A woman by the name of Margaretha Zelle arrived in Paris in 1904. She had only half a franc in her pocket. At that time, thousands of people were immigrating to Paris, but many of them fell into prostitution because there was not work to be done. Margaretha decided to do something different. She began promoting herself as a Hindu mystic. She had traveled with her family to Java and Sumatra when she was young and remembered rituals which had been performed.
Margaretha took on the stage name “Mata Hari” and she would perform her rituals in a room filled with statues and relics from the Hindu religion and from Java. She told stories from the Indian mythologies and folks stories. She became extremely popular. People came from all over to see and hear her. She was even invited to Berlin, Vienna, and Milan.
As reporters began doing their research, they asked questions. And the more questions they asked “Mata Hari,” the more her story changed. It came out that she actually was from the Netherlands. She shared that she had grown up on the island of Java and had spent time in India. In 1905, her name was well known through the streets of Paris.
Eventually, however, her past caught up with her. She was arrested near the end of World War I, tried, convicted, and executed as a German spy. It was during her trial that the facts came out – her real name, her history, and that she was actually from Friesland, Holland and had no Eastern blood in her at all!
But it was her mysterious air that made her so popular. When someone is mysterious, the audience (or public) can make out of them what they want. I have talked to individuals over the years who act like the “Truth” is more complicated, more involved, or even more mysterious than how I have presented it to them.
It is not unlike how Satan tries to make God’s word mysterious or more complicated than it really is. The early false doctrine of Gnosticism suggested that certain individuals had special knowledge (“gnosis”) from God. But Paul argues in passages like Colossians 2 that the fullness of God is found in Jesus Christ (2:9). I have heard that brother Tom Holland was teaching a class at David Lipscomb in homiletics and a student stood up to give a lesson and started with “I’m going to tell you something you probably haven’t heard before.” Brother Holland replied, “You better not.”
There is nothing new in the Scriptures. In my studies of church history, I have learned that there is nothing new or distinctive about what the “churches of Christ” teach. Some other religious group, somewhere, teaches some of the same doctrines that the church teaches, like not using mechanical instruments of music in worship or observing the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s Day. It is because they have studied the same text we have.
The Gospel is no mystery. If we can’t sit down with someone from a different language or culture and study the Scriptures and come to the same understanding (assuming we both have good and honest hearts), then there might be something amiss in our handling of the Scriptures. The Scriptures ought to be self-interpreting, self-enlightening, and self-correcting. Don’t be fooled by Satan working in mysterious ways!
Paul Holland
