In this paper we study several aspects of the geometry of conformally stationary Lorentz manifolds, and particularly of GRW spaces, due to the presence of a closed conformal vector field. More precisely, we begin by extending to these spaces a result of J. Simons on the minimality of cones in Euclidean space, and apply it to the construction of complete, noncompact maximal submanifolds of both de Sitter and anti-de Sitter spaces. Then we state and prove very general Bernstein-type theorems for spacelike hypersurfaces in conformally stationary Lorentz manifolds, one of which not assuming the hypersurface to be of constant mean curvature. Finally, we study the strong $r$-stability of spacelike hypersurfaces of constant $r$-th mean curvature in a conformally stationary Lorentz manifold of constant sectional curvature, extending previous results in the current literature.
