Last day Treasures by John Norton Loughborough

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · OAKLAND, CAL. · Dec 31, 1874

Last day Treasures.

By John Norton Loughborough

We read in the book of James, "Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days." James 5:3. This text evidently teaches that when the last days shall come gold and silver will be very plentiful, even more abundant than can be put into active circulation, for it is "heaped" up, and becomes rusty.

As we learn from other evidences that we are in the last days, should we not expect also a material increase, in the hands of men, of that which really represents the world's wealth, namely, the gold and silver? Such is the case. Within the last half century the California mines and the Australian gold fields have been discovered, and have poured their wealth into the lap of the people. It is supposed that in that space of time there has been three or four times as much gold exhumed from the earth and put into circulation as was in circulation before. The S. F. Chronicle of Dec. 25 says, concerning the gold and silver yield of the pacific slope, "After twenty-five years we have distributed to the world $1,584,000,000 worth of the precious metals, of which $1,348,000,000

was gold and $236,000,000 silver, California furnishing about three quarters of the whole yield. We have found rich mines in every mountain range, from our northernmost boundary to the southernmost point of our possessions, from the Rocky Mountain range to the sands that are washed from the Pacific Ocean's shore; not a month passes that new mines are not discovered, and in older mines each deeper level discloses greater wealth; and now there comes the last and grandest find of all. In the Consolidated Virginia, California, and Ophir mines, a single body of ore discloses itself of an estimated value equal to the assessed wealth of the city of San Francisco, our lands, houses and ships, our trade, commerce and arts, all valued at their price—all that a city of 200,000 people have accumulated in a quarter of a century of industrious labor—is now compared in value to a single lump of ore lying in the body of these three mines.

"It is not strange that there is an excitement upon California street around the Stock Board when values leap from tens to hundreds in a day; when in three weeks stocks advance in value over their cost ten-fold; when hundreds of millions of dollars in material wealth are created by discoveries of gold and silver."

I would state here that the mines above mentioned are mines from which a large amount of treasure has already been taken. These discoveries are being made as shafts are sunk to deeper levels of these mines. I will quote further respecting it from the Chronicle of Dec. 23. "Mr. Deidesheimer, a mining engineer of large experience, who, with unbounded faith in the probabilities and an enthusiastic disregard of the uncertainties, sets the thing at merely $1,500,000,000! Prodigious figures, whose bare comprehension strains ordinary arithmetical capacity."

This engineer in response to a question asked by a reporter said, "Nothing like these mines has ever been seen or heard or dreamed of in the world before. They are richer than I can tell." He says, "Allowing 600 feet for the depth of the ore body, I calculate that there are in these mines $1,500,000,000 worth of bullion. . . . It has already been explored to a depth of 200 feet; and from the unfailing indications . . . which have marked every ore body of which I know anything, I am confident it is not less than 600 feet deep."

Only a few weeks ago the stock of these mines was valued at from 38 to 76 cents on the $1.00. Now the same stock stands at from $2.24 to $5.00 on the $1.00. This change has been produced by the discovery of the immense, rich ore bed in sinking a shaft deeper in the mines.

Thus we see the wealth of the world in the line of silver and gold accumulating, treasures are being heaped up; the spirit of worldliness is prevailing; the masses have no time to give attention to the truth which warns them of coming judgments. When the day of the Lord shall come, and men discover too late that the god of gain in this world has cheated them out of eternal life they will, as Ezekiel says, "Gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads. They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels; because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity." Eze. 7:18, 19. That is undoubtedly the time of which James speaks, when the rust of their gold and silver shall be a witness against them.

While earth is greedy of its treasures may our energies, our means, our all be spent in doing good, in laying up a treasure in the heavens that no thief can steal, and neither moth or rust corrupt. J. N. L.