Here is Duff's talk he gave on Family History last week in Sacrament Meeting.
Doing
Family History and Attending the Temple Will Increase Our Spirituality
January
1, 2011
Brothers and Sisters I am very grateful for the
assignment to prepare this talk. I only wish I was as excited to deliver it. I
had a calling for several years where I frequently was assigned to ask members
of the Stake to come and visit with the Stake President or to deliver a talk in
Stake Conference. In the four or so years I had that calling it was very rare
if ever that I was turned down, even, if
it was going to be a burden to the assigned individual. That experience
has made it difficult for me to turn down an assignment from the Priesthood
even if I would like to. I also learned
that the Lord usually has gone out of his way to be sure the individual has had
experiences that have prepared them for the
assignment that was coming.
I would like to thank the Bishopric for listening to the
spirit in assigning me this particular topic. Several weeks before I received
this assignment I had several spiritual experiences that I believe have
prepared me to talk on this subject.
If you would please try and listen not so much to the
words or my delivery but please listen with your spiritual ears; your heart. I
understand that that requires effort but if you will I promise you that the
Lord through the Holy Ghost will speak to you and give you assignments and
feelings that will bless your life and that of your family.
On September 21st 1823 Joseph Smith went to the Lord in
prayer to know his standing before God. As you are aware a Prophet named Moroni
was sent to deliver a message from God and to train and prepare a Prophet. Of that experience Joseph said "36 After
telling me these things, he commenced quoting the prophecies of the Old
Testament.....
38
he quoted the fifth verse
thus: Behold, I will reveal unto you the aPriesthood, by
the hand of bElijah the
prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the cLord.
39 He also quoted the next verse
differently: And he shall plant in the hearts of the achildren the
bpromises
made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their
fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his
coming.
From this passage we learn the
following: First, the Priesthood will be
revealed by the Prophet Elijah before the Second coming and, second, that you
and I made some kind of promise to our fathers before we got here and our
hearts need to be turned to them so we can keep our promises.
On April 3rd 1836 13 years after the
visit of Moroni The Prophet recounts the
following "13 After this vision had closed, another great
and glorious avision
burst upon us; for bElijah the
prophet, who was taken to heaven without tasting death, stood before us, and
said:
14 Behold, the time has fully come,
which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi—testifying that he [Elijah] should
be sent, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come—
15 To aturn the
bhearts of
the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest the whole
earth be smitten with a curse—
16 Therefore, the akeys of
this bdispensation are
committed into your hands; and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful cday of
the Lord is near, even at the doors.
Six years later the Prophet expounded on this subject of
fathers, children and promises "18 It is
sufficient to know, in this case, that the earth will be smitten with a bcurse unless there is a welding clink of some kind or other between the fathers and the dchildren, upon some subject or other—and behold what is that subject? It
is the ebaptism for the dead. For we without them cannot be made perfect;
neither can they without us be made perfect. Neither can they nor we be made
perfect without those who have died in the gospel also; for it is necessary in
the ushering in of the dispensation of the ffulness of times, which dispensation is now beginning to usher in, that
a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together of dispensations,
and keys, and powers, and glories should take place, and be revealed from the
days of Adam even to the present time. "
President Eyring said
this on the subject "After Joseph Smith, the Lord called other prophets to
lead His Church. One was Joseph F. Smith. He saw in vision what happened in the
spirit world when the Savior appeared there between the time of His death and
His Resurrection. 3 President Smith saw the joy of the
spirits when they learned that the Savior had broken the bands of death and
because of His Atonement they could be resurrected. And he saw the Savior
organize His servants among the spirits to preach His gospel to every spirit
and offer the chance to choose the covenants and the blessings which are
offered to you and which you want for your ancestors. All are to have that
chance.
President Smith also saw the leaders the Savior called to
take the gospel to Heavenly Father's children in the spirit world. He named
some of them: Father Adam, Mother Eve, Noah, Abraham, Ezekiel, Elijah, prophets
we know from the Book of Mormon, and some from the last days, including Joseph
Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff. Think of the power of
those missionaries to teach the gospel and to touch the hearts of your ancestors.
It is not surprising that Wilford Woodruff said while he lived that he believed
few, if any, of the ancestors of the Latter-day Saints in the spirit world
would choose to reject the message of salvation when they heard it. 4 "
Elder John W.
Taylor, while attending the Manti Temple dedication, concluded that only one in
ten would refuse the ordinances. He added, "how many who are kept in
prison are not ready to come out?"
A few weeks ago I had a experience that drove this point
home to me. We have from time to time visitors in our high priest meeting that
hold positions of leadership in the kingdom of God. I have made it a practice
to ask these brethren to take 10 to 15 min. and tell us how thing are going. We
had President Morgan of the Redlands Temple in our meeting and I asked him to
take a few minutes. He related several experience, two of which I would like to
share.
His wife had been doing research on her Fathers and had
names that were ready for Priesthood ordinances. They were in the sealing room
doing the sealing of families together and president Morgan was officiating. President Morgan looked up and there was a
Brother who was very interested in what was going on. President Morgan said the
man was one of Sister Morgan's Long dead "Fathers" and was watching
his family being linked together from the other side of the veil. President
Morgan shared his impression that he believed that his wife was one in her Family who had made Promises to
her fathers to link that family together. Can you look forward a see the
reunion that those of her family will give her when they see her. I am
confident it will be joyful beyond anything we might experience in this
life.
This made a significant impression on me because my
father's family are all Irish Catholics that have shown no interest in the
church. In fact my grandfather never joined the church. He abandoned a family
in New York, needed to marry my Grandmother
and according to Duffy legend physically threw the Bishop out of his house.
He then passed away when my father was 6.
If we believe what the brethren
have said, it looks like most of my family will believe the gospel on the other
side of the veil and are most likely waiting for me to get off my
"Duff" and go to work so we can
be welded together.
I wonder about those of us who do not have a long pioneer
heritage of members in the Church and wish we had a family that was all active.
It seems to me we can all have that blessing. It looks like it is not a matter 'if'
we belong to a strong active generational temple sealed family, it is a matter
of 'when'. We can have our dream of that if we go to work.
Back to President Morgan. Every night one of the temple
presidency walks the temple to close it down. President Morgan was walking the
temple and had been down the side that has one sealing room and all was well.
He passed through the Celestial room and went to the smaller sealing room. He
said he felt the spirits of several people in the room and they were there
rejoicing in the sealing's that had just been performed for them. He said that
this experience is not a rare one. He then went into the larger sealing room
and had the same feeling has he had in the smaller sealing room. He noted that
that was not a usual experience. He returned to his office and was informed
that the Stake had brought more that would fit in one sealing session so they
used the larger sealing room as well.
Brethren and sisters if we will get involved in this work
of welding or own or other families together we will have spiritual experiences
that will fortify us against the evils of the day.
**I would also like to talk now about the power of the sealing
of families together to help us looking into present and the future as well as
the past. I get very interested when I hear people talk about their families
and recount how many children and grandchildren they have, how many are married
in the temple, been on or serving missions, what callings they are in and
various other impressive statistics. While
those discussions are I am sure not meant to cause hurt and feelings of
inadequacy in some of the rest of us not so blessed with the perfect family
situation I am sure they do cause such feelings. I often have those kind of
feelings in those kind of experiences. I have yet to hear parents of those who
are experiencing difficulty with a child or a spouse share those statistics. We
are what I like to call the silent sufferers. I found it very interesting when my family was faced with one
of those difficult situations reaching out to my nonmember friends because they
were far less judgmental of my parenting and my family than some of my member
friends.
If I can share a few things I have learned by difficult
family experiences that I hope will help you. First you are in good company. When I read the scriptures as a father looking
for examples of fathers who are in family difficulty I see names like Adam
& Eve, Abraham, Lehi & Sariah, Alma, King Benjamin, Joseph Smith. If
these parents and children had difficulty why should we get discouraged and question when we have similar experiences.
If we liken the scriptures to ourselves does it make sense that family
difficulty will happen to great parents and children. In spite of difficulty these scripture families
lived on, prayed on and loved their family in spite of what was going
wrong.
I think I know why they were able to carry on. Let me
share a few thoughts from the prophets relating to the sealing power and its
effect on our children.
The prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught a
more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings 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 they will
feel the tentacles of Divine Providence 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. “Who are these straying sheep—these wayward sons
and daughters? They are the children of the Covenant, heirs to the promise, and
have received, if baptized, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which makes manifest
the things of God. Could all that go for naught?
Elder Orson F. Whitney said "You Parents of the
willful and the wayward! Don’t give them up. Don’t cast them off. They are not
utterly lost. The Shepherd will find his sheep. They were his before they were
yours--long before he entrusted them to your care; and you cannot begin to love
them as he loves them. They have but strayed in ignorance from the Path of
Right, and God is merciful to ignorance. Only the fullness of knowledge brings
the fullness of accountability. Our Heavenly Father is far more merciful,
infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his servants, and the
Everlasting Gospel is mightier in power to save than our narrow finite minds
can comprehend” (Elder Orson F. Whitney, April Conference 1929)
“President Brigham Young said: ‘Let the father and
mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous
course...if they conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them
to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go,
they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth
or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return
again to the foundation from whence they sprang.’” (Boyd K. Packer, April
Conference 1992)
I testify that the sealing power and the linking of
families will assist in saving our fathers, us and our children. If we get
involved saving our fathers and remembering our promises to them they will be
able to assist us in our efforts to help them and in our efforts with our
families. To those with a less than
ideal family situation I testify that we can have the kind of family we want to
have even if those hopes seem currently impossible. Please don't give up. Don't lose hope. In Gods family it is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'.
We individually will have an increase in our spiritual
experiences by serving in the temples and by keeping our promises to our
fathers.
Bear
testimony.
Close in the
Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
