APPLICATION GEMS SHOW THE BIG BLESSINGS OF FEELING A SENSE OF ONENESS WITH GOD, AND OF GUARDING IT!
Tuesday, October 11th, 2022
By Warren Huff (with insights from Cobbey Crisler)
Click here to print PDF version
APPLICATION GEMS SHOW THE BIG BLESSINGS OF FEELING A SENSE OF ONENESS WITH GOD, AND OF GUARDING IT!
Let God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with new insights from Cobbey Crisler & others as inspired by The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT”
for October 16, 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
PLEASE GOD BY DOING DEEP-CLEANING IN CHRIST’S WAY—FROM THE INSIDE OUT!
Try Christ’s ultimate “DRY-cleaning” baptism method! Cobbey Crisler on Mark 1:8+, citation B3
[Cobbey:] Mark 1:8 “I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost”… John the Baptist never healed the sick as part of his theology. Here it’s not baptism with water that is ultimately going to count on earth, but baptism with the Holy Ghost… We find John the Baptist… removing the focus from physical cleanliness as being the means by which we would enter a heavenly state… You know water can’t reach what’s within, what is in consciousness, what is mental and really needs cleaning…
Mark 1, verse 10… “the Spirit like a dove descends upon him” in this baptism. It shows he is coming out of the watery baptism into the higher sense of baptism of the Spirit. The spiritual sense of man is what emerges after the carnal sense is washed from consciousness…
Mark 1:11 The announcement comes, “Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased,” shows that sonship and relationship to God is not in a fleshly context… It is a very emphatic point of our relationship to God.” [Warren: Consider the lifelong, spiritual confidence given to the dear ones in our care when we nightly say a blessing over them, and to them, that they are beloved children, in whom God and we are well-pleased.]
[Cobbey again:] “Remember the consistency of the Scripture. This is what turns us into students. The consistency of the Scripture would force us to study in depth how we please God. Take “Here is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” How do we please God? Do you remember any particular Scriptural statements on that?… One of the things that Paul says about it in Romans 8:8 is, “They that are in the flesh (they that are earthly minded, who obey the lower nature) cannot please God.”
What Mark Recorded, by B. Cobbey Crisler**
[Warren: The preceding verses, Romans 8:5-7, with other translations shed more light on the challenge of earthly-minded body-worship that seems so accepted and prevalent in today’s obsession with fitness, diet, revealing selfies… After the King James in italics is Goodspeed’s translation of Romans 8:5 “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh: but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” = “People who are controlled by the physical think of what is physical: and people who are controlled by the spiritual think of—give their attention to—what is spiritual.” Goodspeed]
For a couple of Mary Baker Eddy’s insights that I’ve found helpful to shine a Christ-light light on trending bodily-mindedness, click on my P.S. at the end of a January 2014 Met on “Sacrament,” by Kathy Fitzer, at https://www.cedarscamps.org/metaphysical/articles/2014/1/sacrament/
In this 2014 Met —at the bottom under Download— you can also click on a pdf file that outlines Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism of “the Holy Ghost and fire.” It – and BETTER YET Cobbey’s full talk transcript available below through his wife, Janet Crisler—give a hands-on way to separate any mixed-up mess of good (facts) and bad (fables) by taking them up to the highest point (God). That allows Spirit, God, the Pneuma or Wind—NOT you with tweezers—to sort out any mixed-up mess and to put an end to the fables. In the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scripture, Mary Baker Eddy defines FAN as “Separator of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought.” SH 586
At CedarS Bible Lands Park where thought is put into action, we take a separating “fan in hand” and climb our miniature Mt. Nebo where an actual fire is built downwind. There—using the wind of Spirit and a separating “FAN in hand”—we let the wind sort-out the fables —written on folded-up scraps of papers —and let the fire burn them up. We pray to be see that this will put an end to every mixed-up mess that would attempt to fool and discourage us and so keep us from being the best versions of ourselves that God made and maintains.
In my inspirational talk for Arden Woods’ May 1, 2022 Annual Meeting, in the second half of the meeting, you can hear many application examples and see a time-traveling Moses reenact the separating of chaff from the wheat on Mt. Nebo in CedarS Bible Lands Park. Here’s a link at https://www.ardenwood.org/events/annualmeeting22/
BE AN ANSWER TO JESUS’ PRAYER FOR HEALERS, SOLVING PROBLEMS TO BRING IN THE HARVEST!
Cobbey Crisler on the end of Matthew, chapter 9, verse 35/citation B4, plus 9:36, 38 & 10:1
“And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
(Matthew 9:35 highlighted every shows there’s no incurability!)
[Cobbey:] “In Matthew 9, Verse 36, Jesus is looking around him after he disposes of the Pharisaical thought— “he sees multitudes needing help, moved with compassion. There they were as sheep. They were shepherdless.”
(Verse 37). He turned to his disciples then, and his disciples in future generations, and made the remark, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.” Does that imply he expected his disciples to be out there solving human problems, healing?
(Verse 38). He even asks them to “Pray the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”
We now come to Chapter 10. We’ve had so much evidence that Jesus was an effective healer, but we haven’t yet had evidence that there could be healing via the instruction-route: that could be taught to heal1 sent out like apprentices in some human trade or profession, and come back practicing the rules learned with results, namely, healed cases.
We find right after the prayer (Matthew 9:38) that God “would send forth more laborers into his harvest,” and what do we find? A mandate to heal.
(Verse 1). “He called his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, to heal” What? Only certain diseases? “All manner of disease and sickness.”
“Book of Matthew, Auditing the Master: A Tax Collector’s Report,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
RELEASE PAST MISTAKES & FEEL GOD’S EVER-FRESH LOVE FOR YOU— & ACCEPT IT! – AS A LITTLE CHILD!
Luke 19 — the only gospel that mentions Zacchaeus—is not discussed by Cobbey Crisler, but YouTube has a short video that is lifelong in meaning for the childlike of all ages. No matter your regrets for past mistakes, get ready to feel God’s dear love for you!
“The cast of the Little Clay Bible tell the story of Zacchaeus, a wee little man who was short on love, but in for a big surprise when he meets Jesus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHXqI1-RA1c
NOTE UNIVERSAL HEALING STEPS IN JESUS CURING “INCURABLE” LEPROSY
Cobbey Crisler on Luke 5:12-14/citation B9
[Cobbey on Luke 5:12 (& Mark 1:40):] “A leper comes to Jesus. 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.” Notice how the healer Jesus works here. [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 Luke 5:14 (& Mark 1:44) 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**
TAKE TIME TO PRAY FOR YOURSELF, FOR THOSE WHO WILL FOLLOW YOU & for ONENESS, AS JESUS DID! Cobbey Crisler on John 17:1, 6, 9, 20, 21 /citation B14
[Cobbey:] “In Chapter 17 of John’s gospel, Jesus is praying audibly. If we’ve ever wanted to be present when Jesus is praying, this is a very moving prayer indeed. It’s divided into three sections. To whom does the prayer, represented in the first five verses, refer? Himself. It’s a prayer for himself. Jesus did take time out for himself. This is just before Gethsemane. So you know what’s in his thoughts.
John 17:1. It’s in this prayer he says, “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.”
John 17:2, “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”
John 17:3, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
John 17:4. Imagine being able to say at the end of an earthly career, ”I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” It would be wonderful if we could say that in any given day. But this is an entire career.
John 17:5, “Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Look at the emphasis there. Again, on nativity and Spirit, the before-Abraham concept.
He ends his prayer for himself there. Beginning in Verse 6 and going all the way through Verse 19, he prays for the disciples, “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.”
John 17:8, “I have given unto them the words.” This is the beginning of Christianity, then, the prayer for the emergence of Christianity. “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.” Now what are they going to do with it?
In John 17:15, Jesus prays not for monasticism, nor to have the disciples remove themselves from the world. “I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” What a prayer! That was the prayer the disciples operated under from Pentecost onward.
Then John 17:20 begins the third section of the prayer. For whom? For us. That is, if we believe. “Those which shall believe on me through the disciples ‘word.”
Can you possibly envision the kind of character required to spend the very evening of Gethsemane praying for us? Is there a shepherd motive? Its ultimate is being exemplified there. “Those that believe on me through their word.”
Has that prayer terminated? Has any communication between God and man, ascending or descending angels, terminated? Does that prayer still rest on the Son of Man, on you and me?
John 17:21. The prayer is, “that they all may be one.” Look around and see what the major target is. To keep “all men from being one.” If one can keep man from being at-one, then you’re stuck with a divided God as well. It wrecks and ruins basic theology, that is, for the ones participating. No fragmentation, no separation. Jesus’ prayer, as one of the hymns says, “For all his brethren, Father, that we may be one.” That prayer extends way down to our age. If that were Jesus’ prayer, it better be ours, especially if we claim to be his followers. The prayer “that we all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me.” There’s the standard of measurement. With that, Jesus ends his audible prayer.
“Book of John, A Walk with the Beloved Disciple,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
LET’S FOLLOW OUR MASTER IN BEING FORGIVING, EVEN WHEN WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE RESENTFUL! Cobbey Crisler on John 18: 1-3 (citation B15)
[Cobbey:] “John Chapter 18 begins with Verse 1. He walks across the brook Cedron, separating the Temple Mount of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. There is a garden. He had gone there frequently.
John 18:2. “Judas knew it.” When one stands on that site of the mountain in the traditional spot of the Garden of Gethsemane, you can see as never before what it must have appeared like. Imagine seeing the glaring light of torches snaking their way down that valley across the Cedron brook into the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples would have known that was coming. They couldn’t miss it.
Jesus’ first words to Judas in the Garden are found in the Gospel of Matthew. Again, notice what’s in his thought. If any human had any right to be resentful, Jesus could have regarded Judas in that way.
Matthew 26:50, Instead of anger, he says, “Friend,” That’s his first word to Judas. “wherefore art thou come?
“Book of John, A Walk with the Beloved Disciple,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
FIRMLY ANCHOR YOUR HEREDITY & GOODLY HERITAGE IN GOD, YOUR DIVINE ORIGIN!
Cobbey Crisler on Ps. 16:6-11 (citation B17)
[Cobbey give insights on a prelude to citation B17/Ps. 16:8, 10:] “In Psalm 16:5, heredity is being dealt with in this pharmacy of the Psalms. “The LORD” is what? “The portion of mine inheritance!” Sometimes we’re proud of our inheritances. At other times, we’re ashamed of them. To anchor inheritance, heritage, and heredity in God, is, first, a radically different concept of origin, where we came from. Secondly, it only allows for the expression of the nature from which it is flowing, and that’s divine. The only inheritances, then, can be divine, if that logic prevails.
In Verse 6 you will note that [deep] concern the psalmist [has] about hereditary limitations on his ability. Apparently he comes to the conclusion through accepting the divine fact, the prescriptions he’s had filled, “Yea, I have a goodly heritage.” ··
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
[BONUS— Cobbey Crisler with related prescriptions from nearby Psalm 16:7 thru 17:15]
“Kidneys are the problem in [Ps. 16:] Verse 7. There’s a very polite Elizabethan word used in the Bible, “reins.” That has nothing to do with what holds horses back; in some cases, it’s used that way. But it’s also the translation of the word that literally means “kidneys.” Calvin’s talking about the anatomy of the soul, remember of every part of the soul that he finds being mirrored in the Psalms. But we also are finding specific references to portions of the anatomy that give out, that fail, that act up, and on which we are dependent if the body is dominant; but that in Biblical therapy, if we elect that method, we’ve got to be absent from.
“We find that Verse 7, if it weren’t quite as tragic for the psalmist, it would be slightly amusing, in the fact that it reminds us of ourselves. “I will bless the LORD, who hath given me advice,” but if that’s all it took to get our attention, that would be one thing. But, he says kidneys also instruct me in the night seasons. [Audience laughter] I get cornered·.. I’m desperate. Now I’m back to God again, in a way. So very often these anatomical reminders are warnings.
“But remembering also that there are two levels that every biblical concept is expressing itself, the outer one and the inner one. That kidneys also is meant to refer to the mind as the interior self, even Webster under “kidney” talks about temperament and disposition. Almost all of the anatomical words have mental equivalents. It’s as if back when our vocabulary was being formulated or translated from previous vocabularies of earlier tongues that we’ve had this psychosomatic link: We’ve had the physical and the mental attached even to portions of the anatomy.
“ Why has there been almost an unobserved record being kept by those who have investigated or seen or lived through some of these physical conditions, that also the mental state that accompanied them has been remembered. What is the (nearest dispensary) as far as Bible therapy is concerned?
KEEP YOUR FOCUS AND PRIORITIES IMMOVABLE IN GOD TO BE UNMOVED— WITH A FULL DOSE OF JOY! Cobbey Crisler continues on Psalm 16:8–11/cit. B17)
Verse 8, “I have set the LORD always before me: because [he is] at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Verse 9, “My heart is glad,” and guess what else happened; what follows? “My flesh also shall dwell confidently.” How does “flesh dwell confidently”? That’s a mental state, but it’s been subdued by a mental state. “My heart is glad.” What medicine do we want more than anything else? What leads us to a glad heart?
Then the flesh simply subsides as the significant bellwether as far as health is concerned.
What is the dosage of gladness in Verse 11? “In thy presence [is] fullness of joy.” That’s the dosage, ‘fullness.” There’s no room left for anything else.
[BONUS about diseases that attack breathing;] “Someone asked me during intermission about a marauder of a disease called Tuberculosis [or CoVid-19?]. The fact that there was a great emotionalism in that because it’s taking family members. In the spirit of our investigation of Scripture, going to it for the answers; perhaps this should apply to each and every one of us since we’re the ones to search the Scriptures. The Bible will not dwell on the problems of tuberculosis [or covid], but it will dwell on the solutions. That’s what you want as far as any one of the maxims of the Bible.
“The Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the original meaning of both terms, ghost and spirit, being breath, you can tell it must mean that simply by studying all the references to the Holy Ghost. You’ll find that people are filled with the Holy Ghost. The only thing like that we can relate to anatomically is [lungs) What are we being filled with? What does the pharmacy of the Bible indicate is the cure for improper breathing or lungs? If we can be filled, if we can take in, breathe in the atmosphere of God, we are getting pollutant-free air to just inhale. We must utilize that breath and send back out purity utilized. This is the sequence of breathing in its highest spiritual form when we run into it in the Bible. Perhaps, a good dose of searching the divine intent behind the term, the Holy Ghost, will translate that into our nature. The divine nature has no tubercular problems. The divine nature is the nature of solution to problems…”
[BONUS from Cobbey about prescriptions from Psalms pertaining to the heart and to talking about illnesses:] “From Psalm 17, Verse 3. A cardiograph is taken within the precincts of a hospital in order to prove your heart, to test it out. But according to Biblical therapy, one of the leaves on that tree is that God proves our heart.
…You know what the cardiogram is that results from the cardiograph test? What prints out? Verse 3, ‘Thou hast tried me, and shall find nothing.” There’s another problem that contributes to ill health that we’re all aware of, and that’s hypochondria and the fact that we talk about our illnesses a great deal and too much. Therefore the weight of focus in thought, the weight of thought is on that side. Which is why that needs to be purged out. The purgative must be taken. Here we find the psalmist recognizing that because he is saying, “I am purposed [that] my mouth shall not transgress.” in Verse 3.
“Contrast the transgression of our mouth with, in Verse 4, “by the word of thy lips I have kept [me from] the paths of the destroyer.” It’s kind of an invitation to “shut up and listen” as far as the pathology of the Bible is concerned dealing with the source of many of our diseases, building up of its forms in the image of our thinking. If you and I could take that music of joy in the Psalms. No wonder gladness and joy are connected with psalms. That is what brings that kind of healing within. When we can let the rhythm of our heart be ruled by the rhythm) of the Psalms [and present-day hymn singing] then we can be kept from the paths of the destroyer.
“Verse 15 of Psalm 17 [tells us] that God’s prescriptions, precisely filled, bring satisfaction. Satisfaction because “we awake in God’s likeness.” But that results first from the prerequisite of “beholding God’s face in righteousness.” That requires us to go back to the theology of Genesis 1 to comprehend what that means. If we indeed are image, or likeness, and God is the original, the only way we can find out about our nature is to spend our time studying the original. We know the image. We also know what’s not the image by studying the original.
“Just as Treasury Department experts know counterfeit bills, not because they have studied all the many thousands of counterfeit attempts, from poor work to expert work, but rather, simply study the one original and you will know the counterfeit immediately. That’s in a sense akin to surgically removing in a mental way or taking this purgative cathartic Word of God to remove what does not belong to our nature. Imagine the joy of letting go what has burdened us for so long. It’s part of that darkness that is ignorance, that the light, the laser beam of revealed truth, simply removes, and not painfully at all. It just does what light is supposed to do. It removes any rationale for the existence of darkness.”
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
FIND ONENESS WITH GOD “AS A HUMBLE RAY OF SUNLIGHT THAT IS ONE WITH THE SUN”
from cits. S20 & S24, 315:3 & 361:16 as sung in “I and My Father” Music Video on YouTube
Below is a YouTube link to an inspiring song by a CedarS mom and Zoom Hymn Sing Artist, Cherie Brennan, ho also is an award-winning Country Music artist. It emphasizes the “I and my Father are one” mindset of Christ Jesus as mentioned in this week’s Bible Lesson citation S4, 26:10. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZMNlpZavkA
You can learn more about Cherie and buy her CD “You are Loved” (“I and My Father” is the 4th song) on her website through Spotify at: https://open.spotify.com/album/3Ii5CBrdNs6f8Y3t4l5XHl
Or, on Watchfire Music by CedarS dear 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/
SHOW THE RESILIENCE OF HAVING THE KINGDOM-OF-GOD AS YOUR CORE & YOUR ALL!
[Warren:] If you claim and rejoice in having a kingdom core within you, then, even if you are thrown down hard, you won’t fall apart like an egg! You’ll bounce back even higher like a golf ball does! Jesus tells us clearly “the kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21) Mary Baker Eddy adds:
- “God is at once the absolute centre and circumference of being.” (S&H 203:32-1, citation S22)
- “These clearer, higher views inspire the God-like man to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being.” (S&H 262:15)
[W. continues] A few decades ago when one of these citations was also in the Christian Science Bible Lesson, I decided to dissect a golf ball to explore its circumference and its center to see what made it thrive and bounce back so resiliently in the “hard-knock life” that it led. I clamped one in a vise and hack-sawed it in half. I found it had an inner rubber ball wrapped tightly in a bunch of rubber-bands that snapped as they were cut. (My white dissected golf ball is shown next to a whole orange one in the first Download at the bottom of this original online GEM.)
Spiritual sense and resilience are especially valuable in changeable and tough times, because we and the team we’re on can ill-afford to have us “go all to pieces” like a broken egg—or to have others have to “handle us with kid-gloves” because, if they don’t, we might fall apart or “fly off the handle.” The Golf Ball versus Egg analogy relates to the testing and proving of one’s spiritual resilience “to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being.” (S&H 262: 15) It helps us spiritually perceive that “God is at once the centre and circumference of being.” (S&H 203:32-1, cit. S7)
I have reasoned many times since then with myself and with Sunday School students, campers and counselors (all who got to handle or see pictures of the cut-up ball), that, like rubber bands, we, as spiritual ideas, are made to be stretched. And, I usually remind them (and myself), “whatever stretches you, blesses you.”
These “clearer, higher views inspire the God-like man” (you!) to resiliently bounce back from all kinds of hard-knocks and throw-downs. In fact, like a golf ball, you as a spiritual idea knowing that God’s kingdom reigns over and within you and all, will bounce back higher the harder you are thrown down. (The best higher-bounce-back example is Jesus’ hardest throw-down of the crucifixion followed by his highest bounce back of the resurrection and ascension as detailed on the last section of the Lesson!)
On Easter I usually illustrate the contrast between the resilient characteristics of a bouncy, vinyl-shell golf ball with a fragile, raw egg and its easily broken shell (circumference) and its squishy yoke (centre). The harder an egg is thrown down, the more it splatters! On Easter (egg) Sunday, we always discuss how the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy tell us of our Genesis 1 spiritual origin instead of an egg origin or dust origin. I usually quip that “If you think that you started out as an egg, you’re very likely to end up scrambled.”
Then, to turn things into thoughts and to “strengthen our shells” so as to not crack easily, we often read together “Taking Offense” where Mary Baker Eddy counsels against having a fragile, easily-ruffled or touchy disposition. (Miscellaneous Writings, page 223:24.)
To live love resiliently, Paul tells us, “Love is not easily provoked”… or splattered (I Corinthians 13). Whenever you become easily provoked, one might say, “the yoke’s on you.”
ACCEPT THE RISEN JESUS’ COMMISSION TO BRING ABOUT HEALING RESULTS!
Cobbey Crisler on cit. B18/Mark 16:9, 10 (+preview verse 8 & postlude v. 11-20)
[Cobbey:] “Most of the early copies, if not all the early copies of Mark, end with Verse 8. It ends on a rather uncertain note, “They were afraid.” A longer ending from Verse 9 to 20 is included in other copies. Also, there are excerpts appended here or there as if early editors didn’t know where these belonged, but they were handed down as part of the Markan tradition.
“After Verse 8 is an example. You can see this in the Revised Standard Version in a footnote. It reads, “But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him, all that they had been told. After then, Jesus himself sent out by means of them east to west the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.”
One codex has this placed after Verse 14, “But they excused themselves, saying, this age of lawlessness and unbelief lies under the sway of Satan who will not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God. Therefore, they said to Christ, Reveal your righteousness now. Christ answered them, The term of years for Satan’s power has now expired. But other terrors are now at hand. I was delivered to death on behalf of sinners that they might return to the truth, and sin no more. That they might inherit that glory of righteousness which is spiritual and imperishable in heaven.”
“That translation is by Moffett. It is an early one. It is one manuscript.
Verse 17. The gospel of Mark ends with deeds, not words. “These signs shall follow them that believe.” There’s one of our foundational points again (Mark 1:15). Those who believe will have signs that follow. Otherwise we’re not believers.
“We can say all we want, “We’re believers m Jesus Christ,” but we’re not unless signs are following. That is Jesus’ own definition of a believer.
“All of these signs are fulfilled in the Book of Acts except the sign regarding poison. This was accomplished in an early Christian tradition by Barsebus. He was forced to drink poison and recovered without any problem. So, we have “the new tongues.”
Verse 18. The ”taking up of serpents, the drinking any deadly thing,” even a poisonous chemical! Look at that in the environment today. “And be healed.” It’s a sign that follows those that believe.
Why are we leaving our environment untouched by the Holy Spirit?
Why aren’t we seeing the Spirit there, and therefore, liberty?
Verse 19. The ascension then is very briefly mentioned.
Verse 20. We find the apostolic works follow the apostolic words. They are inseparable. “They went forth, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.”
“Amen,” meaning “this is the truth.” And if it is the truth, we know it makes us free. That gospel can be freed from the page on which it is written and enter our own embodied lives, and be seen worldwide in results.
Satan, as Jesus was alleged to have said, “His term has expired.” Let’s live like the term of evil has expired and take joy in that exultant victory.
Yes, from that very shout on the cross. Some people think Jesus is shouting in pain. But one commentator says the Greek word is a shout of victory.
That’s the gospel, the good news of victory.” [“He is risen!’]
“What Mark Recorded” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
ACTIVELY PRAY TO FEEL AT-ONE with GOD by ACKNOWLEDGING CHRIST JESUS’ KEY ROLE in YOUR AT-ONE-MENT with GOD by HIS SAVING YOU from SIN, SICKNESS & DEATH.
Check out the downloadable history of evolution of the Fourth Tenet of Christian Science (below) as researched by The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity. Click on it in the Download section at the bottom of the webpage.
(Tenet) “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.” (citation S26/487:13)
