Growing up in the Assemblies of God, I was taught the dead were dead and doomed if “unsaved” in life. One particular instance of this hopeless belief is a video I remember watching one Sunday church service.
Two construction workers, one Christian and one an atheist, died. The atheist, at the gates of Heaven, realized his mistake, but it was too late. His friend just shook his head and walked away with Christ who didn’t give the condemned a second glance. The man was doomed to Hell because he hadn’t been “saved” before death.
When my father died, about three months after I’d started inquiring, I worried that because he wasn’t saved, I’d never see him again, and it tore me apart. But God lead me to the story of the onion, that I previously shared, and today lead me to yet another story of God’s mercy, this time from one of our greatest Saints, St. Ephraim.
A brother asked Abba Ephraim, “What saves a soul?” The saint replied, “I saw a woman’s judgment. Her sins filled the scale, heavy with evil. Yet an angel brought forth one tear she wept in true repentance. He placed it on the scale, and it outweighed all. By that tear, her soul was saved.”
I pray that on the day of judgment, all souls are saved by His infinite mercy, as an eternity away from God’s love is worse than torture, it IS Hell.
Kevin Brownfield 
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