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THIS WORD MINISTRIES

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST)

Founder: Mary Ann Morse Baker
Beginning: 1879
Membership: approximately 150,000

Christian Science has decreased in popularity recently, however, its principles are ever present within the New Age movement.  In short, what Christian Science teaches is very popular, although the group itself is not that widely known.  Even though the group is not as popular now, I believe it is still influential enough to spend a little time to inform christians about what it is that they teach and what they are all about.  Many sources have attempted to suppress the beginning of Christian Science; why will become evident. 

Christian Science was began by Mary Ann Morse Baker, born in 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire.  She was raised as a Congregationalist in a very strict home.  As a youth, she experienced very severe illnesses, such as spinal problems.  "Her early adult life included more than its share of serious personal tragedies and poor health. Over the next twenty years chronic illness led her to explore many curative methods". (from their website- http://www.tfccs.com/GV/QANDA/MBEQ1.html)  She married George Washington Glover in 1843, who died of yellow fever in 1844.  In 1853, she married a man named Daniel M. Patterson, who left her thirteen years later, and after 7 years of seperation, she finally got a divorce in 1873. 

Apparently, during the year of 1862 while married to Patterson, she went to a doctor in Portland, Maine named Dr.Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, in order to find help for her spinal illness.  Quimby, influenced by a French mesmerist named Charles Poyen, had developed a type of mental healing called "the Science of Health".  Supposedly healed by Quimby, she undoubtedly became an enthusiastic follower of his method of healing, as can be evidenced by her writings.  Quimby died not to long afterwards, and she denied later that her teachings originated with him, but it is clear when one observes his writings that they are one and the same.  In 1866, which is probably the most significant year as it relates to the founding of Christian Science, Mrs. Patterson claimed she was pronounced incurable and given only three days to live because of a fall on an icy sidewalk.  On the third day, she claims she read Matthew 9:2 , and suddenly was miraculously healed.  It was then she claims that she discovered Christian Science.  "In 1866 she was severely injured in a fall, and turned to the Bible as she had been accustomed to doing. All she had pondered in the past came strongly and clearly to her as she read an account of one of Jesus' healings. She was immediately healed. Convinced that God had healed her, she spent the next several years searching the Scriptures to understand the principle behind her healing. She named her discovery Christian Science and explained it in 1875 when she first wrote Science and Health". (from their website-http://www.tfccs.com/GV/QANDA/MBEQ2.html)

Not to long after this in 1875, Mrs. Patterson wrote and published her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures", a supposed revelation from God given as an aide or help to the Bible which acts as a "key" to unlock the true meaning of the Bible. In 1877, Mary Baker Glover Patterson married a man named Asa Gilbert Eddy, a sewing machine salesman.  Apparently, this healing was so miraculous to her that she began to teach the principles of "Christian Science" to groups of people.  And in their own words "In 1879, four years after the first publication of Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy and some of her students voted to "organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master [Christ Jesus], which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." The Church was reorganized in 1892, and the Church Manual was first issued in 1895 to provide a framework for church government and a blueprint for future development of its mission". (from their website-http://www.tfccs.com/GV/QANDA/TMCQ1.html)

We as christians should remember that Satan can perform healings and miracles as well.  If the purpose is not to glorify the Biblical Jesus, it becomes evident that it is Satan behind it all.  Christian Scientists take the Bible and twist it, to make it out to be a mystical healing document, that gives us a supernatural way to get healed of all of our diseases.  They are so deceptive and their words are so sweet and loving, to where if one is not careful he just might think that it is true Christianity.  Here is their tenets of belief:
1. As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.
2. We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God's image and likeness.
3. We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.
4. We acknowledge Jesus' atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death.
5. We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter.
6. And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure.
(from their website-http://www.tfccs.com/GV/QANDA/CSQ19.html)

Now this is what they say they teach; but what do they really teach about the Bible?