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Sharing God’s Word:
It is interesting to note how often God uses the processes of refining metal to describe the methods
used to purify His called people. The dross, or slag, as the impurities are called today, resulting from melting
and purifying metal, is the symbol of evil. The Lord declared He had set Jeremiah as an assaying tower among
the people. “I have set thee for a tower and a fortress among My people, that thou mayest know and try their
way. They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders: they are brass and iron; they are all corrupters.
The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not
plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the LORD hath rejected them” ( Jer 6:27-30).
This method of refining silver is to apply intense heat to vitrify the lead, which sinks into the cupel
(a porous vessel) carrying the baser metals with it but leaving the silver in the metals in a state of purity.
This same process of refining is taking place today. One cannot detect the impurities in a bar of metal
until it is placed in the melting pot and heat applied. In the molten state the impurities rise to the surface and
the dross, or slag, is then removed, leaving the refined metal behind. This is an appropriate illustration appli-
cable to the nations and to society today. The heat of trouble and tribulation is bringing up the evil and
oppression, while men of violence are more in evidence than in former times. Such conditions have led some
to believe that evil is more prevalent than in the past. Actually, the evil which has been in society is now rising
to the surface, as the result of tribulation, preparatory to the day of its removal.
Such a condition of separation has been foretold for the end of the age. Jesus refers to it in the parable
of the wheat and tares. “He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;
The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the
wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are
the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend,
and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing
of teeth” (Matt 13: 37-42). Daniel designates the same process of separation and refinement in his statement:
“Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked
shall understand; but the wise shall understand” (Dan 12:10).
The process of refining, in which God made Jeremiah the refiner, is about to be completed in our
generation. At the return of Jesus the Christ. The evil, which will have been separated from the mass of His
people will be removed from the Kingdom. A new order will then be ushered in, in which there will then be
administered the laws of righteousness.
Wicked men and nations will no more afflict His people! And He said unto me, Son of man, the place of My
throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever,
and My Holy Name, shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom,
nor by the carcases of their kings in their high places” (Ezek 43:7). ☜ Cogit