Can we rely on our parent’s worthiness to get us to the Celestial Kingdom?
Question
Gramps,
If my parents are sealed to each other and they keep their covenants they made in the temple and remain faithful throughout their lives, can us, as children, still inherit one of the 3 kingdoms of the Celestial kingdom? Even if we break away from the church and don’t keep the covenants? (doesn’t mean I will, just curious) Thanks heaps!
Garrett
Answer
Dear Garrett,
I would encourage you to read Elder David Bednar’s article in the March 2014 Ensign entitled “Faithful Parents and Wayward Children: Sustaining Hope While Overcoming Misunderstanding“. In that article, Elder Bednar writes:
[F]aithful parents can invite the power of heaven to influence their children. Nevertheless, those children remain agents unto themselves, and the choice to repent or not ultimately is theirs.
The fact that a child’s parents have made, and are keeping, temple covenants, does not excuse the child from the need for repentance and an individual acceptance of the Atonement of Christ. Indeed, a child’s conscious decision to sin now and rely on their parents’ temple covenants later, will probably make the repentance process even more painful and difficult.
Gramps
Garrett I’ll quote from Joseph Smith’s March 10th 1844 sermon regarding this.
“Again the doctrin or sealing power of Elijah is as follows if you have power to
seal on earth & in heaven then we should be Crafty, the first thing you do go & seal on
earth your sons & daughters unto yourself, & yourself unto your fathers in eternal glory,
& go ahead and not go back, but use a little Craftiness & seal all you can; & when you get
to heaven tell your father that what you seal on earth should be sealed in heaven I will
walk through the gate of heaven and Claim what I seal & those that follow me & my Council”
He’s explaining the metaphysics behind the power to seal using a hypothetical example. When someone has the power to seal on Earth and in Heaven then you should seal everything dear to you TO YOU as parents. Children, friends etc. Children born under the sealing covenant are sealed to their parents. So when the parents walk into the celestial kingdom the children are bound to them. Gramps response about sin, repentance yada yada goes right out the door, aside from the shedding of innocent blood the child will inherit the celestial kingdom with the parents.
So yes children can rely on their parents worthiness and its by virtue of the sealing placed upon their parents IF the parents are worthy of the celestial kingdom.
This is one of the points of doctrine that really ticked off Joseph’s 2nd counselor William Law. He added it to his list of complaints against Joseph in the Nauvoo Expositor under subheading Resolved 2. William Law called this unconditional sealing up to salvation “a perversion of the priesthood” in that newspaper.
If anyone disagrees with this point of view… Well then they they are siding with the doctrinal opinion of the man that helped martyr the prophet. I hope this helps put the doctrine into perspective.
This quote that “Findfaultwiththis” mentions appears to be taken out of context, and is misleading.
Nevertheless, you will note some additional conditions at the end of this quote – “…those that FOLLOW me & my Council”. That should tell you Joseph didn’t assume that those who did NOT follow his council would still be sealed to him!
God has said that He “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance”. God would not be a just god if He were to “drag” His children, “kicking and screaming” into the Celestial Kingdom! This totally goes against one of the most key, fundamental principles of the Plan of Salvation – AGENCY! Those who are sealed to us must also ACCEPT the ordinance before it is binding! This includes the covenants associated with the ordinance (acceptance of the Atonement, repentance, etc)! If, by their own agency, they choose NOT to accept the ordinances, do you think they’ll just be exalted anyway? It pretty well makes the whole point behind the Plan of Salvation nul and void!
It’s also interesting… I have searched and searched, but I cannot come up with an exact reference (nor does he/she give one) for the quote that Findfaultwiththis has mentioned. I can only come up with a website that, surprisingly enough, has the EXACT same spelling/grammar errors! In the History of the Church, several parts of this quote are different and/or missing.
However, here is another quote (WITH a reference) by another prophet of this dispensation:
“No matter how a person is sealed he will be assigned to his proper
place. If a person is sealed to his parents, or is born under the
covenant, and then he lives a telestial law, to the telestial kingdom he
will go, or to the terrestrial. Salvation is an individual
responsibility. Only through living the gospel can we enter the
celestial kingdom” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions,
vol 5, p. 169).
It’s not taken out of context nor misleading and your inability to do a simple Google search would show you that I pulled that quote word for word from Boap.org which is run by BYU professors. http://www.boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1844/10Mar44.html which has the misspellings et al as well as columns each dedicated to the scribe that penned the notes of the sermon.
JAGuar I find it amusing that you are siding with Joseph Smith’s mortal enemy William Law, he too mocked this doctrine as you do. What Joseph was expounding upon “The Spirit of Elijah” is what is called the 2nd Anointing. It was a sealing of your endowment and an unconditional sealing up to your salvation. Just about all 1st generation Mormons received this and then it became a super secret Mormon elite club only ordinance in the 1900’s. Sin, repentance no longer was hanging over you, the day of judgement was advanced to that ordinance and you were now saved.
EVERY General Authority receives this still to this day. The receiver of this ordinance is given the sealing power, becomes a prophet(ess), priest(ess) and King/Queen since this is done for both men and women. The receiver can seal whomever he/she wants to themselves and the sealed are intern able to inherit the celestial kingdom just as Joseph explained.
William Law argued as you do, so SHAME on you for siding with him!!! What you just posted sound very close to his rubbish in the Nauvoo Expositor published as an anti Mormon news paper in June of 1844 the following under subheading Resolved 2 regarding doctrines Law was opposed to “the doctrine of unconditional sealing up to eternal life, against all crimes except that of sheding innocent blood” Law calls this a perversion of the priesthood!!! You are blind leading the blind with your comment and you speak in ignorance.
I’d counsel you to swallow your pride and lay down the opinions of latter day revisionist doctrine. Try taking your doctrine like you would water in a stream. At it’s source where it’s most pure!
Joseph Smith did teach this doctrine. He did teach publicly exactly as I explained, children sealed to their parents would not be lost. The entire practice of sealing your ancestry back as far as you can is a direct result of this teaching. You do that so you save them all and bind them to you generation after generation thus giving them the ability to inherit the Celestial Kingdom. Why else would you need to seal them to you? What is the purpose if not to grant them access to the Celestial Kingdom? It’s a loop hole. Joseph used the words crafty on purpose, you hold God to his word and promise and if he doesn’t like it, then he shouldn’t have given us the power to seal!
Agency plays a very important role still, they will use their agency to sort themselves and though they may have a place in the Celestial Kingdom they will use their agency and opt into a lower kingdom were they will feel comfortable.