The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (17 page)

Chapter 20

Z.H. Journal
Entry # 8
:

After
dinner
, Bishop Morgan’s
teenage daughters took
charge of
our kids,
whisking them to the lower floor, where a large room had been set up as a miniature Disneyworld.
Palmyra joined
Emma Morgan
in the kitchen, and
Bishop Morgan
took me to his study for the customary hot cider.

“Let me show you something special.”
He opened one of the glass doors
, reached up to a high shelf,
and pulled out an old leather-bound book.
He showed me the spine:

Book of Mormon

First Edition

New York

183
0

This was the
original
work, the divine word of God
,
which had launched t
he Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint
s
by Joseph Smith, the Prophet
, Seer, and Revelator
.
All my life, from early childhood,
I have studied the
more modern editions of
the
Book of Mormon
, together with
the Bible, the
Doctrine and Covenants
, and
the
Pearl of Great Price
—
our
“
Standard Works
”
of holy scriptures. But this was
the
very
first edition!

“The Prophet inscribed it to my great-great-grandfather,
”
Bishop Morgan
said. “I rarely take it out, but
I wanted to share
it
with you.” He opened the book
on t
he
title page
, which carried a handwritten dedication:

To George Robert Morgan,

Blessings unto thee from the Angel Moroni.

Joseph Smith Jr. 18
30.

Clearly enjoying my utmost awe, he opened the book on a page marked by a
silk string and showed me something even more incredible.
“This
side note
,” he said, “is
also in
the Prophet’s own
handwriting
.”

Prophet Joseph Smith
’s
words and revelations were studied by
all Mormon men
. P
art of being a Saint was the
practice of
our Prophet’s
famous
revelation
about baptizing the dead. His words o
n
this subject
, quoted
in the Doctrine and Covenants, were
recited
often.
I was awed by see
ing
the
se
very
words scribbled by
his own
hand
o
n
the
blank half-page above a chapter beginning in the
first edition of
the
Book of Mormon
.

I presume the doctrine of
“
baptism for the dead
”
has ere this reached your ears, and may have raised some inquiries in your minds respecting the same. I cannot in this letter give you all the information you may desire on the subject; but aside from knowledge independent of the Bible, I would say that it was certainly practiced by the ancient churches; and Saint Paul endeavors to prove the doctrine of the resurrection from the same, and says,
“
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?
”

In the margins
of the opposite page
, beside the print
ed text, were strange markings in ink, clearly made by hand.
I pointed
.
“What
are these
?”

“Reformed Egyptian,” Bishop Morgan said in a voice touched by tremor. “Same as the translated
holy
texts!”

I nodded. He was refer
ring to the translation by the P
rophet of the
Book of Mormon
from the
ancient
g
old plates given to him by the A
ngel Moroni
in upstate New York in 18
27
, and the ancient Egyptian papyr
i
that
a traveler
had
brought
in 18
35
to
Kirtland, Ohio, where the
Saints
had moved after
their
exile from New York.
Our pr
ophet
,
Joseph Smith
,
was
also
a
Seer,
cap
able
of
translat
ing
foreign languages
. He
translated
the papyri
, finding them to
contain the
personal journals of the ancient Hebr
ew patriarchs Abraham and Moses
. Those translations,
together with o
ther revelations, became known as the
Book o
f Abraham
and
the
Book of Moses
,
as
p
art of our gospel in
the
collective
scripture titled
Pearl of Great Price
.

“These
Egyptian letters
,” Bishop Morgan
sai
d, “were
added by the
P
rophet’s own hand!
”

Peering at these markings, I
trembled
.

“I compared it to
the
P
rophet’s
other not
ations
.” The bishop gestured vaguely at the glass-covered shelves
of old books
. “It’s
authentic.
”

After returning the
precious
volume of
the
Book of Mormon
to
the high shelf
and closing the glass door
,
Bish
op Morgan
shared with me that
he had recently experienced
a
personal
revelati
on: God was concerned that we have
neglected to save a special class of souls—the
brave
st
souls
of our nation
,
the
men whose
courage
in battle revealed their souls to be of the highest selflessness and idealism
,
men who had show
n
through their valorous sacrifices a great superiority to common men
and thereby
proved
th
at they had progressed to a higher level of righteousness, almost as high as
us, Latter-day
Saints
,
even though they we
re
uninformed
of the
True C
hurch
during their
mortal
lives
on Earth
.

According to
Bishop Morgan
,
his
personal
revelation
had been
blessed by the First Presidency of the LDS Church
in Utah
, after the
Quorum
of Twelve had discussed and confirmed its authenticity.
He decided
to call on me to assist in this s
acred
project.

The first round of baptizing
would be for
winners of the US Medal of Honor.
He explained t
hat the medal was f
irst created in 1862 by the US Senate and signed into law by President Lincoln during the Civil War for servicemen who “most distinguish themselves by their gallantry and other seamanlike qualities.”
In
1917
, other medals
had been
introduced, making the Medal of Honor
the highest honor and
even more indicative of
true battlefield courage
in the face of hostile enemy action
.

The instructions I received
from Bishop Morgan were simple.
Search the
computer
records
at the Department of Veterans Affairs
and
extract
a list of
the
service
men who had been awarded the Medal of Honor
since 1917
, together with their correct birth names, birth dates, and names of immediate relatives
.

Particularly important was the information about their wives. If a hero’s wife was also dead, her soul should be offered salvation through
posthumous
baptizing as well. That way, they
c
ould be
sealed in a
celestial marriage in the afterlife and spend eternity together as godly parents in perpetual procreation
in their own earth-like star
.
The few living honorees, as well as dead honorees’ wives who were still alive, could not be baptized by proxy. Instead, they would be visited by LDS missionaries and given the opportunity to convert by choice—without being told about the secret baptizing of their dead comrades or husbands, of course
, until after they ha
d
converted
and could
be trusted to keep Church
secret
s
from the Gentiles
.

I was to create an electronic file
for all the data
, save it on a floppy dis
k
, and deliver it to
Bishop Morgan
personally. I was not to
discuss
this endeavor
with any other person.
The list
of heroes
and their wives
would
then be divided
into several groups and assigned to various Mormon
wards
for posthumous baptizing ceremonies
and temple
endowment
s
.

But while several wards would be called to conduct the posthumous baptizing rituals for all those heroes, our task would be special.
A
s the reci
pient of this
revelation, Bishop Morgan was given the special honor of
officiating f
or the most courageous of all—the servicemen who had been awarded the Medal of Honor more than once.
He
instructed me to
create a
separate list
of their names
in preparation for
a special ceremony
scheduled for
the following w
eek, on Veterans Day, at the Washington
DC
Temple, where he would personally serve each of
those exceptional
he
roes as a proxy in the baptismal bath
.

I was excited and honored by the opportunity to bring salvation to the most highly decorated American soldiers
and
give
them the opportunity
to rise
to the
C
elestial
K
ingdom
of God
.

The Monday after the meeting with Bishop Morgan, I went to work with renewed optimism,
finally
knowing why
God had directed me to this otherwise uninspiring job at the Department of Veterans Affairs
.

The actual process of extraction was not
straightforward
. By now, all veteran files had been converted into electronic data that could be searched by several parameters.
However, me
dal
s and citations
were
not a searchable parameter. I came up with a plan to search th
r
ough pension records because Medal of Honor recipients received a higher pension, as did their surviving
spouses
. I separated the list by noting
the
handful of honorees who
were still alive
and therefore not
eligible for
posthu
mous baptizing
,
but
could be approached by LDS missionaries
, as well as the few surviving wives of dead honorees
.