Newton's Great Recoinage

In 1696, Isaac Newton — the man who had unlocked the laws of gravity — accepted an unexpected appointment as Warden of England's Royal Mint. The nation's silver coinage had become a disgrace. For decades, people had clipped slivers from the edges of coins, and counterfeiters had flooded markets with debased metal. Trust in the currency was collapsing.

Newton attacked the crisis with ferocious precision. He ordered millions of old coins gathered from across England, melted in roaring furnaces, and recast to their proper silver standard. The process was painful — during the recoinage, money grew scarce and markets stumbled. But Newton refused every shortcut. Each coin had to meet the true standard. No compromise on purity.

This is precisely the picture the prophet Malachi paints of the Lord's coming. "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver," melting down what has become debased and corrupted, recasting His people to the standard they were always meant to bear. The process is not comfortable. When God turns up the heat in our lives — through conviction, through discipline, through the stripping away of what we thought we needed — it can feel like everything solid is melting beneath us.

But the Refiner is not destroying. He is restoring. Every impurity burned away brings us closer to reflecting the image we were minted to carry from the very beginning.