Deep and Unsearchable - Rom. 11:25-36
One of the strangest houses in America is located near San Jose, California. After nearly forty years of building, the house is still not completed, and material sufficient for another forty years construction is on hand in three large storehouses.
Estimated to have cost about five million dollars, the rambling structure has two thousand doors, ten thousand windows, and 150,000 panes of glass. It boasts forty stairways, forty-seven fireplaces, and thirteen bathrooms.
Because not a dozen of the 150 rooms are on the same level, the visitor must constantly go up and down stairways. There are all sorts of bizarre stairs to bewilder and mislead, but most of them have thirteen steps. Each of the steps is two-and-a-half inches high with an eighteen-inch tread. In one place it is necessary to walk up forty-five steps in order to ascend eight-and-one-half feet, and there are nine turns in the staircase. Some of the stairways are like dead-end streets; you climb them and find yourself against a blank wall.
Hallways are usually only two feet wide. There are trapdoors in many of the floors. Windows of all sizes and shapes are to be found not only in walls and ceilings, but also in chimneys; hundreds of art-glass windows open upon blank walls. Doors are built in the most unexpected places—some opening directly outwards from upper-story rooms, so that one could easily fall out.
Only the best materials have been used in the construction of this fabulous mansion. The floors are of the finest woods; no veneer is used. There are thousands of square feet of surfaces finished like a piano top. Art-glass gleams in windows and doors. Gold and silver chandeliers hang in many rooms. Gold and silver leaves decorate some of the walls. The ceiling of the ballroom was engraved by a famous artist so as to give the effect of actual cob webs.
Pushbuttons are found everywhere. Some are connected to gongs and bells; many others have no obvious purpose.
The grounds about the mansion are surrounded by dense hedges and a high fence, over which no one can climb. Within are lower gardens, trees, and shrubs brought from many parts of the world.
It was after her husband and her only child died that Mrs. Winchester came to California and bought a seventeen-room house then under construction. She was an ardent spiritualist and believed that she had received a message from the spirits telling her that as long as she kept building she would live; but if she should stop building, then she would die. So Mrs. Winchester began to work out her own salvation and hope for eternal life. She withdrew into her mysterious mansion and refused to see anyone.
In the thirty-eight years of her life in the house, she never visited another home, rode a train, or entered a public building. When President Theodore Roosevelt came to visit Santa Clara Valley, the San Jose Chamber of Commerce tried to get Mrs. Winchester to receive him, but she refused.
Mrs. Winchester finally died. Her patchwork mansion was purchased and opened as a public curiosity.
Pride is the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the one who has it.
A minister, a Boy Scout, and a computer expert were the only passengers on a small plane. The pilot came back to the cabin and said that the plane was going down but there were only three parachutes and four people. The pilot added, “I should have one of the parachutes because I have a wife and three small children.” So he took one and jumped.
The computer whiz said, “I should have one of the parachutes because I am the smartest man in the world and everyone needs me.” So he took one and jumped.
The minister turned to the Boy Scout and with a sad smile said, “You are young and I have lived a rich life, so you take the remaining parachute, and I’ll go down with the plane.”
The Boy Scout said, “Relax, Reverend, the smartest man in the world just picked up my knapsack and jumped out!