Through Time to Eternity – Elder Efraim of Arizona

 

Raise your mind to the dread judgment seat of Christ —what defense shall we give on the day of judgment when our deeds are judged? How frightening is the hour in which the soul waits full of fear to hear the decision regarding where it will go to dwell eternally!

  The word “eternity” is frightful! To understand in part what eternity means, I shall give you an example. Imagine that the whole earth is one big piece of granite, and every thousand years a bird comes to sharpen its beak on this rock. When the entire rock is worn away by the bird sharpening its beak, then we shall have some faint notion of what eternity means —not that we have actually understood eternity, immortality, or life without end! So this life of ours here on earth determines our eternity, like flipping a coin: paradise or hell! Therefore, how much caution must we have!

 

Selected from the letters and homilies of Elder Ephraim of Arizona