Eternal death

“ That blessing of a heavenly immortality, freely given by God, is nothing else but a celestial holiness, purity and perfection brought forth in the soul, by its having the eternal WORD and SPIRIT of God again restored to, and united with it: called immortality, not because of its eternal duration, but because eternally free from all that, which is death, or the deadly evil of sin in the soul; called also so, in opposition to that natural immortality of devils, and damned souls, which tho’ never ceasing, is only an eternal death. ”

“ And what ought a Christian to say, who knows by faith, that from the moment of death, eternity begins; so that in that moment he lays hold of one of the two wheels which draws with it, either eternal happiness or eternal suffering? If there were two tickets in a lottery, upon which hell might be written on one, and heaven on the other, with what care would you not try to draw out that one, upon which Paradise was written? O God, how must those unhappy wretches tremble who are condemned to throw the die upon which their life or death depends! ”

“ There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death, and see the life beyond.
Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. ”

“ Do you not reach out your arms for heaven, for immortality, and feel you cannot die? When I see men at a feast, or busy in the street, I do not think of their eternal life; perhaps feel not my own. But when the stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, [Pg 135] remorseless, I feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place, the man to his own. It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven. I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me. I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality. ”

“ The spiritual death is that which shall be passed upon the wicked when he shall say unto them, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels." You can read this revelation in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants when you go home.
I understand that that second death is a spiritual death. Is it meant that the spirit shall die? Each of you can draw your own conclusions as well as I. Your traditions may be such that your thoughts do not run in the same channel with mine in this respect. But I can conceive of no other spiritual death than dissolution. ”

“ Nor all of death to die.
Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years;
And all that life is love.
There is a death whose pang
Outlasts the fleeting breath:
Oh, what eternal horrors hang
Around the second death!
Lord God of truth and grace,
Teach us that death to shun,
{52}
Lest we be banished from Thy face,
And evermore undone.
Here would we end our quest;
Alone are found in Thee,
The life of perfect love,—the rest
Of immortality.
—James Montgomery. GRACIOUS SPIRIT.
Gracious Spirit, Love divine! ”

“ Would I have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given me of the Father unless He had also given it to you? When you learn to make me manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless in yourself, and you will see only the eternal as you look out upon a world that cannot die. ”

“ But that which is the sum and accomplishment of God's curse and man's misery is that death to come,—eternal death,—not death simply, but an “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power;”—an infinite loss, because the loss of such a glorious life in the enjoyment of God's presence ”

“ I thank you for your kind reference to my articles on the Sunday School Lesson, and note your question about the phrase, 'Eternal Death,' The meaning of the phrase in my mind is largely determined by the meaning of the corresponding phrase, 'Eternal Life.' In His use of the latter phrase, our Lord evidently lays emphasis, not upon the thought of duration, but upon that of quality. Eternal Life is a certain kind of life which He gives to His people now. Similarly, Eternal Death is a state in which people may exist even while they are in this world. ”

“ Thus God turneth iniquity into righteousness, were ye to explore the realms of divine knowledge, and fathom the mysteries of His wisdom. In like manner, whosoever partook of the cup of love, obtained his portion of the ocean of eternal grace and of the showers of everlasting mercy, and entered into the life of faith—the heavenly and everlasting life. But he that turned away from that cup was condemned to eternal death. By the terms “life” and “death,” spoken of in the scriptures, is intended the life of faith and the death of unbelief. ”

“ Our hearts tell us of a higher form of existence, in which the doom of death is not merely deferred but abolished. This eternal world we here see through a glass darkly: at best we can apprehend but the outskirts of God's ways, and hear a small whisper of His voice ”

“ If thou winnest, then heaven, yea, life eternal is thine; and if thou losest, then thy loss is heaven; besides, thou procurest eternal death, with the everlasting damnation of thy own soul. (2.) Death and damnation follow after thee' as hard as they can drive, and therefore, for the Lord's sake make haste. ”

“ There is a radiant passage by which the soul is translated from the death which is death indeed, to the life which is life indeed. There is another passage by which we pass from life to death; i.e., fall back towards spiritual (which is not necessarily eternal) death. ”

“ It buries our bodies, burns the present world, triumphs over death by a general resurrection, and opens all into an eternal state.
It never considers us in any other respect than as fallen spirits, it disregards worldly distinctions, and proposes nothing to our fears but eternal misery, nothing to our hopes but an endless enjoyment of God. ”

“ Not only do these testimonies show that the resurrection is an essential part of the gospel, that salvation depends upon it, but they contain irresistible proofs that death ends the present life and holds man helpless and unconscious in its grasp, and that no future life can be reached by the dead except through resurrection. It is "in the resurrection that we are to be made like the angels to die no more." It is in the resurrection that the just are to be recompensed. It is in the resurrection that the righteous are to come forth to eternal life and the wicked to condemnation. ”

“ Like breeds its like. Life springs of life; and death eternal is the culmination of the soul's present death to God and goodness. The future glory of the saints is at once a Divine reward, and a necessary development of their present faithfulness. ”

“ Death removes our lovers and friends into darkness (Ps. lxxxviii. 18) , and will shortly remove us out of their sight; when we go hence we shall be seen no more (Ps. xxxix. 13) , but go to converse with the things that are not seen, that are eternal. (3.) That God can easily, and in a moment, put an end to our lives, and send us to another world (v. 8) : " Thy eyes are upon me and I am not; thou canst look me into eternity, frown me into the grave, when thou pleasest."
Shouldst thou, displeased, give me a frowning look,
I sink, I die, as if with lightning struck. ”

“ I seem to hear some readers exclaim, "we do believe in all that you say. We have been taught so from our youth up, and the Bible points to it in every line." You may think you believe it, my friends, and in a theoretical way you may; but you do not realize it, and the whole of your lives proves it. Death, instead of being the blessed portal to the Life Elysian, the gate of which may swing open for you any day, and admit you to eternal and unfading happiness, is a far-off misty phantom, whose approach you dread, and the sight of which in others you run away from. ”

“ In all such sayings, and in every part and portion of the revelations of God as given to the children of men, or to any individual in heaven or on earth, to properly understand them, a man needs the Spirit by which they were given—the Spirit that reveals such matters to the understanding, and makes them familiar to the mind.
In the Scripture above quoted, the death spoken of is a death that the intelligent being undergoes, and never recovers from: it is an eternal death. For the body to decay, like a kernel of wheat that is cast into the ground, is not considered a death. ”

“ Spiritual death is the state of the natural or unregenerate man as still in his sins. Ephesians 2:1 alienated from the life of God Ephesians 4:18,19 and destitute of the Spirit. Prolonged beyond the death of the body, spiritual death is a state of eternal separation from God in conscious suffering. ”

“ But why those who are Christians and not Pagans, who believe that death is not an eternal sleep, who wrest from life its uses and gather from life its beauty,—why they should dally along the road, and cling frantically to the old landmarks, and shrink fearfully from the approaching future, I cannot tell. ”

“ Death—eternal disability—must follow the first and least as well as the last and greatest transgression, and the eternity of its infliction is based on sin and not on continuous sinning. But death does not end life. ”

“ The wicked, the rest of the dead, live not the life of the soul because they have been condemned to the eternal torments of hell, which is the second death be cause it follows the death of the body.
6. The reign of the saints and martyrs with Christ in heaven is called the first resurrection. The resurrection of the body at the last judgment shall be the second. Blessed are they who have part in the first resurrection because the second death hath no power over them. ”

“ No person, either in heaven or upon earth, can enjoy and understand these things upon any other principle.
"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power." The death that is spoken of here is the death that is opposite to the eternal life the Saviour spoke of. If you dishonour that body—transgress the natural laws pertaining to it, you are not worthy, in your sphere, to possess this body in an immortal state. What will become of it? It will return to its native element. That is the death that never dies. That is endless death. ”

“ And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. ”

“ And thou, who has committed so many sins, dost thou not tremble? Be quick and make amends in time; resolve to give thyself indeed to God, and begin, at least from this time, a life the remembrance of which may not grieve, but may fill thee with joy at the hour of death. Give thyself to prayer, frequent the Sacraments, quit dangerous occasions, and if necessary, leave even the world, so that thou mayest secure to thyself an eternal salvation ”

“ O God, for one miserable gratification to lose the Highest Good, which is God! to lose heaven, to lose even peace in this life by granting an entrance of sin into the soul, by which its remorse will ever torment it, and condemn it voluntarily to eternal misery. ”

“ A little quiver ran through her, causing her dress to shake and the gold Mexican gods on her necklace to tinkle against each other. Then she grew still as a stone, and raising those large and steady eyes of hers, looked him up and down, finally fixing them upon his own.
“Is that true?” she asked.
“True! It is as true as life and death, or as Heaven and Hell.”
“I don’t know anything about Heaven and Hell; they are hypothetical, are they not? Life and death are enough for me,” and she stopped.
“Then by life and death, for life and death, and for ever, I love you, Isobel.” ”

“ As God lives, the soul dies not. What though the grave be silent, and the darkness of the Shadow become not peopled—to those eyes that can see there is light, light, light—to those ears that can hear the tumult of the disenfranchised, rejoicing. I am borne down not with the sense of annihilation, but with the vastness of life and the imminence of things spiritual. I know from something beyond and out of myself that we are now but dying to live, that there is no death, which is but as a child’s dream in a weary night. ”

“ You must conquer your worldly passions, Roma. You have been a sinner, but you must not die a bad death. For instance, you are selfish. I am sorry to say it, but you know you are. You must confess and dedicate your life to fighting the sin in your sinful heart, and commend your soul to His mercy who has washed me from all stain. ”

“ Were there not, after earth,
Eternity?{180}
God gives us life to keep.—
And what hath life?—
Love, faith, and care, and sleep,
Where dreams are rife.
Death’s sleep! whose shadows start
The tears in eyes
Of Love, who breaks his heart,
Despairs and dies. ”

“ On the whole, what is sought to be conveyed is the stupendous idea of eternity, the earnest thought of death, the death of this world, wreathed in the lovely fullness of an endless blooming life in the world that is to come. ”

“ That when it stands as a demigod in the midst of the ruins of the temple of the body, the blow of death may prostrate it forever, that nothing shall remain from the corpse-veiled, the mourning and mantled immeasurable universe, but the eternally sowing, never harvesting, solitary spirit of the world! One eternity looking despairingly at the other; and in the whole spiritual universe no end, no aim! ”