Death

LDS Quotes on Death

“In April 1993 our water heater pilot light came into contact with gasoline fumes and exploded into flames. Our two-year-old son, Thomas, was in the middle of it. The fire department put out the fire with minimum damage to our home or possessions, but our son was severely burned. Though I longed for him to live, I could see he probably wouldn’t. Within six hours of the accident, he died…

During the first few days following the accident, all I could feel was acute pain, though now I realize that the Spirit of the Lord was constantly with me. Through the Spirit it became clear to me that how I acted was my choice. I couldn’t change the facts. I couldn’t stop the pain and the hurt, but I could choose my reactions. I looked to the scriptures for everything I could find about death and the Lord’s healing balm. I couldn’t sleep at night, so I searched my mind for any hymns or scriptures that I could call to my memory to find even a moment of relief.

I knew I had to accept my son’s death and work through my grief. Though Thomas was gone, I knew I had the gospel of Jesus Christ and the hope of the Resurrection to help me. The strength of my testimony was of vital importance. I did a lot of soul-searching and determined that everything I had professed to believe throughout my life was indeed true.”

Catharine Rasband  |  Working through My Grief

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“Though each of us will pass through the doors of death, the timing of that departure is less important than is the preparation for eternal life.”

Russell M. Nelson

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Neal A. Maxwell Headshot

“Death is a mere comma, not an exclamation point!”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

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“I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, [Good] Friday was the darkest. But the doom of that day did not endure…Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays…But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.”

Joseph B. Wirthlin

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“Death can be comforting and sweet and precious or it can thrust upon us all the agonies and sulphurous burnings of an endless hell. And we—each of us individually—make the choice as to which it shall be.”

Bruce R. McConkie

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After the spirit leaves the body, it remains without a tabernacle in the spirit world until the Lord, by his law that he has ordained, brings to pass the resurrection of the dead. When the angel who holds the keys of the resurrection shall sound his trumpet, then the peculiar fundamental principles that organized our bodies here, if we do honor to them, though they be deposited in the depths of the sea, and though one particle is in the north, another in the south, another in the east, and another in the west, will be brought together again in the twinkling of an eye, and our spirits will take possession of them. We shall then be prepared to dwell with the Father and the Son, and we never can be prepared to dwell with them until then. Spirits, when they leave their bodies, do not dwell with the Father and the Son, but live in the Spirit world, where there are places prepared for them. Those who do honor to their tabernacles, and love and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, must put off this mortality, or they cannot put on immortality. This body must be changed, else it cannot be prepared to dwell in the glory of the Father.

Brigham Young  |  Journal of Discourses, 8:28

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How consoling to the mourners when they are called to part with a husband, wife, father, mother, child, or dear relative, to know that, although the earthly tabernacle is laid down and dissolved, they shall rise again to dwell in everlasting burnings in immortal glory, not to sorrow, suffer, or die any more, but they shall be heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.

Joseph Fielding Smith  |  (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (2007), 52) — “Death and Life, Pioneer Perspectives on the Resurrection,” Ensign, April 2013, p. 50

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“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

John Steinbeck  |  East of Eden

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“No man will be kept in hell longer than is necessary to bring him to a fitness for something better. When he reaches that stage the prison doors will open and there will be rejoicing among the hosts who welcome him into a better state.”

James E. Talmage

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Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

“. . .For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  “None Were with Him,” Ensign, May 2009, 87–88

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