In Planning, Consider the Unending Future

For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. 1 Timothy 4:8, NKJV.

The accounts of every business, the details of every transaction, pass the scrutiny of unseen auditors, agents of Him who never compromises with injustice, never overlooks evil, never palliates wrong....

Against all evildoers God’s law utters condemnation. They may disregard that voice, they may seek to drown its warning, but in vain. It follows them. It makes itself heard. It destroys their peace. If unheeded, it pursues them to the grave. It bears witness against them at the judgment. A quenchless fire, it consumes at last soul and body.

“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36, 37).

This is a question that demands consideration by every parent, very teacher, every student—by every human being, young or old. No scheme of business or plan of life can be sound or complete that embraces only the brief years of this present life and makes no provision for the unending future. Let the youth be taught to take eternity into their reckoning. Let them be taught to choose the principles and seek the possessions that are enduring—to lay up for themselves that “treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth” (Luke 12:33)....

All who do this are making the best possible preparation for life in this world. No man or woman can lay up treasure in heaven without finding life on earth thereby enriched and ennobled.

“Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).— Education, 144, 145.