My Grandmother and Father as a young boy.
Understanding your families past can greatly help you understand the present. Your life is a continuation of a larger story. Our ancestors toiled, loved, laughed, worshiped, made mistakes, had great successes, fought wars, and ultimately provided the foundation and world into which each of us were born.
Understanding their stories can help put your own life into context. It can greatly enrich your life to understand the lives of those who have gone before you.
As Latter-day Saints, we don’t think of our ancestors as just gene carriers that passed those genes down to us. We view ourselves as a part of a large family chain that transcends this life. This chain can an will continue in the life to come.
There are many of our ancestors who lived their whole lives without even hearing of the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We do not believe these people are lost. We believe that God is completely just and that He will give every person who has lived on this earth an equal opportunity to hear, understand, and believe in His Gospel.
He has provided a way for everyone to receive the ordinances of the Gospel even if they did not receive them when they were alive. Here is how it works:
1. A deceased person will receive Gospel instruction or missionaries in the Spirit world. (the place were we go when we die)
2. Their descendants and other good people will search out their names and important information such as date of birth, place of birth etc.
3. The deceased person can decide to accept or reject the Gospel just as we can while alive.
4. Ordinances such as Baptism, confirmation, and other temple ordinances are performed on behalf of the death by a living proxy in the Holy Temple.
5. If the deceased person decides to accept the Gospel and the work performed for them, they will be given all the rights and privileges anyone receives by becoming a member of the church and thus have access to salvation.
This allows God to give the same opportunity to everyone. From the tribes in South America that have never heard of Jesus Christ, to everyone in the world. Eventually everyone who has ever lived from Adam down to our time will have heard the Gospel and had the chance to fully accept it or not.
Who are your ancestors? Were they baptized by the proper authority? I testify that they can have full access to these blessings today just as these same truths were taught in the New Testament. (1 Corinthians 15:29)
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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