Vodpod videos no longer available.
Some of the Real Rotten Roots of Modern Word of Faith Theology
I posted an article before on Positive Confession, Word Faith, Logos and Rhema, and some of the heresies associated with it. {see here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/positive-negative-confession-word-faith-logos-rhema/ }
Some of the modern Positive Confession Word Faith heresy has evolved from the Christian Science of Mary Baker Eddy, which although known by most folk today as a cult run by a blasphemous false prophetess, influenced to varying degrees ‘the church’ during the late 1800s/early 1900s.
Prayer, from the Christian Science perspective, does not appeal to ask God to intervene in a situation, but is rather a process of learning more of “God’s” spiritual reality within all of us [typical new age] – “awakening mortal thought” to the so-called spiritual truth there is no such thing as evil, disease, death and it is all an illusion. So battling for the mind and the thoughts and getting that ‘right’ by basically being in denial, and utilising mind over ‘illusionary’ matter – and basically mesmering/hypnotising oneself to be well by positive thought. {Interestingly, Eddy thought conversely that ‘negative’ thinking could kill, even from another from a distance, and claimed one of her husbands died this way.]
Note already the similarities with these ideas promoted by Eddy and some modern church thinking within the prosperity gospel/word faith movement.
If you are struggling to see the pattern at the moment, just exchange some of the Christian Science terminology for more familiar Christian sounding words commonly distorted and used out of context today, such as:-
faith
confession
believe
seed
holding on
holding onto the promise
taking authority over
take full authority
command
creative force
speak out
declare
decree
rebuke
bind
cast out
denounce
throw off
casting down each thought
taking each thought captive
foothold
renewal/battle of the mind
visualise
eyes of faith
rhema
word of faith
word of life
’mustard seed’
taking the land
destiny
crossing the Jordan
achieving victory
victorious
spiritual breakthrough
anointed
power
spiritual laws
dominion
defeating the enemy
prosperity
health
name
claim
inheritance
being a champion
positive
negative
thought life
spiritual warfare
And conversely ‘negative words/thinking’, ‘critical spirit’, ‘unbelief’, ‘fear’, ‘doubt’ ’witchcraft’ et al.
Among other terrible things Christian Science teaches [and again you should see the similarities of thinking within the word faith movement, just dressed up a little in a more ‘palatable’ form, and I have included as well as the similarities the blasphemy and other nonsense just so you can see how rotten its roots actually are] –
“In Christian Science we learn there are not two powers – a good one that overcomes an evil one. There is only one power, omnipotent, omnipresent good. Christian Science therefore recognizes all discord such as sin, disease, death, lack and limitation as merely illusion. In this realization – in our ability to rest in the Word of God – the problem that confronts us dissolves; healing takes place.
Mrs. Eddy continually admonished students to expose and denounce evil and errors of every nature but recognize no reality in them since they are illusions, hypnotic suggestion only.
What Conclusion Should We Arrive At?
If you think about it seriously must you not arrive at the conclusion that if God is All, is infinite, is good only, is omnipotent and omnipresent–and there is nothing present but infinite good, it’s nature and its qualities–then must not sin, disease, lack, and limitation, discord of any kind, be illusion? Must these not be the result of universal hypnotic suggestion?
When we believe disease has power, and try to rid ourselves of it, we actually increase its seeming power over us, but if we hold to the Truth that omnipotent Mind–the Mind that is our real Mind–possesses all power, and this power is in the invisible spirit of God within us, we gain the conviction that there is no power in the visible form–the body, the condition, the person, place, thing–and therefore the discord or disease disappears.
The false sense disappears because we have obeyed Jesus’ admonition to resist not evil – resist not illusions, hypnotic suggestions, animal magnetism. The discord has disappeared because the spirit of Truth, the kingdom of God within our consciousness, has acted to dispel the illusion.
Jesus’ life gave us a monumental demonstration of overcoming the illusions of mortal mind. Was there ever a greater seeming defeat, from the mortal standpoint, than Calvary? Was there ever a greater victory than the resurrection? Mrs. Eddy’s life too was a series of snatching stunning victories from the jaws of defeat (illusion, hypnotic suggestion). What these two Wayshowers accomplished we can accomplish, too. These victories are also available for us.
Dispelling the Illusion
Because mortals have been reared in a material sense of life they hold themselves in bondage to form, and so commit idolatry–they bow down and fear a form labeled body, disease, money, person, place, thing, condition. But Christian Science reveals there is a presence and power, which as we contact it, becomes a law unto us; it becomes “He that performeth that which is given me to do.”
The spirit of Truth can dispel the illusion only when we arrive at the inner conviction that power does not exist in the visible form. Spirit–infinite good, reality–is the only substance; it shadows forth infinite forms, but the power remains in the Mind, the Spirit, the Principle. For example, the principle of mathematics has infinite forms each of which can be erased from the blackboard, but the principle can reproduce the examples, the calculations, the forms, because the power and reproductive capacity always remains in the principle. It is the same with the Principle of our being. The power is never in the visible form. Jesus told his listeners, “Destroy this temple [this body, this form] and in three days, I [my divine Mind, the ‘I’ that I am, the Principle], will raise it up,” will reproduce it.
When error looms, we have a decision to make. We will have a battle (since the illusions seem so real, and continually present pictures to us of things that do not exist in reality). Christian Science asks: Is there a something, a condition, that has to be overcome? Is there a condition that Truth must do something to?
Christian Science teaches that other people do not have the power to bedevil our life. But we must know this. When we expose and denounce evil we must at the same time recognize no reality in it.
We Must Know the Truth that Frees
One of Mrs. Eddy’s most valued students, Flavia Knapp, felt keenly the envy, jealousy, malice, hate, and persecution directed against her; therefore at a testimony meeting, after testifying of her many wonderful healings, she concluded by asking: “For which of these works do ye stone me?”
Two weeks later she died. She had personalized error, had made it real. It was the suggestion, illusion, appearing in her own thinking, that caused her to believe in the power of animal magnetism (error, hypnotic suggestion, illusion) and which prompted her to enter her public protest against this illusion. Jesus said, “A man’s foes shall be those of his own household.”
Mrs. Knapp had failed to heed the Christian Science teaching that when we feel thoughts of error we should vehemently enter a protest against our own belief in it. She should have understandingly declared: “No, you are not real; you can’t be real since God, the kingdom of God within me, is All, and has sovereign power; therefore I know you are nothing but hypnotic suggestion. This error has no power of its own; it is coming to me to give it life, and I refuse to give it any!” Then the error, the illusion, would have vanished, and Mrs. Knapp would have continued with her wonderful mission on this plane of existence.
Our great work in this world is to let the light within our own consciousness expand further and further into the darkness until this light– from “the kingdom of God within [us]“banishes all darkness and error.
What Makes Evil, Error Vanish?
If we stand fast in divine Science, the divine knowing that God, infinite good, is All, is One, is omnipotent and omnipresent, then is there a discord to be overcome? Is there disease, lack and limitation to be overcome? The answer, of course, is “No!” Christian Science calls on us to decide between reality and appearances, between the Spirit and the flesh. “The belief that life and sensation are in the body should be overcome by the understanding of what constitutes man as the image of God [our true Mind]. Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh” (S&H 289:4). When we are in that consciousness where “the spirit of the Lord God is upon [us],” evil of every nature vanishes.
Mary Baker Eddy’s great discovery revealed that materiality and the discords confronting us are not a power. They cannot be a power since God, our real Mind, alone is power; Spirit (reality, good) alone is power. Clinging to this truth we prove that materiality and discords are not a power. They are false concepts, misperceptions.
…. Belief in Two Powers Caused Suffering
Now we can understand why, even though the Bible was the guiding light and impetus for the ventures undertaken in the discovery and settling of America, so much adversity and suffering was encountered.
It was because the people involved–and this is still true of most of us–had a religious background which had instilled in them the belief of two powers.
They prayed to a God that did not exist. They prayed to God as a great power that could overcome other powers such as sin, disease, hunger, cold, or danger. There is no such God. God, our true Mind, “the kingdom of God within” us, knows no sin, disease, death, discord, or error. These people believed that evil was real and that God knew about evil; hence they were praying to a nonexistent God.
God’s nature as omnipresent good can have no opposite, hence evil is unreal. God is All; His work is done; evil is merely an illusion. But only as people understand the nature of God and the nature of man can there be unfailing, systematic demonstration of God as the ONE power, the only power.
Evil’s unreality was the great revelation that came to Mary Baker Eddy. So powerful was this revelation in Mrs. Eddy’s time that some practitioners took 100 patients a day and healed them all! This spread Christian Science around the world and built up the thousands of Christian Science churches.
Until Mrs. Eddy revealed the allness and ever-presence of infinite good, people did not realize that even “religion,” which believed in two powers–a good and an evil power–was a barrier to understanding the kingdom of God within their own consciousness; hence the suffering and hardship that has accompanied mankind’s progress.
…committing adultery, lying, cheating, getting drunk or smoking. The writings of Mary Baker Eddy–the second coming of the Christ–reveal sin as far more encompassing.
Sin is dishonoring God, the kingdom of God within our spiritual consciousness, by accepting the universal hypnotic suggestion that there is a material universe, and that humanity is separated from the one Mind, God–the real Mind of man.
This belief in a material universe, inhabited by flesh-blood-bones bodies, is what is meant by having “other gods.” It breaks the First Commandment.
From the point of view of the Science of being there is no difference between the belief in lack, sorrow, and disease, and the belief in any other so-called sin, such as adultery or stealing. They are all ILLUSION, merely hypnotic suggestion. God being All, there is naught besides. Error of any kind is unreal. Once we see this we can heal, just like a mathematician can “heal” 2×2=5, because he has learned it is 4.
….. Christian Science instructs us to dwell on what we already are and what we already have because of the fact that “I and the Father [Mind] are one….And all that the Father [Mind] hath is mine.”….I and the Mind that is Love are one, and all that Mind hath is mine. This is a great impersonal universal truth that applies to every man, woman, and child in the universe.
The understanding and acceptance of this Truth would end greed and every form of discord, and bring into focus the ever-present reign of harmony, the kingdom of heaven.
Christian Science asks: if you accept an infinite God, an infinite good that is all, omnipotent, omnipresent, an infinite Spirit beside which there is naught else, can there, in reality, actually be discord such as sin, disease, lack?”
{source http://mbeinstitute.org/America/AmerIntro.html#anchor873259 ]
___________________________________
=======================================================
CLICK THE LOGOS ABOVE TO GO TO THE HOME PAGE AND LISTEN TO THE RADIO SHOW
—————————————————————————-
how2becomeachristian.wordpress.com 