GEMs to help us LEARN the UNREALITY of ALL DISEASE, ACCIDENTS & EVIL
from BIBLICAL EXAMPLES as well as from MODERN-DAY PROOFS!
Insights by Cobbey Crisler and others** for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Un-reality”
for October 3, 2021
(shared with Janet Crisler’s blessing) by Warren Huff
CedarS Executive Director Emeritus warren@cedarscamps.org
COME “WITH FAN IN HAND, TO THOROUGHLY PURGE” (METICULOUSLY ELIMINATE) EVERY BELIEF in the “FABLE” of EVIL’s REALITY. (Matt. 3:12)
Mary Baker Eddy defines this “FAN” – that we are to have “in hand” so as to be ready to use it early and often or “promptly and persistently” (SH 273:32)– as the “Separator of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought.” (SH 586:7).
In this week’s Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson, we have two Science and Health citations that refer to this dry-cleaning baptismal formula:
- Citation S5 states: “The Science of Christianity comes with fan in hand to separate the chaff from the wheat. Science will declare God aright, and Christianity will demonstrate this declaration and its divine Principle, making mankind better physically, morally, and spiritually.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 466:26) - Citation S23 states: “Jesus’ demonstrations sift the chaff from the wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of good, the unreality, the nothingness, of evil.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 269:5) - The Responsive Reading (RR) shares God’s rhetorical question/perpetual assurance to us: “What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.” (RR/Jeremiah 23:38)
Other BIBLICAL ROOTS of the “FAN IN HAND” and “CHAFF & WHEAT” REFERENCES:
John the Baptizer said that Christ Jesus was to come “with fan (or winnowing fork) in hand”— The New International Version translates John the Baptizer’s words as: “I baptize you with[a] water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:11, 12, NIV)
Click here for an inspirational blog with much more from Cobbey Crisler on how baptizing our thought throughout each day with the Bible-based baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire is the only way to please God and bring out the unmixed results of our Master and Wayshower, Christ Jesus. [that’s at TO PLEASE GOD, WELCOME INSIDE OF YOU CHRIST’S “DRY-CLEANING” SPIRITUAL BAPTISM! Lift-up every mixed-up mess to God… – CedarS Camps]
APPLY ELISHA’S EXAMPLE OIL-FLOWING AS DIVINE SUPPLY FOR A WIDOW & HER SONS TO YOUR SITUATION as CedarS Met writer, Christie Hanzlik, CS, did:
[Christie Hanzlik, CS, wrote in Section 3 of this week’s Met:] “The story of Elisha helping the woman and her two sons was especially meaningful to me during a dark time in which I felt overwhelmed with what felt like insurmountable pressures facing my two sons and me. My simple prayer was to know that if Elisha’s prophet-vision could see beyond the woman’s dire situation, then I too could “open my eyes” and see good flowing into my experience even when it didn’t seem apparent. This change of thought gave me hope, and then, bit by bit, good came into our experience until I felt effortlessly filled up full and more. I always remember the overflowing “oil of gratitude” I felt during this healing of provision for my family when I read the story of Elisha and the woman’s pot of oil. We can all practice the simple prayer of being grateful in advance and becoming sure divine Love is providing for us even when our situation looks bleak.” [Click here to read the rest of Christie’s Met and scroll to and click on the black bar below LISTEN to hear Christie read her Met that includes this application example.]
APPRECIATE DEEPLY JESUS’ HUMANITY IN HIS TOUCHING AND HEALING A LEPER!
Cobbey Crisler on Mark 1:32-41 (cit. B21) and Luke 5:12,13
[Cobbey:] “Then “at even,” Verse 32. What that tells you is that it’s now after sunset and other people can come and be healed. It was a Sabbath day we find out from another gospel. They all come and the Sabbath is over and he heals a great multitude. In fact, in Verse 34, “He [even] healed many who were sick of divers diseases.” That’s not the bends. That’s simply “diverse diseases and casts out many devils;”
“Verse 40. A leper comes to him. We already know what the early message in the Scriptures is about healing leprosy? Notice what the patient does. Study the patient’s role. Then study the healer’s role, namely Jesus. The leper comes, “beseeching, kneeling, and saying, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” What does that show is occurring in his thinking? Is he ready? Again, there’s your key. Receptivity is the key to healing. You know, a leper was not supposed to approach anyone. He was to remain at least six feet away and ringing a bell. He was supposed, according to the Torah, to shout everywhere he went, “Unclean, unclean.” Imagine the label one attached to oneself. No winder it was incurable. You never got off the subject. Unclean, unclean.
“Here, he’s breaking through that ritually required barrier and saying, “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” Look at the difference just in thought there. From “Unclean, unclean” [to] “if thou wilt thou canst make me clean.” Jesus noticed how the healer here works. [Verse 41,] “Moved with compassion, put forth [his] hand, and touched him.” That’s a no-no. You know what the ritual law said he had to do after that? Go home and bathe. And send out all his clothes to the laundromat and stay there for at least seven hours before he could even mingle with humanity again, because touching a leper made you unclean. [Voice:”…took the serpent by the tail.”] Took the serpent by the tail, good point. No fear.
“Also, if we’re studying the healing method of Jesus. If we’re saying that this course on “Heal the Sick: A Scriptural Record” is the record of how we, too, should heal the sick, if this is what Jesus had in mind, or what God is revealing to humanity through the Bible, then what else happened when Jesus touch that leper?
“Just ask yourself. Put yourself in that leper’s position. Then stand back and appreciate deeply Jesus’ humanity. How long had it been since that leper had felt a human touch? Did Jesus have to touch him humanly to heal him? [Voice: “No, he didn’t.”] He’s proved in other cases he did not have to. [Voice: “I think he wanted to prove that he wasn’t afraid of leprosy, and nobody should be.”] Alright, that’s also a good point. But look at it from the leper’s point of view. Did Jesus do everything from his own point of view? In other words, like, “I’m gonna do this because I want to show you all I’m not afraid of this dread disease”? No. That’s part of it. [Voice: “Love.”] But, that great love that saw the man’s need. The love that meets the human need Jesus was expressing there. That man must have just responded in such a way that he was healed immediately.
“Jesus makes him do something. It’s a rare case where Jesus ever does it all for the patient. He says, “Be thou clean.” Whose responsibility? [Voice: “His.”] “Be thou clean.”
“Let’s remember now as we see these things occurring in the early moments of Jesus’ earthly career, that within them, this is not just something that’s springing full blown. There is a continuity, isn’t there? We’ve spent the whole morning with the continuity, the promise, the prophecy, the indications of healing to come up to Jeremiah’s [31:33] prediction of the New Covenant and it would be “written within on our hearts.”
“When Jesus touches this leper and heals him, there comes with it all that authority of God’s revelation behind him, nothing new, as old as God and His revelation to man. Yet, don’t we hark, in a way, to some of the earlier records? For instance, when Jesus tells this man in Verse 44 to go “to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded.” Maybe behind that stands that statement of God to Moses [Exodus 4:8] that if they do not believe “the voice of the first sign that they will believe the voice of the latter sign,” or healing? What greater evidence of one’s religion or understanding could you have than the evidence of a healed case? Especially of one that could very well have been a form of incurable leprosy.”
“Heal the Sick”: A Scriptural Record, by B. Cobbey Crisler**
LISTEN to a “Daily Lift” of cancer healed by applying “REVERSE THE CASE. STAND PORTER AT THE DOOR OF THOUGHT… AND SHUT OUT THESE UNHEALTHY THOUGHTS AND FEARS.” (cit. S26/392:24)
Click on: https://www.christianscience.com/christian-healing-today/daily-lift/cured-of-cancer?j=575366&sfmc_sub=13824637&l=64_HTML&u=21158770&mid=10979697&jb=300
“MAINTAINING THE FACTS…” HEALS A DOG SLED ACCIDENT!
A CASE HISTORY FROM KERRY JENKINS, CS, ON HOW TO WIN HEALING AND AN INNOCENT VERDICT IN THE COURT OF SPIRIT by “MAINTAINING THE FACTS OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE… WITH … UNSHAKEN UNDERSTANDING…”
On page 417 of Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy lays down this law from her many cases of healing:
“Maintain the facts of Christian Science, that Spirit is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law. Then hold your ground with the unshaken understanding of Truth and Love, and you will win.” (SH 417:10-16, citation S27)
CedarS Met contributor, Kerry Jenkins, CS, gives a case study precedent of applying this spiritual law:
“I had a really wonderful example of how this spiritual law is the only true law, when I was involved in a dog sledding accident. I was tucked into the sled and my husband, Doug, was driving. We were really flying down a narrow trail between spruce trees. Things got a bit sideways and the sled flipped and came to a stop with my face between the trunk of a tree and the steering bow of the sled. The injury seemed pretty severe. But I remember deciding that I was going to do just what it said in the above quote and “Maintain the facts of Christian Science…”. I decided not to even look in a mirror when I got home.
“I couldn’t see out of one eye, but continued to maintain my sense of peace that there could be no accidents in a universe governed by Mind—no collisions in a universe of Spirit. By the second day I could see clearly once again. I didn’t look at my face until three days later, just kept it clean and covered. When I got a glimpse, I had to laugh at the very vibrant colors mixed with a few remaining abrasions. By the next evening, when I was to sing in a concert, there was no sign whatsoever that anything had happened only four days before. I felt so embraced by this spiritual law of Love! There was no question that this healing was the result of an awareness of the supremacy of spiritual law.” [Hear Kerry tell this after Section 4 in her CedarS Met on the Christian Science Bible Lesson for “Spirit” for August 9, 2020 at https://www.cedarscamps.org/metaphysical/audio/play/audio-met-on-spirit-by-kerry-jenkins-cs-mp3/.]
OBEY GOD’S COMMAND to LET the KNOWING LIGHT of CHRIST JESUS SHINE IN YOUR HEART TO GLORIFY GOD! Cobbey Crisler on II Corinthians 4:6 (cit. B23)
[Cobbey:] “Chapter 4, verse 6 of 2 Corinthians. Here is a commandment from God. This commandment was for “light to shine out of darkness,” and to shine where? [Voice: “in our hearts.”]. Where is the finger of God at work? Where has Christ written his letter, his epistle? If that’s shining, if we’re facing God, face-to-face, Mind-to-Mind, if our mentality is taking on the likeness of God Himself, then that light is showing. But it’s a light that knows. It’s a mental light, “the light of the knowledge.” In the Latin Bible, do you know what that word is? It’s our word for science, scientiae. It is the light of the knowing in a sense of disciplined science “of the glory of God.”
“We have the ability, therefore we are without excuse, to know God because he has revealed Himself, His nature, to us. We can call upon our divine nature. We can begin the answer the question, “What is natural?” with the response, “The divine is natural for me.” That “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus” leaves not one slight dark spot of Adam’s amnesia left on the disc of our consciousness.”
“Glory: Divine Nature in The Bible,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**