Is there no suggestion of mystery in the destiny of such an one as Pharoah, or of Esau

as recorded in Rom.9:?  Does not inspiration anticipate our natural desire to find out

more than is revealed, and does it not meet it with the words, "Nay but, O man, who art

thou that repliest against God?  Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why

hast thou made me thus?" There are many who speak as though the Bible deals with

eternity; it does no such thing. It begins and ends with time. It is the inspired revelation

of some of God's ways and purposes relative to and during the AGES. What took place

before the age times began we know very little, and of what will take place when these

ages have run their allotted course we know comparatively nothing.  Is it not wiser,

better, and more befitting us as those who have been saved by grace, to recognize the

wisdom and the kindness which underlie this withholding of information?

Think of the errors which have clustered around the wrong translation of aiõn.

Instead of honestly rendering the word "age," the translators assumed that it must refer to

eternity, and so wherever possible they rendered it by words which indicate eternity, and

that which is everlasting. Has not the book of Ecclesiastes been written in order that we

may be led to see the utter impossibility of pushing beyond that which it has pleased God

to reveal to us? "He hath set the world (olam, the age) in their heart, so that no man can

find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end" (Eccles.iii.11).  Is

there no word for us here? Are we quite sure that we, if taught by the Spirit of God, can

hope to find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end?  Some of

God's children appear to think so.

With all our heart we sympathize with them.

Problems press hard upon us all. Believing implicitly in the full inspiration of Scripture,

and believing, moreover, that outside its sacred pages there is found no light upon these

matters, many have come to the conclusion that by prayerful painstaking study, by

careful collocation, the whole range of God's purposes will at length be discovered.

Indeed this is no longer a supposition.  Many of our readers will have read already

articles from the pens of earnest Bible students who believe that they have pieced the

whole together, and who do not hesitate to teach us what is to take place after Satan, and

those whose names are not found written in the Book of Life, are cast into the Lake of

Fire.

At this point exposition ceases, and inference enters.

There is no written

revelation given us as to anything happening to those who are thus consigned to the

second death. True, passages of tremendous import are brought to bear upon the subject,

but it is only by way of deduction. This immediately puts the whole subject beyond the

limits of inspiration, and we distrust our own hearts too much to allow ourselves to be

drawn beyond the divine limits.

When the reader opens the sacred volume he soon becomes aware that much must

have taken place which is unrecorded. He can discover by what is written in Isa.xlv.18

that the earth was not created "without form and void," but that it became so.  He can

further discover that "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished"

(II Pet.iii.5,6), but he will not find recorded the many details which his natural mind

would lead him to enquire into.  In the third chapter of Genesis the Serpent, who is

afterwards discovered to be Satan, is introduced without any explanation as to how he

came to be in the condition of enmity against God that we find to be the case.  The

Scriptures reveal glimpses into the exalted rank, awful ambition, and fearful fall of Satan,