Why would the earth be wasted?

President Joseph Fielding Smith explained: “Why would the earth be wasted? Simply because if there is not a welding link between the fathers and the children—which is the work for the dead—then we will all stand rejected; the whole work of God will fail and be utterly wasted” (Teachings: Joseph Fielding Smith, 219)

 

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles further clarified that an essential step in the salvation of God’s children was the restoration of the sealing power:

“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].’

“Inasmuch as … a sealed, united, celestially saved family of God is the ultimate purpose of mortality, any failure here would have been a curse indeed, rendering the entire plan of salvation ‘utterly wasted’” (Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon [1997], 297–98).