There’s a story I read that apparently originated in Psychology Today. As the story goes, a number of years ago the prince of Grenada, an heir to the Spanish crown, was sentences to life in solitary confinement in Madrid’s ancient prison. The dreadful, dirty, and dreary nature of the place earned it the name, “The Place of the Skull.” Everyone knew that once you were in, you would never come out alive. The prince was given one book to read the entire time… the Bible.
With only one book to read, he read it over and over again. Hundreds of times he read it through. Until finally, after 33 years of imprisonment, he died. When they came to remove his body and clean out the cell, they discovered notes that he had written on the soft stone walls using nails. They were notes like:
Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse of the Bible
Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabet except the letter J
The ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Esther is the longest verse in the Bible
No word or name of more than six syllables can be found in the Bible
He had spend 33 years studying the greatest book of all time. But from all we know, there’s no indication that he ever made any religious or spiritual commitment to Christ. He just learned a lot of trivia.