Healing Generations - Truman G. Madsen, “The Temple: Where Heaven Meets Earth”, pages 84-85.

       “And, therefore, as you look back at your seventy or so forebears . . . you might recognize that you have inherited the blood of many generations.  And blood may not be a correct word scientifically, but in the scriptures it stands for seed, which means heredity, the inheritance of tendencies, and all of us have them.  You have the blood of this generation, from which we must become clean – ‘clean from the blood of this generation’ (D&C 88:85).  If you do, you will be clean from the blood of every generation, because it is compounded and accumulated into now- and that includes the blood of some degeneration.

       “So perhaps you do have problems that you can blame on your ancestors, and if you forgive that and choose to stand close to the Lord in the process of purifying your life, that will affect your whole family in both directions.  You are not alone.  There is no way you can gain solitary and neutral ground.  You are in it- you are involved.  And this, I believe, is one of the profound meanings of that long, laborious allegory in the book of Jacob, the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees.  If you take a wild branch and graft it in to a tame one, if the branch is strong enough it will eventually corrupt and spoil the tree all the way to the roots.  But if you take a tame branch and graft it in to a wild tree, in due time, if that branch is strong enough, it will heal and regenerate to the very roots.  You will then have been an instrument in the sanctification even of your forebears.

        “ . . . To be that kind of branch and achieve that kind of transformation backward and forward is perhaps the greatest achievement of this world.  But to do it one must be great, one must be linked, bound to the Lord Jesus Christ.  One must be mighty.  One must be something of a savior.  And that is exactly what the Prophet Joseph Smith said we are: ‘saviors on Mount Zion.’” 

 

- Truman G. Madsen, “The Temple: Where Heaven Meets Earth”, pages 84-85.