Apols Internet went down in the q household last night I wrote this yesterday and had to cut and paste it to save it - thanks blondie for your post! All Christianity is built upon vicarious work - Christ died for the dead, the living and the yet unborn. Mormons take the scripture regarding being born of the water and of the spirit literally and to mean baptism. All mankind must therefore be baptised to have even a chance of inheriting the kingdom of god. This gets past the problem of salvation that Christianity has with regards those billions who don't even know of Christ or died in ignorance. The essential baptism is done on behalf of those who the church can find records for ( the rest get done during the millennium ). This is important in Mormon theology because regardless of how good you've been you get stuck in a kind of limbo prison until your baptism has been performed. Once a baptism has been performed for you you can choose to accept Christ or not and the ordinance has been done ( a spirit can't do physical ordinances like baptism ). That the Jews or anyone might not want it done is fine in lds thinking it merely delays the day until the millennium when the work will get done. Since there is no religion in heaven there are no Mormons there so baptism for the dead is not the same as joining the church ( which interestingly is not a saving ordinance in LDS theology - you can be baptised but never join the church and that's fine though in practise the two are synonymous for the living.) Those recorded as having had a vicarious baptism performed on their behalf are not counted in the church numbers. This is not making them Mormons any more than Christ's universal sacrifice makes all mankind Christian. Yes I did formerly post in slight defence of the lds religion ( and I still will if I think the poster is merely taking the mick or saying something untrue ) but it should be clear now I worship no gods anymore. There is a lot more to all this in the Mormon plan but it would divert the thread methinks.