7 A final word

I concluded last week's newsletter with the hope that each of us might return home at the end of life with honors, celestial diploma in hand, to the loved ones who have gone on before and to our Heavenly Parents who sent us here.

President Ezra Taft Benson testified that "we once knew well our Elder Brother and His and our Father in Heaven. We rejoiced at the prospects of earth life that could make it possible for us to have a fulness of joy. We could hardly wait to demonstrate to our Father and our Brother, the Lord, how much we loved them and how we would be obedient to them in spite of the earthly opposition of the evil one.

"Now we are here. Our memories are veiled. We are showing God and ourselves what we can do. Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar His face is to us" (Ensign, Dec. 1988, 6).

Wow! That is quite a thought. Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father in heaven and how familiar His face is to us.

President Brigham Young taught the same truth more than a century earlier: "He is the Father of our spirits; and if we could know, understand, and do His will, every soul would be prepared to return back into His presence. And when they get there, they would see that they had formerly lived there for ages, that they had previously been acquainted with every nook and corner, with the palaces, walks, and gardens; and they would embrace their Father, and He would embrace them and say, 'My son, my daughter, I have you again;' and the child would say, 'O my Father, my Father, I am here again'" (Journal of Discourses, 4:268).