The Lord has called upon us to look after our dead, to seek out their genealogy. This spirit has gone forth, the keys that were bestowed by Elijah are here, and the hearts of the children have turned to their fathers. One of the greatest evidences of the truth of the story told by the Prophet Joseph Smith that Elijah came to him and Oliver Cowdery is the fact that people who are not connected with this Church, who have no sympathy perhaps with the Church, are gathering the records of the dead. Their hearts have turned to the fathers.
In Conference Report, Apr. 1934, 19–20.
It is interesting to
know that on the third day of April, 1836, the Jews were
celebrating the feast of the Passover, and were leaving the
doors of their homes open for the coming of Elijah. On that
day Elijah came, but not to the Jewish homes, but to the
Temple in the village of Kirtland near the banks of Lake
Erie, to two humble servants of the Lord who were appointed
by divine decree to receive him.
Church History and Modern Revelation, 2 vols. (1953), 2:53.
Gordon B. Hinckley, 15th President of the Church, 1995–present
I thank him and love him [Joseph Smith] for the sealing power of the holy priesthood that makes possible and certain the continuance of the family through eternity. I have said many times that if nothing else came out of all the sorrow and travail and pain of the restoration than the sealing power of the holy priesthood to bind together families forever, it would have been worth all that it has cost.
In Joseph Smith: The Prophet, the Man, ed. Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate Jr. (1992), 6.
