The Unsearchable Riches

W. Carl Ketcherside

[Page 110]

     I find myself more amused than aggravated with those pseudo-intellectuals who think the scriptures are outmoded and should be discarded. Because their rope is so short it will not allow their bucket to hit the water they think they have drawn the well dry. They are like a convention of termites passing a resolution condemning the Empire State Building because they cannot chew its foundations to pieces.

     God is the author of two books, creation and revelation. There has not been a single atom added to the material universe since the Creator rested, but man is still laboring to discover new truths which have been there all of the time. It required divine skill to ordain a world of inexhaustible riches so that each succeeding generation would meet challenges which would motivate it to continued research. It would be a dull world if there were nothing left to explore.

     As it is in the natural realm, so is it in the spiritual. Not an atom of direct revelation has been added since the sage of Patmos dropped the pen from his weary fingers. But there will be unexplored depths to beckon men on until Jesus comes. The new creation, like the old, releases its secrets gradually and as men can grasp and appreciate them.

     Once in awhile someone who flatters himself that he is a chosen vessel sinks his mental shaft and concludes that he has exhausted a vein of ore, but after his puny body mingles with the mould, another comes along with a more penetrating drill and opens up a completely new lead.

     For this reason it hardly behooves us to put up a sign titled "The End" and build a fence to keep others from proceeding to additional discoveries.

     It is a primary condition of a book such as the Bible that it be an inexhaustible storehouse, that no man come to the end of it and thus contain it, rather than being contained by it. Those sects which seek to bottle truth and peddle it under their private label generally end up selling thin air.

     The Bible was written for all men and for every age. To appeal to all it must offer each generation new fruits which have never before been gathered. There must be a promise for all who search the scriptures, but there would be no use of searching if every truth had long since been discovered. Nothing would discourage study more than a realization that there was nothing to be achieved by it, and that the golden summit of truth had already been attained.

     To discard the scriptures as God's revelation because they have been around so long would be like deciding to abandon the earth because of its antiquity. I do not intend to abandon either the earth or the Bible while I am in the flesh. There really isn't anywhere else to go, so I'm staying with both!

     The fact is that I have not learned nearly as much about God's Word as I want to know, and I expect to continue drinking at this wonderful spring of pure water flowing from the Throne as long as I live. And I want to share what I find in its depths.