OTHER SEALING ORDINANCES
Children born outside celestial marriage, yet within legally established wedlock, are the lawful and legitimate heirs of their parents in all affairs of earth. They are the offspring of an earthly union that is in every respect a legal, moral, and proper relation under the laws of man. That these children will belong to their parents in the hereafter is as uncertain as that the parents will belong to each other. The parents have been but temporally and temporarily married, and the offspring are theirs for the period of their own contract only. Even as husband and wife though legally wedded under the secular law must be sealed by the authority of the Holy Priesthood if their union is to be valid in eternity, so must children who have been born to parents married for time only be sealed to their parents after father and mother have been sealed to each other in the order of celestial marriage.
The Church affirms the eternal perpetuity of all family relationships existing on earth under the seal and authority of the Priesthood; and declares that none other relationship will be binding after death. The offspring of parents not joined in celestial marriage are thus sealed to or adopted by their parents as members of the family organization which shall endure through eternity; thus, husbands and wives who are dead are married or sealed to each other by proxy ministration, and their children are similarly sealed to them in the family relationship.
It will be seen, therefore, that the vicarious labor of the living for the dead, as performed in the temples of the present day, comprises more than baptism and confirmation. The work is completed on earth only when the parties, in the persons of their living representatives, have been baptized, confirmed, endowed, and sealed both in the relationship of husband and wife as once existent and in the family union of parents and children.