Polemics - Discernment - Christian Science
Randy Peterman · Sep 13, 2015
Defense of the Faith, No. 35
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926514495318

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I apologize already because I'm slightly hoarse. I have no explanation. It's not like I've been yelling somewhere recently. I'm starting to get hoarse, which is awesome because I get to sing for the main service. We'll see how that goes. Well, this morning we're going to pick up in an entirely different place.

Last week and the week before that we were in Michigan with the Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and now we're going to go to New England and pick up with the Church of Christ Scientist, also known as Christian Science. How many of you have been downtown on the 16th Street Mall? Down, I think it's right across the street from the Cheesecake Factory, is a place that it's a Christian science reading room. Have you seen that? Maybe anybody noticed it? It's kind of, on a street full of advertising, it's kind of a reserved space. So you almost get a reprieve from like, hello, look at me, look at me, look at me, to this really quiet Christian science reading room.

And you can go in there and you can read all sorts of books written by Mary Baker Eddy and the people who've come after her. that talk about this Church of Christ Scientist denomination. Stan was telling me before we got started that his sister is Christian Science. I have on my dad's dad's side going up some relatives that were, they're passed away now, Christian Science. And I had had various run-ins with Christian science throughout the years.

What ends up happening is that you never know somebody's Christian science until they get injured. Can anybody tell me why that is? Christian science believes that the being of a person is entirely spiritual and intellectual and the physical form is just something that your brain pretends you have. Your brain thinks it has a body, but it really doesn't. It's basically the way to describe that. And so various people have come in contact with this idea, and it almost always comes when injuries show up.

Because when you're healthy, nobody ever cares that they're interfacing with a body, right? Like, hey, how's it going today, Pat? How's it going, Josh? You know, I say that, and nobody thinks, who's he talking to? I don't see any bodies. They just go, there's Pat and Josh, and we're done.

But for Christian science, what happens is, in my elementary school, one of the fourth grade teachers was riding around on horses. Now, I don't know how a body you don't have rides on a horse's body, but she was riding horses and something went wrong and she fell off the horse and at her knee, she totally tweaked it.

Some of us were at the first aid class yesterday. It was a compound fracture. It was not a good thing. And then we all suddenly found out she was Christian Science as a student. And because she was hobbling around, her face was making these extremely strong contortions, because as it turns out, when you break a limb and all the nerves that are in there that God has put together in your physical body that you're supposed to have, they were shooting up into her brain signals like, oh, this isn't good. You should fix it. And she just kept hobbling around on it. I mean, like, like seriously off.

And so that was my first exposure to Christian science, was like, wow, these people have forgotten reality in pursuit of something crazy. So I asked my dad, I said, Dad, where does this come from? And so he began to tell me about Mary Baker Eddy, who is, for all intents and purposes, the founder of Christian science. So let's take a look at the hymn out there on the top there.

She was born in 1821, as much as one spirit body or spirit being can be born out of the non-existent body of another, spirit being's non-existent body, in 1821. And I'm sorry if that comes out so mocking, but it's absurd. And then her physical body that she didn't have stopped working on December 3, 1910. She was married multiple times. Finally, her last husband died in 1887. I'm sorry, he died in 1882. She got married in 1877. And she didn't get married again after that.

In 1875, she published 1,000 copies of Science and Health with Key to the Scripture. What's interesting about this is we're going to take a look here on this chart that goes on the first two pages. We're going to see what she said the Bible said, and then we'll look at the Bible verses right next to it that are what the Bible said. And hopefully it'll be really obvious to see that this person was not interested in expositing the scripture. This person was interested in taking some ideas she had and propping them up with Bible verses and starting what ended up being this very dangerous cult, because she had some ideas.

I'm going to draw attention to one more thing that I think is important here. It's not in the handout, but I think it's critical. Does the scripture lay out the importance of biblical eldership? perchance maybe in 1st Timothy chapter 3 or Titus chapters 1 and 2. And then eldership in 1st Peter 3. There's actually really, really important outline of what biblical leadership and eldership looks like.

And unfortunately for Mary Baker Eddy, it also starts with men having been assigned that role. It doesn't mean women can't teach other women. It doesn't mean women are stupid. I'm not trying to say that. But there's an order that's put in place here.

So immediately Mary Baker Eddy set aside the biblical order of teaching other men. when she took this on and started going around and telling people about all these ideas. So after she abandoned, at the first point, biblical interpretation that made any sense, she abandoned also, secondly, biblical order. And so when we take a look at these things, there are some consequences that the three husbands that she had, none of them were leading in a biblical way. No other men around her said, hey, this isn't This is the biblical order. And she took it and ran with it. So that's unfortunate for her as well as the rest of those who've fallen into her lies, that those things came into play.

So let's take a look here at the tenets of Christian science as taken from Science and Health with the Key to the Scriptures versus the Bible. So the first section there, the first square. As adherents of truth, we take the inspired word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal life. Is the Bible the guide to eternal life? How does the Bible define the Bible? It's inspired. Okay, so you hear that word inspired and you don't go, okay, that's an alarming word. But is the Bible the sufficient guide to eternal life?

Is the Bible about eternal life now, or does the Bible tell us there will be eternal life and that we are identified with Christ and the heavenlies, but not that we are living the eternal life now in a present state of perfection and we just need to walk in that perfection as spiritual beings that are already in the heavenlies.

We are seated in the heavenlies, our position is there, but the position that they have is that there is no condition, there is only position. And so that gets very complicated because, well, how do we sin? Well, we sin with these earthly bodies, right? But then we'll get into why that doesn't matter to them, because earthly bodies don't exist.

But let's take a look at these two Bible verses, or I'm sorry, this one Bible verse here, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. This is one you're familiar with. What is the purpose of the scriptures? All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work.

Is that the same as a guide for eternal life? That sounds very conditionally relevant, doesn't it? Rather than, we are only spirit beings and we're now in the eternal plane. It's a very different concept just starting out. The whole purpose of the Bible is different from their starting point.

Next section there, we acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge his Son, one Christ, the Holy Ghost or Divine Comforter, and man in God's image and likeness. The theory of three persons in one God, that is, a personal trinity or triunity, suggests polytheism rather than the one ever-present I am. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And so they talk about all three beings that we would say are the trinity, only they define them as three manifestations of one single God. They're not trinitarian. Christ was a physical manifestation of God. Why does it matter that Christ was fully human and fully God when he was on the earth, for example? Why do we care? Any thoughts on that? Substitution. That's really important. If he wasn't fully man, would he be a substitute?

That would be a real problem. look up a recipe and I'm making, for example, pecan pie. Everybody here has had pecan pie. You don't have to like it, but you might have tried it once, right? So if I look up and I'm going to make a pecan pie and I realize I have no pecans, am I making a pecan pie? No. Now you're making any other kind of nut pie. You can make any other pie, but it's not a pecan pie if there's no pecans in it, right?

Well, if you have a substitute, and the substitute is supposed to be of a type, because we're all of the type of atom, Christ must be physically in the form of atom. We can't have him just be some sort of being, because that's what the rams were, that's what the bulls and the goats and the birds, those were all substitutes that were not of the right type.

So it matters a lot that Christ is of the right type. Sure. This first statement says, we take the inspired word of God as our sufficient guide to eternal life. That sounds pretty good. Okay, so what do we say about that? Is it the guide to eternal life? Well, what did the 2nd Timothy passage say? What did the 2nd Timothy passage say it was, right next to it?

For training in righteousness. For physical earthly ministry, right? And our eternal life will be new creations, right? We'll be fully, physically, our condition and our position will be eternally different and eternally unified. And will we be looking at the Bible for guidance again? Will we be looking to the Bible for guidance in eternal life when we get into the heavenly? No. So she's saying that we're already eternal beings in the eternal state.

She outlines it in more verses, and this is just a clip from it, so you'll forgive me for being terse on that. But eternal life is only You know, we have eternal life because of the gospel, but the focus of the scriptures and what Paul tells us for is for our growth and edification, right?

This is poking towards a metaphysical explanation of things that doesn't involve your body. And I should have put more quotes in there with more context, so I apologize. That's my fault. It doesn't sound too bad on the surface until you start to explore what they mean by it, and that's when it gets catchy or tricky. And so that's part of the danger with a lot of these things. If you listen to what they say on the surface, it doesn't sound terrible with some of these things that we've said.

Like, for example, we acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. That's not horrible, right? We acknowledge His Son. Okay, well, Jesus is God's Son, so that's good. One Christ, but now they've differentiated one Christ separate from one Father, one God. The Holy Ghost or Divine Comforter, and man in God's image and likeness.

So they've now got four separate entities and four separate beings, because as the next part says, they don't believe in the Trinity. The first part, when you're reading it, doesn't sound horrible, but what they go on to say, suddenly we don't have a Trinity, and that becomes doctrinally problematic. The Trinity is, first of all, clearly stated in Scripture in multiple places. We see that the Godhead exists three, but as one.

If you've been in the main service, my dad's actually been going over that in a few places recently, because why does it matter that Christ is so offensive? It's because he keeps claiming to be God. The Jews are really mad, because this guy keeps saying, the Father and I are one. I only do what my Father tells me to do, because we're one. And he keeps saying these things, and the Pharisees are not okay with that. The chief priests and scribes are not really excited about this Jesus guy, and him talking about being one with the Father.

So the Trinity is definitely a theological problem there. The next section on the top of page two there, we acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin in the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts. So how would you present the gospel to, let's say you're volunteering in Sunday school, you're down there and you're presenting the gospel to a little kid. What would you tell the kid?

Anybody? Just raise your hand and give us the short version. Nobody? You're not going to be judged. I promise that we're just working on looking at this to contrast what they're saying. Would you mention sin? How about I'll ask it that way. I got some head nods. People would mention sin. Why is sin a problem? Because with sin it separated us from God, right? Sin separates us from God. Well, they fixed that in Christian science. Sin is only a problem as long as you recognize it is real. How cool is that? I mean, not literally, but imagine that for a second. If you don't recognize sin, you don't need to be saved from it. You're already saved from it because you don't recognize it. It's bizarre.

In the first sentence there, the forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin, okay, so somehow God destroyed sin through the work of Christ, and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. Sin is not real and evil is not real. So how many of you on Friday noticed that it was an anniversary of what in the United States we would consider to be a very evil event, right? We had the Twin Towers and the attacks on 9-11 with the planes that were hijacked.

And I remember I worked in an office in Texas and one of the owners of the company walked back and forth just going, I don't understand how this could happen. Nobody got any work done, obviously. And we were just totally, utterly destroyed by the state of things emotionally, let alone the destruction that was happening on the sites where things happened.

And all we could say is this is evil, right? This is an evil atrocity that has been put into the world in front of us. And according to Christian science theology, evil only exists when you recognize it. But if you are super spiritual, you won't recognize it and it won't be a problem. That's crazy to me. Anything bad, you deny. Whether it's evil, sickness, suffering, any of the bad things that exist in the world don't exist. How cool is that? Sounds good on paper, right? Just deny it and then the problem goes away.

Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 6. speaks of sin in a literal and exacting way.

If we turn to Romans 6, how many of you remember Romans 6.1 and wrestling with Romans 6.1 where he says, should we keep sinning? No, may it never be. What kind of an idiot was Paul? Why didn't he just realize that if he just didn't recognize sin, it wouldn't be a problem? Like, sin doesn't exist now. I don't believe it exists. Not a problem anymore. Jesus didn't have to... Paul really missed out on what Mary Baker had he got as a special revelation from wherever.

Romans 6.12, he says, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. He doesn't say stop recognizing that sin exists because that's your problem. He says stop focusing on it.

Galatians 5.16, how do you stop doing the desires of the flesh? By the way, he doesn't say that the flesh doesn't exist. How do you quit doing those desires? Well, you stop focusing on them and you focus on the Spirit.

But here we have this idea that's highly contrasting that. The next section, we acknowledge Jesus' atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus, the way-shower. And we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through truth, life, and love, as demonstrated by the Galilean prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death. How are we saved? What does the Bible say? Like if we were to quote Ephesians, for example, how are we saved?

Or 1 Corinthians 15? By grace through faith, okay. I think that's a really good place. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4 tell us that we believe the gospel that Christ died on the cross according to the scriptures and then rose again on the third day according to the scriptures.

And that was the gospel Paul preached, right? That was what he said that you had to believe. This is saying that we need to follow in the way of Christ to be saved. We need to physically live out a life that looks like Christ to be saved. He is the way-shower, and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through truth, life, and love, as demonstrated those things demonstrated, we have to follow them.

So suddenly, works is now in the picture. Even though it's works through a physical body that, again, doesn't really exist. Our identification with Christ is not mentioned. That's definitely a problem. Just like we've talked about with all the cults in the past, is salvation something that we get by works? No. Works is not something that brings about salvation. The next section here.

We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith, to understand eternal life, even the allness of soul, spirit, and the nothingness of matter. And I keep talking about them not believing in having physical bodies, but here's the quote from their book or her book. We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal life.

So the purpose of the crucifixion is very different, but what is the value of a crucifixion of a body that doesn't exist? or a body that has no value. The wrath of God poured out onto this useless thing that doesn't matter, onto a person that wasn't part of the Trinity, that wasn't representative of man, and wasn't representative of God. All of this doctrine starts to get really less useful from a biblical cohesion concept. The crucifixion of Christ paid for the consequence of sin, this is the biblical perspective, the consequence of sins in those who believe have been justified, glorified, and sanctified, as well as the aforementioned identification and positional truths.

Does physical matter matter? Does material matter work? Does it have value? I would argue that it does. When God told Adam and Eve in the garden not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, how much would that matter if material things are nothing? The nothingness of matter. Stan?

Well, when you have something like this, they drive you away from the scriptures because It's so inconsistent with the scriptures that you have to make a choice. You veer off. Are you going to listen to the scripture or are you going to listen to what they write?

Yeah. Because it's totally inconsistent. You believe one or the other. Yeah. You know, and Mormonism is very similar. I mean, you go to the Book of Mormon instead of going to the scriptures. Yeah. Same thing with the Koran. I mean... The Book of Mormon The King James Version that they have within Mormonism is actually one that has notes from Joseph Smith in it telling them where things are wrong.

So even if you go and say, look what the Bible says, they go, oh well Joseph Smith said that this is wrong in the Bible. So bonus, your argument is just invalid now because he went through and nullified most of the text of the Bible. In this case, she nullified it and then said that all the material earthly possessions and things that you want are no longer valid and are meaningless and are actually nothing. I would argue that from a biblical perspective, all material things on this earth will go away when God destroys it and we get a new heaven and a new earth. But it doesn't mean that this is meaningless.

How awesome were the miracles that Christ did from a Christian science perspective? Let's just ask it that way. First miracle, water to wine. Not awesome. He turned the nothing into nothing. Yay for Jesus. Hey, all these fish, or this little bit of fish and these loaves of bread, I'm going to feed all the people. I'm going to give them nothing to put in their nothing body. It's not a miracle. You've just suddenly nullified the value of all of that. So their metaphysical and physiological perspective is by itself alone very troublesome for Scripture. But fortunately, they don't have to study scripture. They can just study Mary Baker Eddy, and then that problem goes away for the most part.

Next section here. And we solemnly promise to watch and pray for that mind to be in us, which was also in Christ Jesus, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to be merciful, just, and pure. So the mind of Christ is within us. We can take a look at Romans 15.5 or 1 Corinthians 2.16. or for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. So that is a true statement, right? And I want to make sure that we emphasize that that is a true statement. We have the mind of Christ.

But do we model our justification as a passageway into the eternal life? Do we model mercy and purity as a passageway? Or are those things that are a result of the Spirit working in us? And this is talking about modeling these things, and we have to do these things, we have to do them, do unto others as we want to be treated, and we have to have all these practices in purity and justness and righteousness.

Now, I would argue from Paul that he says that those things should be normative for us as we abide, but I would not say that they're a requirement of our own behavior for us to show that we're saved. In fact, I can guarantee you that if all of us were to sit down and share some of our failings, we would discover that maybe we are not so merciful or just or pure, right? I'll just say that maybe you are all merciful, just and pure, but I'm certainly not. I certainly make mistakes, though I am a believer, though I do try to abide. But when I walk in the flesh, there's consequences.

But we're justified in Christ, then we don't worry about it, right? If justification is a consequence, in the main service today, Roger's going to go over Romans 8, 26 and 27. But 28, 29 and 30 and on through the chapter, and frankly through the book, Paul talks about the consequences of being identified with Christ and that we are justified.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, which I have memorized because of a song, not because I'm a great memorizer. Nothing physical and nothing spiritual can separate us, but Paul lists the physical. The material matters, but it doesn't separate us from the love of God.

All right, so let's take a look at some other Christian science doctrines. Let's talk about the scriptures here. The Christian scientist doesn't understand the scriptures as literally valuable, but instead finds deeper meaning in allegory. So let me ask this, why do we care about how we interpret the Bible? Where in all of our discussions through this class, and maybe even some of the other classes, where do we find it's important to have a consistent approach to interpreting the Bible? Okay, that's who God is. God clearly communicates and he wants us to understand things As a communicator? Trinity and the plan that he proposed for us. Okay.

So not everybody in this room is a parent, but we've all been co-workers or we've all had opportunities where we've had to communicate with other people to accomplish something, right? How effective is it as a parent if everything you say has two meanings? Well, dad said clean my room, but what if he meant clean the house? I wish my kids thought that, right?

That'd be awesome. Or Randy said I needed to get the project done by Friday, but what if he really meant Monday? You'd think, hey, that's weird. Why is everybody second guessing what Randy is saying? This is a very peculiar problem. There's a communications issue.

Well, allegory says that there's, yeah, sure, there's a simple, understandable meaning, but also there's a second meaning to everything, which is really exciting, in the sense of, imagine what you can contrive. How do you verify a second meaning of text?

If Pat comes in and says, listen, I read Romans 8, and he's talking about creation groaning, but I don't hear creation groaning, so I really think creation groaning means that when jets hit supersonic speed, the universe is hearing sounds of the earth suffering. Now, Pat, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, forgive me.

But if he did that, we'd all kind of go, okay, why? But we could never say he's wrong, because it's allegorical, right? And if Josh came in the next week and he said, no, creation's groaning is this other thing, we couldn't say, well, Josh is really wrong, because it's allegorical. But if we have a consistent approach to hermeneutics and interpreting the Bible that doesn't allow us to just make up garbage, like supersonic groaning, that's silly, really.

But those things matter. Let's read what they say. C.W. Hales was one of their early founders. It is becoming more and more apparent to thinking people that a material viewpoint of the Bible brings to the reader uncertainty, confusion, and frequently contradictory statements. Well, Holly Hills is in trouble.

Spiritually interpreted, the Bible proves to be wholly consistent and enables the student to apply its teaching and prove the law of God given therein in the way Christ Jesus did and commanded his followers to do. So spiritually interpreted. Well now, instead of a literal interpretation, which leads to trouble, we can be spiritually interpreted.

Now, the good news for the Christian science folks is that Pat and Josh don't get to come in and tell us different allegorical interpretations. They get to make up their own from the leadership's position, and then there's that one allegorical interpretation. So at least you've narrowed it down and reduced some of the confusion. But by making it not literal, all the contradictions that we just talked about earlier when we were looking at that list don't matter anymore, because those verses don't literally mean what they said.

They mean whatever Mary Baker Eddy said. Lucky for them, right? Continuing on, by spiritually interpreting the Bible, the literal sense is brought into question and it is harder to combat the opinions of those in leadership. Mary Baker Eddy wrote, metaphors abound in the Bible and names are often expressive of spiritual ideas. The most distinguished theologians in Europe and America agree that the scriptures have both a spiritual and literal meaning. Alright, so names have spiritual meanings, so therefore we should never take things literally. And metaphors abound, so therefore we should never take things literally.

We're going to take communion this morning. Christ talked in metaphors during communion. Did anyone get really confused about what he was talking about with the metaphor in communion? This cup is my blood. It wasn't literally his blood, but it represented his blood as a physical material sacrifice.

And nobody went, I wonder if he was talking about the Rockies baseball season. You know, why? You can't say it isn't, because we're allegorical. Okay? You know, the communion is a metaphor, but nobody walked out confused by what Christ said. And when they took communion later on, when we read it in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and he outlines it, and we'll read it this morning, nobody leaves here from communion thinking, man, I really wish I understood what it was that we were doing. He says, you're doing this in remembrance of me and my sacrifice. It's metaphorical, but it's not metaphorical in a confusing way. But she says, there's lots of metaphors. As you see that hand waving, it's like the Jedi mind trick, if these are not the metaphors you're looking for.

That's a real problem. We can't embrace Bible interpretation that sloppy. The consequence of that is very, very messy. As you can see, the souls of people are impacted by it when they follow this. The next one here, and this one we've already talked about evil and sin not really existing, so here the next one is Satan the devil. The devil doesn't exist in reality.

He is a belief in sin or lies. So the devil, evil, a lie, error, nothing corporeality nor mind, the opposite of truth, a belief in sin, sickness and death, animal magnetism or hypnotism, the lust of the flesh which saith, I am life and intelligence and matter. Really? I am life and intelligence and matter? Who does the Bible describe Satan as? is a deceiver.

What does he deceive us about? Not matter alone. He does deceive about matter, but not matter alone. And his deception about matter is not that matter exists. I just thought of this right now, but what is the use of Genesis chapter 1 if matter doesn't exist? God spoke this material creation into existence, called it good, and it doesn't exist, and it's nothingness, and it's stupid. Satan is evil. So the tree of the knowledge of good and Satan.

Those could be synonymous, according to her definition. That's so sloppy here. Who does that benefit? When you read this, I mean, who is this a benefit to? Is this not something that he told to Eve? Oh yeah. I mean, exactly. So she's telling it to us. Yeah.

That he doesn't exist. That it's a lie. Yeah, by saying you don't have anything to worry about, don't listen to what God really said. And then setting us up with all this, don't worry about what God really said and Satan isn't even real. So no worries. Although I think it's really peculiar. But, you know, again, we don't then now we just allegorically interpret the fall didn't really happen. I guess. The Bible just falls apart.

One of the things that my sister talks about all the time is do not judge. You aren't supposed to judge any of this stuff. Oh, don't judge. That's the biggest mantra that they say all the time, don't judge. You know what's interesting about the do not judge?

Let's say you make a statement that's against Christian science. Based on my relationship with you that I've had at church for some years now, I'm going to guess that you haven't shied away from that conversation, right? When you bring a statement to her that requires her to answer it, She takes your statement in, she thinks about it, and she evaluates it. She judges it. And then she says, whoa, you're saying I'm wrong, don't judge. I'm judging you as wrong for judging. So it's not a position that, it's one of those logical fallacy things where you're like, wait, the snake's eating its tail, stop. We can't go there. But it's a pattern I've found often.

It's like when you talk to a Jehovah's Witness, the first thing they tell Jehovah's Witnesses is that everyone who's not a Jehovah's Witness is a liar from Satan. So you can't really talk to a Jehovah's Witness because the first thing they do is they see your face and then on your forehead they have just tattooed liar from Satan in their mind so that you can't say anything true. You might as well start talking to him about any number of things. Well, I would like to talk to you about the Bible. Really, I'd like to talk about chocolate chips. I'd like to talk to you about Satan and sin and the fact that we need redemption.

Well, those are things that don't exist. Paul was an idiot for spending so much of his time worrying about it then. So the energy that you could spend on these things, they just shut it down right away. Alright. Now that we fixed that problem, now you can keep reminding them that their material problems are not real. Just remind them all the time it's not real. 9-11, not that big a deal. Not a lot of suffering. Alright, so continuing on here, hell. Hell I think matters a lot.

Why do we present the Gospel? So that people can have eternal life and walk with the Lord and grow and spend eternity with Him, right? And not go to hell. So what do the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Seventh-day Adventists believe if you don't follow the Lord?

Annihilation. So your soul ceases to exist. For the Christian scientists, hell exists for those who are immoral and disobey the law, which believers are still under. Hell is a mortal belief, error, lust, remorse, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, death, suffering, and self-destruction, self-imposed agony, effects of sin, that which work with abomination or make a lie. I am asked, here's a quote from her, Is there a hell? Yes, there is a hell for all who persist in breaking the golden rule or disobeying in the commandment of God.

So because you haven't believed that you shouldn't believe in evil, because evil doesn't exist, you will go to the place where evil people go. That feels kind of tricky to me, just saying. So if you don't believe in evil and sin and wickedness, you won't go to hell, according to this doctrine. But if you do believe in them, you'll go to hell. Or, if you do evil things, you'll go to hell.

I don't know. I can't explain it. It's not rational. I'm not following If she was here alive today, I mean, it's been a while since she passed away. If she was here alive today, it would be convenient to ask her, what does she mean? Where does she get this stuff? Maybe there's more writings, and I haven't read everything that's been written about Christian science. I don't want to spend that much energy on it, I'll be honest. It's just like, I'm already disconnected. We're done here. But I can't rationalize it. I can't follow it through. Further discussion on Christ and salvation. Jesus didn't suffer for your sins specifically. You get to do that yourself.

Okay, so Science and Health, page 23, section five, that God's wrath should be vented upon his beloved son is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. So when Paul writes that the wrath of God fell on Christ, that's not inspired by the Holy Spirit, according to this sentence right here. Such a theory is man-made. Okay, so Paul, wrong. I guess we can dismiss most of the New Testament at that point in time. The Atonement is a hard problem in theology. No, it isn't. It's not a hard problem in theology.

Atonement is specifically that we were identified with Christ and atoned for by His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. We're identified with Him. God identified us with Christ so He could atone through Christ's work. But it's scientific explanation. There's science.

Excellent. is that suffering is an error of sinful sense which truth destroys and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love. So Christ's suffering will be destroyed. Suffering is sinful and Christ's suffering will be destroyed by love. At this point in time she has mocked the crucifixion of our Savior so blatantly that putting the word Christian in the name of their denomination or church of Christ, it is disgusting.

It's insulting. The next section there, mere legal pardon and there is no other for divine principle never pardons our sins or mistakes till they are corrected. Leaves the offender free to repeat the offense if indeed he has not already suffered. sufficiently from vice to make him turn from it with loathing. So you must suffer for your sins.

I mean, this is so far veering away from biblical truth that it's a little hard to just go, yeah, I think we're okay. This is all right. They're just slightly off from orthodox Christianity. There's probably lots of Christians in Christian science, and they believe a close gospel. No, it's just off the deep end, way far away from it. Lastly on this page, and we're running out of time, I think we can get through this here. The Holy Ghost is not part of the Trinity. Instead, we see that it, since Christian science doesn't believe that the Holy Ghost is a gendered being, is a reference to pure Christian science doctrine.

Sweet! So, because Acts chapter 1 and 2 are allegorical, right? When the tongues of fire came down and the Holy Spirit descended, did the apostles get the true Christian science doctrine? Like, no, because that obviously doesn't line up with what they started preaching immediately. But the Holy Spirit is pure Christian science doctrine.

The first quote there, in the words of Saint John, he shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever. This comforter I understand to be divine science. I love that she uses the word science so interestingly, because I took science in school and they never ever mentioned anything about Mary Baker Eddy. And the last quote there, Holy Ghost, divine science, the development of eternal life, truth, and love.

But it's not the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit as we define him from scripture, where we say that he is part of the Trinity. It's a he instead of an it. I just say it, it's an he. The Holy Spirit is a he and not an it. And this morning when Roger teaches on Romans 8, 26 and 27, it's focused on the work of the Holy Spirit. And the work of the Holy Spirit doesn't sound like this.

And I don't want to ruin Roger's lesson for anybody and jump ahead, but let's just say that when Romans 8.26 says that the Spirit groans, there's that groaning word again, right? When the Spirit groans, a book A doctrinal set groans?

That's an absurd thing to say. Paul would be an idiot to write that. But we can allegorize it, so it's okay. We fixed it. We swept it under the rug. Not entirely related by doctrinal source, there was a... I'm just bringing this up because we have a few minutes of time.

There was a book actually written by Mark Twain about Christian science. Mark Twain, I don't believe, was a believer. In fact, he was pretty outspoken against certain parts of Christianity over his life. But his wife and his daughter both died very painful deaths. And so the Christian science doctrine that you would abandon all suffering is this stupid thing that your brain has latched onto and you just need to free yourself of the suffering in your head. made Mark Twain very angry because it was growing in prominence as he was an author. So he was seeing these people running into this.

And I have here, and I've only got one copy of it, but it's free online if you search for Mark Twain Christian Science Book. It's free online with the Gutenberg program. The first chapter is comedy gold. It's really hilarious. I've got the first chapter right here. It's fun to read. It's only a page and a half.

But it's one of those things where, imagine as believers that we read 1 Peter 3. I'm sorry, 1 Peter. And in 1 Peter, he talks about trials and suffering. over and over again. It's like he undulates between, this is who you are in Christ, and this is trials and suffering, and this is who you are in Christ, and this is trials and suffering, back and forth in that book. Peter cares about trials and suffering. He cares about those things because those things, he says, the Spirit uses to conform us into the image. Mary Baker Eddy has nullified every single piece of that book and the value that the Holy Spirit inspired in the text. It's dangerous to think that people would follow that. We're out of time, but are there any other thoughts or questions?

I'm not an expert on everything Christian science, but we've dug into some things. Is this tied to Church of Christ? I mean, I think people say it is Church of Christ. No, is that Christian Scientist? They just tied the name Christian Scientist? No, there's a comma on there. Church of Christ, comma, Scientist. Is it Church of Christ? No, Church of Christ is a different denomination.

All of those groups, there's a bunch of Christian science groups. They're Christian Science Disciples of Christ, Church of Science, or Christian Church of Christ, comma, a bunch of things. There's a bunch of them out there, but they're not all related to the Christian Science group.

There was a trend, basically, where people said, hey, we want to claim that, and then we'll add our extra asterisk. this is our subset, to make us stand out so that there's less confusion. Only there's more confusion because there's so many other groups. They're most commonly known as Christian Science today, but their official name that they go by is Church of Christ Scientist. Any other thoughts or questions? We've got people already standing outside the door. And they're neither. Yeah, they're neither scientists nor are they Christians.

All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the chance that we had to actually look at your word in contrast to some of these lies. We just ask that you would give us wisdom and guidance when we interact with these people who have been so sorely deceived. Lord, we pray for their salvation, that they would read the scriptures and instead of the allegorical, they would see the truth. And we thank you and we praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.