Wealth: It's In Your Worship Not Your Works. Roland J. Hill
jungle of wealth misinformation, I realized that the Mother Lode, the big vein, had been right in front of me all the time. The Mother Lode is the Sabbath. It is the principal vein to the understanding and receiving of wealth. As I dug into the Mother Lode of the Sabbath, the riches in this ancient mine were like striking gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the 1800’s. Every shovel scooped up contained wealth beyond my wildest imagination. I no longer felt poor and worthless. Standing in this ancient mine, I knew then that God made humans wealthy. I knew that while wealth may include material possessions ultimately, wealth is about value–God’s value of humans and what human’s value is in the world. In searching out the meaning of wealth as found in the Sabbath, I discovered Ore Wealth placed in us by God. I found the creative wealth genius that is in every person and recognized why a weekly pilgrimage to the ancient mine to worship God is essential. This is no ordinary book. This book will open to you deep treasures that will completely change your outlook on wealth and yourself. You will leave this book cheerfully obeying the Law of Dependence as the Divine Law of Attraction is activated in your life. This book will open to you the abundant life discovered through a biblical understanding of the meaning of true wealth and the divine process for creating material wealth.
- Dr. Roland J. Hill
Memory Card
“In the depth of the Sabbath, this eternal mine, one finds God’s grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It is His unearned generosity bestowed on all of His creation. This eternal attribute of God hidden in the depth of the Sabbath is the essence of the meaning of wealth.”
- Dr. Roland J. Hill
CHAPTER ONE
The Mother Lode
It was initially kept a secret. The government of Transvaal, formerly an independent state settled by the Boers, put out a gag order after J. H. Davis, an Englishman, sold the Transvaal Treasury 600 pounds of gold that was discovered near Krudgerdorp on the Witswatersrand reef. To keep the discovery of gold a secret, they ordered Davis out of the country. That was in 1852. But a year later, Jacob Marais, a South African, discovered gold on the banks of the Jukskei River. He too was ordered to keep his mouth shut. No one was to know about the gold, for history had recorded that gold had always caused a big stir with often uncontrollable results. But one Sunday in March of 1886, George Harrison, an Austrian gold miner, stumbled onto the Mother lode. He declared his claim with the then-government of the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR), but sold his claim for a measly 10 pounds because of pressure from the government and his own failure to see the significance of the find. Harrison had discovered the Witswatersrand main reef, the Mother Lode. The secret could no longer be kept and the Witswatersrand Gold Rush ultimately resulting in the establishment of Johannesburg and the gold mine that has produced 40 percent of the world’s gold in the last 100 years. As significant as the Witwatersrand main reef is to the gold industry, I have discovered a gold mine of far greater significance–a Mother lode of unlimited wealth. It’s been kept a secret. In fact, there has been a gag order put out about it. The devil doesn’t want the world to know about this gold mine. He has ordered those who know about it to keep quiet and others of us, like George Harrison, to underestimate its value. Many have spent years digging in the mine but have missed the wealth vein. Eureka, I have found it! Now you can find it.
Mother lode refers to a principal vein or zone of veins of gold or silver ore. When a Mother lode of gold or silver is discovered, an almost unlimited amount of potential material wealth is made available. In this book you will discover the Mother Lode of true wealth; it is the Sabbath. It is the mine of God where we excavate the ore of truth about wealth from the mind of God. With excitement and expectation our first parents watched the opening of the mine and the uncovering of the Mother Lode on the seventh day of creation week (see Genesis 2:1-3). Rabbi Abraham Heschell wrote, “…the seventh day is a mine where {S}pirit’s precious metal can be found…”1 God took it upon Himself to invite Adam and Eve into the secrets of creation. He called them into Sabbath worship as a time of divine revelation. It was a day of disclosure about who and what God values. It was the beginning of God’s instruction on the meaning of true wealth. Amasa Walker, the eighteenth century economist, in his search for a definition of wealth, came to the conclusion that wealth is simply the allocation of value.2 And at the beginning of creation God created the Mother Lode so that men could have a perpetual place to search out what He values most.
The Gift Of Wealth
In the depth of the Sabbath, this eternal mine, one finds God’s grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It is His unearned generosity bestowed on all His creation. This eternal attribute of God hidden in the depth of the Sabbath is the essence of the meaning of wealth. Adam and Eve standing in midst of wealth at the dawn of the history were taught that wealth is a gift from God. Wealth is an unearned favor, a gift, an act of God’s grace.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). God didn’t need to create the earth. He had and has unnumbered angels that show forth His creative power and His unlimited love. Neither was there pressure to create. Out of love God purposed the creation of the world. By grace He called it into existence. Neither nature nor man contributed to creation; it was the sole work of God. Creation is a gift of God’s unearned generosity, His grace, and a declaration of His value system. Simply put, wealth is a gift of grace.
This was a fresh revelation for me, both in terms of grace and a new understanding of wealth. As a theologian and a pastor, I have always defined and described grace in the context of sin. Grace has always been thought of as an acquired attribute of God, an attribute that developed after sin. But rediscovering that grace is an eternal attribute, helped me to understand that grace predates sin because it is an inherent attribute of God. And wealth, it has always been viewed as a by-product of work and definitely not a gift. Wealth was never seen as God’s value but human’s production.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19: 1-2). In the intricate details of creation, God’s value system is seen. In the elegant design of nature, He shows forth the worth He assigns to animate and inanimate objects. “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1: 10). These words announced God’s thoughts about His world. God values His creation. But that value is only in relationship to God and man. The creation in and of itself has no value. It has value because God gives it value. In the Sabbath mine, God taught Adam and Eve the worth of His creation, thus shaping their understanding of wealth as provided by Him. Our first parents learned that the value of animate and inanimate objects was determined, not by their existence, but by the assessment placed on it first by God, then by man.
Man’s Value
Ellen G. White, a nineteenth century prolific writer and American Christian pioneer states, “Upon all created things is seen the impress of the Deity. Nature testifies of God. The susceptible mind, brought in contact with the miracle and mystery of the universe, cannot but recognize the working of infinite power. Not by its own inherent energy does the earth produce its bounties, and year by year continue its motion around the sun. An unseen hand guides the planets in their circuit of the heavens. A mysterious life pervades all nature –a life that sustains the unnumbered worlds throughout immensity, that lives in the insect atom which floats in the summer breeze, that wings the flight of the swallow and feeds the young ravens which cry, that brings the bud to blossom and the flower to fruit.”3 As valuable as the world is, its value is subordinate to man’s value. The earth was made for man, not man for the earth. God’s inaugural speech to our first parents was a statement of value. “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:28). Animate and inanimate objects were spoken into existence; man on the other hand came from the hand of God (Genesis 2:7). Man’s value is determined from the order used for creating him and appraised by the method of making him; God the Model, God the Maker. God’s value statement is unmistakably clear: “You are valuable. You were created in My image. You were created to be like Me.”