The Prisoners Shall Go Free

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The Prisoners Shall Go Free

• Khinckley1_at_yahoo.com

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The Terrible Dilemma
Essential Steps For Salvation
God Loves Everyone
What about the African bushman?
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What did the early church do?

• 397 A.D.
• Chrysostum, a patriarch at Constantinople,
  says..
• After a catechumen churchman was dead they had
  a living man under the bed of the deceased then
  coming to the dead man they asked him if he would
  receive baptism he being unable to answer, the
  live man (under the bed) would answer for him, in
  the affirmative, and was baptized for the dead
  man.
• Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, wrote
• As time passed abuses crept into the churches
  regarding the ceremony of baptism for the dead
  some insisted that a dead person be anointed with
  oil and then immersed in water others that oil
  be used instead of water and some sprinkled
  until the ordinance was totally done away with.
  (Improvement Era 1940)

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1841 The City of our God

• Psalm 48
• 1 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in
  the city of our God, in the mountain of his
  holiness.
• 2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole
  earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north,
  the city of the great King.

• Joseph Smith
• The name of our city (Nauvoo) is of Hebrew
  origin, and signifies a beautiful situation, or
  place,

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Jerusalem/Nauvoo

• 3 God is known in her palaces for a refuge
• 4 For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed
  by together
• 5 They saw it, and so they marveled they were
  troubled, and hastened away
• 11let the daughters of Judah be glad

• DC 12410 and where shall be the safety of my
  people, and refuge for those who shall be left of
  them?
• 11 Awake, O kings of the earth! Come ye, O, come
  ye, with your gold and your silver, to the help
  of my people,
• to the house of the daughters of Zion.

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Jerusalem/Nauvoo

• Psalm 48 8 As we have heard, so have we seen in
  the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our
  God God will establish it for ever...
• 9 We have thought of thy loving kindness, O God,
  in the midst of thy temple.
• 12 Walk about Zion, and go round about her tell
  the towers thereof.
• 13 Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her
  palaces that ye may tell it to the generation
  following.

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Question?

• What are we to tell the towers and the
  generations about Nauvoo?
• Nauvoo is the place that the Lord revealed, to a
  living prophet, the answer to the Terrible
  Dilemma.

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Minutes, Oct Conference, 1841

• For illustration the speaker Joseph Smith
  presented, by supposition, the case of too men,
  brothers equally intelligent, learned, virtuous
  and lovely, walking in uprightness and in all
  good conscience, so far as they had been able to
  discern duty from the muddy stream of tradition
  or from the blotted page of the bock of nature.
• One dies, and is buried, having never heard the
  gospel of reconciliation to the other the message
  of salvation is sent, he hears and embraces it,
  and is made the heir of eternal life. Shall the
  one become a partaker of glory, and the other be
  consigned to hopeless perdition? Is there no
  chance for his escape? Sectarianism answers.
  "none! none!! none!!!" Such an idea is worse than
  atheism

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Seymour Brunson

• Member High Council
• Far West, Nauvoo
• Funeral, August 15th, 1840
• Jane Neyman
• Lost a son, Cyrus
• Harvey Olmstead
• Joseph Smith, Sr. request
• Font dedicated, Nov. 8th, 1841

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Joseph Smith

• I first mentioned the doctrine baptism for the
  dead in public when preaching the funeral sermon
  of Brother Seymour Brunson and have since then
  given general instructions in the Church on the
  subject. The Saints have the privilege of being
  baptized for those of their relatives who are
  dead, whom they believe would have embraced the
  Gospel, if they had been privileged with hearing
  it, and who have received the Gospel in the
  spirit, through the instrumentality of those who
  have been commissioned to preach to them while in
  prison.
• "Without enlarging on the subject, you will
  undoubtedly see its consistency and
  reasonableness and it presents the Gospel of
  Christ in probably a more enlarged scale than
  some have imagined it." HC 4231

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Section 128

• 1 As I stated to you in my letter before I left
  my place, that I would write to you from time to
  time and give you information in relation to many
  subjects, I now resume the subject of the baptism
  for the dead, as that subject seems to occupy my
  mind, and press itself upon my feelings the
  strongest, since I have been pursued by my
  enemies.

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Section 128

• 9 It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine
  that we talk ofa power which records or binds on
  earth and binds in heaven. Nevertheless, in all
  ages of the world, whenever the Lord has given a
  dispensation of the priesthood to any man by
  actual revelation, or any set of men, this power
  has always been given.

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Dispensation?
The Lord
Dispenses Keys
Prophet
Dispenses Endowment
Gift
Gods People
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The Prophets Plea

• Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause?
  Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren
  and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts
  rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth
  break forth into singing.
• Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal
  praise to the King Immanuel, who hath ordained,
  before the world was, that which would enable us
  to redeem them out of their prison for the
  prisoners shall go free. (DC 128)