Our whole religion is based upon the fact of immortality. Men have come back from the dead to accomplish the restoration of the gospel. Even God himself came.
First came the Father and Jesus Christ, his Beloved Son. They visited Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove near Palmyra, New York. They talked with him face to face and answered his questions.
Moroni also came, repeatedly, visiting with and instructing the young prophet. Then came John the Baptist of New Testament times. Peter, James, and John were next. Moses came to the Kirtland Temple. And then came Elijah, who was taken into heaven without tasting death.
Each one was physical evidence of the fact of immortality, but each one brought more than the proof of life after death. Each one came with a great purpose—far beyond the proof of immortality. The Father and Son opened this dispensation and provided the knowledge of the true nature of God—that he is a person and that man was made in his image.
Moroni revealed the location of the Book of Mormon. John the Baptist brought the Aaronic Priesthood. Peter, James, and John brought the Melchizedek Priesthood. Moses brought the keys of the gathering of the Jews to Palestine and the gathering of Ephraim and Manasseh.
One of the most important events of this dispensation was the coming of the Prophet Elijah to the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Kirtland Temple on 3 April 1836. He brought the keys of his ministry, but many people have misunderstood what those keys were. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained it this way:
“It is held by some that Elijah came with these keys because he held some peculiar position standing between the living and the dead due to the fact that he was translated. But when Elijah came to Joseph Smith it was with a resurrected body, for he was with Christ in his resurrection. It was not because Elijah held peculiar keys which applied to the dead, that he was sent, but because, as explained by Joseph Smith the Prophet, the ordinances of the Gospel would not be valid unless there was on the earth the sealing power which Elijah held to bind these ordinances in the heavens.” (The Way to Perfection, Salt Lake City: The Genealogical Society of Utah, 1931, p. 161.)
Elijah now came with the sealing power to make the ordinances of the gospel fully valid, as President Joseph Fielding Smith explained.
Said President Smith in discussing this matter further:
“Elijah came to restore … the fulness of the power of priesthood. This priesthood holds the keys of binding and sealing on earth and in heaven of all the ordinances and principles pertaining to the salvation of man.” - Mark E. Petersen, “The Mission of Elijah,” Ensign, Aug 1981, 64
Go to Lesson 1 and click on the 2nd video listed.
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