CLAIM AS YOUR OWN the lasting GEMs of REALITY!
Saturday, March 18th, 2023
By Warren Huff (with insights from Cobbey Crisler)
CLAIM AS YOUR OWN the lasting GEMs of REALITY!
Let God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with insights from Cobbey & others
as inspired by The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Reality”
for Sunday, March 26, 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
“BE STRONG &… FEAR NOT” by “Remembering Everything About REALITY!” This will cause “SORROW & SIGHING to FLEE AWAY…” & Give CONVINCING PROOFS OF GOD’S CARE!
Read & see (in the links below) samples of application ideas for Isaiah 35 (Responsive Reading) as proved as part of CedarS divinely-defined purpose & Reality to be “loved into view”.
Each verse and word of the 35th chapter of Isaiah has been treated as CedarS divinely-given “marching orders” to live up to. Since 1962 Isaiah 35’s guidelines and promises have been passed along to CedarS staff by: Ruth E. Huff, CedarS Founder and Executive Director for the first 16 summers; its second Executive Director for 42 summers, Warren Huff; and its current Executive Director for the last 4 summers, Holly Huff Bruland.
[Cedars Founder, Ruth E. Huff wrote of CedarS purpose and Isaiah 35:] “In asking God what His/Her purpose was in founding CedarS Camps near Lebanon, Missouri, I (Ruth) opened the Bible “at random” for a divine answer and the first words that I saw were “the glory of Lebanon.” (Isaiah 35:2) Since that first summer in 1962, every Counselor Training course has featured the vital importance of putting into practice each word of all ten verses of Isaiah 35 as CedarS divinely-given “marching orders.”
Putting into practice an Isaiah 35:1 Prelude: “The wilderness* and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose” CedarS staff work together to put a full stop to the three, negative parts in the opening of Mary Baker Eddy’s definition of “WILDERNESS. Loneliness; doubt; darkness.” and to replace these temporary dark aspects with the lasting joys of her spiritual definition of wilderness as: “Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.” (SH 597) CedarS Bible Lands Park (BLP) features the great growth that all major Bible characters experienced in the wilderness when they had to go outside their “comfort zones” to find their “spiritual growth zones.” This stretching and growth happens intentionally every day and really every hour with CedarS Mets that kick-off each activity with a spiritual sense of it and of every participant.
Solos are another tradition for older campers and staff that feature a sacred, “solitary place” and set-aside time to commune one-to-one with God. In BLP, what was a deserted place has been transformed into the lush land of Sharon, even with blooming roses of Sharon.
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:2: “It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.”
The blossoming “excellency” of all at CedarS is celebrated with unique Quality Awards;
our 5th Fundamental is “We expect to make camping at CedarS fun!”;
every meal includes singing; and, at every Wednesday Testimony meeting all see and hear amazing testimonies to the glory and excellency of our God.
BONUS: Putting into practice Isaiah 35:3, “Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.” Above and beyond the physical healings of weak hands and feeble knees that could be related here, shine the examples in every camper and staff member (as part of their God-ordained purpose at CedarS) to strengthen their grasp on Truth through hourly Mets and more as well as to quicken and firm-up their resolve to take a “stand for right especially when it’s not the popular thing to do.” [part of CedarS Torchbearer pledge]
BONUS: Putting into practice Isaiah 35:4 A big part of each CedarS counselor job is to lovingly “Say to them that are of a fearful heart, be strong, fear not…” Throughout each day CedarS staff members constantly accentuate “Christ’s keynote of harmony, ‘Be not afraid!’” (SH 410:30)
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:5, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened. And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.” [A wonderful, instantaneous healing happened at CedarS about 20 years ago when a workman was blinded by an accidental splash of acetone. A healing of a pre-existing hole in a camper’s ear drum happened at CedarS a few years ago. Above and beyond these “miracles”, we witness daily shining examples of campers and staff awakening to the “gratitude that outlaws blindness to present good” as well as to a new openness to hear and obey our guardian angels that are either whispering or thundering in our ears “This is the way, walk ye in it!” [Isaiah 39:21, Misc. 539:23]
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:6, “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, (& as at the Pool of Bethesda) and the tongue of the dumb sing…” We have also witnessed physical healings at CedarS of a Division 1 football player on the same day he broke a foot being able to leap & run — eager for Football Camp — as well as a kindergartner who had not talked for over a year being able to open up and speak at CedarS.
But the day-to-day fulfillment of these promises comes in symbolic ways as campers and staff leave behind a crippling, “material sense of things…” that mutes the expression of their true spiritual identities which “break out” as “spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.” (Definition of Wilderness, SH 597)
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:7, “And the parched ground shall become a pool…” This prophecy was fulfilled, six days before the opening of CedarS 50th season, when our promised, under-construction “Mediterranean Sea” was parched and would have remained so all summer without divine help. Warren was impelled to quickly obey divine guidance to have a culvert drain sealed-off and to transfer runoff from a record storm that filled the lake before Opening Day 2011 with 60 million gallons of “holy water.” [In a YouTube replay of my 5-6-18 Principia Inspirational talk, you can hear and see details about this and other modern day “miracles,” including my life-saving healing.] I share my Hymn Sing healing of cancer 19 minutes in on YouTube and a divine provision 60-million gallon of “holy water” in 6 days at 31 minutes into my 2018 Principia Parent Association inspirational on YouTube.] Note the theme of water running throughout this Bible Lesson and see an aerial video and other posted videos of how this “holy water” runs through CedarS on our homepage.
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:8, “And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness;” This promise from God was fulfilled in “concrete” terms by the completion of Interstate 44 a few years after CedarS opened in 1962. This reduced trips from St. Louis to CedarS from 5 hours on 2-lane ‘Route 66,’ with its hills, curves and trucks to a beautiful and smooth 2.5-hour drive. But the deeper, daily meaning comes from the time and effort one always saves by taking “The way of holiness.” This is God’s “alias” for CedarS that we strive to demonstrate as we work to fulfill our purpose to “give each camper an appreciation of spiritual sense.”
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:9, “No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast…but the redeemed of the Lord shall walk there.” Our little piece of heaven in the Missouri Ozarks is free of all ravenous beasts, and by design, free of strife-filled thoughts, words and ways. Time-traveling campers and visitors walking on CedarS Time Travelers’ Trail in Bible Lands Park, are redeemed from beastly, strife-filled thoughts when they pledge (like Daniel in the Lions’ Den) to ‘win without a fight’ – and (like David) to be quick to forgive, and so be forgiven and redeemed.
Putting into practice Isaiah 35:10, “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return… they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” In addition to welcoming new family members, over a thousand campers and staff return to CedarS year after year to experience the nonstop joy of “Spontaneity of thought and idea” (another spiritual aspect of “Wilderness,” SH 597) and to put a “full stop” (period) to the “sorrow and sighing” of fables like “Loneliness; doubt; darkness” that they may “flee away.” (Let these aspects of a merely material view of “Wilderness” vanish as a dream. SH 597)
DEMONSTRATE REALITY which includes:
HEALING without delay, relapse, side effect or after effects;
and GOD’S THOUGHTS, PROVED as the only LASTING
REMEDIES FOR ALL ILLS — FOR ONE AND ALL.
Cobbey Crisler on Psalm 33: 11 (citation B5, + Ps. 33:9)
[Cobbey Crisler gives this prelude to citation B5:] “Psalm Chapter 33, Verse 9 … alludes 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.
[Cobbey on Ps. 33: 11 (citation B5): “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 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 the remedies all are.”]
“Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from Psalms” by B. Cobbey Crisler
BE HUMBLY EVER-READY TO MAKE WISE, LOVING ADAPTATIONS that always flow with DIVINE BESTOWALS!
[Warren Huff & Geith Plimmer, CS on citation S10, 13:2]
[Warren:] “I will always cherish my time in the mid-1970s as a church lecture committee host for Geith Plimmer, a Christian Science Practitioner and Lecturer from Great Britain. In one of his very Bible-based, Christian Science lectures, Geith commented on this sentence in Science and Health “Love is impartial and universal in its adaptations and bestowals.” (SH 13:2-3, citation S11) He said something like, “individuals and organizations will only be ready to receive divine BESTOWALS when they are ready to make wise, loving and divinely-directed ADAPTATIONS. Humility and love are the keys to the letting go of limiting circumstances and of humanly-outlined outcomes. We need to open up a willingness to let “Thy will be done” and to humbly make appropriate adaptations so that all we do is “characterized” by “wisdom, economy and brotherly love.”
[Warren:] “A need to make adaptations seem to imply that we can make mistakes with lasting bad results even when we are striving wholeheartedly for good. But we are blessed to be students of the Bible and so to know that no mistakes can really be made when we love God with all our hearts and put all we do in His hands. As Saint Paul declares as one of the rules by which we gladly operate: “And we know that ALL things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28, emphasis added)
I was and am humbly grateful to share in my INSPIRATIONAL TALK (in the second half of the Arden Wood’s 2022 Annual Meeting), a DETAILED EXAMPLE ABOUT MAKING AN ADAPTATION TO CORRECT A “MISTAKE” THAT RESULTED IN A WONDERFUL BESTOWAL OF BLESSINGS. We all now “see the past (“mistake”) through wisdom’s eyes, as a blessing in disguise.” (You can read & hear this verse & Desiree Goyette’s whole, inspiring solo, “Let It Go,” at https://desireegoyette.com/track/2585018/let-it-go )
Click on the ARDEN WOOD WEBSITE FOR A VIDEO of thrir 2022 annual meeting and a link to download the transcript of my inspirational talk for it which is in the 2nd half . [Below are related inspiration on adaptation & bestowal from my talk with John Mitchell, Arden Wood Executive Director:]
[Warren:] “Over thirty years ago, even though all steps were prayed about in advance, it looked like a big mistake had been made. CedarS team and Board felt divinely directed to start a shoulder-season service that was often undersubscribed and therefore operating at a large deficit. We also were running over our budget not only to complete the purchase of an expensive venue in West St. Louis County but also to maintain the very old structure on it. Our right motive was to put CedarS resources to use to offer an after-school and day-care program in the St. Louis area near Principia School when camp was not operating. The site featured a stone house built in 1818 on 8-acres that adjoined Queeny Park. It was bought during a high and quickly rising inflation period when interest rates could not he secured for more than 6 months and they had jumped to 20%. We were spending unsustainable funds to buy that high-maintenance property and the anticipated enrollment was big on some days and very small on most other days. To make a long and detailed story shorter, our Board prayed with several ideas and adaptations to make this program and property sustainable in keeping with Mary Baker Eddy’s guidance in the Church Manual: “God’s Requirement. Sect. 5. God requires wisdom, economy, and brotherly love to characterize all the proceedings of the members of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist.” (Church Manual 77:18)
As we prayed about the idea of selling the property, my mom who was then serving as Executive Director Emeritus, suggested that, like Gideon, we ask God for signs of this being a right idea. We did ask for “signs” – and God sent two quickly. The first sign, right away was a clear one that St. Louis County had favorably considered our application for the amazing Thomas Mason House to become an Historic Landmark so that developers wouldn’t be able to tear it down; and the second sign was that my sister, her husband and their young daughter planned to move to St. Louis, knew of the house, were very interested in bidding on it and in restoring its historic features. We did put out a “For Sale” sign and they won a bidding war that kept the Thomas Mason House in the CedarS family, so to speak, and the rest, including its preservation, is history.
In hindsight, after CedarS Board sold the house and land we had financial resources to “love into view” not just one, but two, unique, game-changing recreational features — first, our 30-acre Crown Lake in the shape of a crown, perfectly positioned on our cross-shaped, 1,000 acres; and, second, a fun, over-300-foot-long waterslide to get from our Aquatic Center to our new Crown Lake. Both have blessed thousands and thousands of kids of all ages from every state in the U.S. and from over 25 countries in the 32+ years since CHEER House sold and enabled them to be built.
We now clearly “see the past through wisdom’s eyes, as a blessing in disguise” as Desiree Goyette wrote and sings in her solo “Let it Go.” Confidently holding out to see God’s blessing, always gives you the “grace to go forward wherever he guide thee, gladly obeying the call of his word” (from Hymn 278:2 – which was not only CedarS 2021 metaphysical theme, but also that of The Mother Church and Principia.)
A Bible-based comfort that gave us the grace, strength and courage in advance to sell the house was Jacob answer to the angel he was wrestling with when at daybreak the angel asked to be released. Jacob’s condition for letting the angel go became ours for letting the property go: “And he (the angel) said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he (Jacob) said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. … And he (the angel) did bless Jacob and us as we continue to wrestle and hold out for the angel’s promised blessings, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” (Gen. 32:26, 28)
ACT LIKE YOU KNOW THAT PROPHECY IS FULFILLED NOW & THAT INCURABILITY IS HEALED BY CHANGING YOUR CONCEPT & BELIEVING!
Cobbey Crisler on Mark 1:14, 15 (cit. B12)
[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.
The 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.
“Heal the Sick”: A Scriptural Record, by B. Cobbey Crisler
LIVE IN GRATEFUL AWE OF THE REALITY OF THE CHRIST POWER — AND BE AN EAGER, FAITHFUL FOLLOWER!
[Warren:] Click here to see in Season 1, Episode 7 of “The Chosen” an inspiring, geologically-realistic and Biblically-accurate reenactment of Luke 5:1-15 (citation B13). This awe-inspiring event illustrates how Jesus fished for and caught his fishermen disciples and began to convert them to become “fishers of men.”
Sunday School teachers with internet bandwidth too narrow to share episodes of “The Chosen,” might want instead to “Let down your net for” a smaller, but dramatically narrated “Free Bible Images” video of this abundant “draught” to bring Bible stories to life for yourself and for those you love! Luke 5:4 (citation B13) https://vimeo.com/160924345
Images await you sorted by character, by book & verse, theme & story — including 120 images just for Peter. For yourself, your family members or Sunday School students, you may want to explore or videos with downloadable text based on the Bible at the http://www.FreeBibleImages.org website. It freely shares along with Bible-based text a “Story Planner” to go along with the pictures. Pictures range from more cartoonish to more realistic, depending on your “Target audience.”
ALSO CHECK OUT ACOUSTICAL TESTS of the NATURAL AMPHITHEATER WHERE JESUS LIKELY SHARED HIS INSPIRING INSIGHTS with large crowds. [A Matthew 13 Cobbey-corollary to Luke 5:1-15, cit. B13)
[Cobbey Crisler explains the acoustical logic of Matthew’s account of Jesus teachings being audible to large groups:] “Matthew Chapter 13 begins eight parables.
Verse 1) starts out where Jesus is preaching on the side of the Sea of Galilee…
Verse 2 [Res. Reading] “He went into a ship and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.”
First of all, when you’re standing in a ship without a public address system, can you be heard? This is one of the things that I questioned, and received grants from two foundations to explore… We took an acoustical expert to Israel from… an acoustical firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts… We had a hundred pounds of equipment. We tested every area where it said in both Old and New Testaments a single individual addressed hundreds, if not thousands of people without the aid of public address systems. We came back with very definite evidence that there seemed to be acoustical phenomena at these places which permitted such sound to carry. Of course, none of the gospels tell you where it is exactly.
But outside of Capernaum there is this little cove, and in the middle, I stood holding seven red balloons. I had to pop one balloon at a time while my acoustical-colleague was on the slope of this natural amphitheater measuring it with his electronic instrument…
Interestingly enough, we measured how many people could have been in that area. Five to seven thousand people could have stood or sat there and seen and heard anyone in the vicinity of the rock 9or boat) where I was standing. My suggestion is that these four parables, where Matthew records as having been said here, have an unusual emphasis on the acoustical element. Listening and being receptive…
“Book of Matthew, Auditing the Master,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
SHOW YOUR BOUNCE-BACK RESILIENCE of KEEPING the KINGDOM AS YOUR CORE & YOUR ALL! (SH 262:24 cit. S19)
With the Kingdom at your core, even if thrown down hard, you won’t fall apart like an egg! You’ll bounce back even higher – like a golf ball!
Jesus tells us clearly “the kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21, cit. B19)
Mary Baker Eddy adds:
- “These clearer, higher views inspire the God-like man to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being.” (S&H 262:15, citation S19)
- “God is at once the absolute centre and circumference of being.” (S&H 203:32-1)
Several decades ago when one of these citations was also in the Christian Science Bible Lesson, I felt impelled to dissect a golf ball to explore its circumference and its center and so to see what made it thrive and bounce back so resiliently in the “hard-knock life” that it was designed to lead. To dissect the white golf ball pictured as a Download (titled “Show your resilience, flexibility & inner kingdom bounce of peace”) at the bottom of this GEM webpage, I clamped it in a vise and hack-sawed it in half. I found it had an inner rubber ball wrapped tightly in hundreds of rubber-bands that snapped as I cut them. (I have reasoned many times since then with myself and with Sunday School students, campers and counselors (all who got to handle 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 (beyond your “comfort zone”)— blesses you.”)
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 make it so others need 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, cit. S19) It helps us spiritually perceive that “God is at once the centre and circumference of being.” (S&H 203:32-1)
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!)
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 core (centre). The harder a raw 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.”
STOP (38 years of) SITTING around YOUR Pool of Bethesda WAITING for SOMETHING to HAPPEN!
Christ is telling YOU of your freedom & oneness with God NOW!
So, “TUNE-IN” to A Chosen reenactment and to Cobbey’s insights on John 5:2-9/cit. B11, plus BONUS to verse 20):
[Warren on “The Chosen” — Season 2, episode 4:] Watch a short YouTube real-istic reenactment of this moving healing of a long time belief that others are beating you out of what’s rightfully yours. (Even getting a perfect parking place right before you.) It time to feel like that healed man and to let “sorrow and sighing …flee away” (Isa. 35:10, Responsive Reading)
[Cobbey Crisler on:] “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 right after Citation B13:
“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**
Have a ONE-ness Mind-Set to Fulfill Bible PROMISES & BE A HEALER LIKE CHRIST JESUS!
[Warren Huff:] Mary Baker Eddy made Christian Science a religion based on the Bible and its promises.
In her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she quotes the Bible 60 times just in the opening 20-page chapter on “Prayer.”
In the following one-sentence she makes at least three Biblical allusions/references. “Having no other gods, turning to no other but the one perfect Mind to guide him, man is the likeness of God, pure and eternal, having that Mind which was also in Christ.” (S&H 467:13). In this sentence Mary Baker Eddy refers not only the first commandment about having no other gods (Exodus 20:3) and to man being the “likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26), but also to “having that mind which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5/cit. B18)
