Sealing of
Righteous Parents Save their Children Boyd K. Packer/Orson F. Whitney
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It
is a great challenge to raise a family in the darkening mist of our
immoral environment. We emphasize that the greatest work you will do
is within the walls of your own home and that 'no other success can
compensate for failure in the home.' The measure of our success, however,
as parents will not rest solely on how our children turn out. That judgment
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're puzzled over why they are so helpless when they have tried so
hard to do what they should do. It is my conviction that those wicked
influences one day will be overruled. The Prophet Joseph Smith declared--and
he never taught 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 the tentacles of Divine providence
[will be] 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, April 1929, p. 110; Boyd K. Packer, CR, April 1992, p. 94-95) |
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