These verses caught my eye because these sorry, lost people couldn’t find their names among the genealogy registers and were put from the priesthood and they were polluted and could not eat of the most holy things. I think they were polluted by genealogy, too. It says ‘most holy’ so I’m guessing there were degrees of holy things of which to partake. But these three short verses really got me thinking of the importance of genealogy in the grand scheme of things.
Securing our link back to Adam and Eve through genealogy research and the making and keeping of sacred ordinances links us into priesthood power. When we do temple work for the dead we give our kupuna the opportunity to make the choice to link themselves in the priesthood chain, or not. I remember Pres. Hinkley advised us to not be the weak link in our family chain. He did not talk about the family as a tree and warn us not to be the weak branch of the tree. He compared the family to a chain. I understood him then and I understand him now. But after these verses I see it a little differently.
As illustrated by these people in Ezra, in the eternal worlds we can only participate in the ‘most holy’ blessings of exaltation if we can find our names in the genealogy registers and be found unpolluted. If we refuse the ordinances of the temple or refuse to valiantly keep the covenants we made in the temple then we have no place in the genealogy registers and become ‘put from the priesthood’ as the good book says and can only partake of the lesser holy blessings of the lesser degrees of glory.
I guess that’s why we are taught that in the lesser degree kingdoms there will be no eternal families. Those will be the people who chose not to get linked in. They’re just individual links, even if a whole family makes that choice.