President Howard W. Hunter, A Temple Motivated People, 1995
The dead are anxiously waiting for the Latter-day Saints to search out their names and then go into the temples to officiate in their behalf, that they may be liberated from their prison house in the spirit world. All of us should find joy in this magnificent labor of love.
Elder Henry B. Eyring, “Hearts Bound Together,” April 2005
. . . 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. (“Discourse by President Wilford Woodruff,” Millennial Star, May 21, 1894, 339-40.)
Sister Wendy Nelson, “Open the Heavens through Temple and Family History Work”, Ensign October 2017
President George Q. Cannon (1827–1901), who served as a counselor to four Presidents of the Church, taught that in these latter days, those who are joining the Church are joining precisely because their ancestors have been praying for one of their posterity to join the Church so that they, the ancestors, can receive their essential ordinances by proxy. (Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of President George Q. Cannon, comp. Jerreld L. Newquist, 2 vols. (1974), 2:88–89.)
A missionary’s best friends in the local unit are the ward or branch mission leader and the ward or branch temple and family history consultant, he added. The former helps missionaries get more meaningful teaching opportunities, and the latter to help people new to the Church to learn names of ancestors, “many of whom are yearning — even desperate — for the exalting ordinances of the gospel to be done for them by their living posterity.”
“The spirit world is full of spirits who are anxiously
awaiting for us to perform these earthly ordinances for them. …
“Some of us have had occasion to wait for someone or
something for a minute, an hour, a day, a week, or even a year. Can you imagine
how our progenitors must feel, some of whom have perhaps been waiting for
decades and even centuries for the temple work to be done for them?” (“The
Things of Eternity—Stand We in Jeopardy?” Ensign, Jan. 1977, 1, 7).
Introduction to Family History Student Manual - Angels Need Our Help.
At the dedication of the lower story of the St. George Utah Temple on January 1, 1877, President Brigham Young indicated that some in the spirit world have waited thousands of years for their temple work to be done: “What do you suppose the fathers would say if they could speak from the dead? Would they not say, ‘We have lain here thousands of years, here in this prison house, waiting for this dispensation to come?’ … What would they whisper in our ears? Why, if they had the power the very thunders of heaven would be in our ears, if we could realize the importance of the work we are engaged in. All the angels in heaven are looking at this little handful of people, and stimulating them to the salvation of the human family” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young [1997], 309).
