Question
Gramps,
Why do I have to get sealed to my spouse if I got sealed with our family? If I don’t get sealed will I not be with God?
gabs
Answer
Dear gabs,
I appreciate your witness and testimony of the value of children getting sealed to parents. Brigham Young taught, “This Priesthood has been restored again, and by its authority we shall be connected with our fathers, by the ordinance of sealing, until we shall form a perfect chain from Father Adam down to the closing up scene.” Adding to the importance of this ordinance, Elder Russell M. Nelson testified that children that have been sealed to their parents are “heirs to the blessings of the priesthood.”
What a tremendous blessing a person may enjoy in this life and the next when sealed to parents. But this is not the whole picture. Rather, the fuller quote from Elder Nelson is “Children born to parents thus married [in the temple] are natural heirs to the blessings of the priesthood. They are born in the covenant. Hence, ‘they require no rite of adoption or sealing to insure them place in the posterity of promise.'(James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1977), p. 446)”. That is, the “heir” status of the child is given under the aegis of the parents’ covenant.
The new and everlasting covenant of marriage is not only a tremendous blessing to children but also to the couple participating in it. Those who enter into this covenant and are faithful to it are promised the following blessings:
they “come forth in the first resurrection”
they “shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths”
the marriage “shall be of full force when they are out of the world”
“they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, … to their exaltation and glory in all things”
their “glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever”
they “shall they be gods, because they have no end”
they shall “be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue”
they shall “be above all, because all things are subject unto them”
“angels are subject unto them”
Wrapped up in these blessings are covenants made with Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If you were born in the covenant or sealed to your parents you are an heir to the covenants and entitled to claim them. Elder Nelson bore an apostolic witness that “you may also claim the supernal blessings promised to the faithful lineage of Abraham. The Lord explained that the blessings and responsibilities of His priesthood are yours because of your faith, works, and lineage—the lineage declared in your patriarchal blessings. You ‘are lawful heirs,’ He said. ‘Your life and the priesthood have remained, and must needs remain through you and your lineage’ (D&C 86:9–10). The ultimate blessings of the Abrahamic covenant are conferred in holy temples.”
I encourage you to do everything in your power to go to the temple and receive the sealing blessings with your spouse. If you are married to a man of another faith, you can still live the principles of a celestial marriage in your home and merit those blessings. If you are not yet married, stay worthy to receive temple blessings. If you remain single through no fault of your own, seek a witness of the oft-spoken teaching that “in the eternities no blessing will be denied his sons and daughters who keep the commandments, are true to their covenants, and desire what is right.”
Gramps
