Pastor Stam used to call the Bereans “the spiritual aristocracy of their day” because they “received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:10,11). Knowing that he was a wordsmith who chose his words carefully, I looked up “aristocracy,” and sure enough, one of the definitions is, “those who rise above the rest of the community in any important respect, as in wealth, knowledge, character, etc.”

I thought of all this when I recently came across Proverbs 25:2 again in my daily Bible reading:

“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”

It was truly the glory of God that He could conceal the Mystery from the devil. After all, it was said of the Antichrist, “thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee” (Ezek. 28:3), an arrogance he will learn from his master. Since that was Satan’s boast as well, imagine how humiliated he was when Paul went forth heralding “the mystery of the gospel” (Eph. 6:19), the secret of the gospel, and he learned that the Cross he thought spelled his greatest victory was actually the thing God would use to rescue sinners from his clutches!

Then, as the apostle began to unfold “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles” (Col. 1:27), how Satan must have gasped as God’s secret plan to reclaim the rule of the heavens from the “spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12) caused him to realize that there was a secret that had been hidden from him, one that spelled his complete defeat! No wonder Paul concludes his greatest chapter on the mystery by saying of the Father who concealed this matter, “unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:21).

But while it is the glory of God that He could conceal such a great thing, “the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” You may not be a kingpin in the world, but you prove yourself to be part of the spiritual aristocracy of your day when you search out the depths of the mystery that God concealed from Satan so effectively since before the world began. What an honor it is to plumb the depths of this great truth, and to “be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of that which “passeth knowledge” (Eph. 3:18,19), “that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.

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