Listen link in Cherish recently-found GEMs for yourself & all mankind by applying insights
of Cobbey Crisler and others** for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Substance”
for September 6-12, 2021
shared by Warren Huff
CedarS Executive Director Emeritus warren@cedarscamps.org
START & STAY IN THE ABSOLUTE WITH AFFIRMATIONS & DENIALS as does John 1:1-3 (citation B1) The “Scientific Statement of Being” also follows this pattern on page 468 of Science & Health]
[Cobbey Crisler:] “In the beginning was the Word… without (the Word of God) “was not anything made that was made.”
“John 1:1. John starts off unlike any of the preceding gospels. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
He starts off, as a matter of fact, as only one other book of the Bible begins. Notice Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ” Do you think the early readers of his gospel would have recognized that? Do you think that was John’s intent? That it should be recognized? …
“John 1:3 continues with a statement that is quite absolute, “All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Is there any reservation for qualifications? “All things were made by him. That is [an] enormous commitment to make at the beginning of a book. The theology of this book is therefore committed right squarely on what principle if we’re now defining the theological principle on which the Bible is based? Not only oneness of God, but the fact He’s one, also means He’s all. “All things were made by Him.” Everything is created by Him. That also poses problems, because all we have to do is open our eyes and look around us. And what we see, we’d rather not think was created by God. But as of now, we’ve just started the book. So, let’s see what the style of the author is and his theological commitments. “All things were made by Him.”
“He doesn’t leave it there. The very next sentence adds, “Without him was not any thing made that was made.” Why is he saying that? Doesn’t “all things were made by Him” take care of the other part? What is the difference? What’s the distinction that he is implanting in his readers’ thought right at the beginning of the book? “All things were made by Him.” What would you call that? That kind of statement is an absolute, but is it also an affirmation. It’s a real solid plus. This is a plus of the theological view of John. “All things were made by Him.”
“What have we got now? Denial. Here is how we’re going to deal with the minus element. The minus element is without Him, “without him was not any thing made that was made.” Any hint of a minus existing after the all-things-were-made-byhim being declared, is removed, because it is the other side of the same coin.
“The plus, the minus, the affirmation, the denial is a mathematical approach. Dealing with the plus, dealing with the minus and ending up with one, not dualism. One, so there’s no doubt that the key to the gospel is monotheism. It challenges the reader’s thought to see if he’s there at that altitude before he continues any further in the gospel. It forces the reader to get to that height in order to remotely commu
EXPERIENCE IMMEDIACY! NO WAITING! (Plus, NO SIDE-EFFECTS OR AFTER-EFFECTS with GOD’S HEALING & PREVENTATIVE CARE! Cobbey Crisler on Ps. 33:9, 11, on the last and following verses of citation B2)
[Cobbey:] “Psalm 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.
[Warren:] AN EXAMPLE OF THIS IMMEDIATE ACTION, is SHOWN IN THIS WEEK’S LESSON in citation B13/John 5:2-9, when Jesus healed the 38-year invalid by the Pool of Bethesda, “And IMMEDIATELY the man was made whole, and took up his bed and walked.”“
This reminds me of a unique bumper sticker that referred to Genesis 1:3:
“The Big Bang theory:
“Let there be light” and
BANG! It happened!”
“In Psalm 33, Verse 11, “The advice or counsel of the LORD stands” for how long? “For
ever.” What good is 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.”
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 all remedies are.”
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms”, by B. Cobbey Crisler**
Read about & FIND HEALING IN A SIMPLE POEM
THAT DEBUNKS THE FABLE OF YOUR DUST-MAN ORIGIN WITH THE FACT OF YOUR SPIRITUAL ROOTS
(in Genesis 1/cit. B6 versus Genesis 2 & 3/cits. B7 & B8)
GENESIS 1 OR GENESIS 2
By Woodruff Smith
Where did it begin this idea called you?
In Genesis 1, or Genesis 2?
Which one of these concepts
Will prove to be true?
If you know what is what,
Do you know who is who?
In Genesis 1 in the 26th verse
There’s a man with never a taint’ of a curse.
But in Genesis 2 in verse number seven
There’s a dust man conceived…
He’ll never see heaven.
So, it really comes down
To which one you will claim,
What thou see’st thou be’st…
So, what is your name?
There they both stand.
Which one is you?
Is it immortal man one,
Or mortal man two?
If you’re immortal man
You know what you’re worth.
For according to law
You’ll inherit the earth.
But if you’re just a mortal
And made out of dust…
Is there anything to you
That’s worthy of trust?
No, the thing they call man
In Genesis 2
Is the dream of the dreamer.
It never was you.
So, know what you are.
Take your place in the sun,
You’re the immortal man
Of Genesis 1.
TESTIMONY OF HEALING [“The proof is in the pudding.”]
I gave a testimony one night in our Golden, Colorado church based on the ideas from a poem I really liked, which said, “Which of these men do you think of as you, Genesis One or Genesis Two?”
A couple of weeks later a businessman, not knowing I was behind him, probably, testified that he had heard a rather banal, trite testimony a couple of weeks ago from someone who recited that line, “Which of these men do you think of as you, Genesis One or Genesis Two?” and he thought it was so trivial, so lightweight.
He went to a business meeting in Atlanta, Georgia after that and was in a hotel room in the middle of the night, sound asleep with his wife beside him, when he had a massive heart attack.
He said he wasn’t naive, he knew what was happening, and he knew he was in a life-threatening situation. He was totally helpless, so helpless he could not even cry out to his wife for help, obviously could not call a practitioner, and he said for the first time in his life he felt completely helpless. He tried to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Scientific Statement of Being, but he couldn’t remember them, couldn’t put them together.
He felt totally mentally jumbled and then he recalled a very simplistic statement…”Which of these men do you think of as you, Genesis One or Genesis Two?” and he realized that it wasn’t so banal after all, that if he were a Genesis Two man he would probably not live through the night, but if he were a Genesis One man he could claim his dominion over the “things of the flesh.”
He did it. He said the pain lifted immediately and he felt whole and well. He decided the poem was OK after all.
–Lona lngwerson, CS
SEE HUMANITY’S CURES AS BEING WAY BEYOND MERELY MEDICAL SOLUTIONS.
Cobbey Crisler on Isaiah 1-2:22 (citation B10): “Cease ye from Adam”
[Cobbey on the next verses:] Isaiah 1:5 and 6. Isn’t this a question of Isaiah asking all humanity, “Why should you be stricken any more? You will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head [there is] no soundness in it: [but] wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores.” That’s Job’s problem written right out there. That’s his record that he that he didn’t want to have as his witness any more when he said [in Job 16:19] “my record is on high.” They must not have been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.” Here is even Isaiah bearing witness that the application of medicine has not cured what humanity needs to have cured.
In Isaiah 2:22 (citation B6) maybe this is part of the solution? What’s the recommended solution? “Cease ye from man.” That word in Hebrew is actually the Hebrew word “Adam.” It literally reads, “Cease ye from Adam whose breath [is] in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?”
“Heal the Sick”: A Scriptural Record,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
STOP SITTING around YOUR Pool of Bethesda WAITING for SOMETHING to HAPPEN!
Do you want to “sin no more?” Tune-in so nothing obstructs your at-one-ment with God.
Cobbey Crisler on John 5:2-9 (cit. B13, plus BONUS to verse 20):
[Cobbey:] “John 5:2 We’re now at the famous incident at the “Pool of Bethesda”. Near what serves as an occasional sheep market today, there is still a pool that has been excavated, that has archeological remnants that suggest the five porches. There is apparently, if this is the correct location of the pools, a structure that had two pools, each with two porches. Down the middle was a fifth porch with pools on either side. It may have been the ancient equivalent of a hospital.
“John 5:4 There’s some indication that it might have at some point in its history a spot that might have been associated with Aesculapius, the pagan founder of medicine, and that this superstition may have gotten to the point “that those who stepped into the pool when the water was troubled would be instantly healed.”
John 5:3 At least “an awful lot of people were waiting around for that event,” so the news must have spread that this occurred.
John 5:5 Here we run into a man that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. “He’d been there for thirty-eight years.” I’m sure that many of us would feel for him. We all have been sitting around our own pool of Bethesda waiting for something to happen, something miraculous, something fateful. We have all waited for something unexpected from the outside to lift us out of a condition that we haven’t made too much of an effort to do anything about.
“There was an environment there that did not help the problem. As a matter of fact, here’s how Professor Dodd describes it. I like this:
‘There is another story about a man who had given way to a chronic disability, and for years had nursed a grievance which excused him from doing anything about it.’
John 5:7. “Someone else always gets in before me.” If that sounds like a familiar excuse, then Bethesda isn’t so far back in history. So, he translates Jesus’ statements this way. Do you want to recover? That pinpoints it, doesn’t it? Do you see how that translation exhibits Jesus dealing with the thought of the patient? Where must it happen?
If communication from God to man must work, where must we work? In the thought of the receiver. Do we want to recover? That almost sounds silly to people who have been in a longtime condition, but it may very well be the core of the issue. Do we really want to be healed? Or have we become so settled into our condition that for thirty-eight years, we just sit there with our friends and talk about our operations? Misery loving company is a quality that attaches itself to human nature.
John 5: 6. Here’s how Dodd again translates Jesus’ question and then his demand on the patient. “Do you want to recover?”
John 5:8, “Then, pick up your bed and walk.” Jesus wasn’t about to volunteer to pick up his bed for him.
That says a lot. How else do we know Jesus, but to study his thoughts, his words, his methods, his messages, his intent, the logos, not but the word, but the thought behind it? What is required for the healing of a paralytic condition that has lasted practically a generation? It’s the very thing that he thought he couldn’t do, to pick up his bed and walk. Do you want to be healed? ‘Let there be light!’ (Genesis 1:3) That’s permission. Let it in.
John 5:9, “Immediately the man was made whole.” We don’t have any sense that there was a convalescence period. “He took up his bed and walked.”
“Notice in John 5:13 Jesus is saying: “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more.” This was another aspect to healing before it was complete, dealing with the thought of the patient. Jesus often views himself in the role of physician. Remember, he said, “A man that is whole needs not a physician” (Matthew 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31). “Sin no more” was something which that man had to comprehend in thought to avoid a recurrence.
“Notice the priority with what he dealt with the patient’s thought. “Do you want to recover?” OK great, we’ve got something we can work with.
“Do you really want to?
Do you want to give up this 38-year record of horizontalism?
“We have an even longer record of that. Stop and think how the “bed” dominates our lives, especially after a long day. All the way from birth to death, in sickness and in sleep. There is so much happening and looming so large in this concept of bed, that when Jesus healed the man, he made him take up what had dominated him for thirty-eight years. He said, “You dominate that bed and get out of here!” Jesus spoke with some degree of authority. And that’s just what happened.
BONUS verses ON YOU AS REFLECTION (right after citation B16):
“Jesus responds to the debate on the Sabbath (verse 16) with a brilliant exegesis of the seven days of creation.
In John 5:17, “Jesus said, you’re stopping me for healing on the Sabbath day. But my reading of the Scripture is this, My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” If the original works, what can the image or reflection do?
“Notice also John 5:19 is Jesus’ famous statement, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.” Taking this apart, it really gives you what man’s role is. What is it? It’s reflection. It’s image.
Man is not original in what he does. What he does stems from the original which is God. Then it reflects originality. Otherwise there would be competition for the job of Creator. Under monotheism there is no possibility for such competition (“For what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”)
“He took the Son of Man through every problem that the world could hurl at him and proved that even the Son of Man can be victorious and not a creature of circumstances when the understanding of his true nature as the Son of God can be applied.
Our understanding of the Son of Man and the Son of God, and the difference, might be heightened by realizing that the Christ comes to the Son of Man. The Christ doesn’t come to the Son of God because the Christ really presents the Son of God.
We’re on the human side of things, who feel the foot of domination on our necks from outside circumstances. Is that where the Son of Man belongs? Notice the argument of Bildad in the book of Job… It uses the very same phrase that Jesus does, elevating him way above the outlines of fleshly domination. So, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.” Why?
“John 5:20, “The Father loves the Son.”
John 5:30. The same point is repeated, “I can of mine own self do nothing.” Is this false humility or is Jesus actually giving us the facts straight out? What is the secret and source of everything he thought or did? What is the obstacle then between us and following Jesus? There’s something in there. Some kind of different concept of our selfhood than what he had. His was so transparent that there was nothing obstructing his at-one-ment with God, even on earth. His summons to us is to follow his example and shows his own expectation that we’re equipped to do it. So, we’re equipped to receive and to act on the instructions given us via communication. All we need to do is tune-in.
We’re coming to understand Jesus’ view of himself, and where he thinks this authority originates, “The Son of Man can do nothing of himself.” (John 5:19)]
“John, the Beloved Disciple,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
Plus, LISTEN (by clicking black bar in the online version) for an ORIGINAL ‘LITTLE DITTY” on REFLECTION
(written, sung and offered VIA EMAIL by longtime CedarS staff member, Mike Griswold, now the
Director of the Music Ministry at Brentwood Christian Science Church/Next Generation Fellowship
email: musicamonteverde@gmail.com
