The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his075/chrscien.lzh/CHRSCIEN.TXT

Text File | 1991-06-30 | 7KB | 145 lines

CUL:Christian Science - Christian or Cult?

   Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, foundress of the "Christian Science", now
dead, was an ex-spiritualistic medium. Her book, SCIENCE and HEALTH
with KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES, is accepted by her followers as THE text
book of revelation, and it is required reading at all services. Mrs.
Eddy wrote about the book, thus:

   "I should blush to write of SCIENCE and HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE
SCRIPTURES, as I have, were it of human origin, and I apart from God,
it author; but I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven in
Divine Metaphysics, I cannot be super- modest of the Christian Science
text-book."

   From the these words one would naturally expect that the teachings
of CHRISTIAN SCIENCE would harmonize with those of the Bible, of which
it is supposed to be the key! We now offer a comparison:

   "The principle of Divine Metaphysics is God" (S&H, pg 5) "Life,
Truth and Love constitute the triune God, or triple Divine principle"
(S&H, pg 277) "The theory of three persons in one God (that is a
personal trinity or tri-unity) suggest heathen gods" (S&H pg 152)

   Thus Christian Science denies a Personal Trinity. Now, while an
actual doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere explicitly taught in
Scripture, the WHOLE Scripture testifies to this. The Bible confirms
and leaves NO DOUBT that GOD IS TRIUNE in NATURE.

   Let's look at some questions and answers that are found in S & H to
see if the God of the Bible is the God of Christian Science.

   QUESTION: What is intelligence?

   ANSWER: Intelligence is omniscience and omnipotence. It is the
primal and eternal quality of infinite mind, of the triune Principle -
Life, Truth and Love - named God. (pg 469)

   QUESTION: What is mind

   ANSWER: Mind is God (pg 469) God, the Divine Principle of man, and
man in God's likeness are inseparable, harmonious and eternal ... God
and man are not the same, but in the order of Science, God and man
co-exist and are eternal. (pg 470)

   The Divine Mind is the Soul of man, and gives man dominion over all
things. (pg 307)

   God, without the image and likeness of Himself would be a
non-entity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be without a witness or proof
of His own nature .. If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from
His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity
reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed and the Father would be
childless - no father. (pgs 303,306)

   The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected God, liable to wrath,
repentance, and human changeableness. (pg 120)

   We do not need to detail a rebuttal of these unscientific, illogical
statements that are in DIRECT opposition to the Word of God! The God of
the Bible and the God of Christian Science are totally opposites, and
we cannot worship and love both at the same time - unless we deny the
reason God gave each of us AND do so in spite of the Word of the Living
God.

   The term "CHRISTIAN" denotes following one called CHRIST. Christian
Science attempts to deceive people by claiming to be "CHRISTIAN" while
they are NOT. Let us look at the Jesus of Christian Science, who the
Bible states IS THE CHRIST.

   "The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal
sense, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. This dual
personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and the material,
the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest in the flesh,
continued until the Master's ascension, when the human, material
concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ,
continues to exist in the eternal order of Divine Science, taking away
the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the
human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes." (S & H)

   Some factors become immediately obvious at this point. (1) The
writer NEVER read the Bible in context and (2) was blatantly
blasphemous in her absurdities! What does Christian Science teach about
ATONEMENT?

   "Jesus never ransomed man by paying the debt that sin incurs,
whosoever sins must suffer.."(VOL 2,pp 143,144)

   "Jesus bore our infirmities; he knew the error of mortal belief, and
with his stripes (the rejection of error)* we are healed." *=Mrs.
Eddy's own explanation of the "stripes" -how far off base could she
have been??

   "Final deliverance from error, whereby we rejoice in immortality ...
is not reached ... by pinning one's faith without works to another's
vicarious effort." (VOL 2,p 22)

   What does the BIBLE say? 1 Timothy 2:5,6: "For there is one God, and
one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus; who gave
Himself as ransom for all, to be testified in due time."

   In the 1903 edition of S & H on page 113, Mrs. Eddy gave FOUR BASIC
PROPOSITIONS. These are Mrs. Eddy's own words:

   FIRST, God is all in all. SECOND, God is good, good is mind. THIRD,
Spirit being all, nothing is matter. FOURTH, Life, God, omnipotent,
good, deny death, evil, sin, disease ---Disease, sin, evil, death, deny
good, omnipotent, God, life.

   In her statements, Mrs Eddy stated that these propositions were true
because they could be read forward and backward and have the same
meaning. On this very basis, we could "prove" that angels, cherubim and
seraphim are lizards, pigs and horses! The absurdity of these teachings
are all the more damning when you consider how many people are snared
in this trap of lies and misrepresentations. Again, quoting Mrs. Eddy:

   "If the body is only a phantom and the flesh is only a shadow, it is
logically certain that by-and-by some very practical sinners will take
refuge under this system, and insist that the sins of the body and the
transgressions of the flesh are harmless, since they are only the
phantom of a phantom, and the shadow of a shadow."

   Where is it PROVEN that the body is a phantom? If this one premise
is incorrect THEN ALL the remainder is FALSE! Christian Science has as
its aim to take away Jesus Christ as the alone Saviour of men. It
denies His actual birth, repudiates Him as the Christ, makes Him to be
as full of errors as other mortals, rejects the Atonement of the Cross,
says He never died, never was buried and never rose from the grave,
does not exalt His name above every name, refuses to Bow to Him as Lord
and God, teaches that He does not sit upon the infinite Throne, and
that He is not in heaven at all. In short, it turns His body into an
apparition, His blood to nothingness, His cross to a myth, His death as
a fiction, His burial as a mockery, and Himself to a personality that
was never real and no longer exists.

   CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IS NOT CHRISTIAN AND CAN NEVER BE CLASSIFIED AS
CHRISTIAN! A CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST IS DOOMED TO A HELL THAT HE WON'T
BELIEVE IN UNTIL HE ARRIVES THERE!

   We, as Christians and followers of JESUS the CHRIST, are required in
Ezekiel 3 and 33 to "sound the warning" and we are doing so here. We
pray that the message will reach the hearts that Jesus wants to have as
His!

   Computers for Christ - San Jose