OUR CHOICE OF RICHES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 12, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 40.

OUR CHOICE OF RICHES.

RICHES and folly go hand in hand; greed and great loss travel side by side.

Inspiration tells us the end of the man who makes the accumulation of riches his aim. “As the partridge that sitteth on eggs which she hath not laid, so is he that getteth riches, and not by right; in the midst of his days they shall leave him, and at his end he shall be a fool.” Jer. 17:11. He has been industriously digging in the mire for something that could not last, while over his head unheeded hung the crown of everlasting life and the pearl of greatest price. At the same time that his greed for gain was consuming his energy he was losing out of his life that which would have made it worthy of everlasting preservation, namely, character. So loss and greed are companions, and the greater the greed, the greater and more rapid the loss.

The world has learned to despise the “miser,” as such; but it has failed to recognize that the “miser” is simply one who knows better how to hoard than how to get. The millionaire knows better how to get, and so does not need to be so particular about the hoarding. But the principle actuating both is the same—the love and worship of money. God calls it foolishness, and the scripture declaration is as applicable to the one as to the other; for in each case the glorious gift of eternal life is forfeited for the vanities of the world. The people of the world despise the one and laud and long to imitate the other. God declares that in the end they both are fools.

“Riches make themselves wings,” says the prophet; and in their talons they carry captive the soul of the man that has laid aside all else to seek them.

This is well illustrated in the case of the “rich young man” who came to Jesus to know what he might do to inherit eternal life. He had great riches, and his soul was knit to them and bound up in them. Jesus touched the cord of his bondage to this world when He said, “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor.” But the rich young man would not be loosed. He had chosen his bondage because he loved it, and now, with his perishable riches in the balances with the riches of heaven, he chooses still that which is earthly, transient, perishing, and goes away sorrowful, to perish with his goods. “And Jesus seeing him said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!”

That young man was facing the “day of recompense” with the full knowledge of the fact that “riches profit not in the day of wrath; but righteousness delivereth from death.” Prov. 11:4. He knew also that “he that trusteth in his riches shall fall; but the righteous shall flourish as the green leaf.” How many there are to-day who are choosing the wealth and the vanities of this world while knowing these positive scripture assurances that the lover of this world’s goods must perish with them. Building on the sands to go down in the overthrow of this world; gathering to themselves hay and wood and stubble, rather than the precious gems of eternity; hunting the fleeting, evanescent pleasures of this world, and tossing aside the promise of an eternity of peace and joy and glorious companionship with a loving Father, with Christ and unfallen angels; how can the verdict of Heaven be other than it is written—“at his end he shall be a fool.”

“At his end” that worldly wise man whom this scripture declares a fool will acknowledge his foolishness when he shall call to the rocks and mountains to hide him from the face of the One who had been, during all that man’s life, holding out to him in vain the everlasting riches of heaven.

The glamor which the love of riches throws around the getting and hoarding of gold is called by the Saviour “the deceitfulness of riches.” That chokes out the desires of the soul for the better and wiser life, constantly promising what it can never give, until the great and bitter disappointment comes, and the soul realizes the utter worthlessness of the choice it has made.

But there is a wealth which it is perfectly legitimate for us to seek after. It is that everlasting inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. To those who “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” there is promised here the necessaries of this temporal life, and over there a life that is purged from every taint or stain of the temporal and perishable things. So while the Christian has this life, it is his business to preach “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” and then share them with Christ in that joint inheritance.