by George D. Durrant

Sections 127 and 128 constitute two doctrinal letters dictated by the Prophet Joseph Smith while "in exile" near Nauvoo, Illinois, during the first week of September 1842. His scribe was William Clayton. The sections were first published in the times and seasons on September 14 and October 1, 1842, and first appeared in the Doctrine and Covenants in 1844 as numbers 105 and 106.

These documents clarified and formalized the LDS doctrine and practice of baptism for the dead, a practice attested to in the first century at Corinth (1 Cor. 15:29). Two years earlier, while speaking at a funeral on August 15, 1840, Joseph Smith first publicly announced the privilege and the responsibility of Church members to perform baptisms for the dead (TPJS, p. 179). "It presents the Gospel of Christ in probably a more enlarged scale than some have imagined it" (TPJS, p. 180). Immediately thereafter, Church members began performing proxy baptisms in the Mississippi River. A year later, Joseph Smith declared, "There shall be no more baptism for the dead, until the ordinance can be attended to in the Lord's House" (HC 4:426). When the baptismal font in the Nauvoo Temple was completed November 21, 1841, baptisms for the dead were performed there (HC 4:454).

Sections 127 and 128 stress the requirement for eyewitnesses and a recorder at all such baptismal services. Without authenticated records on earth and in heaven, a baptism is not deemed valid (D&C 127:6-9; 128:3-10).

In Section 128, the Prophet expounded on Malachi 4:5-6 and explained that baptism for the dead is "a welding link" between parents and children (D&C 128:18). He further explained that unless children are sealed by temple ordinances to their deceased forebears, who are in turn sealed to each other in God's family, neither can be fully saved and exalted (verses 14, 15, 18). "They without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect" (verse 15; cf. Hebrews 11:40).

Baptisms and other temple ordinances for the dead continue as a vital part of Church doctrine and practice.

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Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Vol. 1, Doctrine and Covenants Section 127-128

Copyright © 1992 by Macmillan Publishing Company