Dear Gramps,

I am very close to my dead grandparents who are of Jewish decent. My mother and father divorced and remarried, but I still go by my father’s and grandparents last name. My mother married a good member of the church and was sealed in the temple. Later he passed away. My brother and I were never sealed to anyone but feel most closely tied to our Jewish grandparents and never became close to our step father.
So here is my question Can I be sealed to my Grandparents, the people I want to be with in eternity and the ones I’m very close to. But my real Dad, not a member wants nothing to do with the Church, has forbidden me from doing his temple work after his death so I am left with a generational skip. Or getting sealed to my step dad who I am not close to and breaking the connection to the family I really want to be sealed to. That would also connect me to his family none of whom are members and are people of low moral values or anything else I would want to be connected with. Is it possible to be sealed to both?

Michael, from Norcross, Georgia

Dear Michael,

Let’s explore a little what it means to be sealed in the temple in the Mormon Church. You must realize that temple sealings are ordinances of the gospel. And the ordinances of the gospel are actually signs of the covenants that are made with the Lord by the contracting parties of the marriage that are confirmed and legitimized by the act of the covenant. The covenants made during the sealings of wives to husbands are very sacred commitments of fidelity, love, respect and honor towards one’s partner. If these covenants are not completely obeyed the ordinance of being sealed together for eternity simply is no longer valid, and unless there is full and complete repentance for any deviation from those sacred promises, that marriage will not exist beyond the grave, and the participants will be single individuals after they are dead, and will not be married or be parents in eternity.

So, if your read Dad does not fully and completely repent, joins the Mormon Church and is remarried to your mother, and they both continue faithful for the rest of their lives, you have nothing to worry about your read Dad being your father in an eternal family. On the other hand, if he were to fulfil all those conditions you would no doubt be both thrilled and honored to be part of that eternal family.

We have no right to make any choice to be sealed to anyone other than our legitimate earthly partners and family. The sealings in the temple are a perpetuation of the family relations that exist in mortality, and as mentioned earlier they are dependent upon the righteousness and worthiness of the contracting parties. So the only recourse we have is to live completely chaste and worthy lives, and commit ourselves to never enter into any marriage contract unless it can by sanctified by the Lord through fulfilling the eternal marriage covenant available to all of God’s worthy children in his holy temples.

Gramps