The Exemplar

You can find this book at Deseret Book here.

An excerpt from a book that I just finished reading: 

The atonement is the great, central proxy ordinance of time and eternity.  All other ordinances are appendages to it.  As with the living, the dead, too needed to have an atonement made for their sins.  Jesus did for them and for us what they and we could not do for ourselves.  Anyone who believes in the atonement of Christ therefore implicitly believes, whether he knows it or not, in vicarious work for the dead.

Has anyone else never thought about that before?  That of course ordinances can be performed for those not living, since Christ, in His Atonement, performed the ultimate vicarious ordinance?  Amazing stuff, no?