." Particularly when Mormons who elect not to marry in the temple right out of the gate are forced to wait a year from the date of their civil marriage before being allowed to have a temple wedding.

Also, the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Menachem Mendel Schneerson) has totally had his temple work done. I also seem to recall that once upon a time, Family Search listed all of the ordinances performed for a given person, but after a number of flaps regarding the posthumous baptism/sealing of people like Pope John Paul II, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and other such luminaries who would never have agreed to such things while alive, that information was removed. The whole posthumous baptism thing seems really sleazy to me, particularly in light of the fact that the Mormon church has promised, repeatedly, to stop the baptism of Jews in general and Holocaust victims in particular and has been caught time and again continuing to allow the practice. They're really not helping their cause there.

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I have heard a lot of stereotypes about "Utah Mormons" versus those who live "in the mission field," as it were. On the one hand, it doesn't surprise me that someone living in a state that's heavily Mormon (and in some places, almost exclusively Mormon) would be more sheltered and less aware of how Mormonism can appear to non-Mormons. On the other, I work with some Utah Mormons who shatter the stereotype, but if you're living in China, you're probably not going to fit that particular mold, anyway.

I've definitely heard a number of pretty disturbing stories of people who have left Mormonism, ranging from creepy love-bombing to outright stalking. I personally know people who converted, got married in the temple and whose own parents were unable to attend the wedding, since they weren't Mormon. That whole scenario, which isn't at all uncommon, is particularly jarring when it comes from a church that emphasizes family values, family togetherness, et cetera. My mother wasn't thrilled when I told her I was converting to Judaism (she has since adjusted and is relatively supportive now), but she's not going to be barred from my wedding, God forbid. I'm not really down with any religion that actively divides families up the way Mormonism does. And I know that any religion can come in between family members, but to me there's something very different between having a falling out because person A identifies with, say, Judaism, and person B is a Baptist, and saying, "Well, your family is barred from our place of worship (and, by default, your temple wedding, without which we're telling you you won't have a 'forever family') because they aren't Mormon/haven't paid their tithing/have other issues keeping them from being Mormons in good standing." Particularly when Mormons who elect not to marry in the temple right out of the gate are forced to wait a year from the date of their civil marriage before being allowed to have a temple wedding.

Also, the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Menachem Mendel Schneerson) has totally had his temple work done. I also seem to recall that once upon a time, Family Search listed all of the ordinances performed for a given person, but after a number of flaps regarding the posthumous baptism/sealing of people like Pope John Paul II, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and other such luminaries who would never have agreed to such things while alive, that information was removed. The whole posthumous baptism thing seems really sleazy to me, particularly in light of the fact that the Mormon church has promised, repeatedly, to stop the baptism of Jews in general and Holocaust victims in particular and has been caught time and again continuing to allow the practice. They're really not helping their cause there.

Last year my cousin's now wife converted to Judaism Orthodox. Her Catholic mom was NOT thrilled of course, but that didn't mean either cut the other out. But, despite not being Jewish her mother and sister were not only "allowed" to be there but they were actively involved in the ceremony. Mom walked her down the aisle as her sister/maid of honor helped her walk the circles around my cousin. Mom also made a speech involving a Catholic/Irish prayer at the reception. It was a bit uncomfortable for the couple but I think they also realized that it made the mom feel like she could still have her family's traditions present even in the new faith of her daugher. I can't imagine barring a family member simply because they were of a different faith. Its so sad that people are willing to foresake their families like that simply to fit in with a new religion.

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I am sure that the Mormons are afraid that if people find out that they'll spend the rest of their lives chanting and watching B-movies while wearing head to toe white polyester and paying for the privilege that they'd have a harder time recruiting. Then again joining a religion that bars alcohol AND caffeine has got to be the dullest religion ever.

They must be awesome brainwashers, after all how do you keep people coming and performing this mundane routine every week? They should use Mormons to extract secrets from terrorists. After all, isn't the best way to brainwash the terrorist into believing that you're his new friend? If so then Mormons have definitely figured out what that secret is (as do Scientologists). Maybe this way they could at least contribute in some positive way to the world instead of building shiny temples with "keep out" signs on the doors.

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