{"id":8360,"date":"2020-06-02T12:33:42","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T16:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=8360"},"modified":"2020-05-31T17:36:09","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T21:36:09","slug":"8360","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=8360","title":{"rendered":"Elder Ephraim of Arizona on the Fear of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDeath is inherently cold\u2014\u201cMy soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death,\u201d said our Jesus. Yes, death is cold by nature. But unfortunately, most of the fear comes from the conscience: the conscience does not assure the soul that it has lived properly; it has not put itself in order; it has not washed its wedding garment, and so it is ashamed to present itself to the King, thinking about what the verdict will be: yes or no? Will I be saved or not? If, however, the soul leaves without having confessed and without having repented completely, then woe\u2014this is the evil day which the prophet Jeremiah hints at.3 Let us pray that our holy God will deliver us from this by giving us complete repentance, worthy works of repentance, works of mercy and love, and a spirit of repentance with true humility, so that the just Judge may be merciful towards us, so that when the fearful hour of death comes, the soul will take courage in the mercy of God and say, \u201cI trust in God, that He will have mercy on my lowliness.\u201d Amen; so be\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n

– \u2018Counsels from the Holy Mountain\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDeath is inherently cold\u2014\u201cMy soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death,\u201d said our Jesus. Yes, death is cold by nature. But unfortunately, most of the fear comes from the conscience: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8363,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8360\/revisions\/8363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}