At the end of World War II, the Nazis were reported to have driven a 300-400 foot armored train into a mountain entrance on the Germany-Poland border. It simply disappeared into the mountain. Since 1945, rumors of its existence have never quieted, nor has anyone found a trace. The contents were suggested to be armaments, stolen art, financial treasures—up to 300 tons of gold—and government documents.
A man who claims to have helped hide the train 70 years ago revealed on his deathbed the approximate location of the train. Mid-August two adventurers told the Polish government they were willing to divulge the secrets for a 10% finder’s fee. In the past few days, the Polish government said, with 99% certainty, that the train had been found.
George Clooney appeared in a movie called “The Monument’s Men” which is about the men who saved 24,000 pieces of art the Nazis had stolen and stored in a mountain tunnel. So the pattern does have German fingerprints.
The possibility of that train under the mountain fascinates me. More than that, it is becoming the icon that identifies my heart.
Irving Stone has written several of my favorite biographies and historical novels. His 1956 book Men to Match My Mountains captures my imagination. It is the telling of how the Far West United States was won, Stone tells the stories of men and women who surveyed, pioneered, fought for and settled the land. Virtually everyone had a hidden tunnel in them hiding a flaw, a past or disposition that motivated or paralyzed them. John Fremont was one. John Sutter, John Marsh are on the list of those who settled California and our West Coast. Each with a hidden track in their personal history that carried buried treasure.
“The Far West was little concerned with a man’s past: he could become anything he could prove himself to be.” (Irving Stone)
“They (John Fremont and Thomas Hart Benton) would not be content until they had discovered and established new routes along which thousands of American families could travel to settle the Far West and claim it for the United States.” (Page 47—Men for My Mountains.)
Had Fremont not fallen in love with sixteen year old Jessie Benton, the hidden treasure known as John Fremont would have remained a mystery—at least what we know of his successes would be a faint outline. Jessie was the excavator in a difficult project.
I am drawn to people and methods that uncover tunnel entrances and excavate the treasures in people who God has equipped to map and make mountains and coast lines productive. People like Brené Brown, Jon Acuff, Dave Ramsey, Bob Buford, Bob Biehl, Michael Hyatt, Henry Cloud, Andy Stanley, Anne Lamott, John Eldredge, John Maxwell, Mark Rutland, Donald Miller and a few dozen others. That is the reason I like biographies. It is the reason I like to ask people questions—tell me your story! And it is the reason why I write books, teach seminars about divorce, depression, hope, change, anger-healing, God’s Kingdom and why I’m obsessed with small groups and transformational tribes.
All of this is like Jesus standing outside Lazarus tomb calling, “Come out—be dead no longer.” Let’s find the unique healing path that will release the treasure that something or someone hid in that tunnel deep beneath your surface.
Today there is a news article warning adventurers, treasurer hunters and tourists to stay away from the mountain and the tunnel entrances—they may very well be mined with explosives. The spiritual tunnels in us are not easily uncovered. They are guarded by strongholds. Satan will fight the discovery. John Eldredge writes something like—“The devil fears you for he knows what you can be.”
Hidden in you is a fortune. From yesterday’s reading: “Where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be.”
Hand me that pick ax. Holy Spirit, where is the hidden entrance? There is a treasurer to uncover.
©2015 D. Dean Benton—https://bentonministries.com
Writer, Wonderer, Would be excavator
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