Eternity

• “The mind of man is the crowning creation of God.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, May 1986, 48)
• “The Lord has made no secret of the fact that He intends to try the faith and the patience of His Saints. (.) We mortals are so quick to forget the Lord: ‘And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions…they will not remember him’ (). However, the Lord knows our bearing capacity, both as to coping and to comprehending, and He will not give us more to bear than we can manage at the moment, though to us it may seem otherwise. (;.) Just as no temptations will come to us from which we cannot escape or which we cannot bear, we will not be given more trials than we can sustain. (.)…President Brigham Young said of a geographical destination, ‘This is the place.’ Of God’s plan of salvation, with its developmental destination, it can be said, ‘This is the process’! President Young, who knew something about trial and tribulation but also of man’s high destiny, said that the Lord lets us pass through these experiences that we might become true friends of God. By developing our individual capacities, wisely exercising our agency, and trusting God—including when we feel forsaken and alone—then we can, said President Young, learn to be ‘righteous in the dark.’ (Secretary’s Journal, 28 Jan. 1857.) The gospel glow we see radiating from some—amid dark difficulties—comes from illuminated individuals who are ‘of good cheer’! To be cheerful when others are in despair, to keep the faith when others falter, to be true even when we feel forsaken—all of these are deeply desired outcomes during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us—because He loves us. (Msh. 3:19.) These learning experiences must not be misread as divine indifference. Instead, such tutorials are a part of the divine unfolding.” (Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, Nov. 1982, 67)
• “Someday, when we look back on mortality, we will see that so many of the things that seemed to matter so much at the moment will be seen not to have mattered at all. And the eternal things will be seen to have mattered even more than the most faithful of the saints imagined.” (Neal A. Maxwell, Even As I Am, 104)
  
• “You can’t make eternal decisions without eternal consequences.” (Thomas S. Monson, Church News, 12 Nov. 2005, 3)
• “Seen with the perspective of eternity, a temporal setback can be an opportunity to develop soul power of eternal significance.” (Dallin H. Oaks, Ensign, Nov. 1985, 63)
• “President Ezra Taft Benson taught: “Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing. “The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means ‘hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition’”
• President Benson explained: “Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s … in the spirit of ‘my will and not thine be done. … “Our will in competition to God’s will allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled (see Alma 38:12; 3 Nephi 12:30). … “Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren’t interested in changing their opinions to agree with God’”
• “How does pride affect our relationship with others? President Benson observed: “Another major portion of this very prevalent sin of pride is enmity toward our fellowmen. We are tempted daily to elevate ourselves above others and diminish them (see ; ). … “Pride … is manifest in so many ways, such as fault-finding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous. … “Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. ‘How everything affects me’ is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking. … “Another face of pride is contention. Arguments, fights, unrighteous dominion, generation gaps, divorces, spouse abuse, riots, and disturbances all fall into this category of pride” in Conference Report, Apr. 1989, 4–5; or Ensign, May 1989, 4–6. Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual, Lesson 10: “This Is My Voice unto All”
• “The sacrifices you have made, the hardships you have endured and the privations you have suffered will … sink into insignificance, and you will rejoice that you have obtained the experience which they have furnished. … Some things we have to learn by that which we suffer, and knowledge secured in that way, though the process may be painful, will be of great value to us in the other life.”  Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow
• Enos 1: 27…  And I soon go to the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer; for I know that in him I shall rest. And I rejoice in the day when my mortal shall put on immortality, and shall stand before him; then shall I see his face with pleasure, and he will say unto me: Come unto me, ye blessed, there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father. Amen.
• D&C 130: 19... And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.
• “It is a wonderful pleasure to speak upon the great things that God proposes to bestow upon His sons and daughters, and that we shall attain to if we are faithful. … Our travel in this path of exaltation will bring to us the fullness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to stand in the presence of our Father, to receive of His fullness, to have the pleasure of increasing in our posterity worlds without end, to enjoy those pleasant associations that we have had in this life, to have our sons and our daughters, our husbands and our wives, surrounded with all the enjoyment that heaven can bestow, our bodies glorified like unto the Savior’s, free from disease and all the ills of life, and free from the disappointments and vexations and the unpleasant sacrifices that we are making here”  Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow, 2011, Page 8
• “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect [Matthew 5:48.]. I believe the Lord meant just what He said, that we should be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. That will not come all at once, but line upon line and precept upon precept, example upon example, and even then not as long as we live in this mortal life, for we will have to go even beyond the grave before we reach that perfection and shall be like God.” Manual, Teachings, Chapter 18 Living by Every Word That Proceeds from the Mouth of God