Resurrection – Battling for a Brighter Crown
Wednesday Evening Readings for April 7, 2021
Acts 26:8
Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?
I Kings 18:46 (to
And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah; …
I Kings 17:8, 9 (to 2nd ,), 9 behold, 10 (to 1st .), 17 (to 2nd ,), 17 fell (to ;), 17 2nd that, 18 (to 1st ,), 18 O, 19 (to 2nd ,), 19 4th and, 21, 22 2nd and, 23 (to 1st ,), 23 3rd and (to :), 24
¶ And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, … behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath. …
… ¶ And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, … fell sick; … that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, … O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, … and laid him upon his own bed. …
And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.
… and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, … and delivered him unto his mother: …
… ¶ And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.
Heb. 3:12
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
Matt. 4:23
¶ And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
Luke 7:11 (to 2nd and), 12 behold (to :), 13, 14 4th And, 15
¶ And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and …
… behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: …
And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.
… And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.
Matt. 22:23 (to 2nd ,), 29 (to 1st ,), 31 as, 32 ; 23:1 (to 1st ,), 2 (to ,), 27, 34, 37 (to 1st ,), 37 thou
¶ The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, …
Jesus answered and said unto them, …
… as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. …
Then spake Jesus to the multitude, …
Saying, …
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. …
… ¶ Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: …
O Jerusalem, … thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Matt. 20:17–19
¶ And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.
Matt. 27:11 (to 2nd and), 22, 35 (to 1st ,), 40 saying
And Jesus stood before the governor: and …
Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. …
And they crucified him, …
… saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
Matt. 28:1 (to 1st ,), 1 came, 2 (to 2nd ,), 2 the (to 3rd ,), 5 (to 1st ,), 6 (to 1st .)
In the end of the sabbath, … came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, … the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, …
And the angel answered and said unto the women, …
He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. …
John 20:26 (to 1st ,), 27–29
¶ And after eight days again his disciples were within, …
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Acts 1:1–3 (to 1st ,), 3 and, 9
The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, … and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: …
And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.
I Cor. 15:12 if, 51 (to ;), 51 2nd we, 52 (to 1st ,), 53, 54 then, 57
… if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? …
Behold, I shew you a mystery; … we shall all be changed, In a moment, …
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
… then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. …
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
James 1:12 (to 2nd ,)
Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, …
Rev. 3:11 (to 1st ,), 11 hold
Behold, … hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.
Rev. 19:6
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
SH 497:20 We
… 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.
SH 593:9
Resurrection. Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding.
SH 508:26–8
Genesis i. 13. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
The third stage in the order of Christian Science is an important one to the human thought, letting in the light of spiritual understanding. This period corresponds to the resurrection, when Spirit is discerned to be the Life of all, and the deathless Life, or Mind, dependent upon no material organization. Our Master reappeared to his students, — to their apprehension he rose from the grave, — on the third day of his ascending thought, and so presented to them the certain sense of eternal Life.
SH 27:10
That Life is God, Jesus proved by his reappearance after the crucifixion in strict accordance with his scientific statement: “Destroy this temple [body], and in three days I [Spirit] will raise it up.” It is as if he had said: The I — the Life, substance, and intelligence of the universe — is not in matter to be destroyed.
SH 320:24–25 (to 1st ,)
The one important interpretation of Scripture is the spiritual. For example, …
SH 494:2–3 (to
Jesus said: “Destroy this temple [body], and in three days I [Mind] will raise it up;” …
SH 114:27; 115:9, 19–20, 21 Evil (only, to 1st ,), 21 fear (only, to ,), 22 self-justification (only, to 1st ,), 23–25 sin, 26 Humanity (only, to 2nd ,), 26–27 compassion (to 4th ,); 116:1, 2–10 Wisdom
In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Science shows that what is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author mortal mind.
… The great difficulty is to give the right impression, when translating material terms back into the original spiritual tongue. …
SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND
First Degree: Depravity.
… Evil beliefs, … fear, … self-justification, … sin, sickness, disease, death.
Second Degree: Evil beliefs disappearing.
… Humanity, honesty, … compassion, hope, faith, meekness, …
Third Degree: Understanding.
… Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.
In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God’s image appears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses, as to makethis Scriptural testimony true in our hearts, “The last shall be first, and the first last,” so that God and His idea may be to us what divinity really is and must of necessity be, — all-inclusive.
SH 44:5–8, 10; 45:1–3 Jesus (to 1st ,)
The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being. His three days’ work in the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time. … He met and mastered on the basis of Christian Science, the power of Mind over matter, all the claims of medicine, surgery, and hygiene. …
… Jesus vanquished every material obstacle, overcame every law of matter, …
SH 42:15–18 (to ,), 19–21, 24–28; 43:3–6
The resurrection of the great demonstrator of God’s power was the proof of his final triumph over body and matter, and gave full evidence of divine Science, … The belief that man has existence or mind separate from God is a dying error. This error Jesus met with divine Science and proved its nothingness. … Let men think they had killed the body! Afterwards he would show it to them unchanged. This demonstrates that in Christian Science the true man is governed by God — by good, not evil — and is therefore not a mortal but an immortal. …
The magnitude of Jesus’ work, his material disappearance before their eyes and his reappearance, all enabled the disciples to understand what Jesus had said.
SH 305:31–4
The Sadducees reasoned falsely about the resurrection, but not so blindly as the Pharisees, who believed error to be as immortal as Truth. The Pharisees thought that they could raise the spiritual from the material. They would first make life result in death, and thenresort to death to reproduce spiritual life.
SH 314:12–13 (to 1st ,), 14–20 and (to ;); 315:11–13, 16
When Jesus spoke of reproducing his body, … and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” they thought that he meant their material temple instead of his body. To such materialists, the real man seemed a spectre, unseen and unfamiliar, and the body, which they laid in a sepulchre, seemed to be substance. This materialism lost sight of the true Jesus; …
The opposite and false views of the people hid from their sense Christ’s sonship with God. They could not discern his spiritual existence. … The likeness of God we lose sight of through sin, which beclouds the spiritual sense of Truth; and we realize this likeness only when we subdue sin and prove man’s heritage, the liberty of the sons of God.
SH 34:18–23
Through all the disciples experienced, they became more spiritual and understood better what the Master had taught. His resurrection was also their resurrection. It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities.
SH 306:5–8
Jesus taught them how death was to be overcome by spiritual Life, and demonstrated this beyond cavil. Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul makes man immortal.
SH 515:11–12 (to
Genesis i. 26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; …
SH 90:24–27
The admission to one’s self that man is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea. This conviction shuts the door on death, and opens it wide towards immortality.
SH 317:18
The understanding of his spiritual individuality makes man more real, more formidable in truth, and enables him to conquer sin, disease, and death. Our Lord and Master presented himself to his disciples after his resurrection from the grave, as the self-same Jesus whom they had loved before the tragedy on Calvary.
SH 46:13–24
The Master said plainly that physique was not Spirit, and after his resurrection he proved to the physical senses that his body was not changed until he himself ascended, — or, in other words, rose even higher in the understanding of Spirit, God. To convince Thomas of this, Jesus caused him to examine the nailprints and the spear-wound.
Jesus’ unchanged physical condition after what seemed to be death was followed by his exaltation above all material conditions; and this exaltation explained his ascension, and revealed unmistakably a probationary and progressive state beyond the grave.
SH 26:1–2 (to ,), 5 yet
While we adore Jesus, and the heart overflows with gratitude for what he did for mortals, … yet Jesus spares us not one individual experience, if we follow his commands faithfully; and all have the cup of sorrowful effort to drink in proportion to their demonstration of his love, till all are redeemed through divine Love.
SH 429:31–32; 430:2–5, 7–9
Jesus said (John viii. 51), “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” … Jesus demonstrated this, healing the dying and raising the dead. Mortal mind must part with error, must put off itself with its deeds, and immortal manhood, the Christ ideal, will appear. … When man gives up his belief in death, he will advance more rapidly towards God, Life, and Love.
SH 233:1
Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil.
SH 291:28–31; 292:7–10
No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually,
even the judgment by which mortal man is divested of all material error. …
Truth will be to us “the resurrection and the life” only as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the only immortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled by death.
SH 254:16, 27–31
During the sensual ages, absolute Christian Science may not be achieved prior to the change called death, for we have not the power to demonstrate what we do not understand. But the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual. …
If you launch your bark upon the ever-agitated but healthful waters of truth, you will encounter storms. Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the cross. Take it up and bear it, for through it you win and wear the crown.
SH 45:16
Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts! Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.
Hymn. 290
Press on, press on, ye sons of light, / Untiring in your holy fight, / Still treading each temptation down, / And battling for a brighter crown.
Press on, press on, and fear no foe, / With calm resolve to triumph go; / Victorious over every ill, / Press on to higher glory still.
Press on, press on, still look in faith / To Him who conquers sin and death; / Then shall ye hear His word, Well done! / True to the last, press on, press on.
Words: William Gaskell, adapted
Music: James W. Elliott
Hymn. 542
O Life that maketh all things new, / The blooming earth, the thoughts of men; / Our pilgrim feet, wet with Your dew, / In gladness hither turn again.
From hand to hand the greeting flows, / From eye to eye the signals run, / From heart to heart the bright hope glows, / The seekers of the Light are one:
One in the freedom of the truth, / One in the joy of paths untrod, / One in the heart’s perennial youth, / One in the larger thought of God; —
The freer step, the fuller breath, / The wide horizon’s grander view; / The sense of Life that knows no death, — / The Life that maketh all things new.
Words: Samuel Longfellow, alt.
Music: Andrew D. Brewis, alt.
Hymn. 66
From these Thy children gathered in Thy name, / From hearts made whole, from lips redeemed from woe, / Thy praise, O Father, shall forever flow. / Alleluia! Alleluia!
O perfect Life, in Thy completeness held, / None can beyond Thy omnipresence stray; / Safe in Thy Love, we live and sing alway / Alleluia! Alleluia!
O perfect Mind, reveal Thy likeness true, / That higher selfhood which we all must prove, / Joy and dominion, love reflecting Love. / Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thou, Soul, inspiring—give us vision clear, / Break earth-bound fetters, sweep away the veil, / Show the new heaven and earth that shall prevail. / Alleluia! Alleluia!
Words: Violet Hay
Music: R. Vaughan Williams
