Unlocking Sacred Secrets

For many of us, sight is the most precious of our five senses. But without light, human vision would be almost useless. We would be virtually blind. So, too, the human mind. It has an amazing ability to match patterns, apply logic, and thus solve puzzles. Yet, something more is needed to unlock sacred secrets. While others may offer solutions to the riddles posed in the Bible, only their Author, Jehovah, the God of light, can reveal their intended meaning. -1 John 1:5.

Unfortunately, men are often too proud and independent to wait on Jehovah for answers. Intrigued by the mystery, there are those who, seeking intellectual stimulations but not necessarily truth, sought solutions outside of God's Word. For example Jewish mysticism with its Cabala pondered the magical significance of numbers and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Gnostics of the second century, on the other hand, made use of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures in an attempt to extricate secret meanings from them.

All such searching, however, led them further into pagan rites or superstitions and away from divine truth. 'Why, if the world is full of evil,' The Gnostic reasoned, 'then its Creator, Yahweh, cannot be a good God.' How shallow human reasoning is! No wonder the apostle Paul, fighting apostate ideas that were later developed by Gnostic sects, strongly warned in his letters: "Do not go beyond the things that are written"! -1 Corinthians 4:6.

Next time: Turning The Light On "Dark Sayings"

Watchtower, 1999