"The Merchant of Death is Dead."

"The Merchant of Death is Dead."



"The Treasure Principle", a CBD (Christian Book Distributors )-Exclusive Edition written by Randy Alcorn, is a little compact hardcover book, which has been sitting between the driver’s and passenger’s seats in my wife’s car for a while.

It is a book unlocking the secret of joyful giving. It is a book of "life change".

Every so often, while I was sitting in her car, I would pick up the book, flip through it, and read certain chapter.

In one of the chapters entitled "For Such A Time As This", it mentioned a story about Alfred Nobel:

Alfred Nobel dropped the newspaper and put his head in his hands.

It was 1888. Nobel was a Swedish chemist who made his fortune inventing and producing dynamite. His brother Ludvig had died in France.

But now Alfred’s grief was compounded by dismay. He’d just read an obituary in a French newspaper—not his brother’s obituary, but his! An editor had confused the brothers. The headline read, "Le marchand de la mort est mort" (The merchant of death is dead.). Alfred Nobel’s obituary described a man who had gotten rich by helping people kill one another.

Shaken by this appraisal of his life, Nobel resolved to use his wealth to change his legacy. When he died eight years later, he left more than $9 million to fund awards for people whose work benefited humanity. The awards became known as the Nobel Prizes.

Alfred Nobel had a rare opportunity—to look at the assessment of his life at its end and still have the chance to change it. Before his life was over, Nobel made sure he had invested his wealth in something of lasting value.






Yeh Tze