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Refiner’s Fire It all started a few months ago when I had to do a research paper for an English class I was taking. I was impressed by the Spirit to do a report on refining gold. Wanting to start the paper biblically, I lead off with Proverbs 17:3, “The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the hearts.” As material was gathered for the paper, one of the ways of processing gold spoke to me. I wanted to tell about it but something was missing. Every time that I would start to write it, something was missing. As I was going over notes from a Tuesday night Bible study, (good reason to take notes, reference for later), the Pastor’s words jumped up, “God wants to test us and try us through the fire. A test of faith to see whether you’re of God or self.” Now we’ve been in the fire for sometime but this might help understand some of what is happening. With that in mind, here is the “salt cementation process” used in the refining of gold. One of the first attempts by man to get gold by the refiners fire was in Sardis around 1500 B.C. by a king Croesus. In his drive for wealth, he developed a way of refining gold using common salt in a process called salt cementation. In this process, salt was mixed with brick dust and then layered over gold grains or flakes and placed in an ordinary clay cooking pot. This pot was then placed in the center of the furnace and surrounded with wood as a heat source. The furnace operated at around 600–800 degrees Celsius. This lower temperature caused the production of gaseous chlorine that reacted with the silver and other metals present in the gold. Much of the silver was bound into silver chloride, which then seeped into the pot walls and furnace bricks, to be later recovered by cupellation.” Cupellation is the “Refinement (as of gold or silver) in a cupel by exposure to high temperatures in a blast of air by which lead, copper, tin and other unwanted metals are oxidized,” (Webster’s). With a cupel being, “A small shallow porous cup esp. of bone ash used in assaying to separate precious metals,” Keeping in mind what the Pastor said, “to test us and try us in the fire” I went back to Webster’s for test and found one of it’s meanings to be, “a vessel in which metals were assayed, an earthen vessel, an earth pot, cupel or shell.” Then when looking up the word try, “to melt down and procure in a pure state, to fit or finish with accuracy.” So what comes out of gold in the refining process? Silver, copper, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, and iridium. All are precious metals. Very little slag comes out of the gold process. -David Oakley June Newsletter 2002 | Our Inheritance | Ministry Minded part 2 of 2 Pastor's Journal - June 2001 | God of the New | Signs and Tokens part 3 of 3 | Refiner's Fire |
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