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Many thrilling stories are told of the searchers for gold in the Klondike. This one is impressive.

A prospecting party, penetrating far into that land of snow and ice, came upon a miner’s hut. All without was quiet as a tomb. Entering the cabin they found the skeletons of two men and a large quantity of gold. On a rough table was a letter telling of their successful search for the precious ore. In their eagerness to amass it, they forgot the early coming of winter in that northern land. Each day the gold was found in more abundance. One morning they awoke to find themselves in the midst of a snowstorm. For days the tempest raged with ever-increasing fury. Their little store of food was soon exhausted. They laid down and died amidst abounding gold.

Their folly was not in finding and amassing the precious metal, but in neglecting to prepare for the inevitable winter. Men who are diligent in business and successful in the accumulation of wealth are not to be classified as fools. Men, however, are guilty of great folly if they permit material things to so occupy them that they make no provision for the winter of death so soon and so sure to come!

To follow such a course is natural to the heart of man. Everything today in the educational, social and business world is geared to such a program of material promotion, and the danger of being swept into such a soul-destroying current is greater than ever before. Even though death constantly and abruptly brings to a sorrowful end the plans of many about us—both young and old—alas, how few there are among the living who stop and consider their own lack of preparation in view of eternity! Is the reader of this paper guilty of such folly?

You may not be seeking gold, but does your philosophy of life drive you to search for education, a good job, and the things of this life so that you have sufficient to “eat, drink and be merry”? Do you have no desire to think of death, no time to consider where you will be when this short life has vanished? What folly! Stop now and consider the words of the Lord Jesus Christ:

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

But you need not lose your soul! Christ died at Calvary for you and rose again for your justification. The work to save you is finished! All the preparation required is that you: first, honestly own before God in repentance your lost, sinful condition; second, turn in simple faith to the Lord Jesus Christ and accept Him now as your personal Saviour, trusting His death as payment in full for your sins. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). “Christ died for our sins, … was buried, … and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Without this transaction of faith taking place in your heart and life, you are not prepared! Should death overtake you as the storm did the miners in their hut, all that you have acquired or achieved here in time, as well as your precious soul, will be lost FOREVER in eternity!

“O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” (Deuteronomy 32:29).

—Adapted from the Gospel Herald

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