Sunday, October 13th, 2024 Roundtable
Look Unto Me, and Be Ye Saved
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Are Sin, Disease, And Death Real?
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
Hold to the correct view of man that heals. We adulterate the Truth when we have a false sense of God and Man. We have idols when we hold in thought the beliefs of sin, sickness and death, and believe them to be real. We break the law when we believe that evil is as real as good, for this is a false sense which sees only the inverted image and not the true idea of God; hence it prevents us from reflecting the healing Truth, having but one God and loving our neighbor as ourself.
My beloved students: Enter into the closet of divine Love and there in humility ask this ever-present power to shield and to defend you from the enemies of your souls and bodies, to defend you and guard you and guide you in the paths of righteousness, pleasantness and Truth.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 101, 160
Discussion points
312 — WATCH lest you continue to try to reflect God as a means to an end — that end being health. The time comes when God expects you to use discord to help you to find Him.
When one seeks help through Christian Science and fails to receive it, he gives himself away if he declares that he had treatment for a month, for instance, and received no benefit. Such a one means that he did not receive health; and he is then apt to toy with the notion of returning to medical methods. He exposes the fact that all he wants from God is pleasant matter, without regard for spiritualization.
When one regards sickness as the means to the end of finding God, any clearer thought of Him or more trustful sense attained, makes him grateful, even if he does not gain the harmony in the flesh at once.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT Psalm 119 : 128
“I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way.”
The unreality of sin, disease, and death, rests on the exclusive truth that being, to be eternal, must be harmonious. All disease must be — and can only be — healed on this basis. All true Christian Scientists are vindicating, fearlessly and honestly, the Principle of this grand verity of Mind-healing.
— from No and Yes, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 4
Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts — mortal inventions, one and all — Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present and eternal good.
— from Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 59-60
In erring mortal thought the reality of Truth has an antipode, — the reality of error; and disease is one of the severe realities of this error. God has no opposite in Science. To Truth there is no error. …
— from Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 4
Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath he articulates truth and error. We say that God is All, and there is none beside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of nothingness, a powerful presence named evil. We say that harmony is real, and inharmony is its
opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon sickness, sin, and death as realities.With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the similitude [human concept] of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals are free moral agents, to choose whom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto them All-in-all.
— from Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 9
Article — Letter on Body by by Edward Kimball
When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious — as Life eternally is — can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.
— from Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 495
“Gill’s Exposition” John Gill Bible Commentary,
“Handling Weather Broadcasts” — by Parthens,
“What is it that has been hidden from the ages?” queried Rev. E. Morgan Isaac. “Man’s oneness with God,” was his answer. “‘Look unto me, and live.’ This is the one thing; and it is surely coming. The kingdom of heaven, as Jesus said, is within you, and no one has power over you. What is faith? Understanding. What is understanding? Your oneness with God. Herein lies healing power.”
— from Christian Science Sentinel, September 16, 1922, Signs of the Times (excerpt) [“Oneness With God Is Topic,” from the Press, Glendale, Calif.]
There is perhaps no fact more plainly set forth from Genesis to Revelation than the inevitable nature of the demand that all must finally bow to God; that all must finally acknowledge Him as infinite, All. Indeed, again and again we find God insisting therein on His own completeness; as, for instance,—this time also in Isaiah,—”Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” …
… That the Leader of the Christian Science movement saw fit to unite it with the communion services of the Christian Science church certainly evidences that it has a place to-day in a correct worship of God, and it is our duty so to understand its purpose that its use will bring to all attendants upon Christian Science services the beneficial result Mrs. Eddy intended. …
Now humility is not a natural trait of the human consciousness. Indeed, the very arrogance of the suppositional belief of an existence in matter uncovers instantly a sense of resistance to whatever asks of it any admission of the need of its subserviency in any direction. The so-called mortal mind always questions its need of bowing to anything or anyone; instead, it is ever quite ready to argue for its own dignity, which it claims should never be called upon to bend, even to God.
When we pause to realize that every supposititious claim of material selfhood is an egotistical, outrageous denial of God’s all-power and all-presence; that every belief in materiality is a belief in another power and presence than the divine, we begin to wonder if we should ever for an instant lose sight of the necessity of mentally bending the knee to our good God.
— “The Bended Knee” from Christian Science Journal, 1927 by Ella W. Hoag
“You stand the tallest on your knees.
— Charles Stanley
We turn, with sickened sense, from a pagan Jew’s or Moslem’s misconception of Deity, for peace; and find rest in the spiritual ideal, or Christ. For “who is so great a God as our God!” unchangeable, all-wise, alljust, all-merciful; the ever-loving, ever-living Life, Truth, Love: comforting such as mourn, opening the prison doors to the captive, marking the unwinged bird, pitying with more than a father’s pity; healing the sick, cleansing the leper, raising the dead, saving sinners. As we think thereon, man’s true sense is filled with peace, and power; and we say, It is well that Christian Science has taken expressive silence wherein to muse His praise, to kiss the feet of Jesus, adore the white Christ, and stretch out our arms to God.
And, before the flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes — lay aside your material appendages, human opinions and doctrines, give up your more material religion with its rites and ceremonies, put off your materia medica and hygiene as worse than useless — to sit at the feet of Jesus.
— from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 124, 17
Final Readings
Conversion of Charles Spurgeon (His Personal Testimony) (excerpt)
When, for the first time, I received the gospel to my soul’s salvation, I thought that I had never really heard it before, and I began to think that the preachers to whom I had listened had not truly preached it. But, on looking back, I am inclined to believe that I had heard the gospel fully preached many hundreds of times before, and that this was the difference,–that I then heard it as though I heard it not; and when I did hear it, the message may not have been any more clear in itself than it had been at former times, but the power of the Holy Spirit was present to open my ear, and to guide the message to my heart….
I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if they could tell me that, I did not care how much they made my head ache. The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now, it is well that preachers should be instructed; but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was,-
LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Isaiah 45:22 KJV
He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus:
Then the good man followed up his text in this way:–
“‘Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! Look unto Me!”
When he had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.”
Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, “and you always will be miserable–miserable in life, and miserable in death,–if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”
Then, lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, “You man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothin’ to do but to look and live.”
I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said, — I did not take much notice of it — I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, “Trust Christ, and you shall be saved.”
It is not everyone who can remember the very day and hour of his deliverance; but, as Richard Knill said, “At such a time of the day, clang went every harp in Heaven, for Richard Knil was born again,” it was e’en so with me. The clock of mercy struck in Heaven the hour and moment of my emancipation, for the time had come. Between half-past ten o’clock, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve o’clock, when I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me! I had passed from darkness into marvelous light, from death to life.
— by C. H. Spurgeon