Genealogy from the perspective of a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, LDS)

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Elder Allan F. Packer speaks of our Spiritual Passport

At this year's RootsTech Conference held in the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah, Elder Allan F. Packer of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave an extraordinary presentation entitled "Spiritual Passport." If you log in to LDS.org, you can view the presentation on video or read the transcription.  Since that presentation at RootsTech 2014, there have been many Conference talks and at least one and sometimes two articles in the Ensign and other Church publications about family history. Here are some links to some of those talks and articles:
I could go on and on, but perhaps you can get the message. Family history and searching our our ancestors is a top priority topic for the Church as a whole. Are you missing the boat? Don't you understand that as Elder Packer points out in his presentation:
Hastening the Work of Salvation is the call of the Prophets to leaders and members in our day. To hasten is “to move or act swiftly, to cause to hurry, to speed up; accelerate.”[i] It also means “to cause (something) to happen more quickly.”[ii] The work of Salvation is “to help individuals and families qualify for exaltation”.

There are four divinely appointed responsibilities for us to work out our exaltation as explained in Handbook 2[iii]. One of them is to help “enabl[e] the salvation of the dead by building temples and performing vicarious ordinances.”[iv]
There is presently no excuse for ignoring this vital part of the mission of the Church. We have the tools and we have the time during our mortal probation to do the work.

No comments:

Post a Comment