Streets Of Gold

by HJS

The chemical symbol for this metal is Au. Men have killed, lied and cheated for it. It is gold, something that is valuable primarily because it is scarce as well as beautiful. In the 1500s, the Spaniards came to Mexico seeking gold and spices, but when they saw the Aztec gold, they forgot the spices and killed over fifty thousand Indians, plundering the gold of the Aztecs. In 1849, probably the greatest gold rush ever took place in California's Sierra Nevada when more than a half-million men traveled from far away to pan for gold.

You may have heard the story of the miner who insisted on being buried with all the gold he had mined, sealed in his casket. When he got to heaven, lugging his bag of golden nuggets with him, Peter asked him, "What do you intend to do with the asphalt?" "No, no," he clarified, "this is not asphalt. It's gold - my lifetime treasure." Peter says, "You may call it gold, but we call it asphalt because we pave the streets with the stuff up here."

Are the streets of heaven really paved with gold? A better question is, "Do you disbelieve everything in the Bible that you find hard to comprehend?" In the book of Revelation, John attempted to describe the beauty of heaven - gates of pearl, foundation stones of jasper, sapphire and so forth. Then, says John, "the street of the city was pure gold, as transparent glass" (Revelation 21:21). The qualifying phrase seems to indicate that just as transparent glass is without blemish, the streets in heaven are 24K gold.

Wise is the person who doesn't spend his entire life searching for the stuff here when there is so much on the other side. Forget about storing gold here. There's plenty in heaven.

The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass.  REVELATION 21:18