The Treasury of God

The following scriptures from the Bible describe how the Israelites took down the city of Jericho by following God’s detailed instructions. There’s more to the message than the battle, and once again, the number seven plays a mysterious and significant role.

And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him. (Joshua 6:3-4, King James Version)

For more information, watch Secrets of the Bible: The Fall of Jericho with Dr. Bryant Wood, a documentary on physical evidence behind one of the bloodiest episodes of the Old Testament. At the sound of trumpets, Jericho fell exactly as God said it would, after the Israelites did as they were told. Except for the prostitute Rahab and her father’s household, the entire city perished. Rahab and family were spared because she did God’s people a favor by hiding the messengers that Joshua sent to spy on Jericho. This story fascinates me because it’s the only place in the Bible that mentions God’s treasury and what God wants in it. According to Biblehub.com, the Hebrew phrase for treasury occurs just three times in the Englishman’s Concordance: Joshua 6:19, Joshua 6:24, and Daniel 1:2.

But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord. (Joshua 6:19, King James Version)   And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. (Joshua 6:24, King James Version)   And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god. (Daniel 1:2, King James Version)

So what exactly is the treasury of the Lord? Your understanding of this treasury will be guided by your understanding of God. Personally, I don’t see God as an old white man in the sky with a beard. In fact, I don’t “see” God at all—I feel God in my heart and I perceive God through all my senses, but I can’t behold an image and say “That’s God!” To me, God is an energy and matter is a vessel. My favorite verse from the Bible is “God is love” (1 John 4:8). For more information, read my fiction debut Love Evil: An extraordinary journey of the heart.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)

If God is love and God loves, then God is what God does. If we are made in the image of God, then we are what we do also. It doesn’t matter what we think we should do. It doesn’t matter what we want to do. It matters what we actually do—that’s what determines who we are in the grand scheme of things. I think of this as a law like gravity. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment in the law, he replied it is to love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. What all this means is that God’s treasury and God’s house must also be guided by love. Dare we ask, “What does physical silver and gold have to do with God’s energy of love?” Or even better, “How does a three-pound glob of fat in your head orchestrate your entire human existence?” Things don’t always make a whole lot of sense when you try to grasp big pictures with small minds. To understand gold, silver, love, the brain, consciousness, and life, you have to understand the synergy of physical elements, energy, and natural laws. This means you have to break things down and rebuild what you think you know about everything. That’s how you grow. Now that we’re clear on God, let’s look at the physical characteristics of gold and how they might complement God’s energy of love. Gold, as we know, is a soft heavy metal, both malleable and ductile. It can be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking and it can be drawn out into wires, threads, or flakes. Gold is not made on Earth; it is only formed when a star explodes at the end of its life cycle. What’s here now is all there is and all there will ever be on earth, unless humans start mining in outer-space. Get this, two or more gold atoms in a microcluster have metallic properties, but only one gold atom has ceramic properties which make it chemically inert with super-conductive capabilities. While 99 percent of our bodies are made up of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms, there are gold atoms in our bodies too. This makes sense; we came from the Earth, which came from the stars. According to The Elements (third edition) by John Emsley, we have about 0.2 milligrams of gold inside of us per 154 pounds of body weight. There’s a purpose for this, we just don’t know much about it yet. What we do know is that gold has an important role in joint health, cancer research, and transmitting electrical signals throughout the body. It’s also interesting that the word “atom” is a Greek word which means “indivisible” (can’t be divided any further). Atoms are the smallest unit of everything we find in solid, liquid, and gas. In the center of each atom is a nucleus with protons and neutrons. Electrons orbit around the nucleus, as the planets circle the sun. Notice the word “atom” (the smallest indivisible element) and the name “Adam” (the first man created by God) have something in common, similar to “God” and “gold.” Energy is the only thing that’s not matter and that energy is God. Not all energy is God, just a specific kind that we call love. The truth grows high and deep, and there are lots of roots to follow. I was just starting to feel proud of myself, because I thought I had figured something out. I don’t know much about the Canaanites, but I just realized that annihilating them like God did through the Israelites is not what we would call “a loving thing to do.” I find it very difficult to marry the concept of love with such a bloody horrific battle. A friend once told me that the Old-Testament God was evil and was not God at all. I don’t want to be sacrilegious or shake anyone up, but honestly, it’s hard for me to understand the angry mean God who plays favorites in the Old Testament. I’ll leave it at that without lacing it with any opinions. Maybe nothing is as it seems. Maybe we can only understand things in the context of our own experience and culture. Maybe the key to refining and internalizing our beliefs is to see them from all different perspectives. I don’t have the answers, but I know that we are not meant to blindly follow without asking questions. I believe there’s a big wave of truth sweeping through this nation and world, and I pray that we will figure out what’s real and genuine, and store our wealth there. I have a good idea of what is in God’s treasury, and why gold is much better than fiat currency. And while I don’t understand or have an affinity towards the angry mean egocentric god I have read about in the Old Testament, I do believe in Jesus Christ and I do believe in love.