Introduction:The bible talks much more on money than people realize. It opens with a description of the wealth God placed in the ground. At the end of His book, God talks about Heaven. I have been there and have seen solid gold streets, trees made out of precious gem stones, diamonds as big as motorcars adorning garden beds and so on. God walks on solid gold pavement and lives in the midst of sparkling gemstones! We shall see in this study, various accounts where God talks about these matters. There have been six major wealth transfers in the earth and we are about to enter the Seventh! At this point, may I ask you, “Do you consider yourself to be an heir of God… a joint heir of Jesus Christ and of the seed of Abraham”? If you do, then let us start with Father Abraham. This was before God cut the covenant with him! Apparently God was not concerned about wealth so why do some Christians fight it? This was the first recorded wealth transfer. The second wealth transfer happened with Isaac. This account is found in Genesis 26:12-14. If you read the entire chapter you will see that Abimelech asked Isaac to leave because of his wealth and all it produced. Isaac sowed in the middle of a major drought and famines in those days were disastrous and he reaped an hundredfold in the first year (Genesis 26:12). Please do not count or think in terms of 100 times as much. A fold is not fixed numerically. To explain, the printed version of this study is printed on A4 paper that is folded in the middle. There are 16 pages in all, but I only used 4 sheets of paper. By adding one single A4 sheet of paper this document would produce 20 pages. By folding, not multiplying, the results have greater effect. Image what may happen when you Fold your offering by 100!
The third wealth transfer came to Jacob and is recorded in Genesis 31:6-9. The fourth transfer came to Joseph. He was sold into slavery by his own brother, falsely accused of a distasteful incident, thrown in to prison, but became second in charge of the whole of Egypt and in charge of all properties and possessions. See Genesis 41:39-44. The next wealth transfer came to Israel. God ensured that when they came out, that they received 400 years of back pay, with accrued interest. He took them by way of the treasure city! They crossed the Red Sea carrying all that wealth with their livestock and arrived at the place where God called Moses into the mountain. He gave Moses instructions for building the Tabernacle and here the story gets really interesting. Several years ago I responded to a young man in response to a question he posed on social media about entering the ministry and recommended several ministries where he could be trained. The backlash of responses shocked me, but when I first mentioned David's offering it was like unleashing the hordes of hell! He and the group of churches he attended all questioned me, asking what bible did I get that from and so on. I replied with the relevant scripture references I shared with them adding that they could check it out in any bible version they wanted and do all the cross-referencing they wanted and they fumed and spluttered and told me I was a liar and so on. My goodness! They were vicious. I asked to be removed from their mailing list after that. God had no concerns about accepting sinner’s wealth and giving it to His people! Some of them misused it of course, but there was a Godly cause. The Tabernacle:GOD spoke to Moses: "Tell the Israelites that they are to set aside offerings for me. Receive the offerings from everyone who is willing to give. The wealth that God’s people brought out of Egypt was carried there to build God a house! He asked for it! He had a plan for it and He wanted it built His way and He used sinner’s money! That whole chapter of Exodus 25 and more describes what took place. It concludes with the words- Study the design you were given on the mountain and make everything accordingly. Exodus 25:40. I have been involved in numerous church building projects and was very enthusiastic about them, until the Lord revealed certain things to me on such matters. It is good to want a church, but there is a right way to go about it—a God way, not a man’s way and far too many are the latter. In fact when we finally build our new facility, it will be somewhat different to the usual church seen today and will be 100% out of debt, paid for and completed without placing one burden on anyone. God has given us a plan! We intend following that plan and not our own, even if we have to wait (as we have been doing now) for the right timing. The Israelites brought so much to Moses he had to ask them to stop giving! There was no pressuring of people in any way to give. They wanted to give and God loves a cheerful giver. The Tabernacle was much more than a simple tent. I was not able to find any references to the cost, but it was very significant. The Ark of the Covenant was approximately 1200mm long and 690 mm wide, constructed of Acacia wood and overlaid with gold. The Mercy Seat or cover was made of solid gold with two angels sculpted of gold on top. The golden candlestick was fashioned out of one piece of gold. Gold was everywhere! The tabernacle proper was made of wood overlaid with gold. Silver fittings were also used. It was a very expensive piece of work! The Priests’ Garments:Exodus 28 gives the details of the priestly garments. The cloth was expensive, even by today’s standards, using dyes derived from molluscs. Such materials were renowned for vibrant lasting colour intensity. Fine twined linen was used and gold thread was embroidered and woven into the material. The garment was held together on the shoulders with twined gold chains. One outfit was made for Aaron and one for each of his sons. It must have been an amazing sight to see them dressed in those garments as they ministered to the Lord. Imagine the glitter and gleams they reflected from the light or fire of God. There are more illustrations I could use, but I’d like to jump now to David. The era of David and his son Solomon ushered in the sixth wealth transfer. Then David said, “This is the house of ADONAI, God; and this is the altar Isra’el is to use for burnt offerings.” David ordered that the foreigners in the land of Isra’el should be assembled, and he appointed stone-workers to shape stones for building the house of God. David prepared a large store of iron from which to make nails and clamps for the gateway doors and, a quantity of bronze too great to weigh, and cedar logs beyond numbering—because the Tzidonim and the people from Tzor brought cedar logs in abundance to David. The Temple was a magnificent structure, the value of which in today’s economy would rival the national economy of many large countries. David had a desire to build a house for God, who did not permit him to build it. He made preparations for the construction giving his son Solomon charge to fulfil the task God did not permit him to build. It appears that this was his personal offering, or tithe. He appointed masons for the stonework, provided an abundance of iron nails, provided so much bronze it could not be measured and provided an abundance of cedar. The detailed list of his offering is revealed in the rest of the above chapter. It is as follows-
Metrology:To facilitate our studies, the topic of Metrology needs to be addressed. Metrology is the science of weights and measures. It deals with linear measurements, dry measures, liquid measures, weight and value or money. We shall concentrate on the matters of weight and coinage. Because of the various ways of measuring and valuing objects employed by various countries it not a simple matter to convert to today’s modern methods of assessment. Even in our present time, varying standards in different countries of the world are used, requiring conversion an interesting exercise. Primitive measuring processes relied on parts of the human body such as a handbreadth or span, or a reasonable weight for a man to carry in one day and so on. A cubit for example was the length of the arm from the point of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. In like manner, a handful was originally used for measuring purposes. When measuring weights the shekel was the most common unit and was the standard God established for His people. Also seen in the bible are measuring units of the Bekah, the Gerah, the Maneh and the Talent, which was the largest unit of measurement by the Jews. With regard to money, a wide range of units of measurement was employed with both coined money and un-coined money. The denarius, farthing, penny and shekel were common measurements or denominations. The precise equivalent of one talent is not easily defined, but is up to 125 pounds in weight. I have opted to use 100 pounds for my calculations. My cost estimates are based on world prices of precious metals, easily obtained by Internet searches. Gold:Gold is provided by several means, such as gold bars and coinage. The most common way of handling gold is by bullion. Bars are available in differing sizes. What is knows as a Good Delivery Bar, weighs 400 troy ounces. 1 Kilogram bars, 100 gram, 10 Ounce and 1 Ounce units are also used. Gold prices at November 2011 on which this study is based were $1787 per ounce. Silver:Silver bars usually come in 100 Ounce (3.11Kg) and 1000 ounce (31 Kg) bars and 1 Kg bars. Like Gold, silver is also available in coinage. Silver prices as of November 2011 were $465 per ounce. The Gold David Collected:The bible says that David provided 100,000 Talents of gold. If 1 Talent equates to between 100 Lbs (US) and 125 Lbs (US), David provided somewhere between 10,000,000 Lbs of Gold. I will use the smaller amount for calculations, based on US measure. 10,000,000 Lbs is equal to 160,000,000 Ounces. At the current updated price of $1787 per Ounce at the time of writing, David provided a mind-boggling amount of Gold. At today’s price, his offering of gold amounted to $285,920,000,000. Physical statistics of the gold:If 1 bar of gold weighed 10 kilograms or 22.2 pounds, David provided 405,405 bars. If 1 bar of gold weighed 25 kilograms or 55 pounds, David provided 163,636 bars. To give you some idea of the size of his gold offering, one ounce of gold measures 42mm long, 24mm wide and 2 mm thick. The overall dimensions of the gold he gave would thus be something like this-
The world's largest gold bar today weighs 250 kg or 551 lb. It measures 45.5 cm x 22.5 cm x 17 cm or 17.9 in x 8.9 in x 6.7 in. This equates to 17403.75 cm³ or 1062.04 in³. The Silver David Provided:David provided 1,000,000 talents of silver. Using similar calculations, he provided 100,000,000 Lbs, or 1,600,000,000 ounces of silver. This equals 4,535,923,700,000 Grams. In silver bars that weighed 5 Kg, David gave 907,184,740,000 bars, coming to a value of $74,400,000,000. Total Value of David’s Precious Metals: Solomon:David did not build the Temple. His son Solomon accomplished that task. His dedication prayer and peace offering seen in 1 Kings 8 reveals the extent of his wealth that vastly exceeded that of David. Solomon sacrificed 22,000 oxen and 120000 sheep. The Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s great wealth and came to see for herself, bringing gifts that the bible says were very great including 120 talents of gold! When she saw how his servants lived, she fainted! Solomon’s income of gold in one year was 666000 talents. You can read the full account in 1 Kings 10. It seems that the Temple was covered with gold! Imagine entering a building today that was overlaid within and without with gold plate! The detailed accounts are found in the books of Kings and Chronicles and it is simply amazing how much hold is mentioned. In one bible search alone, I discovered 391 references in the Old Testament alone concerning gold! When I shared part of this on another occasion, religious people threw their hands up in horror and asked me what bible I used. I told them… no I challenged them to use any version of the bible they wished and conduct their own independent research, but they declined! Brainwashed? Religious? Sick, poor and broke? Yes to all questions. Sadly the church has been programmed very effectively to believe a lie so that we are rendered less effective in helping establish the Kingdom of God on the earth. The seventh wealth transfer is coming to the Church. There are numerous scripture references to confirm my statement. Proverbs 10:22 says- I recentgly spoke with the pastor of a denominational church and he fiercely debated with me about finances, almost spitting out the statement that I was one of those "Charismatics" and started speaking on a nasty way about some world renowned ministers who is very wealthy. He labelled him and one of those "prosperity preachers" and a televangelist who was always on about money. I personally know this ministry and corrected some glaring errors. I told him that he does not know what this preacher does with his money and that he operated totally by faith! I told him that he has paid mortgages of people's houses, provided much aid to disaster ridden communities and more. Proverbs 13:22 tells us that Sinners may be holding onto it at present, but in reality they are amassing great wealth and storing it up for the Church. Those of us who have a specific call of God that requires massive funding are going to receive their allotment very soon. Jesus was never broke. He made the things I have spoken about, but did not draw on them for resources because the need as we understand it just was not there. He did not need an intercontinental jet, or a television program, but we could! That is the difference. We need a massive injection of finances in the end time church to get the job done and it is time that the lie that the devil has successfully injected into the church about Christians having to be poor to be spiritual stops. I am fast running out of space, but have shared enough by now to let you see that God has no problems with us being wealthy. In fact, the wealth of the sinner is being stored up for the righteous. Such scriptures as Proverbs 13:22 affirm this. It is all there, but at present is merely in the wrong hands. For additional study, you may like to look at Exodus 23:35; Leviticus 26:4; Deuteronomy 28:2; Psalm 65:9; 68:19; 107:38; 144:13; Isaiah 30:23; 54:12; Joel 2:26; Amos 9:13; Zechariah 10:1; Malachi 3:10; Matthew 6:33; Luke 18:30; 1 Timothy 6:17. I must close now, but want to leave you with a thought about Heaven and the Holy City of Jerusalem. As the song says (about Jesus), it is beautiful beyond description. Too wonderful for words… Her streets are made of gold. Precious gems adorn her walls. Her gates are made of pearls and it is reported that each pearl is 200 Km in diameter! When I visited Heaven, I saw streets of pure metallic gold that appeared to be transparent. On one occasion what I saw was like a freeway made of this gold that disappeared into the distance and seemed to melt into a crystal sea that was smooth, calm, transparent and looked like molten gold! Please prayerfully weigh up what I have shared. It may give you caused to rethink your viewpoint on God’s perspective… not man’s on what we call wealth. I hope you will live there with me! Robert |
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