Your ShelfYour Projects

The Snare of the Golden Calf

6%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 30, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 35.

Read the full edition

The Snare of the Golden Calf

By C. M. S.

ISRAEL worshiped a calf of gold, and suffered God’s displeasure. His servant burned the calf, ground it to powder, and scattered the dust upon the water.
The people of our day have molded no calf of gold, but it is literally true that they have bowed down to the same metal that Aaron molded into a calf and Moses scattered upon the water. It would be less displeasing in the sight of God ifthis worship of gold were confined to the people of the world, the mixed multitude; but it is not so. In very many cases indeed, even the church-member has sacrificed truth and honor to the shining idol, and then has sat down to eat and drink and has risen up to play.
The Word declares: “They that are minded to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Tim. 6:9, 10. In many, many cases we have found that this unholy and dangerous love has taken possession of those of our own faith; and an idol has been set up in the soul that has eclipsed the missionary zeal, the love of the message, and even the fervent love of God experienced in former days. Satan has been wonderfully industrious in these closing years to invent a myriad of schemes for catching the eye and the heart of every soul in this age.
If we are “minded to be rich,” we may know, as surely as the Word of God is true, that we have put ourselves in the way of Satan’s temptations and thrown ourselves into his snare, and have opened up our hearts for the “many foolish and hurtful lusts” that Satan has invented for the very purpose of drowning men “in destruction and perdition.” We can not love two things supremely at the same time. When the love of God is uppermost, the love of the things of this world sinks out of the heart. When the love of money is uppermost, the love of God declines and vanishes; and then it is that men are “led astray from the faith.”
At the present time unscrupulous men, whose only god is the gold they have or covet from you, are advertising all kinds of plausible schemes to enable “the small investor” to amass a fortune in a few months. These men are not ashamed to print the picture of their own faces to inspire confidence in their impossible propositions. They profess to have, or propose to establish, great plantations in Mexico, Central America, Cuba, or the Philippines, for the production of some article indigenous to the climate, which will yield large dividends. The whole proposition is figured out almost to a demonstration. The people invest their means, and may even receive a dividend; and then for some reason, plausibly explained, the project ends, the “promoter” is rich, and the people who invested that they might become rich have the experience and a depleted purse.
Concerning one of these get-rich-quick concerns, the Financial World says:—
These people are rich and bold, as people usually are when they have come into sudden wealth and consider themselves smart. As for his [the promoter’s] guarantee, it means absolutely nothing, and it is apparent that the idea originated to make shallow-minded people jump at the shares, thinking no such offer could be made unless such shares were an absolutely safe investment.
The guarantee runs for only a year. During that time, all that he is required to do to make good and inspire the confidence of those who purchased the shares for this reason, is to pay eight per cent. After the year has passed, the guarantee is wiped out. Where then is the protection to the shareholders for the remaining ninety-two per cent of the principal, which they may invest?
The Springfield (Mass.) Republican says:—
A very striking exhibit of the extent to which investment in speculative stocks has been carried, even by so-called conservative men, appears in the showing made by the estate of the late Charles H. Houseman, cashier of the Columbus (Ohio) East End Savings-bank. The probate court has ordered 94,781 shares of stock in twenty-seven different gold-mining companies, bought by Houseman, to be sold for four hundred dollars. These shares represented the better class of stock in prospective mines, sold at prices between ten and twenty-five cents a share. No common fake stocks, such as Mount Shasta Gold Mines Corporation, or Ray Consolidated, or similar concerns promoted by Make-ever or other “bankers,” are said to have been on the list—and yet these shares have hardly brought one half of a cent. This shows how dangerous and destructive investments in mining companies usually are. And yet great things were expected of all these companies—great dividends and fortunes!
Under the heading, “Plundering a Nation,” the World says:—
It is estimated that during the last five years confiding investors have sunk a fortune in excess of one hundred million dollars every year in fake oil, mining, and industrial stock-jobbing promotions. Not long ago a reader of this paper informed us that since he was so unfortunate as to answer a get-rich-quick advertisement, about one thousand one hundred prospectuses of fake companies, whose total capitalization ran up to over one billion dollars, have reached him. While he did not bite, they caught thousands of small, thrifty business men, clerks, workman, and servants, to whom every dollar means a great deal. They lost all their money.
It might at first be supposed that the public press would take up these unscrupulous transactions and expose them for the benefit of the public. But the press itself is muzzled by its business management, hungering for the shekels that come from the advertisements of these very men. So the public press, whether it realizes it or not, is, to that extent, made participes criminis.
The writer knows that some of our own people have invested their hard-earned means in one or another of these plausible propositions, and that it is still there, beyond their reach, and many times they have received not a penny of dividend thereon. They can not contribute as they would like to the promulgation of the third angel’s message; for the very being that prompted “the love of money” is holding theirs where it can never be used for that purpose. It is a scheme of the adversary—and it works.
Such investments are like those of which Haggai speaks: “He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.” God’s blessing is not upon them. How much better to follow our Saviour’s instruction: “Provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Luke 12:33, 34.
The powers of darkness will never come to the support of the legions of light to advance the interests of the kingdom of Christ in this world. Satan exults when Christians (and especially Seventh-day Adventists) put their means where he can handle it in his own way.
C. M. S.