Reverend D. Alan Mathna
Carlisle First Church of God
February 2008
BEHOLD I SHOW YOU A MYSTERY!
“Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed!” (1 Corinthians 15:51)
Behold, I show you a mystery – but it’s probably not the one you’re expecting to discover. The mystery I want to “show” you or tell you about is called the Winchester Mystery House (pictured at left). This “mystery” is a rambling, 160-room unfinished Victorian mansion built by Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune. Sarah Winchester’s husband William had acquired a fortune by manufacturing and selling rifles. After he died and because of her longtime interest in the occult, Sarah sought out a medium to contact her dead husband. The medium, who has become known colloquially as the "Boston Medium", told Sarah Winchester that there was a curse upon the Winchester family because the guns they made had taken so many lives. She told Mrs. Winchester that "thousands of persons have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance." Furthermore, the medium told Sarah that she needed to leave her home in New Haven and travel west, where she must "build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon, too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die."
Sara Winchester (pictured at left) did move west, taking her $20 million cash inheritance and $1,000 a day income with her. She bought an unfinished eight-room farm house near San Jose, California, and soon started building on to the house never allowing the construction to stop – literally! Under Sarah Winchester's guidance the construction on her bizarre, multi-gabled 160-room house continued 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, until her death 38 years later on September 5, 1922. In the end, she created a sprawling structure covering 6 acres with 160 rooms, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 40 staircases, 47 fireplaces, 2,000 doors and 10,000 windows. It cost $5.5 million at a time when workmen earned 50 cents a day! On top of that, Mrs. Winchester left enough materials so that workers could have continued building for another 80 years!
Presently, the Winchester Mystery House is open for tours daily, everyday except Christmas. But the house stands as more than a tourist attraction. It is a silent witness to the dread of death that holds millions of people in bondage. In the minds of most people, even those who are not particularly religious, there is a feeling of mystery that surrounds the thought of death. Even as Christians we admit to a sense of mystery as we contemplate death, more particularly the thought of dying. That is not to be unexpected since Paul told the Corinthian believers that death is an enemy, “the last enemy that shall be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Paul went on to declare that the great mystery is not death, but the fact that some Christians will never die and that those Christians who do die will someday receive a resurrected body! “Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality….and...then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory!”
Death is an enemy, but for the Christian it is an enemy that has been defeated through the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, instead of spending our lives attempting to keep death at a distance by “always abounding in the work of constructing a Mystery House on earth,” believers can confidently invest our lives “always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Rather than leaving a 160-room mansion behind on earth when we die, Christians can anticipate moving into that place the Lord promised he would prepare in heaven for those who believe in him (John 14:2). Death will be forever destroyed, “swallowed up in victory”, its sting no longer felt, its mystery forever and finally gone.
- Pastor Alan Mathna