THE GOLDEN WEDGE OF OPHIR

By H.W. Roberts

Scripture references are to the King James

(Authorised) Version unless indicated otherwise.

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Isaiah 13: 11-13

11 [I] will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. 12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. 13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

GOLD IS A heavy, yellow, metallic element that occurs in the uncontaminated state in nature. Malleable, ductile, not liable to corrosion, it lends itself to cutting, shaping, and burnishing. It is held precious among all civilised nations, and has been from earliest times. ‘Gold of Ophir’ was apparently a synonym for the finest gold.

Gold was stored and traded in wedge-shaped bars or ‘tongues’, an example of which has been found in the residual mound of the ancient, ruined Canaanite town of Gezer. The theft of such a ‘wedge’ as this, weighing fifty shekels, occasioned Israel’s defeat and the downfall of Achan in Joshua’s first battle against the city of Ai (Josh. 7: 11, 21, 24). The acquisition of gold has always appealed to the worldly-wise, partly for its use in personal adornment and partly as a means of exchange.

The Twin Solicitudes of the Fallen Race

Like riches, another great desire, common to all mankind, has been for lasting life and health. These two great solicitudes have led even the most intelligent to search for easy answers. They dreamed of a physical substance with magical properties that would enable them both to transmute base metals into gold (the Philosopher’s Stone), and to prolong human life indefinitely (the Elixir of Life).

The study of these things, known as ‘alchemy’, has attracted man from earliest times. Egyptian, Greek, and later Arabic records tell of the practice of alchemy, and it features prominently in the work of some of the deepest thinkers of Mediaeval and early Reformation times. Writings from those periods show that learned men, searching for that elusive Philosopher’s Stone, believed that when reduced to a powder and mixed with molten iron, it had the power to change that base metal into gold. Alternatively, if imbibed with certain other substances this ‘Elixir of Life’ would reward the drinker with eternal life and youth. Countless ingredients and potions were tried and discarded in centuries of such experimentation. Many concoctions were bizarre, and many experiments were foolhardy, but all were fruitless. Rather than promoting life and health, no doubt most of them had the opposite effect!

Life, Youth, and Riches never to want and never to grow old and die have been desired by all men ever since those perfect gifts, bestowed on humankind by a benevolent Creator in Eden, were lost at the Fall. To those acquainted with God’s plan of the ages it is clear that this search for a panacea for all sickness and want by means of alchemy, is an endeavour to achieve the blessings of the Millennial Kingdom without undergoing its painful but necessary corrective features. ‘The desire of all nations shall come’, but not by man’s intelligence nor on his terms (Hag. 2: 7).

The Great Alchemist

Jehovah is the great Alchemist. His skill is shown in His transforming members of the Church, the Body of Christ, from earthly, sinful creatures with corruptible flesh, into heavenly, spiritual beings of the divine nature, immortal and incorruptible (1 Pet. 1: 3, 4, 23).

In the divine alchemy, what is God’s symbolic Philosopher’s Stone? How did He concoct His Elixir of Life? Love was the greatest thing. This, together with Faith and Hope, specified in 1 Cor. 13: 13, was stirred up with the Providences of God. As the consecrated drank, it strengthened them in their earthly sacrifice of themselves, enabling them to develop those holy affections and graces of character required by the new spirit nature to which they were begotten by the Word of God (2 Cor. 5: 17). The final act in this transmutation process was the resurrection of each member of the Body of Christ the Very Elect to the glory of the divine nature.

God’s Alchemy for Mankind

But God’s alchemy will go further than this, for in our text we read His promise. ‘I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.’ This indicates another fundamental change, but this time of mankind, without his having to undergo a change from human nature.

Since the Fall, when the original divine image and likeness was lost by Adam and Eve, all their descendants have become less like their Creator. And after more than six thousand years of the in-breeding of sin and the intensification of its disastrous consequences, that original resemblance is barely recognisable in even the finest of our race. There is an immense disparity, now, between the estate of fallen man and that of the perfect Adam.

Nevertheless God declares that He will make a man (Hebrew, ‘adam aw-dawm’, the race in general, not a particular man) ‘more rare than fine gold, and a common man than pure gold of Ophir’ (Isa. 13: 12, Young’s Literal Translation). In other words, He will restore man to that image and likeness of God and His dear Son, a divinely set, universal and eternal standard below which no member of the human race will be permitted to live everlastingly.

What is necessary to achieve such a transformation? No less than a complete change of heart. Change must come to that cold, stony and unyielding heart condition, which from the time of Cain’s intransigence has resisted calls to repentance and been largely deaf to the voice of conscience. It must be transformed into a warm, loving, and sympathetic condition that responds immediately to the principles emanating from divine justice, wisdom and love.

Such a change far transcends the hopes and aims of the most sanguine of this world’s well-meaning reformers. Most of them have preferred to apply their own earthly, pragmatic means and principles to the problems associated with man’s fallen estate, rather than adopt those high moral and religious principles of absolute justice and perfect love set before us in the Word of God (Isa. 55: 8, 9).

What is the symbolic Philosopher’s Stone? Strange to say, in this first stage of God’s alchemy, the primary ingredient of a healing medicine for this sin-stricken world is trouble; not so much the trouble that mankind has known and lived through since the Fall, severe though it has been from time to time, nor yet the trouble among the nations of Christendom during the Gospel Age, for that was but the ‘beginning’ of troubles (Mark 13: 8). There is yet to come a special trouble, such as the world has never known (Dan. 12: 1). Elsewhere the Bible presents it in most awesome and portentous terms, likening it to a great whirlwind (Isa. 66: 15; Jer. 30: 23, 24). This particular, unprecedented Time of Trouble is gathering force.

Other ingredients, such as mankind’s instincts, feelings, and reasoning powers are also being thrown into the great melting pot of this Time of Trouble, giving rise to frustration, fear, anger, and desperation. All the evils that have marred the course of mankind from the founding of this present evil world the social, political, and religious order which has developed since the world-wide disaster of the Noachic flood are being exposed. In the greater waves of trouble which lie ahead the world order will be wrecked, and nature itself showing signs of disruption because of man’s carelessness will be in danger of sustaining irreparable damage. See Isa. 24: 1-6.

Present World Conditions

The immensity of the power made available by modern energy-sources, linked to the miniaturisation of weapons and the globalisation of political activism, has brought new dangers of unimaginable proportions. In the scientific world the amazing advances in knowledge have given rise to new situations in society, challenging those beliefs and behaviours that traditionally underpinned ordered society. Developments in medical and agricultural science have seen the principles and stuff of life itself searched out as never before, often by those who are commercially, rather than morally, motivated. Genetic experimentation gives rise to moral and legal dilemmas that cause grave misgivings among thinking people. Governments seek to introduce legislation to control the situation, but the power of commercial and financial interests in huge, international conglomerates, is too strong. Politicians are often either washed along with the tide of money-making and power-brokering, or are sidelined and rendered ineffectual. There is a growing spirit of scepticism, cynicism, and anarchic disobedience to the kind of law and order which has permitted and encouraged the present situation. This militant protest is part of the symbolic whirlwind of prophecy in which the primary interest-groups of this world are disastrously involved.

The True and Only Panacea

Rather than being ‘fine gold’, man at present is more like an old, rusted and misshapen lump of low-grade iron ore than the choice and pure gold of Ophir! But God the Alchemist declares emphatically, ‘I will change him!’ Let us then see the processes and agencies by which God will achieve this objective.

Implicit in God’s promise are the assurances, ‘Then the eyes of the [spiritually and morally] blind shall be opened, and the ears of the [spiritually] deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man [limping in conduct] leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb [who praise not God] sing’ (Isa. 35: 5, 6 [bracketed comments added]). He says, in effect, ‘I will cause each individual to see his neighbour with such clarity, understanding and benevolence as never before. I will make of man a creature to be protected and cared for by all of his fellows, to be loved with an intense and appreciative love, to be fought for, prayed for, wept over, rejoiced over, cherished! I will make of him a precious, rare, and exquisite being designed to grace this planet earth, for all eternity. Truly, I will open the eyes of the blind!’

Golden Prospect

In view of man’s refractory nature and his historic recalcitrance against all God’s natural and revealed religious promptings, why would God want to do that? Why should He maintain this high purpose for mankind, having endured thousands of years of disobedience, opposition, misrepresentation and vilification of Himself? Why did He, the Mighty God, stoop to plead with fallen men to turn from their wickedness? Why did He permit His beloved Son Jesus to die at the hand of those He was sent to save? Why did He stand by when His suffering Son died on the cross? Why, in spite of all these things, does God still pursue His purpose to uplift and to bless mankind beyond their present mental capacity to conceive?

Even as the Psalmist David mused, the divine wisdom passes our understanding! ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?’ (Psa. 8: 4). Just what is there in man at present so often arrogant, drunken, vicious, avaricious, cruel, lustful, warlike, faithless, hopeless, despairing and physically ailing and dying that can be made finer than purest gold? What is it that God sees, but that the world cannot?

Close your eyes for a moment to the scenes of misery and woe, degradation and sorrow that yet prevail on account of sin, and picture before your mental vision the glory of the perfect earth. Not a stain of sin mars the harmony and peace of a perfect society; not a bitter thought, not an unkind look or word; love, welling up from every heart, meets a kindred response in every other heart, and benevolence marks every act. . . . The inward purity and mental and moral perfection will stamp and glorify every radiant countenance. . . . (The Divine Plan of the Ages, pp. 191, 192)

That is what God sees!

Now, let us open our eyes again. Have we been mistaken? No there is no mistake. We see again the ‘scenes of misery and woe’; the graveyards, the hospitals and prisons, famine, civil wars and genocide, forced labour, decay and crime-ridden streets in the richest cities of the world, the horror of frightful diseases, and so forth. We see also, in civilised nations, the development of weapons of unimaginable destructive power. These things add massively and needlessly to the ordinary sufferings already associated with living and dying in this present evil world.

As we look again among the leaders for help, we see the implacable revolutionary and the blinkered reactionary, both rejecting reasoned argument and co-operative reform. They turn, rather, to the hate-politics of extremist political dogma the former to violent demonstration and anarchy; the latter to harsh economic control and repressive law. We see the challenge by libertarian behaviourists to all moral restraints, with depraved standards becoming acceptable in public life. We see hedonistic nations and individuals living carelessly on credit, piling up debts that no subsequent generation can repay ‘scenes of misery and woe’ indeed!

We, like Abraham, stagger not at the promises of God (Rom. 4: 16, 20). In studying the signs of the times we peer through the dust and debris of a rising whirlwind. We hear the howling winds of war and the thunderclaps of controversy rolling and echoing around the symbolic heavens (revolutionaries and rulers); we feel the symbolic earth shake; we see the torrential rain and driving hail of Truth, from which mankind is fruitlessly seeking shelter, and in these things we recognise that we are living in the ‘great and very terrible’ day of the Lord (Isa. 28: 17; Joel 2: 11).

The True Church A Restraining Influence

The Gospel-Age Church, the Very Elect, were the primary ‘salt’ of Matt. 5: 13. One side effect of their work was a measurable uplifting of an otherwise degenerate world. As a consequence, God did not abandon the world to complete depravity, but has reserved it ‘unto the day of judgment’ the Millennial Age (2 Pet. 2: 9).

But the reproofs, corrections, and ethical teachings of the Bible no longer find their way into the consciousness of a sin-stricken world. As it plunges downward, unchecked, the symbolic lightning flashes of truth of all kinds political, social, and scientific reveal a world in turmoil, shouts of fear and anger on all sides. This confusion, clamour and trouble causes many to seek something better than present conditions allow. Yet although they challenge traditions once accepted without question, they have no alternatives to offer. In their impotence they become angry, anarchic, and destructive.

The Fall Of Christendom

Christendom was once the hub of the world. On its historic religious base and over many centuries it erected the defensive walls of intellectualism, industrial power, economic expertise, and financial control. The true nature of these fortifications was disguised, being ‘daubed . . . with untempered mortar’ of sin and error (Ezek. 13: 10-15). This whole erroneous, multi-faceted arrangement was foisted upon and accepted by the gullible peoples of Christendom as the earthly Kingdom of God.

The great shaking of the ecclesiastical ‘heavens’ and the social and political ‘earth’ by reason of disaffection and rebellion of the people will cause the whole structure to rock and sway dangerously, precursive to its final collapse a reduction first by revolution, to rubble, then by anarchy, to dust (Hag. 2: 6; Heb. 12: 26, 27).

Thus will mankind be prepared for the next stage in God’s alchemy. The sheer hopelessness of the situation will prompt each individual to respond positively to the ‘still small voice’ that will then be heard in the earth (1 Kings 19: 12). Each one will be free to seize the great hope held out to all as they become aware of the terms and promises of the New Covenant. God will, at last, bring them to their ‘desired haven’ (Psa. 107: 30).

The route to that haven is neither a short nor an easy passage. It will be by way of the ‘highway of holiness’, with all its refining processes, leading mankind from a heart and mind conformed to an evil regime, to a heart and mind in tune with the standard of righteousness (Isa. 35: 8). Christ will establish His Millennial Kingdom among those then living. Then will come that astounding feature of John 5: 28, 29 — the opening of the graves and the start of the refining process which will continue methodically, step by step, generation by generation, to a completion.

Thus will God, in all the willing and obedient, bring the refining of mankind symbolic, earthly gold to its glorious conclusion. His finished work will reveal man as he was before the Fall in Eden, the ‘golden wedge of Ophir’, the likeness and image of God, prepared for eternity.

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Note: This article is a distillation of a discourse given by the author, H. W. Roberts (now deceased), in 1986. The original discourse has the same title but is substantially different from this print version. The original discourse can be downloaded as an MP3 from our website page, Voices from the Past

February 2015. You are free to reproduce this article without express permission, but please acknowledge the source.

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