Speaking of the spirits of the dead Joseph F. Smith said, 'I claim that we live in their presence, they see us, they are solicitous for our welfare, they love us now more than ever...They see the temptations and evils that beset us in life, and the proneness of mortal beings to yield to temptation and to wrong doing; hence their solicitude for us and their love for us and their desire for our well being must be greater than that which we feel for ourselves..If we can see, by the enlightening influence of the Spirit of God and through the words that have been spoken by the holy prophets of God beyond the veil that separates us from the spirit world, surely those who have passed beyond can see more clearly through the veil back here to us than it is possible for us to see to them from our sphere of action..we are not separated from them..We cannot forget them; we do not cease to love them; we always hold them in our hearts, in memory, and thus we are associated and united to them by ties that we cannot dissolve, or free ourselves from." (Gospel Doctrine, pp. 430-31)
“So often we think of our responsibility to do something for those who have gone before. We need to understand that probably one of the most important beneofits of preserving our heritage is what it does for us today. If we want our problems to be solved, one of the surest ways of doing that is to search for our past, for therein we receive strength, guidance, and understanding. All of you here today are giving an added eternal dimension to your lives as you learn and study the past. We can receive strength and
help from those who have gone on before. To raise our families today, we need to do family research and genealogy.” -- Elder John H. Groberg
"To my mind, there isn't anything to great and so glorious in this world as to labor for the salvation of the living and for the redemption of the dead."
-- Joseph F. Smith YWJ 23:130, January 1912
"The work for our dead . . . l should not be neglected. We should avail ourselves of those sacred and potent ordinances of the gospel which have been revealed as essential to the happiness, salvation and redemption of those who have lived in this world when they could not learn the gospel and have died without the knowledge of it and are not waiting for us; their children, who are living in an age when these, ordinances can be performed, to do this work necessary for their release from the prison-house. Through our efforts in their behalf their chains of bondage will fall from them, and the darkness surrounding them will clear away, that light may shine upon them and they shall hear in thespirit world of the work that has been done for them by their children here and will rejoice with you in your performance of these duties.
-- Joseph F. Smith CR, p. 6, October 1916
