True faith survives the trials of this world just as gold survives the refining process and emerges as an object of enduring beauty, but faith has a far higher value than even the most enduring and valued items of this world. The refining process which is used to purify gold is compared to the far greater refining process that purifies faith.
God delights in great reverses and this will be the reverse of all reverses. Christ will not come before the world has reached such a state that evil appears to have triumphed and its cause justified. The church will not be completely destroyed for there will be those still alive who are changed in the twinkling of an eye, but other Scriptures picture the church as lying dead in the street of the great city. All human skill and learning will be focused on the one great aim of denying God and his Christ. The church will be counted as nothing and as the dregs of the earth. The world will deride believers as obscurantists and disdain them as powerless, without influence, and yet objectionable for their convicting testimony which awakens a conscience that the unbelieving world can never entirely divest itself of. But Christ, who forgets nothing will avenge all that has been done. Where the believer has passively submitted to injustice and turned the other cheek, he will not be passive. Where the believer has been unable to find an answer to silence the conceit and disdain of the world, Christ will triumph. The world has used great force against the church, but Christ will use Almighty power against the world, and where the world conducted a long campaign to wear down the people of God, Christ will overcome in an instant. On that day, faith will receive its reward, the reward of being vindicated.
There is such a thing as false faith – I believed in Jesus Christ; I put my trust in him but it turns out I didn’t really do it with all my heart; I didn’t really mean it as I should have done; I didn’t really repent of my sin and give him my life; I only half did it; I wasn’t really converted. Soon I will fall away. Faith needs to be proved and a trial comes. Perhaps somebody goes to college and is bombarded with intellectual doubts and temptations and he cannot answer them. The people who bombard him with these things are intellectually superior and they seem to be armed with so many facts but faith, even if it is overwhelmed by its attackers, it has a tenacity and a determination and it says, ‘I don’t care what they say. I have proved Jesus Christ and I trust in him and I believe in him and I know him and I have walked with him’ and it cannot be overcome. The only thing that can undermine faith for a time is my own foolishness, or sin, but all the attacks of Satan and doubt, they cannot overwhelm my faith.