“Sell all” to make your own the healing GEM of Oneness with divine Love!
Friday, April 14th, 2023
By Warren Huff (with insights from Cobbey Crisler)
Click here to print PDF version
“Sell all” to make your own the healing GEM of Oneness with God! (Matt. 13:45)
God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with insights from Cobbey & OTHERS
as inspired by The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Doctrine of Atonement”
for Sunday, April 16, 2023
(Cobbey Crisler’s insights are shared with the blessing of Janet Crisler janetcrisler7@gmail.com)
by Warren Huff, CedarS Executive Director Emeritus, warren@cedarscamps
RESPECT ALL! — CHERISH UNIVERSAL HUMANITY—
DO GOOD FOR ALL MANKIND WITH A “WALK TO EMMAUS” KNOWLEDGE AND SPIRIT! Cobbey Crisler on part of the Responsive Reading (RR)/Acts 10:38-41 (+verses before & after)
“Acts 10, verse 34, begins a lecture or sermon to the first group of Gentiles. And the opening statement that Peter makes is one that could be well considered by every denomination of Christianity today… Here Peter expressed his new view of God, that God is no respecter of persons, that God speaks to receptivity.
Acts 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
This new view of God, of course, leads to this next question: Should man as well be no respecter of persons? This is a tradition-shattering concept.
And Acts 10, verse 35, Peter summarizes it by saying “in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” …
Then he begins to explain to Cornelius and the friends and acquaintances of Cornelius, the history of early Christianity. “The beginning of Christianity is traced from Galilee after John’s baptism, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth.” … Of course, that word “anointed” immediately identifies Jesus as the Messiah. This is a point that Peter is obviously going to get across to this Gentile audience that would need some instruction in this. (See below)
(Bonus Prelude to RR/Acts 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
And you find in Acts 10, verse 43, he does that by stating that “all the prophets had given witness to the Messiah, namely Jesus.”…
As soon as Peter gets into this “Walked to Emmaus” approach, in other words the comprehension of Jesus’ role in the earlier scripture, we find in Acts 10, verse 44 that “the Holy Ghost falls on all the listeners.” …
It wasn’t Peter’s idea that this should happen; it’s at the Holy Ghost’s initiative. This is disturbing to some of those that came with Peter: Jewish Christians.
And we will find it becomes even more disturbing to other elements in the church later on, for this is a departure. The question underlying this event is “Should the church be parochial or universal?” Is it simply a sect of Judaism or an outcome of Judaism, or is it the fulfillment of God’s will as expressed in prophecy with its ultimate mission to embrace universal humanity?”
“After the Master What? – The Book of Acts,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
THINK AGAIN TO PROVE THAT IT’S NOT PROBLEMS, BUT HARMONY, THAT IS AT HAND!
Cobbey Crisler on Matt 4:17 prelude to Matt. 4:23 (cit. B18):
[Cobbey:] “Verse 17 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” … Jesus’ opening word, according to Matthew’s gospel is “Repent.” Change your concept. Again, just as John the Baptist said in Matthew 3:2, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That is radical good news for mankind.
“It’s not a far-off event. Many denominations have left the impression that heaven is something attainable in the far-off future. But, the opening words of John the Baptist, as well as of Jesus, are “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” right here. That means that we must be able to do something with it and about it. And, apparently that had something to do with the changing of our concept, even theologically, that heaven can do something about the problems that that seem to be at hand.
“… Are the problems at hand, or is heaven at hand? That’s the test question that Jesus met in the preceding verses so beautifully as a sovereign over it in the wilderness. He proved that heaven was at hand.”
“Book of Matthew, Auditing the Master,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
[W.] We follow our Master Jesus, as we dismiss dualism like he did to feel a heavenly harmony that heals EVERY PERSON & EVERY ISSUE! (cit. B18, Matt. 14:23) As a prelude to these verses from this week’s lesson, you’ll enjoy Cobbey’s insights on Jesus’ wilderness testing experience where he overcame feeling isolated and alone, by feeling ALL One with his Abba “Daddy”! You’ll enjoy this even more if you’re feeling vulnerable to attacks from a devilish, divisive virus! (Devil or diabolos means to try to throw in 2 opposite directions at the same time.)
Cobbey Crisler on Jesus “acing” his long isolation tests & healing all, Matt. 4:1-11 before verses 17, 23 (in citation B16):
[W. Before the Matthew 4:17 and 23 verses in this week’s lesson is what enabled Jesus to heal everyone.]
[Cobbey:] “There is what we might call an identity-crisis test in Chapter 4 (of Matthew). The Anglo-Saxon word “tempt” has almost picked up a theological meaning. It really means “test.” That’s what the word means. It’s a test. (Verse 1) So, “Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness” to be tested on the fact that had recently been revealed (directly from God in Matthew 3:17 (and Mark 1:11) that Jesus was God’s “Beloved Son”).
Verse 23. And “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Here are human problems that had defied solution, and Jesus solved them all based on his concept of theology, namely the kingdom. Remember a kingdom is not chaos. It’s an ordered government of heaven and harmony at hand.”
“Book of Matthew, Auditing the Master, A Tax Collector’s Report,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
SHARE YOUR CHRISTLY LOVE & HUMANITY TO HELP BRING HEALING & DOMINION TO ALL MARGINALIZED BY DISEASE, SOCIETY…—Cobbey on Jesus healing leprosy in Mark 1:40-45—(I have no recorded commentary from Cobbey on Jesus’ similar but different healing the ten lepers from afar in Luke 17: 12-19 (B19)
IN A 4-minute YouTube video, CATCH THE FEELING OF WHAT ONENESS WITH GOD CAN DO FOR YOU TOO, WHEN JESUS HEALED A SOLO LEPER AS PORTRAYED IN THIS SCENE FROM “THE CHOSEN” Mark 1:40 https://youtu.be/VL8DThllZAY
[Cobbey Crisler said of this Mark 1:40 version of leprosy healed]: “We have a leper.” We have ample precedent in the Old Testament with the healing of Naaman’s leprosy.
Verse 41, “Here the leper is touched by Jesus.”
Verse 43, “And the leper is cured.”
Verse 41: Does he need to be touched by Jesus for the healing?
Does Jesus touch everybody? No. The method Jesus uses is there in very intricate detail.
Jesus touched a man here who had not been touched physically by anyone but another leper. Imagine how long he may have had this leprosy, whether it was acquired or he was born a leper. But the fact is, look at the humanity breaking through the wall. Where was ecclesiasticism on the subject of leprosy? “Stay out!” “Shout unclean, unclean everywhere you go,” so there’s no danger of contagion. This was the church’s definition of what to do with a leper. Jesus radically set aside every aspect of this traditional approach. This is the rock breaking theories into fragments, praying these ideas were never God’s theology, nor a revelation of Himself.
Jesus reached through that barrier and touched a man. What do you imagine the leper was thinking as Jesus touched him? Imagine what happened within him. We’re talking about the Holy Ghost cleansing. Cleansing is the thing that’s needed. Just look at the love expressed through the human agency of touch. Jesus was not afraid to touch him, nor was it a violation of God’s law to touch him. Jesus didn’t have to go back and turn his clothes in, bathe himself, and wait until he reemerged. That is what the Levitical rule said he’d have to do if he were touched by a leper. None of that made any spiritual sense at all.
How could one ever solve universal human problems if one could not reach the thought that was bearing the crushing burden of the problem? Jesus just touched that leper as if it were normal and natural, and the great love that was conveyed through that. How long it had been since that leper had felt a human touch?
Notice he said, “be thou clean.” In Verse 40, the leper had said to him,
“You can make me clean.”
Jesus said, “Be thou clean.”
What is Jesus definition here of a healing? It’s based on dominion. Dominion is not just doing something for someone. This is Jesus’ dominion over an individual. Hypnotism bases its claim to heal by having one mind take dominion over another’s mind. By contrast, Jesus’ definition of God’s healing theology is based on relationship. Each and every individual son or daughter .in his relationship to God has dominion as an integral part of his being. This is what Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 26, announced.
If that is true, it can never be violated. It can never be compromised. We have it or we don’t. It’s never “dominion-if,” or “dominion-but.” You cannot qualify it. Nothing can dominate us if we actually have dominion.
Jesus’ words and acts reveal what this theology is. So, “Be thou clean” is the precious privilege of that man who had thought he was a leper. He has dominion over it. “Now, exercise it,” Jesus said, and supports his divine right to exercise it.
We go out in mobs with slogans and signs protesting the absence of human rights on our globe. What if we began to focus on the deplorable way with which we have viewed our divine right? Jesus did.
Verse 42. So, “he was healed.”
Verse 44. Jesus told him not to make a show of this. His definition of healing did not include publicity. In fact, publicity is one of the worst dangers to the theology of healing.”
“What Mark Recorded”, by B. Cobbey Crisler**
BONUS 1: START with GOD to GIVE THANKS as did 1 of the 10 lepers Jesus healed.
Here’s a CSJ article about Luke 17:12-16/cit. B19 to also apply what this healing could mean to you. Click on this Christian Science Journal webpage address: https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/2pl5ue2yiyk?s=e
Giving thanks starts with God
By Phil Davis
August 07, 2012
[Here are some excerpts:] “I was at a recent Wednesday evening testimony meeting at my Christian Science branch church, listening to the gospel narrative of Jesus’ healing the ten lepers (citation B19, Luke 17:12–19). A corresponding citation from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy was also read. It says:
“Of the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, but one returned to give God thanks,—that is, to acknowledge the divine Principle which had healed him” (S&H, p. 94).
… if God did it, if He is responsible for it, then give Him the credit!”
BONUS 2: TO SEE and CLAIM AS TRUE FOR YOU TOO, below is a link to soak in another related and MOVING HEALING. It was reenacted in an episode of the first season of The CHOSEN as based on Mark 2. CLICK on this 5-minute YouTube scene about how 4 dear friends went to extraordinary lengths & heights for their paralyzed friend to be healed. It illustrates how Jesus’ demonstrable understanding of his oneness with God enabled him to deal with the “scholastic theology of the rabbis… (and) was a rebuke to them.” (cit. S23/315:3-20)
**The last GEM shares links to 2 songs to help celebrate & solidify your healing sense of oneness with God, which is “fully sustained by spiritual sense.” (cit. S5/471:13-17)**
At the bottom of the online version of these GEMS is a Downloadable PDF file (from the MaryBakerEddy Library for the Betterment of Mankind). It tracks the EVOLUTION of the FOURTH TENET about “Jesus’ atonement” (cit. S26/497:13)
BRING the CARE of the GOOD SHEPHERD to ALL YOU DO; AND, ALWAYS CHOOSE TO BE AT ONE with God! Click to see all or part of a 30-min. video about what Jesus’ means in John 10 about being our Good Shepherd AND about daily life and death choices sheep & we face. Cobbey also has great insights on John 10:7-10+/cit. B22 plus S&H 315:3-7, 32-7/cit. S23.
[Cobbey Crisler:] “Chapter 10. Not too many of us keep sheep anymore. So, this is a lost simile on the twentieth century. Should we be keeping sheep in the real meaning of it? What could you and I do more about our job, our home, our world, our political situation, our community, and church, if we introduced more of the shepherd motive into all of them?
John 10:13 shows the difference between the shepherd-motive and the hireling’s motive who was working just for pay. “The hireling fleeth, because that’s all he was working for is money.” Where’s the difference? “He doesn’t care.”
Let’s ask ourselves the question, do we care? If we care, that’s the shepherd motive. Jesus cared. He walked in the midst of the dissolute, the despairing, the injured, the grieved, and the broken in heart as well as in body. And nobody knew why he did it. The upper classes, those who didn’t have similar problems, wondered why he was with the publicans and sinners. But he said that “the whole didn’t need a physician” (Matt. 9:12; Mark 4:23; Luke 5:31).
“He apparently contemplated an Israel in prophecy which the existing Israel, the establishment, had not remotely seen.
He saw the Israel in prophecy which is exactly in accord with Jeremiah’s prediction of the new covenant and Isaiah’s. The new Israel would be composed of those whose needs had been met, where the recipients were, no class, no mass, no private sector, no ghetto, but receptivity gathering the sons and daughters together. They are gathered to prove what is possible on earth as in heaven. The shepherd motive of caring brings us into that new Israel.”
“Jesus says that he is the Shepherd and he also says he is the door. It may look like he is confused. Let me give you an example of how he isn’t. When my wife and I were in Israel, we stopped in a place between Jerusalem and Bethany. I saw what I thought was an unattended flock of sheep. There was also a rock wall with one door or gate. It was an almost complete square. As I wandered around, I was suddenly surprised by the shepherd whom I had disturbed. He rose up. He was stretched across that entry way, getting a few winks.
“Right there I had illustrated what Jesus meant in John 10: 2, 11, 14, “I am the shepherd” and in John 10: 7, 9, “I am the door.” Now there was no confusion at all. With the sheep inside an enclosure and the only possible entrance of wild animals or thieves being that door, you had to get through the shepherd in order to get to the sheep. The shepherd was also the door.
John 10:27, 28 (B7) “My sheep hear my voice… and they follow me.” In Mary Baker Eddy’s poem, “Feed My Sheep”, there is the statement, “I will listen for Thy voice.” [Hymn 304] While we were down in that area of Beersheba, we saw many sheep all mixed together. I said to Janet, ‘I wonder how the shepherd is ever going to sort out his sheep. They’re all just mingled together.’ … It wasn’t very long before our shepherd separated himself from the crowd, walked away – never looked over his shoulder at the mixed-up sheep— but made some kind of identifying click or clack of his tongue or voice.
“Do you know that every one of his sheep separated themselves from that flock and followed him?! He never doubted. He never looked back. The sheep did their job. The sheep knew his voice. “I will listen for Thy voice.” These lessons are things that in the busy moments of our own twentieth century we need to contemplate. They’re not just symbols. They’re not done just as ancient history. They’re attitudes. They’re states of mind and thought. This is something we often need to consider.” In John 10:30 (cit. B7, and expounded on in cit. S6, 315:3-7, 32-7) is Jesus’ great statement, “I and my Father are one.” If this is from the Aramaic, then, the Aramaic word would give the meaning, “I and my Father are in accord.”
“Book of John, A Walk with the Beloved Disciple,” B. Cobbey Crisler**
FIND ONENESS with God “as a humble ray of sunlight that is one with the sun.” Hear healing music inspired by the Lesson.
Below is a YouTube link to an inspiring song by a CedarS mom and award-winning Country Music artist, Cherie Brennan. It emphasizes the “I and my Father are one” mindset of Christ Jesus and mentioned in this week’s Bible Lesson citation B22/John 10:30, cit. S23/315:3 & cit. S30/361:16. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZMNlpZavkA
Or, on Watchfire Music by CedarS friend, Peter Link, — LISTEN TO A SAMPLE of “I and my Father are one” SUNG by Mindy Jostyn and BUY IT and the SHEET MUSIC for SOLOISTS at: https://watchfiremusic.com/shop/recordings/songs/i-and-my-father-are-one-2/
