by Texe Marrs
The Teachings of Christian Science
According to Mary Baker Eddy, the Bible should be interpreted in a metaphorical and spiritual sense, but certainly not literally. This is the reason for her distorted interpretations of the Bible. For example, Christian Science denies the deity of Jesus Christ. Eddy stated that the Trinity for Christian Science does not consist of God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit, but instead the Trinity is comprised of “Life, Truth, and Love.” There is no personal God in the Christian Science teachings, only an impersonal, pantheistic God, a God who is Mind, Principle, Intelligence, or Mother. In Christian Science, even the divine birth of Jesus is explained away. Mrs. Eddy’s concept was that Mary simply conceived a “spiritual idea” and named it Jesus. So Jesus resulted as a thought from Mary: “Jesus was the offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God.”
Christian Science emphasizes healing. Periodically one reads in the newspapers of Christian Science parents being prosecuted because they failed to seek medical attention for a critically ill child. Eddy taught that there is no disease, sin, or death, that these are all illusions of our minds. By removing this illusion and recognizing that our thoughts can heal, there is no need for medical doctors. There is no way for us to determine how many innocent young children, as well as adults, have suffered and died because of this quack rejection of trained medical doctors.
The heretical nature of Christian Science can be seen most clearly in its doctrine of the atonement—more accurately, its rejection of the biblical doctrine of atonement of Christ Jesus. Eddy’s Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures says that, “The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon the‘accursed tree’than when it was flowing through his veins as he went daily about his father’s business.” Furthermore, Eddy asserted that Jesus did not die as a result of his crucifixion, for death is illusory.
The unholy doctrines and teachings of this heretical Christian sect can easily be seen from a sampling of quotes from the church’s own pamphlet entitled Jesus and the Christ:
The irresistible Christ is the power of Mind... The power of Mind is the Messiah, and salvation depends on the demonstration of God as the Mind of man.
So you and I as persons... are human concepts of the real man, the Christ, concepts evolved by the so-called human mind.
All that has ever existed is God and His Christ... The Christ is not resurrected nor has it ever ascended.
The Christ Science verifies the unreality of evil...
Divine Science takes men beyond the mortal belief of earth and stars for the recognition of the Kingdom of God within man and throughout the vastness of Mind. In the discovery of Christian Science, the world has been given the answer to what has been called the riddle of the universe.
The Christ is and has always been the spiritual idea of divine Principle, and to claim any aspect of the Christ as a personal attribute or accomplishment is to misunderstand Christ.
What is designated as the Antichrist is the belief of carnality or hatred.
In summary, Christian Science is a religion that overemphasizes healing to the neglect of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and it denies His works on the cross on our behalf. Eddy describes her teaching as “scientific,” but in reality it is simply the administration of placebos. Moreover, Christian Science can be extremely dangerous to one’s physical as well as spiritual health.
A Fall in Numbers
Once Christian Science was the premier cult among early New Age believers. It was the focal point of what was called the New Thought Movement. But today, Christian Science is greatly diminished in numbers and reputation. Practically each year for the last two decades, cult and religious researchers have reported that the number of people who identify themselves with Christian Science has declined. Nevertheless, this was a forerunner of many other groups, including the health and prosperity gospel, often dubbed “name it and claim it,” that has become so prevalent in some Christian charismatic circles today.
In fact, D. R. McConnell, a former professor at Oral Roberts University, in his book, A Different Gospel clearly shows how current, well-known evangelist teachers of the health and prosperity gospel have plagiarized the works of such groups as the Christian Scientists and others, and have simply recast some of the teachings of New Thought into a newer framework of doublespeak more acceptable to conservative Christianity. Kurt Koch, the late and great German evangelist, in his revealing book, Occult ABC, briefly discussed the infiltration of Christian Science and New Thought teachings into the Christian church. He wrote: “The finest flower of Christian Science is Agnes Sanford’s book, The Healing Light. This book has such a plausible Bible framework, and the ideas of Christian Science are so sublimated, that many Christians, indeed even a bishop, have been deceived by it.”
Regardless of its loss in members, the Church of Christ, Scientist, with its Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, still exerts considerable authority over some 2500 congregations located in over 50 countries around the world.
Chapter 19: CHURCH OF DIVINE MAN
The Church of Divine Man has a strong and enthusiastic following on the West Coast. Based on the principle that every man and woman is psychic and is able to develop their psychic gifts, the Church of Divine Man has a number of associated church assemblies and other organizations. For example, there is the Yin-Yang High School Seminary, the Santa Rosa Psychic Institute in Santa Rosa, California, the Berkeley Psychic Institute in Berkeley, California, and also psychic institutes in San Jose, Palo Alto, Marin, and elsewhere in California. There is also Delphi University in Richmond, California, which offers Courses in a number of New Age areas, including astrology. The Church of Divine Man also oversees a group of missionary healers who visit homes and hospitals.
The California branch of the Church of Divine Man was founded by Lewis S. Bostwick. Though he holds in common with other New Agers the belief in reincarnation and karma, Bostwick emphasizes the here and now, and provides advice on how people can attain happiness, success, wealth, health, etc., through psychic communication.
Many of Bostwick’s parishioners have claimed miracles. For example, recently in The Voice Within, the church’s California newspaper, one of the group’s ministers testified that she had witnessed another minister in the church heal a woman by creating the antibodies needed to heal the disease that she had been inflicted with for months. He did this, she said, by showing the person how to accomplish her own healing through her own psychic powers.
In Washington state, a former associate of Bostwick’s, M.F. “Doc” Slusher, publishes the Church of Divine Man publication, The Inner Voice,, and has founded churches. In The Inner Voice, Reverend Gail Coupal recently explained the basis of the church’s belief system when she wrote:
The spiritual healings we do at the Church of Divine Man are based on faith... It is the healees’belief in themselves that allows the healing to take place. The spiritual techniques that we teach—grounding, centering, creating and destroying roses, and running energies— are all based on faith. People’s belief that they can heal create change in their physical reality. This is the vital ingredient which allows things to happen.
Faith, believing your spiritual self, is not something that is outside of you: Rather, it is a spiritual part of you... Your faith is a spiritual energy. You do not have to do anything to have your faith. Rather, you can simply allow your faith to be, to own it for yourself.
Although there are many other teachings of the Church of Divine Man, the above statement, more so than any other, explains how this group diverges from the true Christian church. According to the Church of Divine Man, faith is not believing in God, a personal God who is our Heavenly Father; instead, faith is “believing in your spiritual self... Not something that is outside of you.” Moreover, you do not have to be born again and have Jesus Christ as the object of your faith. Rather, this New Age church teaches that you “simply allow your faith to be.” In other
words, man himself, his mind, is the central deity of the Church of Divine Man.
In Washington state, the Church of Divine Man has centers in Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma; also there are locations in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, B.C., Canada. In addition, the publications of the Church of Divine Man encourage parishioners to attend psychic fairs, aura readings, church retreats, kundalini workshops, meditation retreats, clairvoyance training sessions, and similar meetings.
Chapter 20: CHURCH OF RELIGIOUS SCIENCE (SCIENCE OF MIND)
“I hardly know the person that I was—poor little struggling person that I was,” said the Reverend Peggy Bassett in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where she was attending an International New Thought Alliance conference. Ms. Bassett was referring to the woman that she was before she came to believe in the teachings of Science of Mind. Bassett reported that in 1962 she first stepped into a Church of Religious Science meeting and was shocked at what she saw, attributing her reaction to a conservative Southern Baptist upbringing in the small Arkansas town of Friendship—population 500—where she was raised. Today, Bassett, 65, of Huntington Beach, California, is the first woman president in the 62-year history of the Church of Religious Science. Like her predecessor, Bassett believes strongly that when man recognizes his true union with the infinite, he automatically becomes Christ. Currently, she is pushing the church to become more involved in peace and “social justice issues,” including the environment and AIDS. She also promotes a close relationship with the Soviet Union.
The Church of Religious Science was founded under another name in 1927 by Ernest Holmes, who borrowed from the metaphysical writings of Unity Church’s Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, and Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science. Science of Mind, a book by Holmes published in 1938, is the classic textbook of those who are in the Science of Mind religion.
Holmes wrote that one’s inherent self-worth emanates from the divine part. Like Christian Science and other mind science groups, Holmes insisted that Jesus was not God, but that we are all collectively both Christ and divinity. Holmes also did not believe in a literal heaven or hell, nor did he confess that Jesus’resurrection was a literal fact. Through developing the powers of the mind, said Holmes, man’s potential is unlimited and he is able to do miraculous and supernatural acts.
The Church of Religious Science has congregations across the United States. Many of them do not use that name but they are still in one way or another affiliated with the overall group. Science of Mind magazine is also a popular staple of New Age bookstores.
The Flamboyant Terry Cole-Whittaker
Perhaps the most famous teacher and minister of the Church of Religious Science is a flamboyant and attractive blonde woman named Terry Cole-Whittaker. Called a Doris Day look-alike, Terry made it big on television in the late-70s and early-80s; soon however, she fell victim to burnout and quit her television program which had been beamed to millions and millions of viewers in major markets. Nevertheless, she remains a popular seminar, workshop, and conference speaker and her books are consistent bestsellers.
Whittaker draws a big audience with such declarations as “You’ve never been judged except by your own faults.” She also attracts a large audience by teaching the principles of A Course in Miracles, a false New Age bible, and is one of the most popular proponents of the prosperity gospel. In her church she held “Dressing to Win” seminars and told her yuppie crowds that they were entitled to “divine wealth.” She also crowed, “Our ministry isn’t into sin, guilt, disease, pain, or hunger.”
Terry often speaks of her prayer ministry and she has stated that it is through the Holy Spirit that she receives salvation. In Terry Cole-Whittaker’s 1986 book,The Inner Path From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, she demonstrated that she is perfectly aligned with the cardinal teachings of the New Age when she wrote: “God is That Which Includes All Beings. God is All of It and the Everything, and God cannot be apart from It, any of It, anyway.” Recently, she has begun to promote the goddess and Mother Earth religious ideas, and she now has proclaimed that the New Age has already arrived and that enlightened men and women are “walking on the earth as sons of God.”
Chapter 21: THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT (ELIZABETH CLARE PROPHET)
Guru Ma, her church followers call her: “Mother of the Universe.” She herself says she is “the one present messenger of God’s voice on earth.” Her heavenly messages come from such spirits as “Jesus,” “Agent K-17,” “Koothoomi,” and “Count Saint Germain,” the ascended Master whom she recognizes as the “Hierarch of the New Age.” If she is getting messages from these spirit entities, according to many reports those messages are making her fabulously wealthy. I am referring to Elizabeth Clare Prophet, founder and head of the Church Universal and Triumphant.
Prophet is one of the most colorful figures in the New Age religion. Her church has tens of thousands of members-the exact number is unknown—throughout the United States mostly but also overseas. Her worship services and ceremonies are broadcast on cable television systems around the nation, greatly expanding her audience. Mostly this is a church based on communication with spirits, among whom have been mentioned Ray-O-Light, Agent K-17 of the “Inner Secret Service,” El Morya, Helios, Amazonia, Cosmos, Ra, Mu, Merlin the Magician, Astara, Hercules, Venus, Zoroaster, and many more.
Its founder is a firm believer in reincarnation, and the Church teaches that Prophet’s daughter, Moira Lewis, is the reincarnation of the late president John F. Kennedy. Also, it has been claimed that a second daughter, 23-year old church spokeswoman Erin Prophet, is the reincarnation of the Hindu leader Gandhi. Moira Lewis, 21, recently left the cult. She explained that she had always been the rebel of the family and that when her mother and stepfather, Elizabeth’s fourth husband, realized the extent to which she rejected the Church’s teachings, she was thrown out. Since then, she has given interviews to anti-cult organizations and has exposed a number of facts about her mother’s cult.
The Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) has made the national news because of reports that its leader had claimed that the world was coming to an end, and that nuclear catastrophe was on the immediate horizon. The cult promptly began to build earthen bomb-shelters. Then came reports that the New Age cult had begun to stockpile arms and munitions in its headquarters community near Paradise Valley, Montana, a picturesque area bordering Yellowstone National Park. These rumors became known as facts when Vernon Hamilton, described by federal officials as the security chief of Prophet’s Church Universal and Triumphant, was arrested in July, 1989 in Spokane, Washington, for allegedly purchasing arms under a false name.
Federal officials said that Hamilton planned to purchase more than $130,000 worth of high-powered weapons and ammunition—an arsenal designed to arm 200 people. The revelations caused frantic discussions and anxieties to be raised among residents of the nearby Montana community, who feared another Jim Jones People’s Temple massacre. In an article in the Spokane Chronicle, former cult member Kenneth Polini turned up the heat on the controversy when he stated: “Unfortunately, this does have the potential to be another Jonestown.” Polini, former security chief for the church prior to Hamilton, added, “I really hate to say that, but it does.”
However, the allegations of Polini were dismissed by the church as comments coming from a “sour apple,” and church leaders professed innocence and surprise over the arrest of Hamilton, claiming that they knew little or nothing about the details of the arms purchases.
Mother Mary and the Teachings of CUT
Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s teachings were originally borrowed from Guy Ballard’s I AM group; however, the innovative Prophet seems to have added a number of fresh new concepts, practices, and twists to her presentations and to community life. In an interview with People magazine (June 4, 1990), Prophet was referred to as “Mistress of the Universe.” She told People magazine, “We have all lived thousands of times,” a
nd confided: “As a child I walked and talked with Jesus.” In the church’s literature, the charismatic and flamboyant Prophet has also written that she got the idea to found her group when Mother Mary appeared to her on a street one day. Subsequently, she has claimed to receive many visits from Mary, who supposedly has told Prophet that today, in the spirit world, she, Mary, is known as “Lady Nada.” Answering critics who warn that she is another Jim Jones, the smooth-talking, intelligent Prophet smiled and answered, “I don’t control my members in any way.”
Elizabeth Clare Prophet belongs to the conservative wing of the New Age religion. An avowed anti-communist, she has had such dignitaries as army general (retired) Daniel Graham on her program to tout his idea for a High Frontiers space defense system. In the Church’s magazines and publications, communist insurgencies in Central America are often denounced. During the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, Prophet’s publications carried many reports of the atrocities committed by Soviet troops in their conquest and suppression of the Afghan people.