They baptize a living person, who acts as a proxy. If I remember correctly, there's some stipulation that the person in heaven has to actually accept the baptism, they're not just being forced into it. I don't remember the specifics of that though, I left the church a few years ago.
> there's some stipulation that the person in heaven has to actually accept the baptism
Would the unbaptized not be in limbo or hell? I'm a bit confused by the mythology of all this - it seems to be offering a lifeline(deathline? spiritline?) out of eternal torture. If you're in heaven, baptism seems irrelevant, or are there levels of heaven? What good is an act of faith when you're literally experiencing the truth of the claims at that very moment?
The LDS church teaches that all spirits await the resurrection in a 'spirit world,' which is divided into different conditions for the just and the wicked, that heaven is divided into three 'degrees of glory,' and that baptism is a precondition for attaining the highest degree of glory. In this system, nearly all spirits go to heaven after the resurrection. Those who do not accept Christ as their savior receive some punishment / hell in the spirit world, but eventually end up in the lowest kingdom of heaven (so not 'eternal' torture).
> What good is an act of faith when you're literally experiencing the truth of the claims at that very moment?
I don't know what kind of information spirits in the spirit world have, but the LDS church teaches that there's some teaching of the gospel still going on in the spirit world, so presumably spirits don't automatically have complete information. The LDS teaching is that baptism is prerequisite for attaining the highest degree of glory, and all spirits have the opportunity in the spirit world to accept baptism by proxy if they did not have an opportunity during their life to be baptized or chose not to be.
