Bible Study from September 28th, 2024

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Since angels are referred to about two hundred times in the Bible, it is highly important that we should understand their true meaning if we are rightly to interpret the Scriptures. It had long been believed that angels were guardians who appeared to the ancient worthies in some mysterious way with messages,

It remained for Mrs. Eddy to interpret that Scripture, as well as many other Biblical promises, in terms of present possibility, by stating in the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 581), that angels are “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality.” She also says (ibid., pp. 566, 567): “The Old Testament assigns to the angels, God’s divine messages, different offices. Michael’s characteristic is spiritual strength. He leads the hosts of heaven against the power of sin, Satan, and fights the holy wars. Gabriel has the more quiet task of imparting a sense of the ever-presence of ministering Love. These angels deliver us from the depths.”

It is plainly evident that the mission of angels is the deliverance of mortals from the false beliefs of material sense, or the serpent,—the devil or Satan,—whose lies since time began have claimed to reverse man’s real spiritual nature by insisting that he is material and subject to sin, sickness, and death.

Angels meet the need of the mental state in which they find us, and they speak in terms we cannot fail to understand. It is through spiritual sense we know God. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 209), “Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God;” and she adds (p. 210), “Its ideas are expressed only in ‘new tongues;’ and these are interpreted by the translation of the spiritual original into the language which human thought can comprehend.”

It may be because of the familiar language in which we hear these angels or messages from God that we sometimes fail to recognize their spiritual origin. We may have thought of them as intuitions or inspirations of the human so-called mind.

The right method of knowing truth or availing ourselves of these angels is to dwell in a sense of receptivity rather than with a belief in a personal creative sense. When receptivity is entertained, the student not only will lose his burdened sense of responsibility as to what to think, but will have found the way to entertain God’s angels.

Much light may be thrown on the subject by the meaning of the word “entertain.” These thoughts are, so to speak, guests from God coming to abide with men. Who that desires to have a guest in his home does not first issue him an invitation? Then, does he not set his house in order, all the while expectantly happy in anticipation; and upon the arrival of the guest does he not open wide the door for his admittance? Just so is the process by which we entertain these angel visitants. Desire is the invitation. We set our thoughts in order by sweeping out the testimony of material sense; and with joyful and calm expectancy we open wide the door of spiritual sense, the “conscious, constant capacity to understand God.” And, behold, what do we find? Already a legion of angels standing at the door waiting for us to bid them come in.

Speaking absolutely, the angels are always present; but we have been so busy entertaining material thoughts that we have failed to note the presence of God’s angels. When we begin to give heed to these angels, the promptness with which they speak to us can but convince us that true consciousness is always filled with truth whether one humanly recognizes it or not. There is never a lack of these angels; never a condition where hearing them is impossible; never a time when they cannot be recognized. When we do not seem receptive to them, it can only mean that there has been an attempt to create, instead of to receive God’s thoughts.

How joyful just to be still and listen for God’s voice! We can hear it as we walk along the street, as we are busy with our household duties or in our offices, even while we turn the pages of an account book or as we turn to speak to someone. However crowded or confused the place may seem, His angels of peace are there to calm our thoughts. However silent and alone we may think we are, His angels of love are there to cheer us. So, no one can plead lack of opportunity to learn of God when His angels are ever present, pointing us Godward, always away from evil and materiality.

As we learn to listen for God’s thoughts, we find much interest in noting the Michaels and the Gabriels as they come. And we note how they seem always to meet our very need. As we learn to lift our thoughts constantly for these spiritual guides, while at work or play, we find that even before we have called, God has answered. Our thoughts sing with truth sometimes even without a conscious desire on our part; and who has not found himself repeating a beloved promise from the Bible, a thought of Truth, or a verse of some hymn, and almost before he discovered he was so doing? Does not this prove that we do dwell “in the secret place of the most High,” and that His angels do have charge over us, to keep us in all our ways?

—”Angels” from The Christian Science JournalFebruary 1928, Iva B. Linebarger

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1. When did the story of the Tower of Babel occur?

After the flood.

2. Who was Nimrod?

The key to the leadership in this case is found in the previous chapter. Here we read that “Cush begat Nimrod: [Gen. 10: 8] he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord … And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.”

Nimrod, the mighty hunter, was a grandson of Ham. His powerful personality and desire for control at first appear to have found an outlet in the subduing of wild beasts. His hunting trips must have extended over very wide areas, and this probably accounts for the numerous Hamitic colonies before referred to. The particular journey from the east which resulted in the discovery of the plain of Shinar was probably one of those hunting excursions. At all events it seems certain that the proposition to build a city and a tower at Babel was not a general scheme but was evolved exclusively by Nimrod and his personal following. Their expressed purpose to make for themselves a name would have no meaning were it not for the fact that they desired to exalt themselves above their brethren.

3. What was the reason for building the Tower?

… we have in this story the germ of that megalomania so familiar in history and which has always set for itself the same impossible task of building to heaven upon a material foundation.

4. Why did God stop the Babylonians from building the Tower and what was the result?

The city and tower of Babel were never completed, according to the account in Genesis, because, it is said, the Lord did there “confound their language” so that they could “not understand one another’s speech.” After this the people were scattered abroad, so that each family group was compelled to think for itself and to work out its own problems individually. The word Babel means “confusion,” and one of the definitions given to it by Mrs. Eddy in the Glossary of Science and Health is “material knowledge” (p. 581). She continues, “The higher false knowledge builds on the basis of evidence obtained from the five corporeal senses, the more confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall of its structure.”

All who have practised the teachings of Mrs. Eddy know from experience that Christian Science is the Word of God. It is continually being translated into as many forms of health and happiness as there is receptivity for these in human consciousness. On the other hand, the tower of Babel, that structure of fear and personal ambition which mortals have been trying so persistently to build from earth to heaven, is the very opposite of true security, and inevitably ends in “confusion worse confounded.” The divine idea, of which the tower of Babel was the counterfeit, is obviously the true church, reaching up to heaven, which Mrs. Eddy defines on page 583 of Science and Health. “The church,” she says, “is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick.”

Each individual Christian Scientist aims to establish a true sense of this ideal church, which casts out evil and heals the sick, within the realm of his own consciousness. This state of mind he understands to be “the secret place” referred to in the ninety-first psalm, and in which mankind may find his true refuge and fortress. It is by means of this spiritual idea of church that one is enabled to demonstrate his right relation to that human institution known as the church organization and to infuse into its activities the true spirit of divine service.

—”Tower Of Babel” from The Christian Science Journal, January 1917, Richard P. Verrall

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Article: — “The Ninety-First Psalm” by Bliss Knapp

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Article — “Electricity” by Bicknell Young

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Article — “Dictatorship” by Herbert W. Eustace

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