At times the necessity of rededicating their lives to Christian Science is apparent to those who love Truth and realize the demand for continued inspiration if the Christ is to be revealed in its full power and glory. Often these times come when the threatening claims of evil need to be faced with renewed courage and their nothingness proved.
Dedication usually marks a beginning, a consecration occurring in the flush of fresh revelation, when Truth is "in [the] mouth sweet as honey" (Rev. 10:10). On the other hand, rededication must come when error is rebelling at Truth, fighting for self-preservation, resisting the resistless, defying Deity. This is the time when the digestion of Truth, its fuller assimilation, may seem bitter and unpalatable. It is a call for closer communion with God and a more confident yielding up of the false mortal sense of existence for real life in Spirit.
A notable rededication ceremony took place in Jerusalem in the year 164 B.C., when the Maccabees cleansed the temple after its pollution by heathen sacrifices under the rule of a Syrian conqueror. On this occasion the altar was rededicated to the one God, and a feast was inaugurated which the Jews celebrated annually, a ceremony sometimes called "The Feast of Dedication" —meaning literally renewal—sometimes called "The Feast of Purification," and sometimes "The Feast of Rededication."
