Ah, Sweet Mysteries

Once you hear Calvin Miller, you never forget him. As creative a mind and as uncontainable an energy force as you will ever run up against. A preacher, pastor, professor, best-selling author, and accomplished author. And, I’m happy to say, a friend.

I heard him tell this story 15 years ago and have repeated my version of it ever since. Last night I found the notes taken from that message and felt that readers would enjoy it.

A traveler was making his way by foot through a strange and foreboding countryside. When a violent storm arose, he was forced to seek shelter. Coming upon a monastery, he was pleased to see a light shining through a window. He knocked. A monk came to the door.

“Come in, come in, stranger,” said the monk.

The brothers fed him and let him warm by their hearth.

“Would thou care to spend the night under our roof rather than return to the storm?” said the abbott, the head monk.

“I would indeed and I’m grateful,” said the traveler. “But in order to do so, I will need a few items. Could you please provide for me a rubber suit, a pound of butter, and a bass saxophone? Also, if you have it, two duck eggs and three turnips fresh from the garden.”

That night, all kinds of noises came from the visitor’s room. No one slept in the monastery that night.

The bad weather continued. The next night, the abbott invited the stranger to remain another night. “I thank you,” he said, “And, if you would be so kind, I will once again require the use of the rubber suit and bass saxophone, and another pound of butter, two more duck eggs and three turnips.”

That night was a repetition of the first, the strange noises filling the air, driving sleep from everyone. In all, as the storm lingered, the stranger stayed three nights. By now, the monks were beside themselves with fatigue.

On the morning of the fourth day, the sun came out.

As the visitor was leaving, the abbott walked out with him. “May I ask you what that was all about, this business of the rubber suit and the bass saxophone, the butter and eggs and turnips? All that noise coming from your room? We are beside ourselves with curiosity.”

The stranger said, “It’s an old family secret. I can tell you if you agree never to tell another living soul.”

The abbott agreed never to breathe a word of it to anyone. So he told him.


And, true to his word, the abbott never told a soul.

That’s why we still don’t know what that was all about.

(We will pause a moment for you to groan. And maybe laugh a little.)

Ah, mysteries.

We don’t like them.

And yet, Calvin Miller says, mysteries are all around us and we even need them, particularly in our faith. God has planted various mysteries in the faith which you and I hold dear. There is the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the incarnation (Jesus’ being all man and all God), and the mystery of the Lord’s supper. You’ll think of others.

Here are a few mysteries mentioned in Scripture….

–The mystery of the Kingdom. (Matthew 13:ll; Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10) To outsiders, the Christian faith may make little sense. However, the insider–the believer who is indwelt by the Spirit and instructed by the Word–understands the mysteries of the Kingdom, Jesus says.

–The mystery of the resurrection and what happens afterward. (I Corinthians 15:51) Now, to us this mystery has not been fully explained. Only the broad outlines are visible; the rest remains in the realm of mystery.

—-The mystery of the gospel. (Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 1:26,27 and 4:3) Paul asks for prayer as he “makes known” the mystery of the gospel. So, he’s clearing up this mystery for his audience. Readers will recall that first century citizens of the Roman world often thought Christ-followers literally ate His body and drank His blood–were cannibals. So, there was much to clear up.

In the Colossian references, the mystery which has been “hidden from past generations,” is now revealed: Christ in you. That generally refers to the Lord indwelling everyone who puts faith in Him, but it specifically means Jesus Christ indwelling Gentile believers, the last thing any Jew would have expected (in spite of all the Old Testament teachings given to prepare them for this).

–The mystery of iniquity. (II Thessalonians 2:7) This refers to the devil and how he works. We are not ignorant of his devices, Paul tells us (II Corinthians 2:11), but there is still so much we do not understand. As far as I can see, the Scriptures nowhere aims to make any of us experts on satanology. Rather, we are to focus on Jesus Christ.

–The mystery of faith. (I Timothy 3:9) Bear in mind that a mystery in Scripture is anything that cannot be known except by divine revelation. Faith is that way. “It is the gift of God,” Ephesians 2:8-9.

–The mystery of godliness. (I Timothy 3:16) This involves the life and work of Jesus, Paul says.

Couple of thoughts here….

1) We do not like mysteries. We prefer everything neat and orderly and understandable. Even when Scripture forbids it, we still kick our OCD into gear and try to arrange everything for the Lord.

I will not forget my first encounter with Jehovah’s Witnesses who sat across the conference table from me at my church. They scoffed at any notion from me that a particular doctrine or the details of one were “a mystery.” They had it all figured out and had neatly scissored out anything not conforming to their doctrine.

We must beware of that temptation.

2) The other temptation we must watch out for is to overly obsess with speculation on certain mysteries. The details of Revelation–the seals, the books, the signs, the dates–have drained off the energies of untold numbers of Christian workers who could have spent their time to far better use.

Perhaps the most popular temptation is to speculate on the Antichrist, who he is and what he is going to do.

Professor Michael W. Holmes, in his NIV commentary on Thessalonians, identifies a long list of candidates for the antichrist named by Christians through the centuries. The various Roman emperors were first, followed by the Vandal invaders who sacked Rome, Mohammed, various popes, the papacy itself, Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX (who each identified the other as the antichrist), Martin Luther, King George II of England, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III, each side in the American Civil War, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, the League of Nations, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the United Nations, Khrushchev, the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev (the birthmark on his forehead was the mark of the beast!), King Juan Carlos, Pope John Paul II, Anwar Sadat, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, the New Age Movement, theologian Matthew Fox, Henry Kissinger, and both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and so forth.

Someone told me this week he’d heard England’s Prince Charles identified as the antichrist. Thirty years ago, I recall Christians naming a teenage Indian guru as the one.

One wonders why God’s people have not figured out that a) we’re never going to know, b) if God wanted us to know, He would have told us, and c) when we engage in this kind of speculation and name-calling, we hold ourselves up to ridicule before the world. Shucks, we even hold ourselves up to ridicule to one another by doing this.

There. Thank you for getting us off on this, friend Calvin Miller.

To my knowledge, no one has suggested Calvin as a candidate for the antichrist. But you never know; there’s still time.

Incidentally–a word to pastors here–I would never ever tell that story of Calvin’s in a sermon. Tell it and no one will hear a thing you say for the next 10 minutes. They’ll be sitting there in frustration, trying to figure it out, and a tad angry at you for passing along a story that has no clear solution.

But it’s a fun story, isn’t it. (When I’ve told it over the years, usually to pastors in informal settings, I drop in all kinds of paraphernalia that the stranger required before he could spend the night with the monks. It really doesn’t matter what he took into that room with him since we never learn what he was doing in there in the first place.)

2 thoughts on “Ah, Sweet Mysteries

  1. Cute story.

    Maybe it’s my type A nature, but I have this crazy idea that if I know the whole of something somehow I will be able to contribute to it. When it comes to the things of God this idea is so laughable. My stubborn nature must submit to His complete knowledge.

  2. Ah! Calvin Miller. One of my all time favorite writers. I think I have about 15 of his books. Once upon a time I attended a conference at Glorieta Baptist Conference Center in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico. Most of your readers know the place. Calvin was the preacher for the week. So I gathered all my Miller books and took them with me. He graciously signed them all. The last one I handed him, POEMS OF PRAYERS AND PROTEST, which was published in 1968, drew this question from him: “Where did you come by this book?” “I found it on a used book table at a bookstore in San Francisco,” I replied. “How much did you pay for it?” he asked. “I think I gave 25 cents for it,” I answered. “Why do you want to know?” I asked. He laughed and said, “Because I thought I had bought every one of those terrible poems back!” A great friend and a great story teller as you reminded all of us.

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