Vance Havner Quotes

One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.

The grave is but the threshold of eternity. What a world were this, how unendurable its weight, If they whom death hath sundered, did not meet again!

Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.

Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.

The body dies, but the spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death.

Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they're going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion.

Certainly, we all wonder what is beyond, and when you lose a loved one, I think part of the grieving process includes where that person might have gone or if you'll ever see them again. I think it forces you to look up to the sky, to the cosmos.

I think in order to have eternal life, you have to have a soul, and the soul of the show is that we all really did love each other. I think that really came across.

When I was younger, I had so many people in my family die. In my mind, heaven was as physical a place as home or school, and I knew that everyone I loved was together, enormously happy, and watching over me and awaiting my coming to this extraordinary place.

And what shall we know of this life on earth after death? The dissolution of our timebound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather, does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear- Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.

But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

Lines I die but when the grave shall press The heart so long endeared to thee When earthy cares no more distress And earthy joys are nought to me. Weep not, but think that I have past Before thee o'er the sea of gloom. Have anchored safe and rest at last Where tears and mouring can not come. 'Tis I should weep to leave thee here On that dark ocean sailing drear With storms around and fears before And no kind light to point the shore. But long or short though life may be 'Tis nothing to eternity. We part below to meet on high Where blissful ages never die.

Death is simply a break in our linear stream of consciousness.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.

For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.

I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

I also believe that when one dies, one may wake up to the reality that proves that time does not exist.