Assaying the Gold  

   Search Bodie, California for interesting videos of gold rush days. What's left of Bodie is 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe. It had two churches and 65 taverns, and you can guess what else. 

   When a miner presented a dirty nugget to be confirmed and weighed, the assayer poured acid over it to reveal the truth. Beginning in 1859 and continuing into the early 1900s, numerous people became millionaires, including Richard Sears, Alva Roebuck and Levi Strauss. 

   While Bodie was booming, in more ways than one, Abraham Kuyper started a newspaper in the Netherlands. He was interested in a different wealth. He said, "Scripture contains God's ordinances - that is, his eternal and unchangeable principles - but mostly in mixed form, like nuggets in a gold mine." 

   He wrote, "Neither history nor legal science nor philosophy of law, as far as we can judge, offers a reliable starting point for knowledge of the true, sound, eternal principles of justice." 

   Pastor Jack Hibbs of southern California, who pastors 10,000 people and reaches hundreds of thousands on Youtube etc., last Sunday held an open Bible above his head and slowly lowered it past his heart.

   He was demonstrating the cleansing properties of God's word to wash away our dirt and other impurities, and to reveal truth. 

         Jimmy