In the midst of chaos God perfects his many jewels. How many jewels is he perfecting? Billions, but he perfects some before others, the chosen of the called, the remnant overcomers of earth. This earth, this temporary home of ours, serves God as our purifying furnace of affliction. In it he brings heat and cool, pain and comfort, as he chooses. In the midst of our affliction we learn to submit our will to his or we don’t. I don’t know what comes next for those who cast aside God’s plans for their own. Jesus says they shall be cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But I do not think that this remains their eternal home. No, I believe this describes that place outside the capitol of God’s Kingdom, New Jerusalem, when she is revealed. God builds New Jerusalem herself from the stones of earth he perfects over time, each stone a perfect jewel set in his or her perfect place.
Dictionaries define a jewel as “a precious stone.” A stone is “concreted earthy or mineral matter.” One could say that a stone is “hardened dust.” A jewel could thus be defined as “precious dust.” God created man from the dust of the ground. Science teaches that intense pressure turns common carbon into diamond. Carbon is a “naturally abundant nonmetallic element that occurs in many inorganic and in all organic compounds, exists freely as graphite and diamond and as a constituent of coal, limestone, and petroleum, and is capable of chemical self-bonding to form an enormous number of chemically, biologically, and commercially important molecules.” See Link. The dust God created man with must, therefore, have included carbon. Spiritually, God works upon this dust, each of us, with pinpoint pressure in order to turn us, like carbon in the natural, into spiritual diamonds, spiritual jewels.
This transformation of souls into perfect jewels completes at least one stage in mankind’s creation into the image of God. Of course we will not sit still as beautiful gems to be gazed upon by our Creator. He gives us a picture of perfection, something for us to consider as we meditate upon Jesus’ words, “Be perfect even as my Father in heaven is perfect.” He means us to become something as lovely, as precious, as the glittering diamond, emerald, and ruby.
Thus, when he first introduces the word “stone” in Scripture it appears next to that which we find most valuable in creation, gold itself. “And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.” (Genesis 2:12) As we continue studying Scripture we find that Jesus himself is known as “that rock.” Concerning the rock that Moses struck to get water in Numbers 20:8, Paul says, “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:4) Isaiah adds light to this and tells us that this Rock actually forms the “quarry” from which we were dug.
Hearken to me, you that follow after righteousness, you that seek the LORD: look unto the rock from where you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. (Isaiah 51:1)
Notice who it is that looks to this Rock, those “who follow after righteousness.” What do you follow?
