 Posted Thursday, February 26, 2009 6:37 AM
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While I was making breakfast this morning, I was thinking about two extremes that are equally unhealthy: being naive, and being overly skeptical. The one believes anything anyone tells them, and trusts without testing. The other believes little or none of what anyone tells, unless they can (or want to bother to) prove it to them.
When we've been once deceived, it's tougher to retain that childlike quality that Jesus treasured so highly; but still, it's good for us to try.
Regarding the matter of n.d.e.'s (near death experiences), I have some decent techniques for filtering the accounts I hear. I don't tend to care for the sites where the host is into spiritualism or talking to the dead. That's forbidden, in the Bible anyway. Saul got in huge trouble consulting a medium. I like listening to Christian sources, like Guideposts, and Catholic Digest, for example, when the readers write in with their experiences. The man whose chest was crushed under a tractor... comes to mind. Prayer was all that kept him alive (or brought him back), and restored him 100%. I know these publications are careful to verify anything before they publish. Although editors may not sort their material according to categories like "raised from the dead," if you read them long enough, you'll come across enough examples of prayer doing just that.
When I say I've read about these things, I have. Skeptics need not call me foolish. I check for reliable "proof" if you will. I credit individuals with knowing what they experienced, even if there was no doctor able to document it. I have some knowledge of what sort of problems remedy themselves, and how the body works.
Please don't hold the people of Scarsdale or Princeton or any specific locale to be above anyone else, either in wisdom or sophistication. I've lived in many places, met many people, and found that such a generalization just isn't true. I'll take the people you deem "simple" any day. Yes I have friends from many spheres, including the ones the previous comments mentioned. Really, it isn't possible to profile anyone by locale like that. It really isn't loving either. So I wish you would take another look at it.
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Posted Monday, February 22, 2010 1:26 PM
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Hello, I am a Christian - Jesus working through me raised a woman from the dead a couple years ago. Here is my story. Jesus certainly works in mysterious ways. First of all, I want to say that I was on fire for Jesus - this happens shortly after I got saved in 2006. I was working on my co-workers floor at the hospital - I actually didn't want THAT floor due to the volumes of patients. She worked two floors - I asked for the opposite but got this floor. I walked through the doors to the nurses station and all I heard were screams coming out of this woman's room - I had no idea who she was. It was recorded that the woman screaming had just gotten back from the cath lab, and her mother had been awaiting her arrival into the room. Her mother reached over the bed to her daughter when she lost all pulses. Now, I was looking through a chart at the nurses station and it was as if something entered me and I walked into her room. The nurses were distraught calling 911 and running back and forth. They had sat the elderly woman upright and she was dead leaning against a nurse. It was as if no one saw me in that room - I walked up to the woman and put my hand on her leg and prayed a simple prayer, "Lord, bring this Lady back to life again. In Jesus name, amen." I then walked out of the room and back to my chart. Shortly therafter, a stretcher came for her. As they lay her down, she recovered full consciousness. And I will say that I've never felt so much joy in all my life, other than the day God saved me. I felt as light as a feather and went out praising God. I overhead the nurses stumped by her coming back to life after being dead so long. I praise Jesus for that experience. I've never met the woman but she must have loved God very much. Sadly, not too many people would believe me so I don't share it too often, but yes it happens. In Christ.
Beverly
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Posted Monday, April 26, 2010 8:11 AM
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I have serious doubts about just what happened in this hospital "risen-from-the-dead" anecdote:
"The nurses were distraught calling 911 and running back and forth."
They were calling "911" in a hospital? Whom were they expecting to respond--the police? the fired department? As a cop I see my share of non-responsive patients, in hospitals and especially on the street, and trained professionals don't go "running back and forth." In such a case, I see the primary physician, nurses, and specialists around the patient's bed or gurney, with an outer ring of attendants providing them with instruments, medication, and technology.
"They had sat the elderly woman upright and she was dead leaning against a nurse."
Non-responsive patients are worked on extensively. The position the "deceased" is described strikes me as odd and I, for one, have a difficult time envisioning this.
The writer makes no reference to CPR, electroshock pads being applied, oxygen, or medications and injections.
" I overhead the nurses stumped by her coming back to life after being dead so long."
No time frame is given. The writer doesn't tell us whether she was actually "pronounced" (dead), or by whom.
"...she must have loved God very much."
Defective theology here. In the Gospels, some people healed were "deserving" because of their faith, others were not. The common theme is glorifying God and serving His purpose. In that Beverly does not apparently share this story much ( "not too many people would believe me so I don't share it too often") I would say, God is not being gloried very much.
This anecdote is actually similar to CS testimonies: long on drama and subjective impressions, and very short on details and validation.
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Posted Friday, April 15, 2011 1:03 PM
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A challenge for you -- Are you up to it?...
Take that same earnest yearning and steadfast humility - and slowly, carefully read 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy, from cover to cover. Do this in quiet privacy, maybe just a few pages per day. Forget, at least for a time, all that you have read on this website - and do this, asking God sincerely for answers. 'Pretend' you are reading for the first time.
At the end, if your heart is honest and broken before divine Love, you will be healed and freer.
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Posted Friday, April 15, 2011 1:41 PM
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Guest April 15, 2011 @ 4:03:13 PM,
A challenge for you -- Are you up to it?...
Take that same earnest yearning and steadfast humility - and slowly, carefully read 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy, from cover to cover.
On behalf of those of us who did that for decades, may I be the first to suggest that you don't understand before you suggest that we don't understand?
Perhaps a more productive challenge (never accepted by Christian Scientists) is to earnestly yearn for the purported basis of Christian Science and with steadfast humility seek the Source. Slowly, carefully read the Bible from cover to cover with the premise that it is God's word, not some flawed mythology requiring latter day keys. Set aside your preconceptions and prejudices to understand that if God exists (He does), that He did not mess up His word and fog our perception of His creation.
Do Go Be Man
<><
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Posted Saturday, April 16, 2011 7:09 PM
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| There are certain books that I know are incorrect, and S&H is one of them. So is The Book of Mormon. I believe it would be more than just a waste of time, but spiritually wrong for me to entertain Mormon missionaries' entreaty to read their tome, and "earnestly pray for God to reveal that it is true." (They believe that this would be confirmed by the so-called "burning in the bosom." ) Similarly, I would not expose myself to spiritual falsehood unless I had a compelling critical and/or academic reason. Why expose myself to something toxic, when what I want is to be nurtured on the untainted truth in God's word, the Bible?
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Posted Sunday, April 17, 2011 12:24 PM
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Take that same earnest yearning and steadfast humility - and slowly, carefully read 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy, from cover to cover
I was the third generation in my family to attend CS Sunday school, and so I am very familiar with S&H and the teachings of MBE.
However, if I was not, I would not take your challenge for a simple reason: On pages 579-99 of S&H, MBE created a new glossary totally redefining the meaning of common english words found in every dictionary.
Up front, I would have to reject both her new definitions and her inherent right to change the meaning of these words. Since I would have to accept MBE's word redefinitions in order for S&H to "make sense", there would never be any reason to read the book cover to cover. No more so than if if somebody wrote a book on how to construct a bridge but stated up front that in referring to a foot, they really mean 14 inches instead of 12. It would, in short, fall down before you get started (as CS, S&H and Mary Baker Eddy's teachings do!)
John
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Posted Tuesday, April 19, 2011 8:57 AM
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Science and Health is nothing more than the rantings of a crazy person.
I know,I read it over and over again when I was in CS
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Posted Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:07 PM
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Guest (4/15/2011)
A challenge for you -- Are you up to it?...
Take that same earnest yearning and steadfast humility - and slowly, carefully read 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy, from cover to cover. Do this in quiet privacy, maybe just a few pages per day. Forget, at least for a time, all that you have read on this website - and do this, asking God sincerely for answers. 'Pretend' you are reading for the first time.
At the end, if your heart is honest and broken before divine Love, you will be healed and freer.
Been there, done that. Parents read S&H to us every morning at breakfast. Read the Lesson-Sermon every day on my own from 12 to 33. Took classes on the History of Christian Science. Have the T-shirt (and the cross & crown necklace).
Don't you think we read Science & Health in class instruction? At Principia? At the A/U camps? At home in a family where four generations were Christian Scientists?
Then, when my father died in 2006, I thought it would be nice, although I had left the church decades before, to read something from Science & Health at his memorial service, since it was his religion all his life. So I read it. Cover to cover. As if reading it for the first time, since it had been at least 20 years since I had last read it.
I found nothing comforting in that book. Nothing I wanted to read at a service meant to comfort grief. Nothing, in fact, that made any sense at all. I was astonished at just how harsh Science & Health really is. And how completely unfounded on anything but Eddy's assumptions, since she even rewords the Bible to fit her assumptions.
Ann
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Posted Friday, August 26, 2011 3:26 PM
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Dr. Bruce Gammon, who practices pulmonary medicine and his team declared me dead in September 1995. I was a class taught student of Christian Science but my determination to use only Christian Science was not consistent with my knowledge of Christian Science which had healed me many times. As a real estate developer, it took too much patience from my team to stay with me. Could not perform normal things. Started successful real estate related service in correcting land surveys made for owners. In September of 1999, same problem, asthma attack, caused me to lose consciousness. Dr. Gammon called. He found me in a coma which I was in for three weeks being declared dead in week one. Have fully recovered through using the Science of Christ as found in Science and Health.
Ronald B. White
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