1. Boyd K. Packer, CR, April 1992, pp. 94- 95, Ensign, May 1992, p 68
It is not uncommon for responsible parents to lose one of their children, for a
time, to influences over which they have no control. They agonize over
rebellious sons or daughters. They are puzzled over why they are so helpless
when they have tried so hard to do what they should. It is my conviction
that those wicked influences one day will be overruled.
"The Prophet Joseph Smith declared--and he never taught a more comforting
doctrine--that the eternal sealing of faithful parents and the divine promises
made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only
themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander,
the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the
tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to
the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will
have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may
tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal,
to a loving and forgiving father's heart and home, the painful experience will
not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on
to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God."
(Orson F. Whitney, CR, Apr. 1929, p. 110.)
We cannot overemphasize the value of temple marriage, the binding ties of the
sealing ordinance, and the standards of worthiness required of them. When
parents keep the covenants they have made at the altar of the temple, their
children will be forever bound to them. President Brigham Young said: "Let the
father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous
course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all
their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they conduct
themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith
and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their
parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them
from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from
whence they sprang." (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols.,
Joseph Fielding Smith, 2:90-91.)
2. Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 7 vols., 2nd ed., Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book Co., 1967, 5:530.
When a seal is put upon the father and mother, it secures their posterity so
that they cannot be lost, but will be saved by virtue of the covenant of their
father and mother.
3. Orson F. Whitney, CR, April 1929, p.110)
You parents of the willful and the wayward! Don't give them up. Don't cast them
off. They are not utterly lost. The Shepherd will find his sheep. They were his
before they were yours long before he entrusted them to your care; and you
cannot begin to love them as he loves them. They have but strayed in ignorance
from the Path of Right, and God is merciful to ignorance. Only the fullness of
knowledge brings the fullness of accountability. Our Heavenly Father is far more
merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his servants, and
the Everlasting Gospel is mightier in power to save than our narrow finite minds
can comprehend.
4. (Alonzo A. Hinckley, CR, Oct. 1919, p. 161
Do not count any boy or girl lost. They are not. Brother Talmage stated at our
conference, a week ago today, as a servant of the Lord, and I wrote it down, and
read it to him after the meeting was over and he said I had it recorded
correctly: "I promise the Saints in the Deseret stake of Zion that if their
lives are such that they can look their sons and daughters in the face, and if
any of them have gone astray, that the parents are able to say, 'It is contrary
to my instruction and my life's example; it is against every effort of love,
long suffering, faith, prayer and devotion that that boy or that girl has gone,
'I promise you, fathers and mothers, that not one of them shall be lost unless
they have sinned away the power to repent." I don't believe any our boys are in
that lamentable condition.
5. Lorenzo Snow, address delivered 64th Semiannual General Conference, Oct. 6,
1893, in Collected Discourses, 5 vols., Comp. Brian H. Stuy, Burbank, Calif.,
1987-92, 3:364-65
. . . . God has fulfilled His promises to us, and our prospects are grand and
glorious. Yes, in the next life we will have our wives, and our sons and
daughters. If we do not get them all at once, we will have them some time, for
every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is the Christ.
You that are mourning about your children straying away will have your sons and
your daughters. If you succeed in passing through these trials and afflictions
and receive a resurrection, you will, by the power of the Priesthood, work and
labor, as the Son of God has, until you get all your sons and daughters in the
path of exaltation and glory. This is just as sure as that the sun rose
this morning over yonder mountains. Therefore, mourn not because all your sons
and daughters do not follow in the path that you have marked out to them, or
give heed to your counsels. Inasmuch as we succeed in securing eternal glory,
and stand as saviors, and as kings and priests to our God, we will save our
posterity. When Jesus went through that terrible torture on the cross, He saw
what would be accomplished by it; He saw that His brethren and sisters--the sons
and daughters of God--would be gathered in, with but few exceptions--those who
committed the unpardonable sin. That sacrifice of the divine Being was
effectual to destroy the powers of Satan. I believe that every man and woman
who comes into this life and passes through it, that life will be a
success in the end. It may not be in this life. It was not with the
antediluvians. They passed through troubles and afflictions; 2,500 years after
that, when Jesus went to preach to them, the dead heard the voice of the Son of
God and they lived. They found after all that it was a very good thing that
they had conformed to the will of God in leaving the spiritual life and passing
through this world.
God will have His own way in His own time, and He will accomplish His purposes
in the salvation of His sons and daughters. We are here to do what God requires
of us, and in doing what God requires of us we keep ourselves established upon
that rock referred to, and these difficulties that arise will not affect us
particularly. . . . We know all things will be right with us in the end, . . .
God bless you, brethren and sisters. Do not be discouraged is the word I wish
to pass to you; but remember that righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost is
what you and I have the privilege of possessing at all times.
6. Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:90
Those born under the covenant, throughout all eternity, are the children of
their parents. Nothing except the unpardonable sin, or sin unto death, can
break this tie. If children do not sin as John says [1 John 5:16-17],
łunto death,˛ the parents may still feel after them and eventually bring them
back to them again.