DISCOVERING JESUS

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DISCOVERING JESUS

DISCOVERING JESUS–HOW TO FIND HIM EVERY TIME YOU OPEN HIS WORD

WHO HE WAS: DISCOVERING WHO JESUS CHRIST REALLY IS: THE GOSPEL BY MARK

Few things fire imaginations like ancient Egypt’s fabled buried treasures, golden tombs, and King Tut. That’s why this week the world of ancient history and archaeology was stunned by what is hailed as the greatest discovery of the century. Archaeologists have found two hidden passageways, off the fabled tomb of King Tut.
For 3,340 years those rooms have silently waited for discovery.
They were always in plain sight but hidden to the eyes of all who did not look closely. That reminds us how easy it is to be:
 

Missing Hidden Treasures in Familiar Places

Finally, the great British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves sat and examined closely the wall painting in hi-res photographs, and proposed that he saw two doors outlined in the walls. This week ground-penetrating radar and other electronic instruments confirmed not only the two rooms but also the presence of both organic and metallic materials behind the walls.
Wow, treasure rooms in plain sight, missed by all but one diligent observer.
History records some other amazing events; times when people have walked over treasures of immense value—usually without even knowing it.
That is often what happens when we get so used to a place that we can walk almost without noticing anything around us.
 

Ever Heard of the Comstock Lode?

There’s a similar bit of American History that has always fascinated me.
Gold was found at the head of Six-Mile Canyon in the territory of Nevada in 1859 by two miners named Pat McLaughlin and Peter O’Reilly. A fellow miner, Henry Comstock, stumbled upon their find and claimed it was on his property. The gullible McLaughlin and O’Reilly believed him and assured Comstock a place in history when the giant lode was named.
Soon multitudes of treasure-seeking miners, lured by gold fever, began following the vein of gold up the canyon. They spent each day slogging their way up and down that narrow Six Mile Canyon chipping the outcropping of gold encased in quartz. Though they labored feverishly it was slow going for two reasons—the quartz was so hard to break, and the only way to their mining claims was that unusual canyon filled with strange, heavy, almost glue-like mud, it’s entire length.
Day after day miners complained that the biggest problem in this grubstake paradise was the sticky blue-gray mud that clung to their boots, their wagons, their picks, and shovels. But they slogged on day after day and week after week. It seemed like their feet were covered with lead and the tools would become too heavy to lift the longer they worked.
Finally, one miner new on the scene saw the mud differently. He immediately scraped the mud off his boot at the assayer’s office and asked for an analysis of why it was so heavy.
When the mud was assayed, it proved to be silver ore worth over $2,000 a ton in 1859 dollars! That was a dollar per shovel full then or at 2016 silver prices it was equal to–$100 for every shovel scooped up and hauled away. No wonder some of the legendary California fortunes like the Crocker Bank of California and the William Randolph Heart empire both began here.
The rest is history. They had all been walking through the Comstock Lode. Beneath their feet, in the sticky blue-gray mud that day in 1859 laid $400,000,000.00 worth of silver.
The common mud that thousands of miners had walked on for months was the greatest lode of silver ever discovered in all of history. Far more valuable than the gold they had feverishly chipped from the hard quartz veins in the mountainsides, was the silver laden mud. All they had to do was stop and scoop it up!
There’s a similar lesson for each of us:
 

Stop, Look & Find Christ Daily

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Check Out All The Sermons In The Series

You can find all the sermons and short clips from this series, Christ’s Last Words to His Church in Revelation 2&3 here.

Looking To Study The Bible Like Dr. Barnett?

Dr. Barnett has curated an Amazon page with a large collection of resources he uses in his study of God’s Word. You can check it out here.