Gold…mans obsession…G-ds possesion

 

“Dollar takes a drubbing, gold soars,” states a recent headline in USA Today news. With monetary expansion through the current economic stimulus, fears of inflation and resulting devaluation of the dollar have driven the price of gold to over one thousand dollars per ounce. Over time, gold has served as a store of value by hedging or protecting against the ravages of inflation.Historically, the first medium of exchange of “money” was figured out in bushels of barley. As business grew complicated, and merchants traded from country to country bars of gold and silver were substituted for the barley. The metal ingots got smaller and smaller and finally coins were minted. Gold’s durability, density, glow, and scarcity, made it a natural choice as a store of wealth and with it came an obsession and quest to possess it.There are over 400 references of gold in the bible. Job stated, “If I had made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, thou art my confidence; if I rejoice because my hand had gotten much, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for I should have denied the God that is above.” (Job 31:24) Unlike Job, the children of Israel, instead of receiving the Ten Commandments, fell into an obsessive delirium worshipping the golden calf, an icon worshipped by their former slave masters in Egypt.This obsession of gold has continued throughout the centuries. While on his first voyage to America, Columbus commented, “Oh most excellent gold, who has gold has a treasure that even helps souls to paradise.” The economist, John Stuart Mill, in 1848 commented, “Gold thou mayest safely touch; but if it stick unto thy hands, it woundeth to the quick.” While the passion and quest for gold has played itself out historically in immeasurable pain, suffering, and destruction between nations and peoples, our Lord tells us that this gold belongs to him. (Haggai 2:8)In fact, it was Jehovah’s first choice to decorate His tabernacle. “Thou shalt over lay it with pure gold,” He instructed Moses on Mount Sinai, “Within and without shalt thou overlay it and shall make upon it a crown of gold round about.”Master goldsmiths purify and try gold by fire, raising the temperature until gold becomes molten and pliable. It is then that the impurities rise to the top and with one swipe of the master’s ladle; the impurities are removed leaving it pure. The pure gold that Jehovah decorated his first tabernacle is a type of our faith being purified in the fire of life’s trials. Within and without it decorates the lives of believers becoming a witness and living epistle known and read of all men.The last biblical mention of gold’s resting place states, “the street of the city (Heaven) was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” (Rev. 21:21) That substance that brought such destruction with its obsessive greed and worship will be placed under the feet of the people of God, the ones who have by faith chosen to forever worship the one true and living God in spirit and in truth.

Crosby, 1997 p.71 citing journals and other documents on the life and voyages of Christopher Columbus, Samuel Eliot Morrison trans. New York Heritage Press, l963 p.883

Bernstein, “The Power of Gold,” John Wiley and Sons, New York,

P.2 (John Stuart Mill quotation)

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