The Challenge of the Cults CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

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1 The Christian Science website is bright and inviting, accompanied on each page with a symbol comprising the empty cross and a crown, encased in a circle. On the perimeter of the circle are the words, Heal the sick raise the dead, Cleanse the lepers, Cast out demons. The Challenge of the Cults CHRISTIAN SCIENCE In their Beliefs and teachings, Tenets of Christian Science, they claim summarize the essential points of Christian Science, all of which are rooted in the Bible 1. As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life. 2. We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God's image and likeness. 3. We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts. 4. We acknowledge Jesus' atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death. 5. We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter. 6. And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure. Apart from a few words and phrases, it all seems fairly innocuous and inoffensive... and yet, what do they mean by the Bible as our sufficient guide the spiritual understanding that casts out evil sin is punished so long as the belief lasts unfolding man's unity with God Christ Jesus the Way-shower the allness of the soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of

2 2 matter that Mind? Alongside Jesus words, Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (Jn. 8:32), they have a quote from a rather enlightening quote from Shakespeare, There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so? Is that true?! Is that what Jesus was saying?! The quote is taken from Shakespeare s Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, and the more complete quote is there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. Well, then it isn't one to you, since nothing is really good or bad in itself it's all what a person thinks about it. Are a few alarms beginning to sound?! Is good and bad set in stone? Or is good and bad relative, depending on the circumstances or is there even such a thing as good and bad?! Let s be candid Of all the cults claiming to be Biblically-based, Christian Science is one of the most interesting. Not only does it deny the essential doctrines of Christianity but also it has completely reinterpreted the Bible, as we shall see. It drastically redefines the Bible s culture and terminology and rips thousands of Scriptures out of their historical and Biblical contexts. The result is a non-christian mixture of metaphysical and philosophical thoughts. Indeed, Christian Science is so foreign to the Bible that if it didn t use words like Jesus, Trinity, Love, Grace, Sin, etc., you would never guess it had anything to do with the Bible. As with the Mormons and the Book of Mormon, the Jehovah Witnesses and their New World Translation, the Roman Catholics and their Apocrypha, Christian Science has the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This is their primary anchor of spiritual knowledge, which begins with the quotes from Jesus and Shakespeare, with the addition of words from Mary Baker G. Eddy, Oh! Thou hast heard my prayer! And I am blest! This is Thy high behest: - Thou here, and everywhere. In other words, This is Thy command/dictate that is, the writing of Mary Baker Eddy is on a par with the Bible. To be careful, though, Christian Science would disclaim this conclusion but would instead present the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as an impeccable means of teaching the truth. Mary Baker Eddy was born in 1821, the daughter of a farmer in New Hampshire, in the most north-easterly state in the US the region where other cults and sects originated during the 19 th century. The youngest of six children, - three boys and three girls, - her childhood was blighted with poor health,

3 3 physically and emotionally. She was often treated with morphine and hypnotism, and influenced by many of the religious attractions which were developing at that time such as mesmerism, spiritualism, Quakerism, and Mormonism. Such allurements appealed to her, and contributed to her becoming known as a healer. She experienced the tragedy of her brother dying at a young age, and also her husband who died six months after they were married, leaving her alone and pregnant. She was engaged to be married again, but her fiancée died her mother also died within three months. She did manage to marry again, but that marriage ended in divorce. Nonetheless, throughout her miseries, she pursued healing which led to her successfully establishing the Christian Science movement. It is claimed she found the only respite from reading the Bible, from which she received spiritual insights, and she also discovered healing from an apparently life-threatening accident. She pursued her infatuation for healing others, and she considered her new Christian Science as a new understanding of God as an Infinite Spirit, beyond the limitations of the material senses. She first published her Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1875, founded a church in Boston, Massachusetts for ten years, and in 1871 opened a college, The Massachusetts Metaphysical College, to teach her system of healing. She died of pneumonia in 1910, at the age of 89. Currently, there are almost 1,700 Christian Science churches in 76 countries. They have no ministers, instead, they describe the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as their pastor and preacher. Bible lessons are studied daily and read aloud on Sunday by two elected lay members of each local congregation. Christian Science churches also hold weekly testimonial meetings, at which congregation members relate experiences of healing and regeneration. Christian Science explains, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, written to explain Christian Science and how it heals, is based on her years of Bible study and provides insight for reading the Scriptures with greater spiritual understanding. In other words, both are required together. She wrote, - actually, the New York Times revealed how she plagiarized material from the writings of P.P. Quimby (another American spiritual and mesmerist healer who had treated Eddy for one of her conditions) and Francis Lieber (a political philosopher and gymnast), - she wrote, I should blush to write a Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as I have, were it of human

4 4 origin, and I, apart from God, its author; but as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven in divine metaphysics, I cannot be super-modest in my estimate of the Christian Science textbook. This explains their attitude to Scripture, As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life n.b. sufficient. In it, - alongside her desecration of her use of Scripture, - she taught that God is incorporeal (bodiless) Spirit the creative Principle, supreme, omnipotent Father-Mother, omnipresent, omniscient the only intelligence and all that actually exists. God is Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love. "God is All-in-all." Nothing else exists, but Him. We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. Jesus Christ was a divine, to be more explicit, the divine idea of sonship. We are all sons and daughters of God, and the reason Jesus came was to show us the way (the way-shower ) to realize Truth, which is God ( unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower ). We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter. and man in God's image and likeness, in other words, the universe and humans are not real, but reflections of God s likeness and image, which is Spirit, without beginning or end. A material world, therefore (they say), is an illusion and delusion because a material world and material body are the results of erroneous thought and ignorance of the true and only nature of reality, which is spiritual. They conclude God is all that truly exists. We are not real (!). As far as death is concerned, death is the belief in death and there is no actual death because as humans, we are immortal spirit. They teach that after what we call death occurs, our spiritual development toward Truth continues until all evil/error/failings/faults/flaws destroy themselves. Heaven and Hell do not places, but are merely states of consciousness post-death. What can be described as Heaven is the self-made eternal bliss of realising oneness with God, and Hell is the self-made anguish of believing in pain and death. Sin, - more preferably, evil is an illusion, because there is nothing real but God, and God is completely good And the Hell sin creates is the person not realising their true nature as spirit. On the other hand, salvation lies in bringing ourselves into harmony with our true nature as God s reflection/image, through good works, and obedience in following Christ s example, We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and

5 5 his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter. There then follows two basic commandments: that we turn only to God, perfect Mind, for guidance we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus When we receive that Mind, healing and immortality are realised by becoming conscious that the only true reality is God, which is Love, and that results in us reaching God s likeness. At that point, they say, one realizes the error of belief in the reality of suffering and evil, these images of thought impressed upon the mortal mind can be altered, thus banishing sickness, death, and sin - testimony to the power of faith in God, of Mind over matter. How do we conclude? The proponents of Christian Science consider their teachings to be consistent with the original teachings of Christ and the Scriptures. They are evidently not. Neither are they consistent with Science. Therefore, Christian Science is neither Christian nor science, - it is an oxymoron, a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. And a transitory reading of their Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures comes across as a rambling exposition of nonsense Listen to this, Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it. Goodness attains the demonstration of Truth. A request that God will save us is not all that is required. The mere habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates the belief in God as humanly circumscribed an error which impedes spiritual growth. Christian Science is yet another example of the alluring deceit perpetrated by the master of evil, Satan himself, who first spun his enthralling deception in the Garden of Eden. God s condemnation of his falsehoods and errors remains today. Mary Baker Eddy belongs to a long line who have perpetuated the devil s deception and the only means by which we can contend against such deceit is by upholding the pure and unadulterated truth of God s Word, from beginning to end, in the same way the psalmist did, Ps. 119:10 With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. 11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. 12 Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.