Joseph Smith
When a seal is put upon the father and mother, it secures their posterity, so that they cannot be lost, but will be saved by virtue of the covenant of their father and mother.
Brigham Young
Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, 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 fountain from whence they sprang.
Lorenzo Snow
God has fulfilled His promises to us, and our prospects are grand and glorious. Yes, in the next life we will have our wives, and our sons and daughters. If we do not get them all at once, we will have them some time … You that are mourning about your children straying away will have your sons and your daughters. If you succeed in passing through these trials and afflictions … you will, by the power of the Priesthood, work and labor, as the Son of God has, until you get all your sons and daughters in the path of exaltation and glory. This is just as sure as that the sun rose this morning over yonder mountains. Therefore, mourn not because all your sons and daughters do not follow in the path that you have marked out to them, or give heed to your counsels. Inasmuch as we succeed in securing eternal glory, and stand as saviors, and as kings and priests to our God, we will save our posterity.
Joseph F. Smith
We will not finish our work until we have saved ourselves, and then not until we shall have saved all depending upon us; for we are to become saviors upon Mount Zion, as well as Christ. We are called to this mission.
Orson F. Whitney
You parents of the wilful 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 fulness of knowledge brings the fulness 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.
The Prophet Joseph Smith declared – and he never taught 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.
John J. Carmack
In 1919 at general conference, Alonzo A. Hinckley, then president of the Deseret Stake of Zion, quoted Elder James E. Talmage of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as follows: “I promise the Saints in the Deseret stake of Zion that if their lives are such that they can look their sons and daughters in the face, and if any of them have gone astray, that the parents are able to say, It is contrary to my instruction and my life’s example; it is against every effort of love, long suffering, faith, prayer and devotion that that boy or girl has gone,’ – I promise you, fathers and mothers, that not one of them shall be lost unless they have sinned away the power to repent” (in Conference Report, October 1919, 161).
Gordon B. Hinckley
I leave my blessing upon you. May there be … a sense of security and peace and love among your children, precious children every one of them, even those who may have strayed. I hope you don’t lose patience with them; I hope you go on praying for them, and I don’t hesitate to promise that if you do, the Lord will touch their hearts and bring them back to you with love and respect and appreciation.
I love these quotes. I love the comfort they give to parents who may have very little control or influence over the choices of their adult children.
These quotes seem to share some elements with our doctrine that children that die before the age of 8 need no repentance or ordinances but are automatically exalted. Likewise the doctrine of the salvation/exaltation of little children does not make sense by the strictest definitions of agency, personal accountability and consequences. It is an anomaly or contradiction.
A young mother's baby dies without baptism in the 16th century and she is told that her child is forever doomed to purgatory. The scriptures were clear that nobody can be saved without baptism. The religious leaders of the time were only doing their duty in guarding the straightness of the gate that leads to heaven. We look back at her inconsolable heartache as needless anguish. If only she had known what was revealed in the BoM - that little children need no baptism and the religious leaders of the time, earnest though they were, did not speak for God on this subject.
It saddens me to have these quotes diminished. Who was being hurt by them. They have been around for over 100 years. Were children of temple sealed parents running around in debauchery thinking that they had a golden ticket? A "get out of jail free" card? Yes, there are no free lunches, the piper must always be paid, and the devil demands his pound of flesh BUT is not the GOOD NEWS of Christianity that our God paid the price for our behalf? That God redeemed the sinner and set the captive free?
I worry that sometimes we look at the captives running free and think to ourselves, "That is not right. They
deserve to be in jail for the choices that they made. Just look them! How happy and carefree they are?!?! Let's go round them up and lock them away again."
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood
“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223
"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13