We Are Obligated To Provide Temple Ordinances For Our Kindred Dead

St George Utah Temple - Stuart L. Gardner Photography

“Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into His presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.

"Once we have received them for ourselves and for our families, we are obligated to provide these ordinances vicariously for our kindred dead, indeed for the whole human family.

"Now, there are those who scoff at the idea of vicarious ordinances performed for the salvation of souls. They think it all to be very strange.

"No thinking Christian should be surprised at such a doctrine. Was not the sacrifice of Christ a vicarious offering for and in behalf of all mankind? The very Atonement was wrought vicariously.

"The Lord did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Is it not Christlike for us to perform in the temples ordinances for and in behalf of those who cannot do them for themselves?”

- Boyd K. Packer, “Covenants”, LDS General Conference, April 1987.