3 Nephi 25

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord;

"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse" (5-6).

In case you didn't know, Elijah has already come. He came on April 3, 1836 to the Kirtland, Ohio Temple:

"After this vision had closed, another great and glorious vision burst upon us; for Elijah the prophet, who was taken to heaven without tasting death, stood before us, and said: 

"Behold, the time has fully come, which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi—testifying that he [Elijah] should be sent, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come— 

"To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse— 

"Therefore, the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands; and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors" (D&C 110:13-16).

Why is this important? What did Elijah do? He restored the sealing powers. Jeffery R. Holland said:

“Elijah restored the sealing powers whereby ordinances that were sealed on earth were also sealed in heaven. . . . Without that link no family ties would exist in the eternities, and indeed the family of man would have been left in eternity with ‘neither root [ancestors] nor branch [descendants]’” (Christ and the New Covenant [1997], 297–98). 

Could you imagine not being connected to your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins, your spouse, your children, your grandchildren? Could you imagine a world where when you die you no longer have family ties? This would definitely be a curse upon us all.

There are so many resources to help us with finding and discovering our ancestry; just googling for such sites gives you a number of them. Have you ever wondered why there is such a huge interest in this?

We are trying to discover our roots. We are trying to link families together so those family ties can be sealed forever. We don't want to lose anyone.