The Greatest Investment Strategy

Wall Street could possibly be renamed "Gall Street." Billions of dollars have been lost as giant after giant reflected a financial vacuity of historic proportions. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch sold itself, and AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, lost half its value. And all this only a week after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became expensive wards of the state, rescued by future liens against us all. No one knows how far, how long or how bad the hemorrhaging will spread.

When wealth, the stability of which is held in trust by greedy and sinning men, becomes mere electronic blips in computers, it can evaporate quickly in mistrust. Much of it has. I confess to not knowing just how all this works, but those who do know seem to have discarded financial good sense and moral restraint. The Bible has it right: "But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Timothy 6:9-10).

The untempered lust for riches is an inscrutable savagery according to James 5:1-6. It’s a long passage, but read it carefully:

"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth (Lord of Hosts). You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you."

Proverbs 23:5 warns, "Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle toward heaven."

There is no prohibition against wealth, but putting trust in it displaces trust in God’s provision, and that’s idolatry. Psalm 62:10 says, "…if riches increase, do not set your heart on them." It’s not the money that’s the problem, but the madness over it.

The frustration of financial fixation was focused by fabled Solomon in Ecclesiastes. "He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver; Nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them; So what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes?" (Ecclesiastes 5:10-11).

The ultimate wealth security is not in mortal dollars but in Heavenly investment according to Jesus Christ, who said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:19-21). Christ Himself is the totality of enduring riches, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). Christ also said that one’s soul is worth more than the world’s wealth. "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:36).

While the Wall Street collapse may not herald the ultimate collapse of the global economy that is predicted in the Tribulation to come, it certainly is a warning that it can fail. James did speak of amassing wealth for "the last days," which surely include our days. Revelation 18 describes the fall of Babylon. "The merchants of these things who became rich by her, will stand…wailing… ‘For in one hour such great riches came to nothing.’ Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like this great city?’"

To see life’s greatest investment, you have to close your eyes. 2 Corinthians 4:18 says it all. "While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

God’s dividends surpass mortal investments, and Heaven’s bank interest accrues as Mark 10:29-31 outlines. "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first." A "hundredfold" is a 10,000% increase!

Human investments may fail, but obeying the will of God is a permanent investment. "And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:17).

Dave Virkler