What happens to children who stray when they die?

Question

Gramps,

My children were sealed in the temple to us and most of them have strayed from the gospel and are not living its teachings. One of them is gay and living a gay lifestyle. What will happen to them when they go to the other side?

J

Answer

J,

As a result of our agency, children who have been born within the covenant sometimes make the decision to stray away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. These decisions create concern for any father or mother who desires the salvation for their children. In response to your question here are some thoughts as given by our prophets and apostles for you to contemplate.

Brigham Young once declared, “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 on earth or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from whence they sprang.” (in Journal of Discourses, 11:215)

President Joseph Fielding Smith also declared, “Children born under the covenant, who drift away, are still the children of their parents; and the parents have a claim upon them; and if the children have not sinned away all their rights, the parents may be able to bring them through repentance, into the celestial kingdom, but not to receive the exaltation.” (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:91)

President James E. Faust declared, “There are very few whose rebellion and evil deeds are so great that they have ‘sinned away the power to repent.’ That judgment must also be left up to the Lord. He tells us, ‘I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.’” (Conference Report, April 2003, p. 68)

Orson F. Whitney declared this statement along with quoting our beloved prophet Joseph Smith, “You parents of the wilful 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 fulness of knowledge brings the fulness 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.

“The Prophet Joseph Smith declared-and he never taught more comforting doctrine-that the eternal sealings 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 in 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” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1929, 110)

Boyd K. Packer also made this statement, “We emphasize that the greatest work you will do will be within the walls of your home (see Harold B. Lee, in Conference Report, April 1973, p.130), and that ‘no other success can compensate for failure in the home’ (see David O. McKay, in Conference Report, April 1935, p.116).

“The measure of our success as parents, however, will not rest solely on how our children turn out. That judgement would be just only if we could raise our families in a perfectly moral environment, and that now is not possible.

“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 and 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…

“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.”
(in Conference Report, Apr. 1992, 94-95)

As you have time to ponder these declarations may the Lord bless you with comfort knowing that he (the Lord) is perfect. His judgements will be perfectly just and merciful according to our decisions here upon earth.

Gramps