Evil is Not Power May 24, 2017 Hymns 447, 99, 9

Transcription

1 Evil is Not Power May 24, 2017 Hymns 447, 99, 9 The Bible Isaiah 41:28 there was, 29 There was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion. Matthew 12:18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. Matt 3:16,17 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Matt 4:1-11 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. James 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

2 Eph 6:12,13 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the ruler of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Psalms 37: 7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Isaiah 41:9 Thou art, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought. For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, By Mary Baker Eddy 563:4-7 We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness? 566:25-8 Revelation xii. 7, 8. And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. The Old Testament assigns to the angels, God s divine messages, different offices. Michael s characteristic is spiritual strength. He leads the hosts of heaven against the power of sin, Satan, and fights the holy wars. Gabriel has the more quiet task of imparting a sense of the ever-presence of ministering Love. These angels deliver us from the depths. Truth and Love come nearer in the hour of woe, when strong faith or spiritual strength wrestles and prevails through the understanding of God. The Gabriel of His presence has no contests. To infinite, ever-present Love, all is Love, and there is no error, no sin, sickness, nor death.

3 569:24 The sin, which one has made his bosom companion, comes back to him at last with accelerated force, for the devil knoweth his time is short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is temporal, not eternal. The dragon is at last stung to death by his own malice; but how many periods of torture it may take to remove all sin, must depend upon sin s obduracy. 17:8-10 God God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease and death. 65:13-16 The broadcast powers of evil so conspicuous to-day show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of the age, struggling against the advancing spiritual era. 30:14 Rabbi and priest taught the Mosaic law, which said: An eye for an eye, and Whoso sheddeth man s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Not so did Jesus, the new executor for God, present the divine law of Love, which blesses even those that curse it. 473:18 In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced the teaching and practice of Christianity, affording the proof of Christianity s truth and love; but to reach his example and to test its unerring Science according to his rule, healing sickness, sin, and death, a better understanding of God as divine Principle, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, is required. 102:30-31 Mankind must learn that evil is not power. Its so-called despotism is but a phase of nothingness. 474:26-31 If evil is real, Truth must make it so; but error, not Truth, is the author of the unreal, and the unreal vanishes, while all that is real is eternal. The apostle says that the mission of Christ is to destroy the works of the devil. 19:1-3 It was therefore Christ s purpose to reconcile man to God, not God to man. Love and Truth are not at war with God s image and likeness. 71:1 Nothing is real and eternal, nothing is Spirit, but God and His idea. Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense. 192:24 Evil is not power. It is a mockery of strength, which erelong betrays its weakness and falls, never to rise. 447:20-22 Expose and denounce the claims of evil and disease in all their forms, but realize no reality in them.

4 92:21-25,26-27 Uncover error, and it turns the lie upon you. Until the fact concerning error namely, its nothingness appears, the moral demand will not be met, and the ability to make nothing of error will be wanting. The foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God. 196:18 Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven. 475:31-4 A mortal sinner is not God s man. Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals. They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil, which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo. In divine Science, God and the real man are inseparable as divine Principle and idea. 16:7-8, 15 Our Master taught his disciples one brief prayer, which we name after him the Lord s Prayer. In the phrase, Deliver us from evil, the original properly reads, Deliver us from the evil one. This reading strengthens our scientific apprehension of the petition, for Christian Science teaches us that the evil one, or one evil, is but another name for the first lie and all liars. 470:5 The supposed existence of more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry. This error assumed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the spiritual presence of Life as infinite Truth without an unlikeness, and the loss of Love as ever present and universal. 472:24-30 All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal. That which He creates is good, and He makes all that is made. Therefore the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not true, because they are not of God. 473:45 The Science of Mind disposes of all evil. Truth, God, is not the father of error. 476:6 only Error, urged to its final limits, is self-destroyed. 447:12-14 Ignorance, subtlety, or false charity does not forever conceal error; evil will in time disclose and punish itself. 227: 7-15 The law of the divine Mind must end human bondage, or mortals will continue unaware of man s inalienable rights and in subjection to hopeless slavery, because some public teachers permit an ignorance of divine power an ignorance that is the foundation of continued bondage and of human suffering. Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to foresee the doom of all oppression.

5 563:1-2 Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal. 565:23 After the stars sang together and all was primeval harmony, the material lie made war upon the spiritual idea; but this only impelled the idea to rise to the zenith of demonstration, destroying sin, sickness, and death, and to be caught up unto God, to be found in its divine Principle. 330:19 God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be, Life, Truth, Love. Spirit is divine Principle, and divine Principle is Love, and Love is Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore there is in reality one Mind only, because there is one God. 571:15 At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good. Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you. The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity. 475:28-31 The, The real man cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom man is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin. 6:3-6 Divine Love corrects and governs man. Men may pardon, but this divine Principle alone reforms the sinner. God is not separate from the wisdom He bestows. 275:17 No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows. 2:23 only God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more?