A new view of God and its effect on well-being - Phillip Hockley, Speaker

you'll gain something new from this whether you're a lifelong Christian scientist or whether you're coming to this lecture for the first time in your life because the time I attended my first ever Christian science lecture was almost 20 years ago now and I knew nobody in the room I didn't even know it was a Christian science lecture and when I came to the lecture I was registered as physically handicapped but when I left the lecture an hour later I was completely free from all of those handicaps and I know for some people that might sound a little bit far-fetched but if you'll just stay with me for this hour I'll do my very best to explain honestly to you not just what happened that night but the way that it became object clear to me how it happens in the days and weeks after that lecture so starting on the same page let's make sure for some people the word handicap means different things for different people I brought the certificate with me for anybody to examine this was issued by the British government in July 1999 after many years about seven years of continual ill health which made me a hundred and five pounds on the night of the lecture my usual body weight is about a hundred and eighty-five but also because I'd had one leg shorter than the other since I was a child I'd had an episode of arthritis as a young boy and the left leg didn't develop properly so I had one leg shorter than the other that caused the spine to curve in the opposite direction called a scoliosis and because of the spine curving in one way my neck curved in the opposite way to keep my eyes level so my neck was always off-center and it used to lock very painfully for weeks at a time so I was grossly underweight one leg shorter than the other curvature of the spine I'm basically bedridden most of the time I'm taking painkillers and nothing helping that was the condition I was in when I came to the lecture now I started out with all the medical support I could get and all the medical professionals did their very best to try and get me a healing I went through all the different alternative therapists next the eh-2-zed quite literally from acupuncture all the way through to zone therapy and everything in between and nothing had helped me so just a couple of years before the lecture I had learned a kind of mindfulness technique which it helped me to kind of manage the pain that I was in 24 hours a day and this technique allowed me to be kind of aware of the pain but not react to it and it was very beneficial because my mind felt more at peace and I felt I could prepare to die at peace so while I was learning to die at peace imagine my surprise when I stumble across a Christian science lecture that shows me how to live and be at peace and this is how it all unfolded I came into the lecture in terrible pain sat in the front row I'm just trying to remain detached from all the pain and inflammation from the short walk to the lecture when everybody starts clapping the lecturer comes out and as soon as the lecturer started talking my heart sank because the lecturer said that she was going to be giving a lecture on the healing message of God's great love as found in the Bible and I thought to myself oh my goodness they're Christians the reason why I thought that I had that reaction is because as a child I'd had a terrible time at the hands of some people who call themselves Christians so I thought all Christians were nasty so I'd never liked Christians since I was a little Tut then when all the doctors had failed to find a cure and all the alternative therapists couldn't find an alternative in my sheer desperation I went to the Google of those days was a thick yellow book of phone numbers right so the younger generation you don't know how good you've got it so I went to the Google I googled all the local churches and I asked them to pray for me and every single denomination very generously and lovingly came to my home and offered me prayers but still I wasn't any improved so while I was sitting there and this lady says oh I'm gonna be talking about the healing message of God's great love in the Bible I thought oh my goodness what do they think they've got that's any different to the other churches then she started reading and I started listening she read from the first book of the Bible Genesis God said let us make man in our image after our likeness so God created man in his own image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good really I was thinking to myself really so I'm not even out of my 30s yet and I'm likely to die I've been disabled for many years I've lost my ability to work I've been cut off from all family and social activities and God is saying oh this is all very good now I was convinced why I didn't like the Christian message because I thought they were just plain crazy in fact I had no interest in listening to anything else that this lady might say I just wanted to get up and storm out rather depressingly because of the inflammation and the pain that I was in from the walk to the venue I couldn't move and I knew that in about 15 or 20 minutes things would start settling down I could get up again so I thought right I'll stay here for that time and then I'm gonna get up and storm out and I'm not gonna pay a tiny bit of attention to anything she's got to say until I heard something which really grabbed my attention and again not in a good way she read from this book it's called science and health with key to the scriptures written by an American lady called Mary Baker Eddy now if you've never heard of this book before no problem the night of the lecture I had never heard of it either what I'll do during the lecture is I'll give you a little kind of bite-sized chunk about where it came from but just right now just listen to the ideas that I found so controversial God is at once the center and circumference of being God is at once the center and circumference of being now when I say it grabbed my attention and I say it wasn't in a good way I'm dressing it up very politely okay I became furious because for the last couple of years while practicing that mindful technique I knew that my Center and my circumference as I understood it was riddled with disease deformity and discomfort and now this lecturer wants me to accept that God is the center and circumference of all this now I was absolutely furious in fact there were some very unkind judgments going on in my thinking about the whole event then something started to change and significantly and this time in a good way so I'm sitting there I now realize I don't like anybody in the room because they're all Christians I don't like what the lecturer is saying so I'm criticizing her so my human mind is engaged in all of this ill-will but I started to become aware of another part of my thinking which was greater than I'd ever experienced before in my life a tremendous sense of peace and an accompanying sense of being loved now when I say being loved I wasn't talking about the kind of human love that I'd experienced sometimes here and sometimes there up until that point in my life it wasn't like a human love and there was certainly nobody in the room that I was expecting to feel any love from and yet I felt this incredible sense of being loved which was completely new to me and yet strangely it felt familiar so while I was noticing this incredible sense of peace and this accompanying sense of love I thought myself oh I'd better be aware of the pain in the body and remain detached from it and as I started passing my awareness through the body to my amazement all of the stiffness the pain and the inflammation that I'd brought with me to the lecture was melting before my very eyes now I used the term melting on purpose because the way that it felt was just like you might expect an ice cube to respond if he took a brand-new ice cube from the freezer tray and you placed it on a warm sunny windowsill the first thing you'd notice is all the sharp edges would soften then it would come down into a puddle and if you left it long enough the whole lot would evaporate wouldn't it that's the nature of an ice cube on a warm sunny windowsill as I was becoming aware of my body all the stiffness the discomfort and the disease that I brought with me that had been with me for years was literally melting and evaporating before my very eyes and I was completely absorbed in this completely new view of myself a sensation 'less body like I'd never experienced the next thing I knew everybody starts clapping to mark the end of the lecture and I hadn't listened to a blessed word she'd said I was so absorbed with what was going on in the body I felt really turned around by this so in my desperation I thought I'd better get out of here and keep my eyes down not to make eye contact because I didn't want to speak to anybody I felt so disabled eyes by this incredible new event so I put my eyes to the floor and I tried to make a beeline for the exit and as I was leaving just like today with this church there were copies of this book science and health with key to the scriptures available I took a copy of this book not knowing why but in the days and weeks after that lecture this book explained in perfectly logical ways exactly what had happened on the night of the lecture so this became a real rock for me but first of all I had to get home coming to the lecture was incredibly slow and incredibly painful getting home it was like I was walking in a completely new body completely sensationalist as I'm walking away in my kind of confusion I just kind of mumbled under my breath what on earth just happened back there and I heard some thoughts in my own thinking say it was just like when you stopped believing in monsters under the bed now this is how I remember coming away from the lecture and yet I'm in my mid-30s I hadn't believed in monsters under the bed since I was about 6 so why was I being reminded of that experience but then I was reminded of it and I do remember it as being a very painful period in this little boy's life I started having these illogical night terrors believing there were monsters under my bed so I would wake up in the night needing to use the bathroom too afraid to place my feet on the floor I'd end up sitting on the bed and wetting myself this went on night after night week after week until I developed a pretty huge case of diaper rash and this diaper rash showed below my shorts in my school uniform so the boys in school noticed this and started picking on me the teachers were not very happy with me because I was coming to school tired so I wasn't focusing so the days were not very pleasant at all the night times were pure terror very memorable experience for me until one eventful night I woke up same old same old I desperately needed to go to the bathroom terrified there was a monster under the bed and just about to accept oh here I go again when I heard these ideas in my own thinking say Philip why don't you just look under the bed so compelling were they I did I just looked under the bed without hesitating guess what I found yes dust bunnies yes no monsters though yes no monster it was almost like the way that a dish sponge works in your hand if you crush a dish sponge and it's all out of shape and then you release the grip the dish sponges nature is it pops back into shape doesn't it it felt like for those few months I did hope all the happiness and the comfort and the peace crashed out of this happy little chappie by this belief of a monster under the bed and on the night that I saw the truth for myself it's like the grip was released and I just popped back into shape I felt like a happy little chappie I totaled off to the bathroom I came back and I slept from that night onwards now fast-forward 30 years later I'm walking away from my first ever Christian science lecture in a completely sensationalist body and the same ideas are coming to me it's just like when you stopped believing in monsters under the bed and I literally felt coming to the venue I felt crushed by all of these medical diagnosis and prognosis their expectations for me were very very dire and that had crushed out any sense of hope in me and yet when I was leaving the lecture it felt as if the release had come that terrifying grip had been released and I felt like I'd popped back into shape the very next morning I realized both my legs were the same length my spine was straight on my neck as free and easy from that day to this and as Lona said within four weeks of that lecture I regained those lost eighty pounds without any special diet or any special exercises I'd always been about a hundred and eighty pounds and I'm back there after the lecture within four weeks everything was new to me and I had lots of questions I'm sure you can understand so the very next morning I made my way to the Christian Science reading room is there anybody here that's never heard of a Christian Science reading room ok a Christian Science reading room is like a public library they're normally associated with a local branch Church of Christ scientists and it's basically opened doors for anybody to come in you can study the Bible you can study the teachings of Christian Science or you can take those materials home and study them at home if you want to or you can buy them and own them if you like so I made my way to the local Christian Science reading room the first thing I said was who is this lady I heard about last night in the lecture Mary Baker Eddy so she showed me where I could read about mrs. Eddy's life and I started reading and I noticed a couple of themes started to appear pretty early on first of all I noticed that she was born in the middle 1800 in a part of New England in two deeply religious community and her mother and father loved the Bible so the first thing I noticed was she grew up reading and studying the Bible from a very young age the second theme that I noticed was she seemed to have an awful lot of ill health an awful lot of invalidism which as a young child had kept her to school for long periods and when she became an adult and started experiencing married life she was deemed so sick that she was unable to look after her own child and the child was taken from her so this lady had this kind of common theme running through her life of being ill for long periods then it gets to the point in the story when it takes a pretty dramatic downward turn in the winter of 1866 on an icy pavement in Boston she takes a fall and so badly injures herself everybody in attendance including a local medic were convinced that she would not survive these injuries she was carried into a parlor and laid out waiting for the people in the other room to make a decision about what might be the next best step in that absolutely desperate situation mrs. Eddie says she reached out and said can I please have a copy of the Bible nothing new in that we knew that she'd read the Bible often throughout her life she then says that she opened the Bible at random and it fell onto a page of a very familiar to her healing it was the healing account in the Gospels of a man that was born with disabilities came in contact with Christ Jesus and was instantaneously healed and she says when I read that gospel healing account it was a very familiar one but she stayed with it and she yearned she really reached out to try in some way to experience what it would have been like to have been in the presence of Christ Jesus and maybe experience some of that healing for herself and in that most desperate situation yearning to feel the comfort that people felt and reported half having met Christ Jesus she said her mind suddenly became flooded with a tremendous sense of love so loved she said that she suddenly rose up well dressed herself walked into the next room and announced this to all those there who probably had the pants frightened off them because they were not expecting to see this lady standing let alone walk in and talking she said to them I am well but I now know how to make other people well and she committed the next three years of her life to studying the Scriptures to find if there were laws and promises of God that could back up what she had experienced that night the end of those three years of searching the Scriptures resulted in the very first edition of this book science and health with key to the scriptures this is not mrs. Eddie's version of the Bible that does not happen mrs. Eddie is giving us a companion book if you like to help us unlock Bible passages mrs. Eddie loved and studied the Holy Scriptures this is why she loved and studied them this is one of the laws that she was basing it on from Hebrews I will put my laws that God I God will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them I will put my laws into their hearts and their minds that means each and every one of us doesn't it there yes so that's one promise from God mrs. Eddie's understanding of this after the healing was this I learned these truths in divine science that all real being is in God the divine mind and that life truth and love when we talk about life truth and love in Christian science we're talking about synonymous terms for God because in different parts of the Bible God is described sometimes as life and sometimes as truth and sometimes as life so we're using divine life divine truth divine love right here so that that life truth and love are all powerful and ever-present that the opposite of truth called error sin sickness disease death is the false testimony of false material sense now material sense is basically the five physical senses those were the five physical senses that informed all of these medical experts that the person standing in front of you today is permanently physically handicapped it was the same five physical senses that informed all of those attendance on that fateful night in 1866 when mrs. Ellie fell everybody was in agreement that she was probably not going to survive these injuries so those five physical senses mrs. Eddie is here calling them the false testimony of false material sense then she goes on to coin a phrase spiritual sense she says spiritual sense is a constant conscious capacity to understand God spiritual sense is a conscious constant now if something is a constant it makes me think of things like the laws of mathematics that's a constant so we know the two plus two equals four today yes if two plus two equals four today I can trust that a million years ago two plus two equals four yes and in a million years time two plus two will still make four yes so this to me is a sign or a symbol of what a constant is mrs. Eddie is saying spiritual sense is a conscious constant capacity to understand God and when I read this first I thought well why would I need to understand what God is isn't that just for Christians but then I was told soon afterwards another Bible passage which says in him in God we live and move and have our being so I thought well if I'm living and moving and having my being within something I should certainly know about it but I had no proof of it it then reminded me of the way that somebody explained to me the nature of radio waves because when this person came to me to explain radio waves he said Philip I'm now going to explain to you about all the radio waves you've been living and moving in all your life and I said what radio waves I haven't been living in radio waves he says let me prove it to you and actually today while we've been sitting here in this venue the whole time that I've been talking local radio broadcasters have been sending their radio a through every brick and beam of this building the five physical senses are not aware of it are they yet if I tuned in to a refined sense listen to this so this proves to me that just because the five physical senses are not conscious of something it doesn't mean that thing is absent does it it just means we're not conscious of it so while I was thinking like this I also realized that not only are these radio waves passing through every brick and beam of this building but if I placed my hand over the antenna and completely bury it what should happens it's no player this showed me what this radio engineer was trying to explain to me he said that radio waves passed through every part of your body but you're not aware of them he said so it proved to me that the five physical senses are not all that we should be relying on mrs. Eddie says the false material sense should be replaced by spiritual sense and this was the way that mrs. Eddie perceived prayer in Christian Science prayer in Christian Science is not petitioning God to come into our lives and change things prayer in Christian Science is more about quietening those five physical senses and tuning in if you like with our spiritual sense - the message that we might have from God and mrs. Eddie didn't just make this stuff up she didn't invent this she found this all in the Bible listen Colossians God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the gentiles which is christ in you the hope of glory Christ in you each and every one of us you Christ in you the hope of glory wasn't this the Christ that mrs. Eddie was yearning to experience on that fateful night in 1866 when she took that terrible fall she was yearning to feel that same loving healing presence that Christ Jesus brought to bear in his healing ministry and she became conscious of it and what she was discovering was because she became conscious of it on that night in 1866 if it was a law it was always there but she may not have been conscious of it until that fateful night the same applied when I came to that lecture I felt for the first time in my life the presence of God in my life as love I became fully conscious in that lecture I had a new view of God but it doesn't mean that God had been absent before the lecture it just means that I hadn't been conscious of it I was relying only on the five material senses my physical senses which were not supporting that presence they did not support that presence but our five physical senses are not supporting the presence of radio waves right now are they and yet we do know that they are here this was the Bible's version of the Christ appearing in each and every one of us a little bit like those laws of God that I talked about earlier written in our hearts and our minds it started making me think this is a bit of an inside job here listen to how mrs. Eddy describes Christ in her own words Christ the divine manifestation of God which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error anything that comes to the flesh to destroy the error that sounds like healing to me yes that's what the Christ is designed to do she also talks about the Christ in this way she says Christ is the true idea voicing good the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness it's actually telling us here that these messages are actually readily received in our human consciousness why because we have a Christ in us our hope of glory we have the laws of God written in our hearts and our minds so this is why mrs. Eddy felt that she was experiencing this Christ lis love so fully she felt that she could confidently call this Christian science science because it's based on the laws of God that never changed just like mathematics yes but Christian because it was based on this Christ lis capacity that God has endowed each and every one of us with to hear the voice of God speaking to our human consciousness maybe it that was the voice that spoke to this little boy who was terrified of the monsters under the bed maybe that was the voice that answered the question as I walked away from the lecture thirty years later but that voice is convincing because it feels so true and loving mrs. Eddie is teaching this same practice of prayer to countless people in her community and they're all having healings but if you look in this book the last 100 pages it's called fruit ditch the whole chapter just on the healing account of people just like you and I who came in contact with difficulty in their lives learned to study this way of praying practiced it for themselves felt the presence of God in their lives and the result was healing and if you are interested in more detail about how to pray the first chapter of the book is entitled prayer it focuses completely on this way of quietening those material senses sufficiently that we can tune into if you like just listen to what spiritual sense is trying to say to us this became a phenomenal discovery for me because I never had any contact with the Bible I had no understanding about God and I had no understanding about spiritual living what I found at that reading room was it's called the Christian Science weekly Bible lesson I thought it was genius because it gives you just a couple of bite-size chunks from the Bible and then on the next side of the page gives you a couple of bite-size chunks from science and health to help explain that and I needed it in very small bite-size chunks so what I was doing was I'm starting to read this weekly Bible lesson and learn a little bit more about God and I'm learning a little bit more about how to practice this healing prayer but a couple of concepts kept coming up in the weekly Bible lesson and they really bugged me I couldn't I couldn't find any peace over them and one of these concepts was God made you in His image and likeness you are God's reflection it kept coming up week after week after week and I thought that doesn't make any sense at all I've got brothers who were taller than me and they've got dark hair and dark eyes and I used to think well a reflection works by you know if you turn and face the mirror if I'm wearing a white checked shirt today and I look into the mirror my image and likeness will appear instantaneously won't it yes what will the image and likeness be wearing exactly the same white checked shirt yes so I knew how reflection worked it's like an unbroken law isn't it I couldn't turn and face the mirror in this shirt and say oh my image and likeness is wearing a Lakers shirt that possible if I'm standing here in this shirt can my image and likeness reflect back a Lakers shirt it's impossible so I was thinking to myself that I know how reflection work I've worked so I thought I said this is how reflection works so if I'm God's image and likeness and my brother who is much taller than me as God's image and likeness which one does God look like seriously it didn't make any sense at all so I'm wrestling with this idea over a couple of weeks in my daily Bible studies and then a thought came to me just fresh inspiration said Philip you're standing in the wrong place you need to back up onto the mirror you're my reflection and I thought about that deeply for a few moments and I pictured myself kind of backing up onto the mirror now and I'm thinking right so I'm God's reflection I'm His image and likeness so as I'm thinking about all that I'd recently learned about God I was realizing well I can't imagine God having arthritis as a child so his reflection couldn't really have had it then then I realized well if God didn't have one leg shorter than the other I couldn't really have reflected it because for something to appear on the reflection it must have come from the original first yes isn't that true think about my journey over here I've gone through two climate zones to get to you I've got cold weather clothes and I've got nothing suitable for Southern California in this temperature right nothing suitable at all so my suitcase is quite heavy when I'm lifting the suitcase up fifty pounds two hands yes two handed left hook onto the scale there's a plate-glass window next to me my image and likeness is lifting the same suitcase effortlessly and I'm thinking yeah that's easy for you why is it easy for the image and likeness I'm doing all the work the reflection how heavy is that suitcase how much does that one-way zero so it was dawning on me that when an original does something the image and likeness does it simultaneously and effortlessly so what I was learning from the weekly Bible lesson I was learning these are qualities of divine mind that are life truth and love and then I as his image and likeness well I could just reflect all those divine qualities in my daily living not by huffing and puffing by reflection now this isn't to say there's no effort involved the effort seems to be focused for me in particular on quietening the material senses and my material beliefs because a lot of material beliefs will pop up as if they are facts like that belief of monsters under the bed for the little boy here how did that work out for me not so good when I looked under the bed and I knew the truth about the monsters what did that truth do the Bible says it you shall know the truth and I'm crushed in fear and the truth will set you free I popped back into shape right the same was starting to occur to me about what had happened at the lecture I'd come to the lecture not knowing the truth about my spiritual identity I thought my biology teacher had convinced me in fact that I was just material constructive 60 percent water 40 percent inorganic salts and when you die you're worm food that's what I was told and I you know I really took they're on board I really believed this person because they seemed to carry such Authority and if you google it most people will come up with the same percentage about 60 percent water and about 40 percent inorganic salts and those salts are not special secret salts that in every veggie patch right so imagine now then that that speaker today is exactly 100 pounds in weight that means it would be 60 pound of water here and 40 pound of inorganic salts so I pictured a bathtub and I was picturing 60 pounds of water being poured in and then a sack of inorganic salts that weighed 40 pounds cutting it pouring it in and stirring it so in that bathtub now you have exactly 100 pounds of water and mineral salts in exactly the same proportion as the 100 pounds of water and mineral salts making up this in front of you today can anybody spot the different speech thank you ma'am there's nothing going on in the bathtub is there its sludge right but there seems to be something going on here but this is not the whole story because if God is keeping us living in laws which are unconditional these laws that never change if something is unconditional it must be applicable everywhere so does God ignore that sludge but put life in this sludge no but what this can do what this body can be used for is just as a reflecting tool if you like to reflect those qualities of health and harmony and neighborly behavior brotherly love we can use this body to just reflect because think about this if the original is here and the image and likeness appears on the glass does any of my shirt fiber have to rush across the room to make the image and likeness appear no so nothing material is left the original to make the image and likeness appear so the original stays intact the image and likeness just effortlessly reflects it and so I was realizing God doesn't endow us particularly with all of these spiritual qualities but we can reflect them not only can we reflect them but at some point we must because that's how the unbroken relationship works the original waves the reflection has to wave back and if the original wasn't sick how could this reflection have been sick for all those years it was starting to dawn on me that I had believed some very convincing material evidence about my sicknesses but it doesn't mean that they were eternal truths mrs. Eddie had a brilliant answer for that just a little further along she says this and remember all of these answers are coming jest from studying the weekly Bible lesson every week I was getting little nuggets of gold from it it was just so helpful consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered correct material belief this is all the belief now of material evidence here correct material belief with spiritual understanding that's spiritual sense yes that Christ in you your hope of glory the laws of God written in your hearts and your mind right it's an inside job correct material belief she says with spiritual understanding and spirit will form you anew do you remember the dish sponge pops back into shape I'd stopped believing in those monsters under the bed on that fateful night I felt completely at peace and I popped back into shape it seems that when I came to that lecture thirty years later I suspended my belief in a material body I felt that incredible influx of love like I'd never felt before I experienced the presence of God consciously for the first time in my life that new view of God completely transformed my well-being I just popped back into shape and left all of my old beliefs behind I no longer believed that I was disabled I no longer believed I'd been in pain for years this is the nature of understanding God mrs. Eddie says spiritual sense is a conscious constant capacity to understand God and when we understand what the principal is doing don't we automatically understand what the image and likeness must be doing as well isn't that the case with reflection it's an unbroken law so I was learning bit by bit to accept more of these divine laws into my consciousness and the more I was replacing my material thoughts and my old habits with all these new spiritual ideas is it any surprise that my life continued to get better and better from that day on I was now learning to become conscious of the constant capacity to understand God and to consciously choose to reflect it in my daily life and I can tell you it completely transformed my well-being I was free from lifelong regrets I'd made some very poor choices as a young person but now that I was understanding if God was my life past present and future if I was God's image and likeness then if God didn't break a moral law I couldn't have broken a moral law by reflection if God hadn't been a cheat or a liar I couldn't have been a cheat or a liar by reflection so it helped me give up these old regrets that I had about my own actions then it helped me see that all those dear ones who had done me wrong in my earlier life I could now picture them as being on the same plane of reflection and I realized that they didn't really have the capacity to hurt me either I became able to forgive those people that I'd harbored long time hurts for then the ones that I loved dearly that it seemed to have gone on before me I was able to regain a conscious awareness of they are still existing a conscious awareness that they live and move and have their being in God and if God is still present His image and likeness must be present I can't tell you how liberating those weeks and months were after the lecture and it all came from just studying the weekly Bible lesson a little bit about God a little bit about Christian Science application of it a little bit about God a little bit about how to apply it it was just genius especially for me mrs. Eddy asks this rhetorical question she says if sickness is real it belongs to immortality if true it is a part of truth you think about 2+2 again just for a moment right if 2+2 makes for today that's true yes we can all readily accept that it means that it always was 2+2 4 a million years ago and in a million years time 2+2 is 4 right that to me is a symbol of what immortality looks like it never changes she says if sickness is real it's a part of truth she says would you attempt with drugs or without to change a quality or sorry to destroy a quality or condition of truth can we surgically operate on the truth in mathematics and stop it making 4 can we give therapy to mathematical principles to stop it making 4 you can't change it it's a fact it's true so mrs. Eddy is saying if sickness is true would you attempt to change it with drugs but she says if sickness and sin are illusions the awakening from this mortal dream or illusion remember the little boy who was terrified every night of the monsters when I woke up from that mortal dream and I saw the truth and the truth made me free mrs. Eddy says the awakening from this mortal dream or illusion will bring us into health holiness and immortality she then goes on to finish that line by saying this is the salvation which comes through God there's God there the principle love as demonstrated by Christ Jesus it was the love appearing in the consciousness of Christ Jesus that allowed him to affect so many healings in his short ministry that seemingly lost love that lost practice was again mrs. Eddy discovered it again in 1866 the fact love was still present it's an ever-present help it's a promise from God from everlasting to everlasting if it's true today it was always true I like the fact that if something is ever present it meant to me that it was also never absent that's why I could look back at my past mistakes and regrets and actually see if they didn't happen to God they couldn't really have happened to me although I could have believed in them if I wanted to we can believe in anything mrs. Eddie was convinced that the root cause of all of human suffering was a lack of understanding the power of the presence of God as a present help in our lives and in everyone's lives and she tried to get that understanding into each and every hand everybody's hands by writing this book and circulating it the churches that developed as a result of these healings every church was based on people coming together and getting healed then they built a church people didn't think well let's just build a church and see if any healing happens these churches have to be healing others before they could form and incorporate and become a Christian Science church so every single Christian Science church all over the world was based on the same healing that mrs. Eddie has shared with us she discovered this in 1866 she did not invent it she discovered that these laws were from everlasting to everlasting but they'd been forgotten for a long time these laws are just as unconditional as the laws of these radio waves are unconditional means without condition suggest as everybody in this room is different these radio waves do not care whether you're male or female young or old rich or poor these radio waves are just going to pass through you and conditionally these laws of God that mrs. Eddie was discovering she found them in the Bible she was experiencing them herself and she was helping others to experience it in the form of healing these unconditional laws are ever-present God said that he would write his laws into our hearts and our minds so that we could understand this God said there is a Christ in you each and every one of you your hope of glory again so that we can understand it what does the Christ do it's above the five physical senses just like the five physical senses are not telling us what's being played on the radio spiritual senses no more like this spiritual sense is like a refined sense of accepting what mrs. Eddie calls Christ the true idea voicing good the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness each and every one of us in fact so unconditional are these laws that it played out in the life of my younger brother one day in a very dramatic way he'd been a lifelong atheist had never been interested in the Bible at all he has a terrible accident one afternoon and really severely broke his arm falling off a mountain bike he showed me and said please take me to the hospital now at this point I'd been praying this way in Christian Science for a couple of years now plus I'd seen my own healing and restoration from all of those disabilities I had full confidence that Christian science could heal this so I offered him prayer well he nearly flipped out he said no I don't want prayer I want anaesthetic I want surgery get me to the hospital I said okay I drove him to the hospital they x-rayed him at the hospital and they confirmed it was a particularly bad break and then the doctor looked down at his watch and he said okay it's now 9:30 p.m. on Good Friday which means a four-day holiday in Britain he says this 9:30 p.m. on Good Friday the fracture clinic closed at 5:00 and reopens on Tuesday morning at 8 o'clock I'm gonna book you an appointment to get a plaster put on that on Tuesday morning but until then I'm put in a very strong support against your chest and I'll give you warping big pain killers to take the pain away and my brother reasoned he thought oh my goodness I'm gonna have to sleep on this four nights without protection and he went white and he said to me his prayers an option it was like he was running out of options here he said his prayers that an option he might as well have said I'll raid your way of still here Philip what do you think I said so we left the hospital and it's about a 10 or 15 minute drive to the house and we prayed the whole way and by praying what I mean is we talked about what might be true of God and therefore what might be true about him by a reflection and my brother readily accepted this our house had a tall mirror that you could stand in front of and check your jacket and everything before you left the house he knew what reflection looked like until we got to the house and I said but remember now God is standing in front of the mirror we are His image and likeness so you need to back up on the mirror with me so I made him back up on to a mirror and we're standing there and I'm saying right so God now is the original God is the principle we are His image and likeness first Genesis and he says okay I said so how does that make you feel about the broken arm and he said don't be so ridiculous he said God couldn't have a broken arm then he went really quiet took himself off to bed and the next morning when he walked into the breakfast-room he showed me his arm the swelling had all gone down the bandages were loose and he said I'm not feeling any pain Philip but I still want to go to the hospital fine I said I'll take you so Tuesday morning I took him to the hospital the fracture clinic was way over the other side of the hospital they said we are gonna take a new image of the arm to make sure that we put the plaster cast on the needful part so they took an image they placed the image up on the light box and these are the words they used he said mr. Hockley who told you you've got a broken arm and my brother said well accident an emergency did on Friday so the doctor calls accident an emergency the other image comes across there's now two images up on the screen and he said look on Friday I can see you had a broken arm what was he seeing with the five physical senses you're one of his five physical senses but he said today I can't see one he said can I do some tests Newcomb said can can you stretch out your hand and my brother did he said can you bend your fingers without pain and my brother did he said that's all I need to know he said to prove you don't have a broken arm you're free to go that healing was not just wonderful for my brother to be able to pain and to get back to his college studies really quickly but it completely changed the direction of his life because for the first time in his life he had experienced the presence of God in his life as spirit that came to him in his hour of desperate need he felt so completely comforted he said when he went to bed that night that he slept like a baby with no thought about the arm that comfort it's one of the qualities of the Christ the comforter is what we were promised in the Bible he felt so comfortable and so at ease he slept like a baby and in the morning he saw that his arm was whole my brother had never picked up the Bible before in his life he gets a brand-new view of God it completely transforms his well-being mrs. Eddie had been a lifelong student of the Bible when she gets a brand new view of God in 1866 the result on her well being was also transformational that proves to me just how unconditional this law is these laws do not care whether you love them or hate them the laws are just there mathematics doesn't care whether you agree with it or not mathematical and principals are just always there this radio station doesn't care whether we listen to it or not it's just passing through us if these radio waves can be passing through us completely undetected by the five physical senses it doesn't mean that the radio waves are not present does it it just means we are not conscious of them what Christ Jesus tried to do in his ministry was teach people to seek the kingdom of heaven within he proved it in countless healings it was lost for hundreds of years in 1866 mrs. Eddy discovered these principles are still present look at the effect the healing work was documented in this book so that each one of us can take a copy of this with us today if we don't have it and we can study and practice exactly the same form of healing prayer we can learn to quieten the material senses and tune in if you like to what spiritual sense might be saying spiritual sense yes that Christ in us our hope of glory is our receiver the laws of God written in our heart and our minds each and every one of us I know life is challenged and I went through some challenges myself and I know a lot of people in this room will probably either have been through challenges or know people who are going through challenges sometimes it can feel really scary sometimes it can feel really really hopeless this lecture is here to prove the promises of the Bible as understood and practiced by mrs. Eddy and Christian science can restore hope where hopelessness seems to have prevailed it can restore health where people have been told they were incurable it can restore comfort where there seems to be so much terror and fear all mrs. Eddie wanted to do was let people know about these spiritual laws realize that they are living and move and breathing within them and that unconditionally these healing principles are available to each and every one of us they're a gift from God to man the divine message from God speaking to the human consciousness and how do we know that we can receive it Christ in you the hope of glory and those laws of God written in everybody's hearts and minds when we come across something in my country back in Wales that's really delicious or really helpful we often say to our friends or go fill your boots take loads of it right if anything has appealed to you this afternoon when you leave here I would say to you with strong encouragement go and fill your boots try this for yourself but you know later on today I am out of here but this church isn't this church remains the church has Sunday services Wednesday services and a reading room open to the public you can come and fill your boots as often as you want you can take a copy of this book with you science and health and learn for yourself the first chapter on prayer the last chapter fruit ditch you can come and get a copy of the weekly Bible lesson and do it in bite-sized chunks like I did if you want to this church remains as a resource for anybody that has those inclinations I strongly recommend you go and fill your boots I ever had this new view of God and I know what a transformation it was in my well-being I wish it to be experienced by everybody thank you all so much for your attention this afternoon and be successful in everything you do thank you you

Channel: Prayer that Heals

Views: 104,989

Keywords: Christian Science, Prayer That Heals, Healing Prayer, God is Love, spirituality, marybakereddy, christianity, Christian Science Lectures, Testimonies of Healing, handicapped, phillip hockley

Id: TjfW_JaUnbc

Length: 59min 23sec (3563 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019