When
Jesus referred to the establishment of his church in the gospel of Matthew, he
promised an apostolic authority to “bind” and “loose” on earth with the
guarantee of heavenly recognition for those actions. In the same pronouncement,
he promised that “the gates of Hades [would] not prevail against” his church.
For Mormons, those assurances are interconnected, the crucial point here being
twofold. First, gates do not in the normal course of events function in an
active sense. It is rather curious to imagine gates “prevailing against”—or failing
to prevail against—anything. Gates don’t function actively, but what gates can
do is keep inhabitants within or intruders without. Since no one is likely to
attempt to infiltrate hell (Christ’s “harrowing” aside), a reasonable reading
of the Savior’s words would be the promise that the gates of hell would fail to
keep its inhabitants forever in bondage, remote from the saving church.
Second,
Mormons find in this verse a warrant for the theological foundations to their
sociable heaven: the sealing referred to, in other words, is for Latter-day
Saints an eternal bound or connection to other human beings, within the kingdom
of God. The power intimated is an apostolic authority to render human
relationships eternal; “until death do you part” becomes “for time and eternity.”
Together, the two assertions (authority to bind and permeable gates) create the
basis of Mormon temple theology. God has thereby vouchsafed to human
representatives a power stronger than death or hell, to reunite in everlasting
bonds of love and association all the living and death who comply with the
sacraments of temple “sealing.” Elijah was uniquely qualified for this bridging
role since he was, according to scripture, taken into heaven without tasting
death. As such a “translated” being, he united both realms in his own person.
Smith was familiar with the original sense of sealing in its conventional
Christian meaning of a pledge or assurance of salvation. However, he also
developed the term in a uniquely Mormon was as Elijah loomed larger and larger
in his theological understanding. (Terryl L. Givens, Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Thought—Church and Praxis
[New York: Oxford University Press, 2017], 180-81)