Today’s is another post by Bishop Bill.
A few weeks ago in Gospel Doctrine class, we had lesson 30 on providing ordinances for the dead, and why they are important. Of course the normal answer was so our dead can be saved. Silly me spoke up and said I thought that we went mostly for our own edification and renewal of our own endowment, and that the number of vicarious ordinances we were doing did not even make a dent in the celestial scale of things. That comment did not go over big, and the teacher steered the conversation to other things.
Well, having been blessed/cursed with an engineering brain, I’ve been mulling over my comment, and decided to do some back of the envelope calculations to validate my views.
In 1988 the church announced that there had been 100 million endowments done. In that announcement, they said they thought they would reach the next 100 million in 15 years. I’m guessing they did not, because we didn’t hear anything about it. But let’s assume they did reach a total of 200 million endowments in 2003. And lets also assume that the same rate is current up to today, so that we have currently done 300 million endowments to date. (I’m going to be generous and not subtract for duplicate names)
If you google the total number of humans that have ever lived on the earth, you get several numbers just over 100 billion. The most common number was 107 billion.
So as of today, the LDS church has done endowments for .3 billion of the 107 billion soles that have lived, or 0.3% And we are losing ground. Google tells us that approximately 55 million people die every year, but a blogger named Jonathan Ellis calculated we are probably doing about 12.75 million endowments a year . So every year we are getting farther and farther behind at a rate of 42 million a year!
So, let’s assume Christ comes next year, because he also realizes we are getting too far behind. We have 1000 years to do 106.7 billion endowments. That is about 106.7 million a year, easily accomplished since we are doing about 12 million a year today, and the temples will be open 24/7 during the millennium!
So now my final calculation, for those of you that are still with me: If we had not done any of the 300 million endowments I calculated that had been done to date, that would only increase the amount needed to be done during the millennium from 106.7 to 107 billion, or about 300,000 more endowments a year, or 821 more a day, or just 34 more endowments an hour.
So for all the current temple work that we are doing, we have given ourselves a .3% advantage in the millennium, or 34 less endowments an hour.
I’ll stand by my original comments made in Gospel Doctrine last week!
Discuss.
From a fellow engineer-head, your calculations look spot on and your conclusion also seems right.
But I will refrain from asking if we should rope in missionary work into this same conversation as my logical brain has questions on that subject also.
Thank you for your post. I agree with you 100%. Also, from a doctrinal standpoint, if God is all powerful and will forgive whom he will forgive, why would he be constrained by someone not having their temple work done? “I’m sorry Jim, you were a great person, charitable, kind and giving, but your grandson was too lazy to do your temple work and there is nothing we can do for you . . .” Also, when really pressed on this issue, the inevitable answer is always “it will get done during the millennium.” I think the reasons you cited are good ones for going to the temple, but I cringe when people lay on the guilt about saving the dead or lose sleep because their are people who haven’t had their work done.
*because there are people who haven’t had their work done.
I’m teaching this lesson on Sunday and am totally using your statistics (at the end, as a very clear attempt at closing humor).
There is an alternative calculation.
Total Population 110,000,000,000/1000 years= 110,000,000 names to do a year/220 temples = 500,000,000 to do per temple / 350 days open in a year = 1,428.57 needed to be done by each temple for each day open/ 40 session per day = 36 per session.
Seems very doable.
I had two things come to mind:
1. “It’s the thought that counts” we are now instructed to look after our own dead. That makes it more personal and more urgent. And if might get done that way.
2. Most dead people have no documentation of their life, so what about them?
I am completely in agreement with your “mostly for our own edification and renewal of our own endowment” comment–though I would change “mostly” to “solely.” The dead are supposedly privy to all the knowledge and understanding they gained in the Pre-Existence. So, they don’t need all the strange clothing and detailed Masonry stuff to make the ceremony seem more ancient, different, important…i.e., psychology.
I did a detailed calculation of this issue back in 1998 and concluded that going 24/5 (time off needed each week to clean the building, etc) with all recommend holders in an ever growing church (after all Christ will be endorsing us) and 400+ temples, we could get 100B done in about 98 years. However, given all that we assume (variously, since no definitive information) –including an open line through the veil, why couldn’t this ordinance be done only for those want it/qualify?
Another thought I have had would require just a simple “rule” change. Have one woman and one man stand in proxy for ALL the dead. Bingo! Done in one two hour “session.”
Jeff’s comment is the thing I always think about – there’s no documentation for most dead people, ergo, the work can never be completed. Fbitsi’s idea of mass proxy is ingenious! Fbitsi for president!
Maybe someday one person could be proxy for 3 members of an immediate family. After all, endowments for a single individual is where the log jam occurs. And your thoughts/meditations would be focused on a single family.
Two quick thoughts.
First as a fellow engineer I must point out a missing variable (ok really a missing constant that is unknown) in the equation. A certain percent of the earth’s total population died before the age of 8 years old and so do not have to have any endowment done, so lowering the total time needed.
Second, fbisti, I don’t think the dead have any more knowledge or understanding about the Pre-Existence than we do now. I think that part of the veil does not get lifted until the resurrection. Otherwise it would not be much of a leap to have faith in Christ if you suddenly knew the whole plan and your part in it, with a perfect knowledge.
And fbisti’s simple “rule” change is just crazy enough it just might work…
Only time will tell. Despite one’s acuity in engineering, there are too many other variables. The number of people, the number of temples, their hours of operation and the number of endowments that can be done. We also have to settle how long people have been on the earth. (If we’re talking hundreds of thousands of years or only six thousand or any number in between, that will make a big difference.) Endowments may be shortened significantly as well, we don’t know.
One thing that’s less in doubt, I think, is your conclusion that we do endowments primarily for our own edification. If that’s true, then shortening the endowment may be a viable option. But if not there still should be plenty of time, especially if we’re freed from some of our current physical constraints. There are some prophecies that state that during the Millennium, one will be able to stand on top of any given temple and see the spires of other temples in each direction. More temples with more people, more operating time, shorter endowments and greater efficiency equals much more work for the dead. Even if we remove nothing from the endowment, a rapid playback audio track may work wonders.
In other words, restraints will not be a problem. If people can move freely between Heaven and Earth, clearing up unnecessary or repetitive geological work, that also will save time. Bottom line, God has a better engineering mind, plus this ain’t his first rodeo. It’s all been done before. Some of the more challenging engineering work will be converting St. Peter’s and Notre Dame Cathedrals to the right configuration and putting gold Moroni statues on top!
I’ve wondered someday with DNA progress if we could do work for a specific ancestor identified by their genetic trace/mark instead of documentation.
When we do endowments for the dead we essentially perform a live endowment session for each name, yet when we do baptisms for the same people we don’t perform a baptismal service for each one with prayers, music and speakers, we dunk them assembly line fashion. Why aren’t endowments for the dead done like baptisms for the dead? Of course it’s easy to know what exactly is essential and what is not with baptisms. What is the essential part of the endowment and what is not? Is the entire ceremony the ordinance or just parts of it?
.3% is still a dent, even if it doesn’t feel bit enough to count. A little progress is far better than no progress.
As for documentation, we have enough to be able to get most of the people in the past three centuries, which is a sizable chunk of the population of the Earth from all times. When we get to millennial times, we’ll be able to get those missed from the recollections of the people who are resurrected. I almost think there will be places for resurrected people to go to help fill in the blanks with their life recollections.
I’d much prefer we get an Endowment with depictions that are egalitarian and ethnically diverse than shorter.
I taught the same lesson and quoted similar stats. I found a BYU Forum Speech by a history professor that shared the same critique of the numbers. This gave me a different view point about the purpose of family history for the living and the dead. It addresses why we don’t do mass proxies. This thought provoking speech is an excellent resource. I have attached the link. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/amy-harris_how-family-history-can-save-the-world/
John Roberts says, We also have to settle how long people have been on the earth. (If we’re talking hundreds of thousands of years or only six thousand or any number in between, that will make a big difference.)
Actually, the question is how long pre-mortal spirit children of our Heavenly Parents have been assigned to inhabit mortal bodies. The broad span of the inhabitation of the planet by Homo sapiens is not in any serious doubt. (Spoiler: it’s longer than six thousand years.)
This issue hasn’t been discussed to its full extent in those PH opening exercises where they’re trying to get people to attend Ward Endowment Night and do stake/ward names. There’s a huge bottleneck in endowments, as everything else can be knocked out quickly. Unfortunately, best efforts aside (and let’s hope they get better with the advent of FamilySearch and Internet records) the duplicate problem means we’ve “wasted” a lot of endowments that could have gone to unendowed deceased persons. I have yet to hear this addressed in any meaningful way by Family History consultants, and many of the new tools (Hope Chest, etc.) might only exacerbate the issue unless people are careful to search for duplicates.
I can’t help but wonder who is going to be doing all this temple work in the Millenium if resurrected people cannot do it. Because if a resurrected being could do temple work for somebody who is dead, then that somebody could just wait until they themselves are resurrected and then do their own temple work. And it’s my understanding that when Christ comes again, almost everybody will either be dead and then come forward in the morning of the first resurrection, or still be on the Earth and then changed from mortal to immortal in the twinkling of an eye. I suppose mortal babies can be born to resurrected beings? Then we’d have to wait for them to grow up enough to be able to attend the temple. Sounds like a gap of about twenty years after the Second Coming to getting temple work going again, and then there’s the question of how many children will be born to resurrected couples during the MIllenium. Although I suppose there could be quite a few people who didn’t have the chance to marry and/or have children during their earthly life?
Or am I wrong in my understanding? Will there still be mortal people on the Earth directly after the Second Coming, righteous enough to attend the temple? I don’t know, I just wonder about these things sometime. Sorry if this seems frivolous, that’s not how I meant it.
Tobia – yep, still mortals. Rapture is a myth.
New Iconoclast, when President Hinckley announced the New FamilySearch program (the universal family tree precursor to our current Family Tree program), he stated it was to address the duplication issue. I think we calculated one of my relatives had his work done over 60 times under the old program. While we *often* deal with duplicates in the new program, in my experience the universal access cuts down significantly on the problem.
While the math is impressive, I have a different take. Like New Iconoclast said, there are a lot of mistakes we make right now, whether it’s duplication or putting the wrong people together or whatever. If these deceased people were depending on our accuracy right now to get saved, they’re screwed. But I disagree that it’s only about us. I feel there is a strong connection that develops between generations on both sides of the veil when people work on their family history. Sounds hokey, I know, but those of us on this side aren’t the only ones who get edified.
Mary Ann, I recall well and agree completely with the purpose and intent of the online programs. And it’s undoubtedly true that they’ve been more successful than a quarterly update of some large number of CD-ROMs in the old IGI. My involvement in family history work over the last 25 years has been in fits and starts, as a number of other things have been distracting me, but my ward’s dedicated Family History lab during the Sunday School hour has helped immensely.
In it, I hear a number of things from our FH consultants, including help on tracking the descendants of collateral ancestors on FamilyTree, the use of data-mining ancillary applications like “Hope Chest,” the minimum info necessary to submit names for temple work, and the importance of keeping our temple busy. I support these things in principle. What I rarely or never hear are instructions on checking the records for duplicates, helpful hints on reading/interpreting 19th-century handwriting, suggestions on firming up and completing research (it’s not hard to figure out what county a town is in, either in the US or most places in Europe, and it should be made part of the record), and the like. Completeness and thoroughness, in other words. Thus, we continue to propagate the problem, Pres. Hinckley’s best intentions notwithstanding. HopeChest, in particular, is a tool ripe for duplicating effort.
So I developed my own research plan: go after the records on Ancestry (since FamilyTree is a terrible research tool), transfer real facts to FamilyTree, and then check for duplicates. It’s been very hard to find names to submit – but I am getting rid of duped records, and I’m not wasting anyone’s time in repeating proxy endowments. (My own family record is 14 repeats – *60* simply boggles my mind.)
I must have a number of persnickety, detail-oriented ancestors, because a desire for accuracy is something that drives me to do the work and helps me develop the connection beyond the veil. I feel that I’m really getting to know them that way. And after all, someone’s got to be the nitpicker in all of this. 🙂
New Iconoclast, don’t get me wrong, cleaning up Family Tree is a necessary and thankless job. I come from a research background, so inaccuracy drives me up the wall (which is why the idea of a universal tree that anyone off the street can mess up fills me with anxiety). But people called to be consultants often don’t have research backgrounds, and the training videos and inspirational speeches don’t really emphasize that “thoroughness and completeness.” It’s one of the frustrations I have with the new calling title “temple and family history consultant.” Number one priority is spelled out as finding names for the temple. That’s not the same as discovering your family’s history. When you get someone walking into the center with a big grin saying they are going to follow the leaders of the church and take a name to the temple, nothing takes away that grin faster than showing them all those hundreds of names they located on that nifty new app are duplicates that need to be merged with records that had temple work done years ago. We’re supposed to push the idea that family history work is *easy.*
I think different people get rewarded in different parts of the process. Research has always been where I feel the biggest connection, so I get where you’re coming from.
Well if the actors in the new films didn’t spend so much time crying, we could probably squeeze in an additional endowment session throughout the day…and maybe only one prayer circle per temple per day?
Baptism for the dead is illogical and pretty much impossible to ever accomplish. There is no mention of this being done in the BOM(which contains the fullness of the gospel recorded for US) or by the people in the city of Enoch. It was first started in 1840 after the church had gone back into apostasy and had had its name changed twice. It was started(along with other questionable practices) after the church had failed to live higher laws and lost the fullness of the priesthood.
According to a statistical guess(I found on the net) the NUMBER of people WHO HAVE EVER BEEN BORN is 107,602,707,791.
Almost 108 Billion people.
LDS church has about 5 million “temple worthy” members who can perform baptisms for the dead. (However, I am sure outside of the youth very few are done by adults.)
How many baptisms would each of these members have to perform in order for every human born so far to receive this ordinance?
21,520 assuming all names were available(absolutely impossible without huge amounts of direct revelation, which isn’t currently happening).
If every member performed 10 baptisms for the dead each time they went how many trips would it take? 2,152 trips. If each member took 1 trip per month how many years would it take to baptize their quota? 179 years. 1 trip each week would take 45 years.
This isn’t even close to happening nor is it even probable of it ever happening.
It makes far more sense for each person who so desires to get baptized for themselves, either in this life or in the next, after they are resurrected and receive a body again, if they weren’t baptized here. That seems perfectly reasonable. Getting baptized for other people really doesn’t make much sense to me logistically nor is it founded in scripture. I think baptisms for the dead are now just used to hook kids onto the temple and to get them believing in it and the rites done there.
I have also heard the church is pretty much out of names and is doing some of the same ones over to keep up attendance. If that is true or even partly true what a fraud that would be.
Illogical or not, mate, baptism of the dead is the commission that’s been given to the Church. But that’s not the real issue, is it? The issue is whether the Church is what it claims to be. If it is, then it’s not a matter of whether it’s possible. That’s a given. But if it’s not, then the question is superfluous.
Was baptism for the dead practiced in the Book of Mormon? Most likely not because the keys of authority were different than those had in the Old World church. It’s unlikely that the Book of Mormon church had the keys for work for the dead. But if the Book of Mormon church did have the keys, it would have had to have kept meticulous records.
There will be time to do the work if the Lord commands it. To try to guess populations against the number of temples and the numbers of people and how long the temples remain open and all the other variables is foolishness as I think God might have taken all these things into account. We also know the heavens will be open and people who need their work done will be interacting with people who do geneaologies and submit names. And once the process is determined, it should proceed very rapidly.
It is a daunting task but I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the church really means to keep us attending the temple for ourselves. We’ve all heard the dead are waiting in spirit prison for their ordinances to be done so they may be freed. If I care about others as I do myself, then I will work to free them. Any service the church asks us to render, i any area, always winds up being primarily for others and not ourselves.
Thank you for the Amy Harris video.