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Many religious scholars today agree with Smith’s Bible Dictionary, that the Scriptures have both a literal and a spiritual interpretation, and that sometimes we overlook the spiritual significance of the message by focusing exclusively on the literal. What we seek is the inspired Word of the Bible. This provides us with a solid foundation for prayer and healing. For example, in the opening chapter of Genesis, (Gen. 1:31), we learn that God saw every thing He had made, and it was very good. The prophet Habakkuk says, (Hab. 1:13), “God is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” If God saw every thing He had made, but He cannot see evil or iniquity, then clearly, these concepts have no place in God’s knowledge of His own creation. What is the Bible telling us about the nature of evil and iniquity if they are contrary to God and to what He creates? It’s telling us that they are not realities, but errors. They can be likened to the symbolic fruit which grows on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said of this fruit, (Gen. 2:17), “In the day that thou eatest therof thou shalt surely die.” In other words, if we accept as valid the premise that infinite good must have an opposite that is real or actual, we cannot then escape the inevitable conclusion that evil is a reality and therefore a legitimate part of God’s creation, and the serpent will have accomplished its most deadly objective. Deadly, because this unavoidable conclusion constitutes the only basis there is for a belief in mortality. The serpent still insists the tree is good for food, (Gen. 3:5), and that eating of its fruit will bring wisdom. Was it ever good for food? No! Was it ever to be desired to make one wise? No! Then why has the serpent always presented it in that light? Because the serpent is a liar by nature. Its only aim is to deceive and to destroy. According to Christ Jesus, (John 8:44), “He [the serpent] was a liar from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it.” Remember, being deceived means being made to believe something is true when it is untrue. Think very carefully about this. According to the Bible, (Rev. 12:9), the serpent’s primary intent is to trick us into accepting as true that which is the exact opposite of truth. Remember also, there is no serpent. This is simply a term used in the Bible to emphasize the subtle nature of evil or error. Read the first three chapters of Genesis, and ask yourself: “What would this serpent (the devil) have me believe about God, man, and creation that is not true?” As the Bible records it, (Gen. 3:5), the serpent’s main objective is to convince us that the knowledge of evil is good and desirable. It claims that without this knowledge we are deprived of that which God knows, and therefore we are incomplete. It is hard to imagine a more sinister deception — a more malicious intent — than the diabolical assertion that God’s spiritual creation must include evil and materiality, the elements of its own inevitable self-destruction. Again, the Bible illustrates the vile nature of that old serpent called the devil and Satan, and shows why John describes it as having deceived the whole world. God’s government constitutes spiritual law, (Psalm 119). This law of divine Love enabled patriarchs, prophets, and others throughout the Bible to prevail against enemies that appeared much stronger and greater in number than they. The understanding of this law enabled Jesus and his followers to heal the sick, raise the dead, and demonstrate man’s God-given dominion over the earth. No mental argument suggesting that God’s law cannot heal, or that occasionally its power to heal is inadequate, should be considered valid . According to writers of the New Testament, (Luke 16:17; James 5:15), it is always unfailing. Nothing can be added to or taken from what God has done, (Ecc. 3:14). Nothing God does needs improvement or healing. Jesus knew this. He said to his followers: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” He said this because he knew that whatever God creates must be perfect. Consequently, in our healing work we are never required to actually alter a discordant condition, such as sin, sickness, or death, because these outward appearances of discord are not “conditions” in the real sense of the word. They are the deceptive mental arguments with which the carnal mind deceives itself, — hypnotic illusions, which it prefers to imagine in place of ever-present spiritual facts. These illusory appearances of discord cannot sustain themselves, and they vanish simultaneously with the recognition and acknowledgment of truth. It is never anything but these hypnotic mental deceptions of the serpent that need to be healed or corrected, and the only place they can be corrected is where they seem to occur, within our own thinking. The Bible emphasizes the importance of seeing these deceptions as untrue, understanding why they are untrue, and replacing them in our experience with what we know is true. For instance: the claim that you have a mind separate from God that can be deceived, that can know or experience evil, is ultimately not true. It only appears to be true. It is an age-old argument of the serpent which says you must believe in something besides God in order to account for your own existence. What nonsense! The Bible thoroughly exposes the illegitimacy of this argument, revealing the fact that God is the only Mind, that we are His image and likeness, and that we necessarily include that understanding which constitutes the truth of God and what God creates. Course Steps Home Step Two |