Losing Out in the Hereafter

Once, I was talking with the manager of a company. I said to him that for success in life, effort is the most necessary thing. The manager replied that this was a principle of old times. The present age, he claimed, is a completely different era, and for success in this age what is required is professional expertise. What he possibly wanted to say is that without such expertise, in today’s age one is doomed to failure.

I reflected on this man’s claim and discovered something really important. I thought that in this present world, some things are thought of as being important for success. But the Hereafter will be a very different world. What one needs for success there is very different from what is regarded as the criterion for success by most people in the present world. Accordingly, those who enter the world of the Hereafter without having prepared themselves in accordance with its standards will discover that they will have no place there. In the Hereafter they will obtain nothing but remorse.

Those who today revel in boasting about their presumed superiority will find themselves speechless in the world of the Hereafter. There, only one language will have any value, and that is the language of modesty.

Those who today refuse to acknowledge God will become totally valueless in the world of the Hereafter, because in that world, only those people will be deemed successful who lived in the acknowledgement of God and His greatness.

Those who are experts in spewing hate here will lose all status in the world of the Hereafter, because in that world, the culture of love will prevail, not the culture of hate.

As a result of this difference, many of those who appear big today in the eyes of the world will, in the world of the Hereafter, appear to be insignificant.