A deep dive into the Bible shows us that many individuals experienced God’s saving and protecting power in the face of extreme adversity. Starting with Genesis, we read of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and other key figures such as Sarah and Joseph, who saw God’s laws of harmony overcome such afflictions as floods, loneliness, hunger, disease, infertility, greed, jealousy, rivalry, and abandonment.
From their stories it is apparent that when they glimpsed the supremacy of divine Spirit, matter and its so-called laws were proven powerless. No matter how insurmountable a difficulty seemed to be, nothing was impossible to God.
This is a point that is brought out in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy when she writes, “The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power” (p. 131). She adds several pages later, “From beginning to end, the Scriptures are full of accounts of the triumph of Spirit, Mind, over matter” (p. 139).
In Moses’ life, the sovereignty of Spirit over physical forces is breathtaking. When Moses observed that a bush was on fire and yet not consumed, he was witnessing the omnipotence of God overriding the so-called laws of physics. When he obeyed God’s command to pick up the snake by its tail, the hypnotism of fear was broken, and the snake turned into a rod on which he could confidently lean when facing a multitude of challenges.
Jesus’ healing works inspired trust in the power of divine Love.
Under God’s impetus, Moses led the Hebrew nation out of their many years of bondage. Spirit’s omnipresence was evident in the wind that cut a path through the Red Sea so they could escape the pursuing Egyptians. In the wilderness, God’s protection took the form of a cloud leading them by day, and a pillar of fire lighting their way by night.
Elijah, Elisha, and other prophets were willing to think outside the box of popular opinion and accept radically new views of God’s allness. This spiritual perspective gave them dominion over whatever was unlike God—disease, lack, devastating battles, natural disasters, and society’s pushback against their God-centered message. Their works proved that nothing is impossible to Spirit.
Christ Jesus advanced this line of light. His students began to see what life looks like when God’s laws are applied to human experience and its copious material beliefs. By showing the dramatic healing effects of thought yielding entirely to the will of God, Jesus inspired trust in the power of divine Love, our Father-Mother, whose will for us includes only good.
Someone might ask, “Where has this superiority of Spirit gone?” The answer is that it’s still here. It is fair to say that every day people are experiencing healing and proving Spirit’s power over material resistance through Christian Science.
As an ardent student of the Bible, Mrs. Eddy discovered how to heal as Jesus did, by understanding God’s absolute authority over what she had recognized as the false claims presented by the physical senses. It was a pivotal moment for theology and society when she published her Christianly scientific discovery in Science and Health, showing how permanently relevant the Bible is. She proved that God and His scientific laws are constant and are just as available to us as they were to the patriarchs, prophets, and Jesus.
This divine Science is beautifully radical. It explains that because God, Spirit, is the source of all being and never created anything unlike Himself, the entire makeup of all being is spiritual. Spirit expresses itself through its ideas, which are God’s offspring. This means that every child of God is created spiritually, in Spirit’s image and likeness, and is governed solely by the laws of Spirit.
When I was in college, my family saw firsthand the supremacy of Spirit over material laws. My dad was at a highly respected clinic, where a noted neurosurgeon had diagnosed him with a brain tumor. Our family members were called to travel to say our last goodbyes to Dad.
As a new student of Christian Science, I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me. She spoke of God’s unquestionable supremacy. When speaking of my dad, she stated with confidence that God had made him perfect and he must remain that way. She was referring to my dad as God’s spiritual expression, not a sick, dying mortal. She encouraged me to read the chapter titled “Creation” in Science and Health, which I did on the plane.
At the hospital, as my family was anxiously awaiting the results of my dad’s surgery, a Bible verse came emphatically to my thought: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:10). I didn’t remember ever reading or learning that verse, but I heard it clearly in a strong, distinct way. A sweet assurance and peace came over me.
Within a short time, the doctor entered the waiting room and told us that there would be no surgery. When they had done the procedure to identify the exact location of the tumor, it was not found. My mother ran up to the doctor to thank him, and he said, “Don’t thank me, thank God. We don’t make mistakes like this here. The tumor that was there is now gone. There is nothing wrong with him. You can pack up your bags and go home.”
My mother ran up to the doctor to thank him, and he said, “Don’t thank me, thank God.”
My dad never again had any symptoms related to that disease. He freely acknowledged that it was a Christian Science healing. The practitioner’s prayer for me and her clear sense of man’s spiritual perfection illumined my consciousness and ruled out any possibility of hidden evil operating anywhere in my thought or experience. The Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love, had dispelled entrenched convictions held by mortal thought. We experienced Spirit’s supremacy over the belief of a threatening physical power.
This healing is best explained on page 331 of Science and Health: “The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God’s universe expresses Him.”
