IS MARY BAKER EDDY THE WOMAN THAT GOD-CROWNED IN REVELATION 12?
by MJSmith
How does Mary Baker Eddy answer this question? She gives us the answer when she first tells us that there is a messenger (or angel) from God that we must take notice of in her chapter “The Apocalypse”. [My comments will be in these types of brackets.]
“Revelation xii. 1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
“True estimate of God’s messenger [angel]
“Heaven represents harmony, and divine Science interprets the Principle of heavenly harmony. The great miracle, to human sense, is divine Love, and the grand necessity of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in man [within man’s consciousness – for that is the only place the kingdom of heaven can be located]. This goal is never reached while we hate our neighbor or entertain a false estimate of anyone whom God has appointed to voice His Word. [God appointed Mary Baker Eddy to voice His Word.] Again, without a correct sense of its highest visible idea [womanhood], we can never understand the divine Principle [God]. The botanist must know the genus and species of a plant in order to classify it correctly. As it is with things, so it is with persons.
“Persecution [of Mary Baker Eddy, God’s messenger] is harmful
“Abuse of the motives and religion of St. Paul hid from view the apostle’s character, which made him equal to his great mission. Persecution of all who have spoken something new and better of God has not only obscured the light of the ages, but has been fatal to the persecutors.[1] Why? Because it has hid from them the true idea which has been presented. To misunderstand Paul, was to be ignorant of the divine idea he taught. Ignorance of the divine idea betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the idea — ignorance of Truth and Love. The understanding of Truth and Love, the Principle which works out the ends of eternal good and destroys both faith in evil and the practice of evil, leads to the discernment of the divine idea.” (SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES p. 560:6-561:4)
She continues with other symbols spoken of in Revelation 21:17 and Revelation 22:2. Mary Baker Eddy is now telling us who she is from St. John’s visions.
“Espousals supernal
“Agassiz, through the microscope, saw the sun in an egg at a point of so-called embryonic life. Because of his more spiritual vision [for he did not use eye or microscope to see with], St. John saw an ‘angel standing in the sun.’ [So the woman God-crowned, clothed with (standing in) the sun is an angel, just as she hinted at with the use of “God’s messenger”. John sees this angel in Revelation 21.] The Revelator beheld the spiritual idea from the mount of vision [Truth and Love]. Purity was the symbol of Life and Love. The Revelator saw also the spiritual ideal as a woman clothed in light [the sun], a bride coming down from heaven, wedded to the Lamb of Love [Revelation 22]. To John, ‘the bride’ and ‘the Lamb’ represented the correlation of divine Principle and spiritual idea, God and His Christ, bringing harmony to earth.
“Divinity and humanity [of Jesus]
“John saw the human and divine coincidence, shown in the man Jesus, as divinity embracing humanity in Life and its demonstration, — reducing the human perception and understanding the Life which is God. In divine revelation, material and corporeal selfhood disappear, and the spiritual idea is understood.” (S&H 561:5-21)
“Sun. The symbol of Soul governing man, — of Truth, Life, and Love.” (S&H 595:1)
“Spiritual sunlight [of Mary Baker Eddy]
“The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man [notice she does not say that this woman is generic man], the spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea. The Revelator [which is the divine calculus of God as the Word, Jesus as the Christ, Jesus’ message (angel) of Christianity and John as divine Science (see Revelation 1:1)] symbolizes Spirit by the sun. The spiritual idea is clad with the radiance of spiritual Truth, and matter is put under her feet. The light portrayed is really neither solar nor lunar, but spiritual Life, which is ‘the light of men.’ In the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel it is written, ‘There was a man sent from God…to bear witness of that Light.’
“Spiritual idea revealed [first as God’s fatherhood and then as God’s motherhood]
“John the Baptist prophesied the coming of the immaculate Jesus, and John saw in those days the spiritual idea as the Messiah, who would baptize with the Holy Ghost, — divine Science. As Elias presented the idea of the fatherhood of God, which Jesus afterwards manifested, so the Revelator [infinite divine calculus as St. John] completed this figure with woman [Mary Baker Eddy], typifying the spiritual idea of God’s motherhood. [St. John never knew the identity of this woman.] The moon is under her feet. This idea reveals the universe as secondary and tributary to Spirit, from which the universe borrows its reflected light, substance, life, and intelligence.
“Spiritual idea crowned
“The spiritual idea is crowned with twelve stars.[2] The twelve tribes of Israel with all mortals, — separated by belief [birth into matter = the zodiac of twelve star constellations] from man’s divine origin and the true idea [given to mankind via Israel (Jacob’s womanhood or highest ideal – the Third Degree)], — will through much tribulation [pressure or persecution] yield to the activities of the divine Principle of man in the harmony of Science. These are the stars in the crown of rejoicing. They are the lamps in the spiritual heavens of the age [of Aquarius (Christianity)], which show the workings of the spiritual idea by healing the sick and the sinning, and by manifesting the light which shines ‘unto the perfect day’ as the night of materialism wanes.” (S&H 561:22-562:21)
The following is from Paul Smillie’s book MARY BAKER EDDY, pages 241-249. Mr. Smillie likes to use Mrs. Eddy throughout his work, so I will only add Mary Baker a couple of times at first. I feel that we owe her the respect to call her by her real name rather than as Mrs. Eddy. I will also refrain from using quote marks unless they are directly from Smillie’s book. [My comments will be in this type of bracket.]
Is Mary Baker Eddy the Woman in the Apocalypse [Revelation]?
In the book of Revelation, the dragon pours out of his mouth water [false teachings, lies] as a river after the woman [in order to kill her reputation in the world and take away her place in Bible prophecy]. This is not false teaching about the [Christian Science, absolute Christian Science, divine Science, or] Science [itself], the manchild [which is Science] already caught up unto God and His throne, [the false teaching is] against the Woman[3] [God-crowned], false teachings about her.
Let us first consider the basis of the arguments that Mrs. [Mary Baker] Eddy is not that Woman, and the reason this has been taught by and to the majority of Christian Scientists.
In the 1899 Communion Message to The Mother Church in Boston, Mrs. [Mary Baker] Eddy made statements about the Babylonish woman, the counterfeit of the Woman in the twelfth chapter [of Revelation]. Josephine Woodbury, a student that had continually tried to gain control of the Movement and remove Mrs. Eddy from her place, took Mrs. Eddy’s statements about the Babylonish whore personally, claiming Mrs. Eddy was writing about her. Accordingly, she sued Mrs. Eddy for slander. [Josephine Woodbury most likely felt like she was the Babylonish woman because she suffered from a guilty conscious over things she did: like having an extramarital affair, getting pregnant by that man, and then pretending to have had a spiritual conception like the Virgin Mary actually did.]
At that time it was obvious that if Mrs. Woodbury could find any of Mrs. Eddy’s students who could state or prove Mrs. Eddy taught that she was the Woman in the Apocalypse, then Mrs. Woodbury could prove Mrs. Eddy taught that prophecy had to have a human appearing. Therefore, Mrs. Woodbury would have indirect proof that Mrs. Eddy was referring to her [in her Message]. That is why Mrs. Woodbury specifically charged in her bill of complaint that Mrs. Eddy considered herself and taught that she was the Woman in the Apocalypse and that SCIENCE AND HEALTH was divinely inspired. [Josephine would–bury Mary Baker Eddy if she could. She was attempting to prove to the world that SCIENCE AND HEALTH was not divinely inspired.]
Mrs. Eddy’s close students who testified at the trial understood this very dangerous point and accordingly stated that Mrs. Eddy did not teach that she was the Woman. They were not lying, for Mrs. Eddy could not teach that point openly, although she had made such statements to them individually.
The news media was most interested in the trial, not due to the question that Mrs. Woodbury was the Babylonish whore but that Mrs. Eddy was the Woman in the Apocalypse and Science and Health was divinely inspired. When Mrs. Eddy was besieged by newsmen about this question they were referred to Mr. [Edward] Kimball. Kimball told the press that Mrs. Eddy had never taught in her classes that she was that Woman, which was partially true because Mrs. Eddy didn’t openly teach this. The second part of his statement was that she did not wish her students to teach it, and this was totally false. What the newspaper reported of their conversation with Mr. Kimball was included in the July Journal of 1901.
Kimball, at that time, was totally unaware that Judge Hanna and Mrs. Eddy had worked together to place a lead article in The Journal on that subject of her place in Bible prophecy and as fulfilling the promise of the woman of the twelfth chapter. Because of the events of the Woodbury trial, Mrs. Eddy thought it not wise to publish Judge Hanna’s article at that time…It is interesting to note that Kimball’s statement to the press has affected the Christian Science Movement on the subject of Mrs. Eddy’s place in prophecy far more than Mrs. Eddy’s words about herself concerning this subject, more than statements from early workers close to her, more than the leaflet “Mrs. Eddy’s Place,” published in 1943 by the Board of Directors. Sometime later, giving weight to Kimball’s assessment of the question, was the inclusion in Mrs. Eddy’s writings of this statement attributed [4] to her concerning Kimball’s “clear, correct teaching of Christian Science…” (My. 297) Mrs. Eddy did not write this nor did she ever intend anything of this kind to be included in her published writings. Adam Dickey admitted that he had been responsible for this statement. [Adam Dickey was one of Mary Baker Eddy’s secretaries, he also was a student of Edward Kimball, and at one point he was a Board of Directors in Boston. He disobeyed Mary Baker Eddy, which he admitted to in later years.]
During the trial Mrs. Eddy said, “a little old grey haired lady could not be the woman in the Apocalypse.” Was she trying to tell us she was not the Woman in the Apocalypse? Many practitioners, teachers, and lecturers parroted this silly statement, believing it to be the denial of her identity as the Woman in the Apocalypse. [Mary Baker Eddy made that statement to her lawyers at the time of the Woodbury trial.] Her two lawyers were quite interested in Mrs. Woodbury’s charges that Mrs. Eddy considered herself the Woman in the Apocalypse and that she considered Science and Health to be divinely inspired. For the non-Christian Scientist lawyers to be given a “yes” answer to these two questions could have jeopardized Mrs. Eddy’s rapport with them and eroded the genuine esteem they felt for her. Thus the positive disposition of the dangerous case she found herself in would not be assured. [It is also true that Mary Baker Eddy knew that the little old grey haired woman, who was completely seen as a material persona, could never be the Woman God-crowned! She knew that her real identity, as the Daughter of Zion, was the Woman, but this “Daughter” was and is God’s divine ideal.] The question of the lawyers, answered in the affirmative [more like, in the relative viewpoint of things], would have set up too much resistance in the lawyer’s thinking and at a time when Mrs. Eddy needed their clear legal ability. [So when Mary Baker] Eddy’s lawyers asked, “Are you the woman in the Apocalypse?” [She replied] with a question to avoid giving the obvious answer[. S]he asked, “Do you think a little old grey haired lady could be the woman in the Apocalypse?” This was the only way of silencing the questioning uncertainty of her lawyers. Mrs. Eddy knew that the lawyers saw her as a little old grey haired lady [as a material persona], as did the world, and knew therefore that the lawyers would [interpret] her to mean that she was not that woman and that is what she wanted them to think. [She did not mislead her lawyers, they just were not Christian Scientists, so they did not understand her teachings, and she went with it.]
In a letter to Judge Hanna dated October 13, 1902, Mrs. Eddy wrote:
“The united plan of the evildoers is to cause the beginners either in lecturing or teaching or in our periodicals to keep Mrs. Eddy as she is (what God knows of her and revealed to Christ Jesus) out of sight, and to keep her as she is not (just another white-haired old lady) constantly before the public. This kills two birds with one stone. It darkens the spiritual sense of students and misguides the public. Why? Because it misstates the idea of the divine Principle that you are trying to demonstrate and hides it from the sense of the people.”
[The book of Revelation has to do with revealing, uncovering, and exposing. What is in Revelation is Truth about the Second Coming of Christ, the Truth about the Woman that God-crowned with twelve stars and this woman reveals, via Christian Science, matter to be error (the red dragon). Matter and error are nothing, illusion, animal magnetism. The Truth is that His-Her angel – Mary Baker Glover Eddy – descended with “a little book open” which is SCIENCE AND HEALTH. To keep what God knows of her, and had revealed to Christ Jesus in Revelation, a secret to the world, is the opposite of what the book of Revelation is all about. (Also, the book’s name is not called Revelations (plural) – as in there are many revelations taking place, it is Revelation (singular) for there is only one revelation – that of the Woman who exposes matter as illusion, unreality, and powerlessness.) Today those who run the material organized church in Boston, if they allow pictures in Branch churches to be displayed, they love to keep pictures of Mary Baker Eddy as being a little grey haired lady.]
To further protect herself and her Cause she made additional statements about that time which have since been misunderstood and taken to mean she was not the Woman. She says, “What St. John saw in prophetic vision[5] and depicted as ‘a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet’ prefigured no speciality or individuality. His vision foretold a type, and this type applied to man as well as to woman.” She is telling us that John did not see the human appearing of this spiritual idea; he only saw the absolute appearing [he did not see the relative appearance of a specific woman – Mary Baker Eddy].
In “Woman’s Hour” Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Prophecy is but history written in advance. The beloved disciple of Jesus on the Island of Patmos, from the spiritual heights of revelation, foresaw human history and recorded the events of these ‘latter days’. He did not leave the ages comfortless. He was the final readjustment of all things, and in the vision he saw symbolically the crown of power and revelation placed upon the head of womanhood.” Prophecy cannot be fulfilled without its human appearing. In the previous statement of our Leader’s she says, “His vision foretold a type…” In Miscellaneous Writings she says, “The Scriptural metaphors, — of the woman in travail, the great red dragon that stood ready to devour the child as soon as it was born, and the husbandmen that said, ‘This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours,’ — are type and shadow of this hour.” The type referred to is “of this hour.” She is saying that its human appearing or human coincidence is taking place now and that what John saw as type was now manifested as fact [as her]. In Science and Health she said it in a different way, “The twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse[6], or Revelation of St. John, has a special suggestiveness in connection with the nineteenth century.”
Another statement made at the time of the trial is similar. “I never taught or thought that I was the Woman referred to in the dim distance of St. John’s period, nor that the Babylonish woman can be identified or individualized in our time.” This first part of the sentence merely says she never taught or thought that John saw the human appearing of the Woman in his period. The second part just says that the Babylonish woman cannot be identified or individualized in our time. She is not saying the Woman in the Apocalypse cannot be identified or individualized in our time. Her published and unpublished works make it very clear that she felt this Woman could be identified and individualized in her time. [In my viewpoint, and I know I am correct about this, the woman of Babylon represents the counterfeit Church – the opposite of The First Church of Christ, Scientist – the held onto material organization called The Mother Church (run by the illegal five board of directors – who continuously disobey the Church Manual estoppel clauses).]
Just prior to the Woodbury trial Judge Hanna had spent considerable time analyzing Bible prophecy and had written an article for The Journal on this subject. After writing this article Judge Hanna contacted Mrs. Eddy, who affirmed and commended everything he had written on the subject.
In part it read:
Must the “Spirit of Truth,” or the “Comforter,” that Jesus said should come be personalized or individualized? Undoubtedly. There could be no fulfillment of prophecy otherwise. What, then, in the Christian Science estimate, is the second-coming? First appeared the person or individual. Then followed the works. Who is the personality or individuality manifesting the second-coming?
The answer of every true Christian Scientist will be: The person or individual who has done, and is doing, the works, in a sense above and beyond that of the average of those, even who are addressing themselves to the task of regenerating the race.
Is there one such?
Christian Scientists unhesitatingly answer: Yes. The Reverend Mary Baker Eddy.
Where is the proof?
We will produce it. First we go to the Bible. We find our proof in Genesis and Revelation and uniformly between those books.
…Must the Woman of the Apocalypse be personalized or individualized to mankind? By every principle of logical sequence in Biblical prophecy, Yes.
In commending the writing of Judge Hanna on her place in Bible prophecy, Mrs. Eddy wrote:
The time has not yet come to say the wonderful things you have written in proof read by me today, unless you qualify it. Now you may hold your ground as therein, but do not say blandly that I represent the second appearing of Christ[7].
That assertion will array mortal mind against us, and M.A.M. has been putting it into your mind to say it, and the infinite Love has inspired you to say it[8]. Now be wiser than a serpent. Throw out your truths not as affirmations or protestations, but as suggestions. Then catch your fish, and make the wrath of man praise Him.
With deep love,
Mother
Another letter indicated permission to proceed with the publication of the entire article. After this, events developed quickly concerning the Woodbury suit, and as has been already explained, such information in the hands of Mrs. Woodbury would have been extremely damaging to Mrs. Eddy and to the Cause of Christian Science. Therefore, the article was cancelled.
Some of Mrs. Eddy’s pupils wrote her in part in 1900, “Now that the world is getting more and more to realize the freedom that you have brought to it, would it be to your liking to have us erect a flag pole at ‘Pleasant View’ [Mary Baker Eddy’s home in Concord, New Hampshire]…the pole surmounted by a woman’s head and shoulders supported by two eagles’ wings.” Mrs. Eddy answered this letter saying:
Your conception in design is very fine, your proposed gift is a rare one, grand, and illustrative. But my dear friends, so little is the world up to, or near, your thought it would be a pearl cast before swine. And you know, Jesus saith, that such is trampled upon. I think that now is not the time for the erection of such a storied pole. If I should at any future time sell P.V. to a student he could have that erected properly; but I have not the sense that it is best to be done while I occupy the place.
With Love, Mother
Mary Baker Eddy
[Wilderness: …Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.” (S&H 597:16)]
In Revelation we read, “And the woman fled into the wilderness…And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle [the fourth living creature for Science], that she might fly into the wilderness.” In The Christian Science Journal Vol. XXXII p. 348 we read, “Your brief, brave, tender lines of loyalty are reassuring to the woman in the wilderness.” The “woman in the wilderness” is a direct statement that she is the woman referred to in the twelfth chapter of Revelation.
In her time, Mrs. Eddy would not call herself publicly the Woman in the Apocalypse. However, she did associate herself publicly with the Woman by calling herself the Woman in the wilderness. The above letters definitely show she felt she was the Woman in the Apocalypse.
The obvious dissension in the Christian Science Movement over the question, Is Mary Baker Eddy the Woman in the Apocalypse?, has been given impetus through ignorance and hatred of the spiritual idea.
In the book of Revelation it is recorded:
And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness…And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood…And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed.
…Water is symbolic of spiritual teachings but flowing from the mouth of the dragon it is corrupted and becomes symbolic of false teachings. [The flood of water coming from the mouth (a river has a mouth) of the red dragon (a talking serpent) would be like gossip about Mary Baker Eddy, lies, false innuendoes, etc. The water from the red (Adam) dragon’s mouth is full of lies. Today we would call it “fake news”.] The great error brought forth by the dragon is false teachings about the woman, not about her child [Christian Science]. The red dragon did this that she might be carried away [killed in the thoughts of her students and pupils] by these false teachings about her. The dragon, animal magnetism, was wroth with the woman and went to make war with her and also with the remnant of her seed. The seed of the woman are her followers but the remnant of her seed are the Remnant who recognizes her place in Bible prophecy and here the thrust of the dragon is most evident. Beware the false teachings, no teachings, incorrect teachings and just plain bad teachings about the woman. [This includes bad biographies about Mary Baker Eddy that the Church promotes – like Robert Peel’s books and Gillian Gill’s[9] book.] Their basis is the red dragon, malicious animal magnetism.
Christian Scientists are fond of saying that Mrs. Eddy says the Woman in the Apocalypse is generic man, but she does not say that. “The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes[10] generic man, the spiritual idea of God, she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea.” This statement says that the Woman “symbolizes’ generic man but certainly does not say the Woman is generic man. [Below I placed the Absolute column last instead of first because it is Absolute.]
[“Lamb of God. The spiritual idea of Love; self-immolation; innocence and purity; sacrifice.” (S&H 590:9)]
Jesus was called the Lamb of God; it was his title. Would it be proper to say the Lamb is the Christ? Would it be correct to say the Woman in the Apocalypse is generic man? Of course not. The Lamb symbolizes the Christ as the Woman symbolizes generic man. It is correct to say that Jesus is the Lamb of God and this was done by those who recognized him as the Lamb of Bible prophecy, the symbol of the suffering servant who would shed his blood to bless all mankind. It is equally correct to say that Mary Baker Eddy is the Woman in the Apocalypse. As Jesus symbolized and proved that Lamb [who manifested the Christ] to all mankind, so Mary Baker Eddy symbolized and proved [the woman God-crowned who manifested] generic man for all mankind.
[Man. The compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind. (S&H 591:5) Compound means whole, as in generic. Man is “spiritual image” of God and female is spiritual “likeness” of God. Generic man, therefore is complete or whole only as “the spiritual image and likeness of God”. So generic man is the man created in the Sixth Day of Truth in the first chapter of Genesis. Generic man is not Adam, the man made up of material elements in Genesis 2.]
Jesus said that if he was lifted up he would draw all men unto him. He thus proved the [Lamb] nature of the symbol, the Christ, and crucified the flesh to prove the nothingness of death and thus uplift all mankind. As Mrs. Eddy’s work brought the full revelation to all mankind, she had to prove generic man, the truth about all mankind. She had to give mankind the means to overcome malicious animal magnetism, that they might be free, and [she] also had to reveal the truth of the Son of God that this freedom might be exercised. As she worked this out in her human experience as Mary Baker Eddy, she was the symbol, the woman in the Apocalypse.
Now the next statement [or red dragon lie] is put forth by Christian Scientists: Then we are all the Woman in the Apocalypse. Not hardly. Would we say that all the people in Jesus’ day were the Lamb of God? Of course not. Mrs. Eddy was the one chosen to bring forth the correct understanding of man, and to demonstrate this understanding. Just as no one in Jesus’ day understood who they were spiritually except through him, so today no one knows the truth about man and the means to prove their spiritual nature, except it comes through Mary Baker Eddy. She uplifted all mankind into this understanding. Have you ever seen anyone add or subtract the leaven from the bread once it has been placed in the meal? It is an impossibility…
[In the eleventh Illustration of Christ and Christmas titled, THE WAY, we see a man in the air. Many people believe it to be Jesus, but I do not think it looks like the previous depictions of Jesus in the book. I have always thought that the man is generic man and after reading the last couple of paragraphs I do believe that the man is generic man, or, Mary Baker Eddy as generic man.]
…In like manner no one may add to her work or subtract from it. Her demonstration is still at work and we are in that demonstration. When we realize this our Movement will begin to prosper. She tells us that the twelfth chapter [of Revelation] reveals the divine method of warfare and the following chapters [Revelation 13-19] depict the fatal effects of meeting error with error. If we are in her demonstration in the twelfth chapter we are safe; if we do not remain in her demonstration of generic man we are doomed to the failure of meeting error with error.
How could we all collectively be the Woman in the Apocalypse as generic man when our Leader says, “no mortal is that man”? How do we know and understand spiritual man? Through her demonstration alone. We certainly can’t add to her demonstration any more than we can add to the leavening process. She did it all and we must follow. If we reject her, we reject her demonstration and the Movement will dwindle away to nothing. All mankind did not bring forth the man child, one woman did this, and therefore mankind is in her demonstration of generic man. One of the prophecies of the Second Coming was that it would be the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power. This is a reference to the spiritual idea, the Son of God, the truth about all mankind. And how did it come? As a woman. Why a woman? Because our Leader tells us that “woman is the highest species of man.” It is most important to understand this human and divine coincidence.
As only that which is visible to the human senses can be a symbol, the human appearing of the Woman symbolizes generic man, just as the human appearing of the man symbolized the Lamb. What is the purpose of this symbol? Mrs. Eddy tells us that the use of the Woman is to “illustrate.” “Illustrate” is defined in various dictionaries as “to make clear, bright or luminous,” “to make distinguished; to brighten with honor; to make glorious or display the glory of; to explain or elucidate; to make clear, intelligible or obvious, what is dark or obscure; as to illustrate a passage of Scripture by comments.” Again, the word “illustrate” more clearly defines the symbol as a person rather than place or thing. Further on, we read what she illustrates. It is “the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea.” Mrs. Eddy has illustrated or made clear, this divine coincidence.
The Woman in the Apocalypse is not generic man; she is its symbol or the one who proves the truth of generic man. Generic man is the divine assessment, the absolute perfect man, but the human has a coincidence with the divine and it is this human and divine coincidence that is inseparable — generic man symbolized by its “highest visible idea,” Mary Baker Eddy. She symbolizes or has proven the divine sense, generic man. Certainly, Mary Baker Eddy is the Woman in the Apocalypse but a direct statement in her time acknowledging this fact would have aroused mortal mind against her. However, that she is in fact that Woman, she does assert throughout her writings, both published and unpublished.
It is very clear that Mrs. Eddy saw the human and divine coincidence of the Woman in the Apocalypse. Mrs. Eddy gave over twenty different accounts of the human appearing of this Woman in her chapter [“The Apocalypse”] on the book of Revelation in Science and Health…In alluding to her own special identity, Mary Baker Eddy says, “John saw the human and divine coincidence, shown in the man Jesus, as divinity embracing humanity in Life and its demonstration, — reducing to human perception and understanding the Life which is God.’ Paraphrasing this, we would say, We too must see the human and divine coincidence shown in the woman Mary Baker Eddy, as divinity embracing humanity in Love and its demonstration, — reducing to human perception and understanding Love’s generic man.
Dictionary definitions of coincidence read: “concurrence, the meeting of two at the same point.” In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy gives the Scientific translation of mortal mind as three degrees [page 115-116]: First degree: depravity; physical; unreality. Second degree: evil beliefs disappearing: moral; transitional qualities. Third degree: understanding; spiritual; reality. The human and divine coincidence spoken of in the previous paragraph deals with the second and third degrees. The third degree, which is divinity, understanding and reality, embraces the second degree where evil beliefs are disappearing. According to Mrs. Eddy, this experience and demonstration in Jesus, this “human and divine coincidence shown in the man Jesus,” brought the perception and understanding of God to man. Jesus was the transparency for this understanding because he remained in the second degree. He was the link between God and man. Mrs. Eddy understood herself as the Revelator of Truth to this age. She was the “highest visible idea” seen by man, the highest type of Truth to this age. She was the “highest visible idea” seen by man, the highest type of womanhood in the second degree. [Yet today the majority of people have never heard of her, or if they have heard of her they have only heard bad things about her.] Only through such a clear transparency could the Word of God be made flesh, the absolute be manifested in the relative, making the Word practical and provable. All healing work, all divine revelation to man, all prophetic fulfillment comes through the second degree making the divine applicable, provable and practical and not just theoretical and abstract. John saw the healing Truth, divine revelation and prophetic fulfillment coming through one man — Jesus. But John was also able to see that the divine revelation would be completely revealed through womanhood, represented by the woman in the Apocalypse, although he did not know the identity of the woman. [I am pausing here, on page 247, to explain about Mary Baker Eddy’s successor.]
I feel that because of their misunderstanding of the term generic man and its application toward the woman God-crowned, that some Christian Scientists have not fully understood what Mary Baker Eddy said about her successor in 1901 news interviews. I first turn to Miscellany, two newspaper articles from 1901, beginning on page 341 and ending on page 347. Then I will proceed to Doris Grekel’s book on the subject, however, what she prints is different from the interviews in Miscellany.
“MRS. EDDY TALKS
“Christian Science has been so much to the fore of late that unusual public interest centres in the personality of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of the cult. [Okay, this newsman, Joseph Clark, has no idea what Christian Science is, or else he would not refer to Christian Science as a cult. However, I will accept the word cult if it is in reference to what it really means and points us to – the circle, or the Unity Matrix of the divine infinite calculus wheel.] The granting of interviews is not usual, hence it was a special favor that Mrs. Eddy received the [New York] Herald correspondent.
“It had been raining all day and was damp without, so the change from the misty air outside to the pleasant warmth within the ample, richly furnished house was agreeable. Seated in the large parlor, I became aware of a white-haired lady slowly descending the stairs. She entered with a gracious smile, walking uprightly and with light step, and after a kindly greeting took a seat on a sofa. It was Mrs. Eddy. There was no mistaking that. Older in years, white-haired and frailer, but Mrs. Eddy herself. The likeness to the portraits of twenty years ago, so often seen in reproductions, was unmistakable. There is no mistaking certain lines that depend upon the osseous structure; there is no mistaking the eyes — those eyes the shade of which is so hard to catch, whether blue-gray or grayish brown, and which are always bright. And when I say frail, let it not be understood that I mean weak, for weak she was not. When we were snugly seated in the other and smaller parlor across the hall, which serves as a library, Mrs. Eddy sat back to be questioned.
“‘The continuity of The Church of Christ, Scientist,’ she said, in her clear voice, ‘is assured. It is growing wonderfully. It will embrace all the churches, one by one, because in it alone is the simplicity of the oneness of God; the oneness of Christ and the perfecting of man stated scientifically.’ [I would like to point out that she did not refer to The Church as The Mother Church or The First Church, so she means all the individual Christian Scientists as one Church – The Church of Christ Scientist.]
“‘How will it be governed after all now concerned in its government shall have passed on?’ [He asked.]
“‘It will evolve scientifically. Its essence is evangelical. Its government will develop as it progresses.’
“‘Will there be a hierarchy, or will it be directed by a single earthly ruler?’
“‘In time its present rules of service and present rulership will advance nearer perfection.’
“It was plain that the answers to questions would be in Mrs. Eddy’s own spirit. She has a rapt way of talking, looking large-eyed into space, and works around a question in her own way, reaching an answer often unexpectedly after a prolonged exordium. She explained: ‘No present change is contemplated in the rulership. You would ask, perhaps, whether my successor will be a woman or a man. I can answer that. It will be a man.’
“‘Can you name that man?’
“‘I cannot answer that now.’
“Here, then, was the definite statement that Mrs. Eddy’s immediate successor would, like herself, be the ruler.
Not a Pope or a Christ
“‘I have been called a pope, but surely I have sought no such distinction. I have simply taught as I learned while healing the sick. It was in 1866 that the light of the Science came first to me. In 1875 I wrote my book. It brought down a shower of abuse upon my head, but it won converts from the first. I followed it up, teaching and organizing, and trust in me grew. I was the mother, but of course the term pope is used figuratively.
“‘A position of authority,’ she went on, ‘became necessary. Rules were necessary [in the Church Manual], and I made a code of by-laws, but each one was the fruit of experience and the result of prayer. Entrusting their enforcement to others, I found at one time that they had five churches under discipline. I intervened. Dissensions are dangerous in an infant church. I wrote to each church in tenderness, in exhortation, and in rebuke, and so brought all back to union and love again. If that is to be a pope[11], then you can judge for yourself. I have even been spoken of as a Christ, but to my understanding of Christ that is impossible. If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women. God the Father is greater than Christ, but Christ is “one with the Father,” and so the mystery is scientifically explained. There can be but one Christ.’ [This does not mean that Mary Baker Eddy did not accept that she manifested the Christ – “one with the Father-Mother God”. What she simply is saying is that the compound idea, or generic man (the absolute), is the wholeness of Christ (also absolute) as all rays of light are one Christ or one Compound Idea called generic man. And she, being one of the rays, as a woman, is one with the Christ idea.]
“‘And the soul of man?’
“‘It is not the spirit of God, inhabiting clay [matter] and then withdrawn from it, but God preserving individuality and [divine, not material,] personality to the end. I hold it absurd to say that when a man dies, the man will be at once better than he was before death. How can it be? The individuality of him must make gradual approaches to Soul’s perfection.’
“‘Do you reject utterly the bacteria theory of the propagation of disease?’
“‘Oh,’ with a prolonged inflection, ‘entirely. If I harbored that idea about disease, I should think myself in danger of catching it.’ [Think about this in regard to the common cold, the flue, or even coronavirus.]
About Infectious Diseases
“‘Then as to the laws — the health laws of the States on the question of infectious and contagious diseases. How does Christian Science stand as to them?’
“‘I say, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” We cannot force perfection on the world. Were vaccination of any avail, I should tremble for mankind; but knowing it is not, and that the fear of catching smallpox is more dangerous than any material infection, I say: Where vaccination is compulsory [by law], let your children be vaccinated, and see that your mind is in such a state that by your prayers vaccination will do the children no harm. So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much. But every thought tells, and Christian Science will overthrow false knowledge in the end.’
[I think that what she means by “So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much” is that the mortal doctor or materialist will not care what they are thinking about mentally (in regard to disease) so long as they go along with the law to be vaccinated. I would like to say, that when Mary Baker Eddy said this in 1901 there was, as yet, no government conspiracy between the Federal government and the medical practitioners. It was not like today where the government agencies are legally teaming up with the pharmaceutical companies (in order for the doctors and medical companies to make money and for the government to be in control of people). Nor was it like now, according to mortal mind belief, where the vaccination shots are showing signs of physical harm to the children who are being forced to take them, even if the children already have natural immunity. However, the Christian Scientist can take comfort in knowing that their children (which they should stop having) cannot suffer from a heart disease (because of covid vaccinations) or become sick due to a medicine given to their children, they should be able to metaphysically work it out. Christian Scientists should be able to heal the situation, they should not be forced into giving a child a vaccination shot that will harm the child – instead they should agree to home school their children and keep them from the public school systems. Also, they should be working on the world situation and healing it in order to help ALL mankind. But most importantly – ALL Christian Scientists must stop getting married and stop child bearing! Jesus did not want Christians to marry and procreate, nor did Mary Baker Eddy. It is time that ALL Christian Scientists wake up to this fact and accept it.]
“[He asked,] ‘What is your attitude to science in general? Do you oppose it?’
“‘Not,’ with a smile, ‘if it is really science.’
“‘Well, electricity, engineering, the telephone, the steam engine — are these too material for Christian Science?’
“‘No; only false science — healing by drugs. I [Second Degree] was a sickly child. I [Second Degree] was dosed with drugs until they had no effect on me. The doctors said I [Second Degree] would live if the drugs could be made to act on me [First Degree]. Then homeopathy came like blessed relief to me [Second Degree], but I [Third Degree] found that when I [Second Degree] prescribed pellets without any medication they acted just the same and healed the sick. How could I [Third Degree] believe in a science of drugs?’
“‘But surgery?’
“‘The work done by the surgeon is the last healing that will be vouchsafed to us, or rather attained by us, as we near a state of spiritual perfection. At present I am conservative about advice on surgical cases.’
“‘But the pursuit of modern material inventions?’
“‘Oh, we cannot oppose them. They all tend to newer, finer, more etherealized ways of living. They seek the finer essences. They light the way to the Church of Christ. We use them, we make them our figures of speech. They are preparing the way for us.’
“We talked on many subjects, some only of which are here touched upon, and her views, strictly and always from the standpoint of Christian Science, were continually surprising. She talks as one who has lived with her subject for a lifetime, — an ordinary lifetime; and so far from being puzzled by any question, welcomes it as another opportunity for presenting another view of her religion.
“Those who have been anticipating nature and declaring Mrs. Eddy non-existent may learn authoritatively from the Herald that she is in the flesh and in health. Soon after I reached Concord on my return from Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy’s carriage drove into town and made several turns about the court-house before returning. She was inside, and as she passed me the same expression of looking forward, thinking, thinking, was on her face.
“Concord, N. H.,
“Tuesday, April 30, 1901″
“MRS. EDDY’S SUCCESSOR
“In a recent interview which appeared in the columns of the New York Herald, the Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, stated that her successor would be a man. Various conjectures having arisen as to whether she had in mind any particular person when the statement was made, Mrs. Eddy gave the following to the Associated Press, May 16, 1901: —
“‘I did say that a man would be my future successor. By this I did not mean any man to-day on earth.
“‘Science and Health makes it plain to all Christian Scientists that the manhood and womanhood of God have already been revealed in a degree through Christ Jesus and [Mary Baker Eddy who gave birth to] Christian Science, His two witnesses. [A witness is not a Science it is a living being, like Jesus and Mary.] What remains to lead on the centuries and reveal [to make known] my successor, is man in the image and likeness of the Father-Mother God, man the generic term for mankind.’”
I now turn to Doric Grekel’s third biography on Mary Baker Eddy, THE FOREVER LEADER. [Again, my comments are in these types of brackets.]
“CHAPTER III
“‘THE HOLY ONE OF GOD’
“Oh blessed daughter of Zion, I am with thee. And none shall take my words out of thy lips. Thou art my chosen, to bear my Truth to the nations, and I will not suffer [permit] another messenger [angel] to go before thee [be higher than you].
“JOSEPH Clarke had no notion of the burdens Mrs. [Mary Baker] Eddy was carrying the last few days in April [1901] while he was in Concord endeavoring to get an interview with her. This well-known reporter from the New York Herald finally managed through Alfred Farlow[12] to gain an audience at Pleasant View on April 30, and his ensuing article (My. 341-346) appeared in the Herald the next day, May 1. An interesting except from a statement by Mrs. Eddy in a second article by Clarke in the New York Herald of May 5 was published by the Committee on General Welfare in 1920:
“The problem is not so much as to the form of the government as to providing an authority that will ever keep its spirit true to the Christian Science doctrine, — a monitor more than a master. I have made rigid by-laws [in the Church Manual] for the government of the Church, and every one has been necessary, but they need to be administered in gentleness and forbearance as well as in firmness with the erring. I have always been motherly to my Church, instead of dictatorial, as has been falsely said.
“Further statements by Mrs. Eddy which Clarke included in his May 5 article are as follows:
“Woman has the finer spiritual nature. She more readily takes the impress of Christian Science. If, as you say (I leave all statistics to the publication department), there are 13,000 women, against 5,000 men, out of a book total of 18,000, it shows that their minds are more receptive; their enthusiasm greater at the beginning of a struggle, but in strength of man lies the power of carrying it on. [Is this why women in the church are willing to let the men run the church’s higher offices today?]
“I look on man as the designate of the Word, but, to my view, the idea of race is superior to the idea of sex. Indeed, may we not look forward to a human condition, when perfection is nearer, wherein neither male nor female shall be known, and the race may reproduce itself otherwise than now?… [In other words as the priest Melchisedec – having no father or mother made up of matter – no material descendants. Think about this, if there is neither male or female then there can also be no transgender, homosexual, or any other type of sexual preference (which are all mental preferences and not really physical like people claim and believe).]
“We are not indifferent to forms of government, but we support the best in each. A church to be universal must in many things be neutral about forms of government and at the same time support what is right to support. [Yet, this is not what male Christian Scientists did. They actually got into political parties. In fact, I have heard that Colonel House, a man who bossed our presidents around, was a Christian Scientist. These men did not remain “neutral”.]
“When all men are one in the Church of Christ, the perfection of life and the perfection of government under the application of the Golden Rule will come. It will all be simple, natural, without clash or combat, all over the world in a divine brotherhood.
“In his first article Clarke quoted Mrs. Eddy as saying:
“’I have been spoken of as a Christ, but to my understanding of Christ that is impossible. If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women. God the Father is greater than Christ, but Christ is ‘one with the Father,’ and so the mystery is scientifically explained. There can be but one Christ.’
“Though this message was pertinent to Mrs. Woodbury’s accusations, it was not the one that caught the world’s attention. Surely Mrs. Eddy knew that the world’s curiosity would be roused by her statement: ‘You would ask, perhaps, whether my successor will be a woman or a man. I can answer that. It will be a man.’ Herbert Eustace has interpreted her reason for this statement:
“In making her statement referring to her successor, ‘the man,’ Mrs. Eddy well knew what would be the reaction of the human mind — a torrent of curiosity asking, ‘Who is it, where is he, etc.?’ That was exactly what she desired to have, a large wide-awake audience ready prepared to hear her answer to that very question, ‘Who is the man?’ and she wanted her answer to go home in such a way that it could never again be asked. So, in due time, May 16th, 1901, she gave that answer to the largest distributors of news in the world, the Associated Press.
“Her answer is familiar to every serious student of Christian Science today, and on the sixteenth of May in 1901 it was flashed round the world as fast as the media of that day could manage it. All over this planet people read eagerly:
“’I did say that a man would be my future successor. By this I did not mean Mr. Alfred Farlow nor any other man today on earth.
“’Science and Health makes it plain to all Christian Scientists that the manhood and womanhood of God have already been revealed in a degree through Christ Jesus and Christian Science, his two witnesses. What remains to lead on the centuries and reveal my successor, is man in the image and likeness of the Father-Mother God, man the generic term for mankind.’
“Is not Mrs. Eddy saying plainly that she can have no human successor for the ‘womanhood of God [has] already been revealed’? [I answer this by saying, “No”. Why? Because, she uses the term “in a degree” – she did not say “the manhood and womanhood of God have already been fully revealed through Christ Jesus and Christian Science, his two witnesses.” Mary Baker Eddy spoke of the Third Advent of Christ, why would she do this if there were to be no third coming of Christ?] When Christ and Christmas was published she explained that CHRISTIAN UNITY (the one and only circular illustration) was intended to ‘foretell the typical appearing of the womanhood, as well as the manhood of God, our divine Father and Mother.’ [So, what does she mean by “typical”? She means “type, symbol”. So wasn’t she talking about the Lamb and the woman God-crowned – as types?] This picture tells us even more…
…It bespeaks the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy: ‘The lord hath created a new thing in the earth. A woman shall compass a man.’ Mrs. Eddy knew this full well else she would never have had the light surrounding the woman’s head brighter than that around the head of the man [Jesus].
“None but the pure in heart can see God or recognize the Christ. But the ‘unclean spirit’ is more aware of its destroyer than are the children of light. In Jesus’ time it used a man to say: ‘Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.’ But in 1901 the serpent that was aware of its destroyer had become the great red dragon, using Mrs. Woodbury in its effort to destroy the womanhood of God, Mary Baker Eddy, ‘the Holy One of God.’
“When ‘unclean spirits’ cried unto Jesus ‘saying, Thou art the Son of God…he strait charged them that they should not make him known.’ The Christ idea must enter the human heart silently in order to do its leavening work. Even though the Christ idea must be recognized, that was not the time. Nor was May of 1901 the time.
“God had revealed Mary Baker Eddy’s identity as Christ’s second coming to Septimus J. Hanna in the spring of 1898, and Judge Hanna had written an editorial about it at that time. When he sent the proof to Mrs. Eddy for her approval she responded:
“The time has not yet come in which to say the wonderful things you have written in proof read by me today, unless you qualify it.
“Now you may hold your ground as therein, but do not say blandly that I represent the second appearing of Christ….” (Ibid, p. 21-22) [The rest has been written above already.]
I will now continue with Paul Smillie’s book, where we left off.
Mrs. Eddy certainly did not see herself as a little old grey haired lady. She knew the symbol of generic man could not be a little old grey haired lady, in spite of the world’s interpretation of her outward appearance. Those who saw Mrs. Eddy correctly understood the dynamism, the unabated energy, the clear insight and perception continually demonstrated by Mrs. Eddy. They saw her raise the dead and do so with a marvelous sense of strength and dominion. They saw her effectively defeat an opponent more vicious and tenacious than any general or army has ever had to face during any period in the history of the world. They saw her demonstration of generic man.
One who lived in her home wrote:
With many mortals, as age creeps over them, you can see them being stripped of the human knowledge that they have spent a lifetime in gaining. But, when I lived with our Leader, I saw her at eighty-five with a spiritual consciousness in no way impaired by the encroachments of old age. Every bit of Truth she had ever demonstrated and attained she still had. She evinced no signs of age mentally. On the contrary, her mentality showed an increasing spiritual comprehension and power; and is surely a logical sequence to assume that now she is still increasing in spiritual understanding and imparting that knowledge.
Jesus was able to see Moses and Elijah many centuries after they had left the human scene, yet their spiritual individuality and life were intact. Mrs. Eddy’s true identity was not that of a little old grey haired lady. Her spiritual individuality was intact just as the identities of Moses and Elijah were when Jesus spoke to them on the mount of transfiguration. [Mary Baker Eddy visited with Jesus just as easily as Jesus visited with Moses and Elijah.]
Mrs. Eddy spoke of two views of herself: the personal Mrs. Eddy as “pliant as wax, the impersonal, impregnable to wind and wave. In the spiritual altitude of the latter I stand alone, none can see from my standpoint there.” The “personal” Mary Baker Eddy she spoke of she described in another way: (Un. 49:8) “The more I understand true humanhood, the more I see it to be sinless, — as ignorant of sin as is the perfect Maker.”
This “sinless humanhood,” the personal Mary Baker Eddy “pliant as wax” was the human appearing, the second degree, of the woman in coincidence with her spiritual identity “impregnable to wind and wave.” But, these two concepts were not of two women but two ways of looking at the same woman. Thus, we understood the term, “human and divine coincidence.” It is only in this manner that we can understand the Woman in the Apocalypse. [And it is entirely possible that this is the reason why she placed two women on the cover of the Christian Science Sentinel in 1906.]
Was it a mortal personality that was working as Mrs. Eddy? No! It was her “sinless humanhood” through which her spiritual individuality unfolded itself to her and to mankind. The spiritual idea was not some nameless, ethereal, unknown entity; it was individualized spiritual consciousness. Mortals, viewing individuality through personal sense, think of persons in terms of matter, and cannot see the spiritual idea that is operating to save and bless mankind. In the fourth series of We Knew Mary Baker Eddy we read, “She made it clear that my sense of personality was mental — a mental image formed in my so-called mortal mind and was never external or separate from my mind.” Worshiping or deifying personality is adoring the concept of personal sense we have established in our own thinking. Spiritual sense alone enables us to see and to love our Leader. What we must see is the spiritual individuality God has revealed as Mary Baker Eddy and follow that. There are not two individualities, one human and one divine. There is only the one and that one is the divine. What seems to appear as a human individuality is but a limited view of the divine.
On page 10 of Christian Healing Mrs. Eddy says, “The dragon that was wroth with the woman, and stood ready ‘to devour the child as soon as it was born,’ was the vision of envy, sensuality, and malice, ready to devour the idea of Truth. But the beast bowed before the Lamb it was supposed to have fought the manhood of God, that Jesus represented; but it fell before the womanhood of God, that presented the highest ideal of Love.’ Notice our Leader says that Jesus represented the manhood of God. So who represents the womanhood of God, before whom the dragon fell? According to her statement the one the dragon fell before is the one known as the Woman in the Apocalypse.
Several articles appeared in the early periodicals showing that Mrs. Eddy was the Woman. [I will say that she had to have known this fact as early as 1882.] The July 1895 Journal p. 171-173 reads in part, “The only possible question is as to when this woman shall appear. We cannot in this article go over all the ground upon which we base our belief that this Woman has appeared and is now with us.” Another article is in The Journal of 1892, titled “His Cause.” There is also information on this subject in The Christian Science Journal Vol. 6 p. 110.
Before the hatred became so intense concerning the issue of Mrs. Eddy’s place, she made it very clear, in the 16th to the 50th editions of Science and Health that she is the Woman in the Apocalypse. In the later editions, Mrs. Eddy has had to veil that message.
In 1943 a group of editors and former editors of the periodicals came out with a report that they had been working on for several years that dealt with Mrs. Eddy’s place in Bible prophecy. It was a report that was to settle once and for all the consternation and confusion about this issue. Most of these editors were in doubt about this issue until they compiled some [typed] 57 pages of what they termed “indisputable evidence” concerning her place in Bible prophecy. These 57 pages were then synthesized into six points and were published in the Christian Science Sentinel of June 5, 1943, and several times since then. Later, they were put into a leaflet and sold in the reading rooms but this has since been withdrawn [due to the war the ecclesiastical despotic red dragon has with Mary Baker Eddy].
…The first point tells us that our Leader “understood herself” as the one prophesied. It makes it very clear that she understood this point about herself. It was fact to her. The second point tells us that she knew that she was the one referred to in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, and because of this her work was “complementary to that of Christ Jesus.’ Complementary means “to complete.” The third point reemphasizes the point that she represents the Woman in the Apocalypse and revealed the motherhood of God. The fourth point states that she knew she was “God-appointed” and “God-anointed” and that a true sense of her, her place in prophecy, “is essential to the understanding of Christian Science…” The fifth point relates that she was “touchingly grateful to those who saw her as the woman of prophecy…” and that this enabled her to accomplish her mission. Are we not to recognize this today? The sixth point tells us that the evidence this committee compiled is “indisputable.” They saw that all of this was “our Leader’s own view of herself.” Most importantly, it stated that this “evidence will stimulate and stabilize the growth of Christian Scientists today and in succeeding generation…” There has been no growth and her place in prophecy is rejected today more than ever before.
Why is there so much resistance to this important truth? It is the work of the dragon, operating through ego, self-will and an unwillingness to admit we can be in error. If one does not accept this indisputable evidence and refuses to see Mrs. Eddy’s place as the Woman in the face of irrefutable evidence, that person is being handled by the [red] dragon. We can see the results of this resistance upon her Cause. It has separated her from her revelation and her Cause has been directly diminished in proportion to the lack of recognition. (MARY BAKER EDDY, by Paul R. Smillie, p. 247-249)
After finishing up Smillie’s portion, I read from Helen Wright’s book Mary Baker Eddy God’s Great Scientist Volume III (p. 139-145) that seemed to summarize the whole issue. [Her comments are placed in these brackets.] {My comments are in these brackets.}
“WHY JESUS AND MRS. EDDY CAME AS HUMAN BEINGS
“The question is sometimes asked; ‘Why did Jesus and Mrs. Eddy have to come as human beings?’ The obvious answer is they had to come in a form the human mind could understand.
“Herbert Eustace, in his book, Christian Science, Its Clear, Correct, Teaching, makes this observation:
“The human mind accepts Truth in gradation, first personally, then impersonally.
“Therefore to understand God, the human mind has to see God first expressed as a person, before the human mind can conceive of God impersonally as Mind. Consequently, Jesus had to appear in a personal form that could be recognized as the very presence of Truth. Likewise, Mrs. Eddy had to appear in a personal form [as she indicates in the textbook, p. 188:7, speaking of “the second appearing in the flesh of the Christ, Truth”] to present this Truth in the form of a demonstrable divine Science, and exemplify it in daily life in order that the human mind might see it and accept it as operative for every idea universally.
“When one considers the vastness of Christian Science and how little Christian Science is understood, it is not surprising that the same lack of recognition that befell Jesus has also befallen Mary Baker Eddy, not only by the public generally, but by many Christian Scientists as well. Regarding this failure to entertain a true estimate of her, she writes (1910 ed. S&H 560:11) under the marginal heading: ‘True estimate of God’s messenger’:
“The great miracle, to human sense, is divine Love, and the grand necessity of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in man. This goal is never reached while we…entertain a false estimate of anyone whom God has appointed to voice His Word. Again, without a correct sense of its highest visible idea [which in this age was {and is} Mary Baker Eddy], we can never understand the divine Principle.
“Why?
“Because it was Mrs. Eddy’s life, her inspired listening for what God was saying, that made her the human representative of the God-crowned woman clothed with the sun. Because of the complete purity of her thought, she manifested the coincidence of the human with the divine. God had been ‘graciously preparing’ her ‘during many years’ to be His scribe, His window or transparency through which the ‘greater light’—spoken of in chapter I of Genesis—could pour forth ‘the spirit of Truth,’ the scripturally-promised Comforter. Therefore, ‘without a correct sense’ of Mary Baker Eddy, we are without a correct sense of ourselves, and consequently the Science she brought cannot be fathomed.
“Mrs. Eddy could say, ‘God wrote the textbook,’ because she listened only for His voice and wrote down what she heard. She was totally oblivious of self.
“MRS. EDDY’S DESCENDING MISSION AND JACOB’S LADDER[13]
“Mrs. Eddy’s many revisions were not necessary for herself or for God, but for humanity’s sake. Her understanding, her Mind, was already heaven. She started at the top with God. Her divinely-appointed task was a descending mission. She let a ladder down from heaven in such a fashion that mortals could grasp the lowest rung {or begin on the lowest ramp} and begin the heavenly climb.
“Genesis 28:11-16 tells of Jacob’s dream or vision in which ‘a ladder [was] set up on earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it.’
“An article in Vol. IV of the June Christian Science Journal, speaks of SCIENCE AND HEALTH as ‘Jacob’s Ladder.’
“When Jacob awoke from his dream or vision, he said: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.’ Because Jacob had made pillows of the stones (truths) that surrounded him—that flowed out of the kingdom of God within his own consciousness—he was able to rest on them. He was able to see God’s ever-presence, the union of heaven and earth right where he was. It was as though he had become aware that ‘God guides every event of our career’ (Un. 3:28). The ascending steps of Jacob’s Ladder take us to heaven through Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love. Then Mary Baker Eddy’s God-directed descending mission brings heaven down to earth.
{I am not sure if “Jacob’s Ladder” had seven levels or six levels – so I present both of them to you. I came up with my Major Pyramid Matrix of Truth because Judge Hanna (attributed to him anyway) came up with a pyramid structure for Christ and Christmas. However, I also used the six levels because Genesis 1 has only the Six Days in it. It is not until the beginning of Genesis 2 that there is the Seventh Day, so I have that on the other side, where womanhood descends.}
“In the Glossary (S&H 1910 ed. 589:5) Jacob is defined: ‘…Inspiration; the revelation of Science, in which the so-called material senses yield to the spiritual sense of Life and Love.’
“Mrs. Eddy asked:
“Are earth’s pleasures, its ties and treasures, taken from you? It is divine Love that doeth it, and sayeth, ‘Ye have need of all these things.’ A danger besets thy path? — a spiritual behest, in reversion, awaits you (Mess. ’02. 19-21).
“…When we rest on these assurances (these pillows of stone), we find ‘surely the Lord was in this place; and I knew it not.’ Resting on these assurances we set up a ladder that reaches heaven right where we are. This ladder then provides the needed channel for God’s descending angels or blessings.
“What does Mrs. Eddy say is ‘the great and only danger in the path that winds upward’? She speaks of the ‘delicious forms of friendship, wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace…A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements…’ (Mis. 9:26).
“OBSTACLES MRS. EDDY OVERCAME
“Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy brought to human comprehension the fatherhood and motherhood of God.
“It was not Mrs. Eddy’s mission to duplicate the work done by Jesus who manifested God’s fatherhood. Her task, prophesied by the Revelator, was to complete the work of Christ Jesus by representing and revealing God’s motherhood, and founding her discovery of Christian Science in human consciousness. Her mission was to write the textbook explaining the Principle involved in Jesus’ ability to perform his mighty works, so that all could learn to do the works Jesus did.
“Bringing forth the ‘little book open’ fulfilled Revelation 10:1 and 2; founding her discovery in human consciousness fulfilled Revelation’s chapter 12 which pertained to the God-crowned woman of the Apocalypse and the ‘wilderness woman.’ The teaching and example of Jesus and of Mary Baker Eddy are the ‘two great lights,’ (Genesis 1:16). The Mind that is God was and is their Mind, enabling them to bring forth, respectively, the First and Second Coming of the Christ, and to be ‘the light of the world.’ The teachings of Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy fulfilled the scriptural prophecy of ‘God’s two witnesses’ on this planet, the ‘two candlesticks’ to light the way, the ‘two olive trees…which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves’ (Zech. 4:3, 12).
“Mrs. Eddy had to make the demonstration to ‘lose [her] sense of ‘I’ {First Degree} in matter and gain [her] sense of selfhood {Second Degree} in Spirit’ {Third Degree} or she could not have completed her mission. ‘Since the foundation of the world no one, save Jesus of Nazareth, has been so maliciously maligned and falsely accused as has been Mary Baker Eddy,’ writes Doris Grekel in The Founding. ‘The intent is to destroy the “little book” {that she wrote having the hand of an angel}.’
“In today’s climate of heightened spiritual awareness, and its more humane and logical treatment of women, it is hard to imagine the obstacles Mrs. Eddy—one lone woman—had to overcome 120 years ago, in order to found this Truth in human consciousness. Women at her time were no longer burned alive at the stake for heresy, disrespect to a priest, or for voicing differing political views, as countless thousands had been between 800 and 1700, and as Joan of Ark was for disrupting the established thinking of her day when she demonstrated that women were as intelligent as men.
“Nevertheless, women in Mrs. Eddy’s day still had few rights. They suffered terrible injustices. Unless one is aware of this, as well as of the ignorance concerning spiritual reality — ‘the fixedness of mortal illusions, and the human hatred of Truth’ — one can hardly conceive of the courage Mrs. Eddy mustered in her Herculean attempt ‘to free fools from the chains they revere.’,,,
{Notice in the Tarot card above, the man and woman could free themselves from their chains because they could just slip right out of them.}
“…But, poor and friendless, she persevered in being the windowpane through which infinite good poured light and healing on this age.
“Like Jesus, she acted boldly in the face of incredible hardships and tribulations. The traitorous defection of students from within, as well as vilification from without, and the intended death-dealing blows administered by the pulpit, the medical faculty, and the press, laid on her the heavy burden of a continuous rain of abuse. Albert Einstein[14] noted, ‘Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.’ But Mrs. Eddy — maintaining that every trial, adversity, or setback was a blessing in disguise, washing away all materiality from her thought — never diverged from looking steadfastly to God alone for help.
“No matter what the provocation, Mrs. Eddy ‘neither held [the world’s] error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected and dismissed,’ though many were the tears she shed before victory was hers and her heaven-sent task completed.
“‘This gospel of suffering brought life and bliss. This is earth’s Bethel in stone, — its pillow, supporting the ladder which reaches heaven’ (Un. 57:17).[15]
“Truly, Mrs. Eddy needed miraculous vision to sustain her. Without the ability to demonstrate that God was her Mind, she could not have finished her God-appointed mission to bring the ‘Comforter,’ the second Coming of the Christ. Jesus, the masculine representative of the spiritual idea, manifested the idea of the fatherhood of God, Mary Baker Eddy, the feminine representative of the spiritual idea, completed Jesus’ work on earth, bringing the spiritual idea of God’s motherhood, God’s womanhood.
“A passage Mrs. Eddy marked in Treatise on English Punctuation, reads:
“All great discoveries, not purely accidental, will be gifts to insight, and the true man of Science will be he who can best ascent into the thoughts of God, — he who burns before the throne is clearest, purest, mildest light of reason.
“Because Mrs. Eddy truly was God’s great Scientist, it was always Truth that attracted and held her attention. Her spiritual senses moved in God’s groves of Science. She toiled ceaselessly in the ever-widening channels of omnipotence as they unfolded from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Her every thought placed her nearer the accomplishment of her mission to complete the work of Christ Jesus on earth, to reduce to human comprehension the divine Science she had discovered — to reduce it ‘to a system, to a form comprehensible by and adapted to the thought of the age in which we live’ (1910 ed. 146:31).
“She labored in these ‘channels of Truth’ not for herself or for God, but to develop a system that would enable the learner to demonstrate the kingdom of God already within his consciousness.”
After writing all of this, I wrote a letter where I was working with the book of Zachariah. I feel that it is of importance to help us understand the two witnesses. The footnotes start over in numerical order.
There are two SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATIONS on page 115. The first Scientific Translation is the SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF IMMORTAL MIND; it is of great importance.
“Divine synonyms[1]
“God: Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind.
“Divine image
“Man: God’s spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal.[2]
“Divine reflection
“Idea: An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. — Webster.”
I have assigned the following colors to the seven synonymous terms for God in the Christ order as follows: Divine Principle (white), Life (green), Truth (blue), Love (violet), Soul (yellow), Spirit (orange), Mind (red). And I do so because we have the seven being complementary to us, as the Christ is the quality of complement. White complements every color there is. In color, however, complementary means “opposite” because complementary colors are found on the opposite side of the color wheel. The word also means “complete” so two complementary colors complete each other (Like male and female complete each other.) So the following is true that Life and Mind are complementary; Truth and Spirit are complementary; and Love and Soul are complementary. So male and female are also complementary to each other. This being so, then does it not stand to reason that the Christ has its masculine representative and its feminine representative – the two Comings of Christ – as Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy?
The true Christian Scientist does not deify Jesus or Mary Baker Eddy, however, the true Christian Scientist does accept their places in Bible prophecy; we do accept them as God’s two witnesses (Who are these two witnesses spoken of in the BIBLE if not Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy?).
“And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep. And said unto me, what seest thou? And I said, I have looked and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.” (Zechariah 4:1-3)
Before I continue with chapter 4, let us look at who Zerubbabel is. He was the son of Shealtiel, of the royal line of David. He was a prince and was at the head of a large company of Jews who returned to Jerusalem and Judea from Babylon (Ezra 2:2; 3:2). He is also called Sheshbazzar in Ezra 1:8, 11; 5:14-16.
Zerubbabbel is metaphysically explained as: “A very strong and influential thought activity belonging to the spiritual phase of man. It comes to light in the consciousness of the unfolding individual in the midst of the stress and sorrow of the sense confusion and bondage (Babylon) into which he has drifted because of not understanding the true nature of Spirit, and so persisting in looking to the outer senses[3] as the source of that which is real and true and worth while. This spiritual thought activity becomes a leading factor in putting away error illusions and restoring the worship of God, with its resultant good.” (The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, p. 697)
“So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubabel, saying, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain[4]? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain:[5] and he shall bring forth the headstone[6] thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it. Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation[7] of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice and shall see the plummet[8] in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven[9]; they are the eyes[10] of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
“Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are the two anointed ones,[11] that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” (Zechariah 4:4-14)[12]
“Oil. Consecration; charity; gentleness; prayer; heavenly inspiration.” (S&H 592:25)
These two witnesses are also spoken about in Revelation 11 immediately after the two gifts are shown to John (the “little book open” and the “measuring rod”). What does Mary Baker Eddy say of these two witnesses? [I will place my comments in these types of brackets.]
“‘Science and Health makes it plain [absolute] to all Christian Scientists that the manhood and womanhood of God [as spoken of in Genesis 1] have already been revealed in a degree through Christ Jesus and [Mary Baker Eddy who discovered] Christian Science, His two witnesses [a witness must be a living being]. What remains to lead on the centuries and reveal my successor, is man in the image and likeness of the Father-Mother God[13], man the generic term for mankind.” (Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 346:29-347:5)
It seems easy to understand, or comprehend, that the first creation account of Genesis 1-2:3 is about the SPIRITUAL TRANSLATION OF IMMORTAL MIND while the allegorical creation given in Genesis 2:5 onward is about the SPIRITUAL TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND (as found in S&H 115-116).
[1] It is most likely that Paul’s writings were changed by less inspired men, the dogs.
[2] The Son of man holds only seven stars in his hand in Revelation 1:16.
[3] I believe that Paul Smillie capitalizes Woman, because Judge Hanna capitalized it.
[4] This is my emphasis.
[5] While there is but one Revelation, there are seven visions in Revelation.
[6] Apocalypse means, “to uncover”. It only means “end of the world”, in the sense that by uncovering the material world as illusion, as nothingness, this uncovering process brings an end to the material world being held as substance.
[7] Smillie has these words underlined, but I am not able to underline them, so they are italicized by me.
[8] ditto
[9] Not every thing in Gill’s book (around the turn of our present century) was bad, but she did not always speak the Truth about Mary Baker Eddy and she was influenced, way too easily, into believing the already produced lies (gossip) out there about Mary Baker Eddy.
[10] My infuses.
[11] Pope means “papa” or “father”.
[12] Alfred Farlow is thought of as being a loyal follower, being loyal to Mary Baker Eddy. Yet he was easily swayed to follow the male directors. He also was willing to try and hide the fact that the First Church of Concord, New Hampshire had not been fully paid off before its first service. This went against Mary Baker Eddy’s wish and he hid this very issue. (See Sybil Wilbur’s biography on Mary Baker Eddy for details. You know, the book that Mary Baker Eddy actually approved of being written and the same biography that is no longer promoted by The Mother Church or found in Reading Rooms [at least to my knowledge].)
[13] The Hebrew word used in Genesis was mistranslated as ladder. The real meaning is “ramp” or “pyramid”.
[14] Albert Einstein actually studied SCIENCE AND HEALTH.
[15] It could be that the stone pillow could be symbolic of the founding headstone of a pyramid.
[1] This order is presented in the CHRIST order.
[2] This is the “man” created in Genesis 1.
[3] The five material senses.
[4] The candlestick has the shape of a mountain.
[5] “something free from artifice, ornament, or extraneous matter…unpretentious…absolutely” Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary – Could not the candlestick and pyramid mountain be understood – or made plain – to ones understanding?
[6] With the Candlestick, the headstone of the mountain or pyramid would have to be the tone of divine Principle.
[7] The foundation would be Love and Soul.
[8] being vertical, upright, perpendicular to the plain-line – like the trunk of Principled Science
[9] synonymous terms for God
[10] Omniscience of God
[11] The Kings of Israel were anointed with oil on their foreheads, so God’s two witnesses must also be anointed upon their foreheads. What does the angel of Revelation 10 have upon his (really her) head? There is a rainbow – the spectrum of seven colors. The goddess Iris, which St. John knew perfectly well, was the goddess of the rainbow.
[12] This is the first time ever that I have written these things as found in the fourth chapter of Zechariah.
[13] Which is Elohim and the man (Divine image) spoken of in Genesis 1.
The Ark of Truth- Mother's Hood 