The Two Crowns

In Testimonies for the Church, volume 1, Ellen White relates a vision in which she saw two crowns. One was offered by God and bore the inscription, “All who win me are happy, and shall have everlasting life.” Upon the other crown were the words, “Earthly treasure. Riches is power. All who win me have honor and fame.” She wrote that a “vast multitude” rushed forward to obtain this crown, even trampling over others in order to do so. She wrote that many “would look wishfully upon the heavenly crown, and would often seem charmed with its beauty, yet they had no true sense of its value and glory. While with one hand they were reaching forth languidly for the heavenly, with the other they reached eagerly for the earthly, determined to possess that; and in their earnest pursuit for the earthly, they lost sight of the heavenly.”* The same attitude is exhibited in the experience of the rich young ruler. When this young man asked what he needed to do in order to “have eternal life,” Jesus replied, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). Quoting those commandments that deal with a believer’s relationship with his or her fellow humans, Jesus chose not to mention the tenth commandment. Undoubtedly the young man spotted the deliberate omission.

Although convicted by Jesus’ injunction to sell his possessions and donate the proceeds to the poor, he went away both sorrowful and lost.

Jesus certainly is not opposed to wealth, and it isn’t only the wealthy who may be trapped by their possessions. Wealth that has been consecrated to God brings blessings to both its possessor and to the work of the gospel, while even a little that is kept from God becomes a curse to its possessor. God asks, “Have your possessions been placed on the altar before heaven?” Those who seek earthly riches at the expense of surrender to God will find that while they have something in this world, they will have no place in the world to come.