APPLY Bible-based GEMs of healing Love!
USE BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS as SPRINGBOARDS TO TRANSFORM YOUR MODERN-DAY DEMONSTRATIONS!
Let God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with insights from Cobbey Crisler & others as found in The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Love”
for January 24-30, 2022
(Cobbey’s insights are shared with the blessing of Janet Crisler janetcrisler7@gmail.com)
by Warren Huff, CedarS Executive Director Emeritus, warren@cedarscamps.org
ENJOY God’s “freaky-fast” (instantaneous) healings that come with guarantees of No convalescence, No relapse, No side-effects and No after-effects! (Cobbey Crisler below on Ps. 33:9, 11, cit. B16)
[Cobbey on Psalms 33:9, citation B3:]
“Chapter 33, Verse 9, we’ve already alluded to. The swiftness of God’s treatment. It’s not a process, according to the Bible. It’s not recuperation. It’s not convalescence, or gradual recovery. “He spake, and it was [done],” In case we have had room in our thinking for a possibility of relapse, it is stated, “He commanded, and it stood fast.” No side effects, no after effects.
Psalms 33:11 (cit. B16 from last week)
“In Verse 11, “The advice or counsel of the LORD stands” for how long? “For ever.” What good I that, if we aren’t there forever to receive such advice? “The thoughts of his heart to all generations.” What good are God’s thoughts unless those are the potions we are supposed to be taking, imbibing, ingesting. God’s thoughts, His potions. Take them, eat them up, drink them in. That makes the Bible a pharmacopoeia which is a word the dictionary says describes “preparations issued by official authority and recognized as a standard.” (SH 593:4)] Pharmacopoeia, which is a word that in its ordinary meaning without uplifting it to what the Bible would require of the term anew would just simply be an authority to which one would turn to know where the remedies all are.”
[Warren: The infinite ALL is the totally reliable “BIG Pharma”that is the “Pandemic Panacea” for which we pray. It’s worthy of daily investing in with a “PROPHET” motive. (a “spiritual seer” inspirational motive of “the disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth.”]
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
HOPE IN GOD (WHO ALONE CAN QUENCH THIRSTY SOULS) TO FIND
A SURE CURE TO DEPRESSION (& put an END to CONTINUAL FEARS & TEARS)!
[Warren on Psalm 42:2 (and verses 5 & 8 and Cobbey Crisler on Ps. 42:11, in (& after) citation B5] “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. O my God, my soul is cast down within me: (Psalms 42:5, 6)
[W: Psalm 42, verses 2, 3 and 5 start with the psalmist acknowledging a thirst, lack, or seeming ‘hole in his soul.’ “… my soul panteth for thee O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God…” This is manifested in “tears… day and night…” and in questioning the existence of God— “Where is thy God?” (Verses 3 and 10)
That seeming void is filled with divine cure-alls for every time of the day and night—God’s commanded “lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song… and my prayer unto the God of my life.” (Ps. 42:8/citation B5) These cure-alls are a panacea that end every pandemic – even one of depression and hopelessness.]
[Cobbey: “Psalm 42, Verse 11 is a refrain in this psalm and the next. [Ps. 43.5] It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves, “Why art thou cast down?” Depression, if not an economic fact, seems to be a mental one at present. “Why art thou cast down? Examine the reasons. “Why art thou disquieted within me?” That’s getting mad in a sense. That’s challenging what we are accepting without question. Why am I depressed? Why is this disquiet? What’s the reason for it? Then notice the remedy. “Hope thou in God: praise God, hope in God. The health of our countenance is in God. “
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
[Cobbey: “Verse 11 [of Psalm 42] is the effect of that [enemy] thought [of questioning the existence of God in verse 10]. Our “soul is cast down,” our whole identity depressed, “disquieted.” Only “hope in God” restored will restore “the health of our countenance,” showing the physical effect of the mental cause.”
“War in Heaven: Conquest of Inner Space,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
ACT LIKE YOU KNOW THAT PROPHESY IS FULFILLED NOW & THAT INCURABILITY IS HEALED BY CHANGING YOUR CONCEPT & BELIEVING! Cobbey Crisler on Mark 1:14, 15 to; 40-42 (cit. B10)
[Cobbey:] “Mark 1, Verse 14. We have “John put in prison.” He has already disappeared from the scene.
And, ‘‘Jesus comes into Galilee, and his work begins.”
Verse 15. There are four foundational aspects to the gospel we need to study. Normally, an architect might refer to just one cornerstone in a building. But let’s remember that all four of the corners have cornerstones. To that degree, let’s ask ourselves if this is not a clue to understanding Mark. We have a foursquare gospel, and at each corner we have a particular point. If this is true, you should be able to compile the information that follows in the gospel under one of the following four headings.
(1) The announcement that, “the time is fulfilled.” What does this mean? Prophecy. The time for the fulfillment of prophesy has arrived. So, everything is just brimming in the gospel of Mark with this great news. All of the expectation is over for the Messianic prophecy: We have a fulfillment now. ‘What could be more exciting than to be living in an era of fulfilled prophecy? Nothing, apparently, because this is what impels the gospel writers to pick up their pens….
Study Mark as if it were a textbook, filled with data that Jesus needed us to know in order to follow him. It is a handbook, so to speak, a textbook where we can find data that can be applied. Those four foundational points, under “the time is fulfilled,” you will see over and over again, explicit or implicit, in the text.
BONUS of other 3 foundational points):
(2) The second one, “the kingdom of God is at no distance.” It is right here. Even that idea is radical to Christendom today often because the kingdom of God, or often heaven, is considered to be so far away from any of us now. It is out of reach, and we’re not really behaving ourselves sufficiently to get there. It takes Palomar’s 200 inch reflecting telescope to even get a glimpse of it. But we find the founder of Christianity saying, ”Not so.” His theology is based on the fact that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”
Do we act like it is? We moan and we groan most of the time. We wouldn’t if our state of mind was the “kingdom-of-God-is-at-hand” and the “prophecies-are-fulfilled.” But those are only two of the cornerstones.
(3) The third one is “Repent!” That means to change your concept. Now, we’re going very deeply to the roots of what is required of us to get anywhere spiritually. The problem is mental or he never would have stated it in this way.
Verse 40. A leper comes to him. We already know what the early message in the Scriptures is about healing leprosy? Notice what the patient does. Study the patient’s role. Then study the healer’s role, namely Jesus. The leper comes, “beseeching, kneeling, and saying, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” What does that show is occurring in his thinking? Is he ready? Again, there’s your key. Receptivity is the key to healing. You know, a leper was not supposed to approach anyone. He was to remain at least six feet away and ringing a bell. He was supposed, according to the Torah, to shout everywhere he went, “Unclean, unclean.” Imagine the label one attached to oneself. No wonder it was incurable. You never got off the subject. Unclean, unclean.
Here, he’s breaking through that ritually required barrier and saying, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” Look at the difference just in thought there. From “Unclean, unclean” [to] “if thou wilt thou canst make me clean.” Jesus noticed how the healer here works. [Verse 41,] “Moved with compassion, put forth [his] hand, and touched him.” That’s a no-no. You know what the ritual law said he had to do after that? Go home and bathe. And send out all his clothes to the laundromat and stay there for at least seven hours before he could even mingle with humanity again, because touching a leper made you unclean. [Voice:”…took the serpent by the tail.”] Took the serpent by the tail, good point. No fear.
Also, if we’re studying the healing method of Jesus. If we’re saying that this course on “Heal the Sick: A Scriptural Record” is the record of how we, too, should heal the sick, if this is what Jesus had in mind, or what God is revealing to humanity through the Bible, then what else happened when Jesus touch that leper?
Just ask yourself. Put yourself in that leper’s position. Then stand back and appreciate deeply Jesus’ humanity. How long had it been since that leper had felt a human touch? Did Jesus have to touch him humanly to heal him? [Voice: “No, he didn’t.”] He’s proved in other cases he did not have to. [Voice: “I think he wanted to prove that he wasn’t afraid of leprosy, and nobody should be.”] Alright, that’s also a good point. But look at it from the leper’s point of view. Did Jesus do everything from his own point of view? In other words, like, “I’m gonna do this because I want to show you all I’m not afraid of this dread disease”? No. That’s part of it. [Voice: “Love”] But that great love that saw the man’s need. The love that meets the human need Jesus was expressing there. That man must have just responded in such a way that he was healed immediately.
Jesus makes him do something. It’s a rare case where Jesus ever does it all for the patient. He says, “Be thou clean.” Whose responsibility? [Voice: “His.”] “Be thou clean.”
Let’s remember now as we see these things occurring in the early moments of Jesus’ earthly career, that within them, this is not just something that’s springing full blown. There is a continuity, isn’t there? We’ve spend the whole morning with the continuity, the promise, the prophecy, the indications of healing to come up to Jeremiah’s [31:33] prediction of the New Covenant and it would be “written within on our hearts.”
When Jesus touches this leper and heals him, there comes with it all that authority of God’s revelation behind him, nothing new, as old as God and His revelation to man. Yet, don’t we hark, in a way, to some of the earlier records? For instance, when Jesus tells this man in Verse 44 to go “to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded.” Maybe behind that stands that statement of God to Moses [Exodus 4:8] that if they do not believe “the voice of the first sign that they will believe the voice of the latter sign,” or healing? What greater evidence of one’s religion or understanding could you have than the evidence of a healed case? Especially of one that could very well have been a form of incurable leprosy.
“Heal the Sick”: A Scriptural Record, by B. Cobbey Crisler**
BREAK ALL CONVENTIONS NOT UPHELD by God to REWARD LOVE with HEALING, ONENESS, PEACE…
Cobbey Crisler on Luke 7:36-48 (B14) & Jesus sensing repentant humility in the woman who washed his feet
[Cobbey:] “In Verse 36 of Chapter 7, we have the incident of a woman coming into the Pharisee’s house where Jesus had been invited for a meal. We’re told in Verse 37), “the woman was a sinner.” In no case is this woman Biblically identified with Mary Magdalene. Very early tradition began to call her Mary Magdalene because of thinking that’s what it might have meant when it described Mary Magdalene as one out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils. Who could get worse than seven devils?
“It was just simply moved over into this context. There is nothing Biblical that ever identifies Mary Magdalene’s name with it, however. It’s an early tradition but there is no Biblical authority for it.
Again, if Jesus is interested in a state of mind, let’s study it from that angle. In fact, if we studied all the gospels from the state mind that it presented, and that Jesus said we should change to, then, it would be like an entirely different Bible to us.
“Here this woman comes right in. In that day and age one would eat at a table on a reclining couch supporting your head with one hand resting on your elbow. Your feet would be away from the table so that your attention would not be there. The woman could very easily have slipped in unnoticed and begun “to wash Jesus’ feet with the tears” that were pouring from her eyes, and “wiping his feet with the hair of her head” (Verse 38). If you remember what a dusty land that is, and that shoes were open sandals, one might get a little bit more of an idea what this woman had undertaken without regard for the effect on her hair among other things.
There was a deep feeling motivating this, there’s no question about it. The Pharisee had forgotten some of the elementary hospitalities that have been passed right down to our century.
“He hadn’t provided water for his guest. Jesus pointed that out later. While the Pharisee was blaming this woman for intruding on his dinner party, this woman had introduced some things that Simon himself had failed to do. We know his name is Simon.
If he happens to be the same Simon who is at a home in Bethany, according to one of the other gospels, he
had been a leper, or perhaps one that Jesus had cured.
And if that’s true, imagine someone who should have been filled with gratitude. That’s a state of breathing
in a Holy-Ghost-form of thinking, yet having an attitude against this particular woman and her needs.
“Simon isn’t very good at reading thoughts. In fact, he says, “This man, if he were a prophet, should have known who this woman is” (Verse 29). Indeed Jesus did know. Simon hadn’t really read Jesus’ thought at all but Jesus certainly had read his. Simon “spoke within himself,” it says. He didn’t say a thing out loud.
And in Verse 40, “Jesus said, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, “Master, say on.” There’s sort of poetry to it.
“The interesting result of this parable is that the parable doesn’t really speak to where the woman is mentally. The woman is beyond the minimal requirements of the parable. In this parable Jesus told Simon that the one who had owed the most, and was forgiven the most, would then love the most. Love after the fact of forgiveness.
“This woman is well beyond that and Jesus knows it. This woman has loved even before the concept of forgiveness bas come up, this woman has shown a deep confrontation with herself and where she has been mentally. She is simply expressing it in the presence of someone whom she feels could comfort and meet her needs. Just sensing that the environment in which Jesus moved would help her.
“This woman was part of a despised profession. The ceremonial purity and public professions of piety of the Pharisees would necessitate a great show of contrast between those states of mind. The surprising thing is, Jesus is going to find that the state of mind of the woman is more receptive and filled with love, hospitality
and repentance than the Pharisee who seems to fill the category of one of the woes that we’d heard already full, with no room in Simon’s thought.
“In Verse 48, Jesus speaks to the woman for the first time. Imagine addressing a woman, especially in a Pharisee’s house, where this woman clearly didn’t belong. (At that time, the most devout rabbis and strict constructionists wouldn’t dare to speak, even to their women relatives, if they met them in the street.)
“Jesus is breaking all convention.
Apparently, he doesn’t think that God is behind that convention. He says, “Your sins are forgiven,” addressing the woman directly. Up to now, she’s just regarded as an object, an object of scorn, derision, repulsion and a sex object. A mere “thing”.
“Jesus addressed her through his lenses that magnified for him the sense of God’s manhood and womanhood, “Your sins are forgiven,” he said. Immediately that set a mental buzz around the table. They said in Verse 49, “within themselves,
“Who is this that forgiveth sins also? “Jesus unperturbed, still addressed the woman,
“Your faith hath saved thee.”
Imagine how she came, with very little peace in thought. She left with her mental state changed, and one is left also with the thought that her entire life must have changed as a result.”Why does Jesus make such a great effort for the woman to comprehend that a change in her mental state has even overcome sin? It can be done because it is implicit in the word “dominion.” If we’re stuck with our mistakes, there’s no way out. If we can solve our problems, then Jesus would have to indicate such as a matter of encouragement to humanity. “Your faith hath saved you.” Your mental state filled with something that has come directly from the Holy Ghost. Faith is a state of mind. “Go in peace.”
“Luke the Researcher,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
ELEVATE ALL YOU DO as well as THE RACE! MAKE ADAPTATIONS and RECEIVE DIVINE BESTOWALS! [Warren & Geith Plimmer, CS on Science & Health 13:2 (citation S17)
I’ll always remember something that Geith Plimmer, a Christian Science Lecturer living in Great Britain, said about part of citation S17; “Love is impartial and universal in its adaptations and bestowals.” (SH 13:2-3) Geith commented that “one will be ready to receive divine bestowals only when ready to make divinely-directed adaptations.” Humility and love are the keys to open up a willingness to let “Thy will be done” and to make right changes and appropriate adaptations to a humanly-willful or outlined plan.
DEMONSTRATE THE HEALING EFFECTS OF “BEING OF ONE ACCORD!
Cobbey Crisler on Acts 5:12-16/cit. B16 (plus “postlude” verses 17-19)
[Cobbey:] Acts 5, verse 12, gives us our familiar phrase of unity. It’s what? “They were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.” (See below)
Acts 5:12 And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.
You see, they’re still connected with the temple. It’s still effective Judaism really.
Acts 5:13 And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.
Acts 5:14 And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)
Now, Acts 5, verse 15, shows that healing is occurring all over. As a matter of fact, the indiscriminate public sense of it was “that even Peter’s shadow passing on people seemed to heal people.” (See below)
It was that easy in those early days.
Acts 5:15 Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.
“Many came out bringing sick people,” in verse 16. (See below)
Acts 5:16 There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.
“And this stirs up – it seems like healing stirs up Ecclesiastism more than anything else,” because Ecclesiastism isn’t capable of getting to the level (apparently) which permits them to do such healing. (See below)
Acts 5:17 Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with indignation,
And, in Acts 5, verse 18, “they high priest gets up and they throw the apostles in a common prison.”
Acts 5, verse 19, look at the power of collective prayer — “It can open prison doors. And they go back to the temple, and they start talking.” (See below, Acts 5:19, 20)
Acts 5:19, 20 “But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth and said, Go, stand and speak in the templeto the people all the words of this life.”
“After the Master, What? The Book of Acts,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
TALK OF “TENDER MERCIES” & QUIT FOCUSING ON NEGATIVITY:
Cherish “… his tender mercies … over all his works.” (Ps. 145:9-11/cit. B20)
Enjoy a serenade of “Tender Mercies” by two Christian Science Practitioners! See and hear Craig Ghislin, CS, and David Price, CS, two of CedarS Met contributors, singing a guitar duet of “Tender Mercies” on the back porch of our new Care House where they were serving.
[Click on either: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PToeaQ_CWLE&feature=youtu.be
By accentuating the harmony, positivity and blessings that flow from receiving God’s “tender mercies,” we can and should eliminate the curses of strife and negativity that daily news and ads play up, especially leading up to an election.
(Ps. 145:10/cit. B20) “All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord; and thy saints shall bless thee”—as two of them do in the “Tender Mercies” duet from the deck of CedarS log Care House.
Cobbey Crisler points out in the next verses that we should encourage one another to share examples of God’s power, TO STOP FOCUSING THOUGHT ON STRIFE AND TO QUIT TALKING ABOUT ILLNESSES (and viruses)!
Cobbey Crisler on Ps. 145:11
“Psalm 145, Verse 11. A receptive, spiritually-educated, human race going to God with total commitment for the answer to all ills will no longer talk about illnesses. “They shall speak of the glory of God’s kingdom, and talk of thy power.“’
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
