Christian Science Academy

Science of The Lord's Prayer

By Rolf A. F. Witzsche – 2013 – Published by Cygni Communications Ltd. Canada

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The Lord's Prayer may be regarded as a quest to experience in life the 'hand' of God

in action, and thereby the essence of God that the senses cannot perceive, such as

the attributes of God as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omni-acting

good.

Towards this end a widely famous and profound prayer is attributed to the Master of

Christianity, Christ Jesus. It is a simple prayer arranged in 8 progressive steps.

In many churches that prayer is mechanically recited at great speed as if it was an

insignificant mandatory element that must be dispensed with before the sermons can

begin. However, if one takes a closer look, it becomes apparent that the prayer is not

insignificant at all.

The first part defines a great underlying cause that is intrinsically good. This

progresses on to the point where everything that is real is consciously attributed to

this underlying impetus of good and great power.

If one looks still closer it becomes apparent that the 8-part structure is divided into

four groups of 2 parts each. The first part presents a recognition, and the second

part a scientific affirmation; and understanding.

The idea of Father as universal good is acknowledged with awe: “Hallowed by thy

name.”

In the second part, the idea of an unfolding divine universe leads to the scientific

recognition that the divine intention is evident everywhere, including on earth.

For example, in modern leading-edge physics enormous efforts are made at the Joint

European CERN laboratory to proof that the phenomenon of gravity and mass have a

physical cause. More than 30 billion Euros have been spent on this experiment, with

not much success so far.

It may ultimately be recognized that the basic universal forces and their respective

operating principles are products of an intelligent intention, with the intention being

for the universe to exist, because without a single one of these basic forces and

principles for which no physical cause is known, the universe would not exist.

In the third group the divine process reflected in human economy is addressed. Our

daily bread is an economic product, derived by creative intelligent processes in human

economy. They are the products of the divine quality of Mind reflected in humanity in

rich measure. We live by the products of our creative expression. This is society's

wealth, and its debt to itself to meet the human need richly with its divine qualities.

We have developed the creative process so extensively that a thousand times as

many people now live on this planet than the natural world could support without the

creative human development that profoundly reflects a divine spiritual quality. The

only debt that society owes to one another is to meet the human need as efficiently

and as richly as can be achieved. Towards this end society provides itself financial

credits to get the job done. When the infrastructures are built by which the job is

done, the debt is extinguished. This is the divine economics that Jesus evidently was

aware of and tried to convey to a small-minded society that regarded debt as related

to money. Humanity has not yet come even close to implementing this divinely

oriented principle of economics.

The fourth part of the Lord's Prayer focuses on the greatest challenge that

humanity is facing, which is to overcome the temptation of small-minded thinking. If

this challenge is not met, the failure fosters ever-greater evils in the world.

An example of this type of festering evil is the currently ruling world-empire's

depopulation ideology that has become a policy of reducing the human population on

the Earth from the present population of 7 billion people to less than one. Who

hasn't heard the chorus of cries that the world is over-populated and is running out

of resources. Humanity has been termed a cancer on the Earth from the 1960s on.

This travesty in perception has opened the gates to immensely destructive genocidal

processes, such as the burning of food in a starving world, and the Uranium wars that

have spread deadly radioactive poisons with the air streams across the world, and

also the global warming hype that has prevented economic development and forced

de-industrialization, creating poverty and death, and so on.

Jesus evidently recognized the immense challenge before society to overcome the

tendency to allow itself to be trapped into small-minded thinking, which is the most

fundamental form of self-denial of its divine status as the reflection of God, and is

thereby a denial of God. The last line takes us above that tragic miasma of society's

self-entrapment that has no foundation in the divine universe where God is All and is

manifest in all.

Since the Lord's Prayer is designed to operate in four progressive stages, it is useful

to arrange the individual stanzas accordingly. I have arranged them here into columns

of development in which the lower idea, the primal idea is located at the bottom, and

the scientific response above it at a higher level.

I have also given the columns a name that accords with the sequence of the Sun

across the sky, from dawn to the golden sunset at the end of the day.

In the second part of the Lord's Prayer the idea comes to light that God is not

mythical, but profoundly substantial. The awakening of such a realization can be

likened to the sunrise in the morning that promises a bright day ahead as this

substance is becoming manifest.

With the spiritual dawning comes the recognition of the creative power that we have

as human beings to enrich our world and our living, and to extinguish this debt to us

by getting the job done. Thus we create a civilization that is as bright as the

brightest noon-day.

And in the last column we celebrate. We rejoice for our achievements won in stepping

out of the trap of small-minded thinking. We step away from the nagging temptation

to deny the fullness of God, to the realization of the full-orbed blessing we have. We

rejoice in the fullness of God's creation, likened to the golden colour of the sunset

that promises another dawning of successive days.

Now it appears that Christ Jesus didn't stop there, but went a few steps past the

simple arrangement of four columns with just two levels of perception. We are told

at the end of the book of Revelation, by John the Revelator, about a slightly more

complex structure that allows for four levels of perception in each of the four

columns. He speaks of a city foursquare, a city of profound spiritual concepts.

It is reasonable to assume that John didn't pick this concept up out of thin air, but

may have given us a hint as to what kind of deeper reasoning was going on that he was

a part of in association with Christ Jesus.

During the Roman persecution of Christianity for nearly two centuries, and of science

in general for several more centuries, the few written documents that may have

existed at the time about Christ Jesus' working and teaching were all burnt and

otherwise destroyed quite early. In order to bypass the Roman inspired madness,

John, living in exile during the persecution, appears to have created a story of the

spirit of those times that is extensively wrapped in metaphor, in a manner that would

not be seen as a threat to Rome, which therefore appears to have survived.

If this is so, then we may assume that much more advanced scientific thinking had

likely been the hallmark of the Jesus era than what has been preserved of it. There

may have been more advanced forms of the Lord’s Prayer under discussion. And why

would this not have been the case? The Christ Jesus era had a great scientific era

preceding it, prominently in Greece, and also in Egypt and other parts of the world.

A foursquare structure can support a vast array of scientific concepts that take us

far beyond what linear thinking can achieve. An advanced type of scientific

perceptions may have stood behind the great teachings and works of Christ Jesus.

It wasn’t something trivial that had shook the mighty Roman Empire so deeply that a

rampage of persecution resulted from it that had lasted for two centuries. A great

treasure has evidently been lost in this long rampage of persecution.

To date no source documents exist or have been found for the stories written in the

Gospels.

John the Revelator seems to tell us that much more went on than what the Gospels

tell us of, or imply, and that this may have also included higher-level concepts of the

Lord's Prayer.

The gap that the failure of historic preservation appears to have left us, was filled in

the late 1800s by America's scientific spiritual pioneer of the time, Mary Baker

Eddy. She presented her highest scientific perception of the original parts of the

Lord’s Prayer and added it as an extension to it, together with a number of definition

for the rows.

Here we have the original parts of the first group highlighted with her addition

presented above them that raises each part a step higher.

She doesn’t change the meaning of the original parts, or the meaning of the group,

but elevates the meaning of them.

The same happens in the column of the sunrise.

Her addition makes the sunrise more substantial.

In the third column, the basis for the daily bread is given a new dimension.

Mary Baker Eddy highlights the essential spiritual dimension of the Lord's Prayer as

grace and affection, and on the highest level, Love being reflected in love.

In the 4th column she tells us that small-minded thinking doesn’t come from God.

She tells us that God gets us out of the trap of small-minded thinking, and she adds

sin, disease, and death as aspects of it. She also vastly expands the image of God as

being infinite, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

You may have noticed by now that in this column by column presentation the various

levels hang together also horizontally in a progressive manner. Such as, "Our Father

which art in heaven, thy kingdom come, give us this day our daily bread, and protect

us from small-minded thinking and get us out of its consequences if need be.

The Lord's Prayer stanzas as presented by Christ Jesus, were evidently designed to

hang together horizontally in a progressive manner across each level. This doesn't

happen by chance. This is intentional. The foursquare matrix design that John

referred to as a foursquare city appears to have been pioneered by Christ Jesus,

which is evident in the design of the Lord's Prayer.

Mary Baker Eddy maintains the same pattern that Jesus pioneered with the Lord's

Prayer. At each level that she added we find the same amazing progression evident

for the level's respective theme.

The end result is that the Lord's Prayer is just as profoundly significant when it is

read row by row from the bottom up.

Each layer unfolds a higher dimension of the whole.

This step by step global progressing is not readily evident when the Lord's Prayer is

seen in the normal linear manner.

Since this lateral view enables a profound view of the global progression, it was

evidently intended and built into the design of the whole by the scientific pioneer

that Christ Jesus was.

In this matrix configuration of the foursquare city some rather profound

interrelationships become evident, as for example between the first and last

elements.

The first element here, "Our Father which art in heaven" unfolds upwards into a

whole pyramid of profound spiritual concepts.

In the same manner, the last element that acknowledges the infinite fullness of God

and God's creation, stands on a cascade of evermore progressive developments

beneath it.

If one considers the great potential for scientific and spiritual development that

John's city-foursquare concept enables, which Christ Jesus appears to have

pioneered, it is not surprising that all of Mary Baker Eddy's works have been created

in a manner that matches the foursquare city's design. This includes even her

textbook on Christian Science that she created as a structure of 16 chapters.

The same interrelationship is evident here between the various chapters, both

vertically, column by column, and horizontally row by row, which Christ Jesus appears

to have pioneered with his design of the Lord's Prayer.

The same can also be said about the 16 segments into which Mary Baker Eddy has

divided the Manual governing her church. The topics she focused on come to light in a

pattern that is essential for the development of civilization.

By the manner in which Christ Jesus presented the Lord's Prayer, everything that

supports civilization becomes drawn together into a single structure with a single

purpose, which is to bring God and man together into the universal lateral

relationship that already exists and covers all aspects of living and being.

Mary Baker Eddy's extended definitions for the rows:

Omnipotence

The Word of Life, Truth, and Love;

Omniscience

The Christ, the spiritual idea of God;

Omnipresence

Christianity, which is the outcome of the divine Principle of the Christ-idea in

Christian history;

Omni-action

Christian Science, which to-day and forever interprets this great example and the

great Exemplar.

Mary Baker Eddy's extended definitions for the columns:

Dawn (the Word)

Northward, its gates open to the North Star, the Word, the polar magnet of

Revelation;

Sunrise (Christ)

Eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the Orient, who followed it to the

manger of Jesus;

Noonday Sun (Christianity)

Southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern Cross in the skies, - the Cross of

Calvary, which binds human society into solemn union;

Golden Sunset (Divine Science)

Westward, to the grand realization of the Golden Shore of Love and the Peaceful

Sea of Harmony.

The danger with prayer begins when it nurtures an ideology that it takes the concept

of God completely out of the human dimension into esoteric isolation that puts God

far above humanity, that humanity becomes a slave to.

Two types of prayer are presented here, by the world's two largest religions. Both

are forms used for reaching out to God. However, the scientific unction is to lift

humanity up to God, not to anthropomorphize God but to render to humanity its

native divinity, to bring humanity into its native sphere in unity with God, and thereby

in unity with one-another.

The greatest platform ever created

Our Father

It renders the whole of humanity as one

in heaven

It renders existence in universal harmony

Thus the Lord's Prayer begins in the first column with the scientific platform of the

most basic fact of the nature of civilization that Christ Jesus challenges humanity to

acknowledge in thought and in deed, individually and universally. Everything in the

rest of the column is built on that basic platform and becomes an expression of it,

and likewise what follows in the rest of the columns.

Society stands presently far from this platform, being trapped into systems of

privatization, indifference, social and national marriage isolation, rivalry, competition,

division, segregation, hatred, war, and so forth. Christ Jesus' challenge is rarely

acknowledged; especially in deeds. Mary Baker Eddy aided the development towards

this realization of humanity's inherent divinity. While some progress has been

achieved along this line, when this is seen in terms of what must be achieved, it

seems we have barely begun.

Ironically humanity seeks riches in property, financial wealth, status, fame, and

power, while it closes its eyes to the greatest sunrise before it that lays potentially

at its feet. The human spirit is rooted in the divine, in Spirit that is God. Christ

Jesus puts no small challenge before us in the second column, but he evidently

expected that the challenge will be met; or else, what's the point then in existing if

we can't make something profound of it?

What's the point in existing

if we can't make something profound of it?

It becomes evident from this progression that the columns built sequentially on one

another. Without the divine Spirit reflected in humanity, what would drive the

creativity and productivity in human economics by which the needs in human living and

human society are met, and without that, how would Love be reflected in love. The

two cannot be isolated.

What powers the creativity, productivity, innovations, technologies, and the entire

economic system by which the human needs or met is the power of divine Mind

reflected universally in humanity. To give it the fullest expression possible is an

aspect of the great debt we own to us and one-another.

The grand obligation we have to us and one-another to express all that God is to the

fullest degree possible, leaves no room for small-minded thinking. God is infinite

Principle expressed in the universe that we are a part of, without which we and the

universe would not exist. But we do exist, and we do exist as God's expression. The

more we develop this fundamental fact in our understanding, the richer and free,

more secure, and more powerful will be our living, our world, and our civilization.

The more this understanding is developed the less-likely it will be for anything to

harm us or place limits before us. The coming Ice Age will then no longer pose a

danger, or any other astrophysical conditions. Christ Jesus opened the divine portal

to us with the Lord's Prayer, towards an endless future, and he suggested that no

other such portal exists.

Mary Baker Eddy built everything that she created on the foursquare platform that

Christ Jesus had pioneered and left to us in the form of the Lord's Prayer for us to

built on. Mary Baker Eddy brought in total 10 major structures into the city as John

had suggested humanity would do. That Mary Baker Eddy followed what John saw as

inevitable is evident by her design of her works as constituents of the foursquare

city. In this she followed the design characteristics that Christ Jesus has pioneered

to the very last detail, whom she referred to as "the most scientific man that ever

trod the globe."

Even her least-known work, her illustrated poem, Christ and Christmas, is designed to

accord with the design characteristics of the city foursquare, and thereby it accords

with the 16 elements of the expanded version of the Lord's Prayer, and also with the

textbook chapters, and with the map for the manual for civilization that we find in

her Church Manual, and so on.

The unction of prayer is that the Face of God be not hid, but gleam through the face

of humanity as the light of the world.

I will close this video with a presentation of the illustrated poem in conjunction with

the Lord's Prayer, the textbook chapters shown in yellow, and the topics of Mary

Baker Eddy's Church Manual shown in blue. Some scenes have two verses associated,

which are typically divided by them.

I present the illustrated poem, divided in four parts, in the manner the Lord's Prayer

is divided.

Christ and Christmas Part 1: Our Father which art in heaven...

Our Father which art in heaven

1. - Fast circling on, from zone to zone,--

Bright, blest, afar,--

O'er the grim night of chaos shone

One lone, brave star.

- The textbook chapter is, Prayer.

- The Manual's segment is named, Church Officers, but in the wider context the

focus is on all officers, offices, and governments in general as a functional element in

civilization. The officers, whoever they are, have only one mandate, which is to

implement the government of "our Father" that has its root in heaven and its

expression in harmony.

Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,

2. In tender mercy, Spirit sped

A loyal ray

To rouse the living, wake the dead,

And point the Way--

- Atonement and Eucharist

- The Manual's focus on membership, reflected in the wider context, highlights our

universal membership in the sphere of humanity that we shouldn't let fall to the

ground.

Hallowed be Thy name

3. The Christ-idea, God anoints--

Of Truth and Life;

The Way in Science He appoints,

That stills all strife.

-The chapter is, Marriage; the segment is Discipline. The binding between them is

Christ Science in which we are more deeply married to one another by our humanity

that reflects the divine, than by anything superficial.

Adorable One

4. What the Beloved knew and taught,

Science repeats,

Through understanding, dearly sought,

With fierce heart-beats;

- Christian Science versus Spiritualism

- The Manual's segment on, Meetings, closes the door to mass-gatherings. The hype

in mass-gatherings in built on the denial of the always existing oneness of humanity

as an expression of God. Instead of denying that, we need to gleam the reality of its

ever-full, unbroken expression.

Christ and Christmas Part 2: Thy kingdom come...

Thy kingdom come

5. Thus Christ, eternal and divine,

To celebrate

As Truth demands,--this living Vine

Ye demonstrate.

- Animal Magnetism Unmasked

- The Manual's segment is on services. For civilization to function society provides

for one another numerous services, for transportation, education, culture, healing,

etc, including church services. The scientific Church Services are designed to furnish

an environment for spiritual healing.

Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present

6. For heaven's Christus, earthly Eves,

By Adam bid,

Make merriment on Christmas eves,

O'er babe and crib.

- Science, Theology, Medicine

- The Manual's segment here is on Reading Rooms. We have a moral responsibility to

keep our consciousness vibrant, orderly, and unpolluted.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven

7. Yet wherefore signalize the birth

Of him ne'er born?

What can rehearse the glorious worth

Of his high morn?

- Physiology

- The Manual's segment is about, Duty. Each human being has the inherent duty to

serve the cause of humanity in whatever form individual situations may require,

whereby the divine design becomes fulfilled.

Enable us to know,

- as in heaven, so on earth, -

God is omnipotent, supreme.

8. Christ was not crucified--that doom

Was Jesus' part;

For Sharon's rose must bud and bloom

In human heart. *

* "God was manifest in the flesh." -- St. Paul.

- Footsteps of Truth

- The Manual's segment is on Sovereignty. Mary Baker Eddy stipulates that all

churches of Christ Scientist are sovereign. No one is a slave to another. Likewise, all

human beings are sovereign and free, and omnipotent and supreme in individual divine

reflection.

Christ and Christmas Part 3: Give us this day our daily bread...

Give us this day our daily bread

9. Forever present, bounteous, free,

Christ comes in gloom;

And aye, with grace towards you and me,

For health makes room.

- Creation

- The Manual's segment here is focused on, funds, or more specifically the

guardianship of church funds. But on the wider horizon, humanity lives and dies with

the funding of its economies. Poverty is a deadly sickness in this realm. Being choked

to near-death by unfulfilled debts, nothing but the power of Christian Science can

bring life back to the scene.

Divine Economics

Divine Debt

We owe a profound debt to God and to one-another to meet all human needs.

Money

We utter monetary credit to one-another to furnish the means for meeting the

needs.

Debt Free

Our debt is extinguished when the human needs are met. Money gains its value in the

process of meeting the human needs.

The footsteps are grace and affection

Here Love is reflected in love

Civilization flourishes with divine economics or collapses in denial

Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections

10. Thus olden faith's pale star now blends

In seven-hued white!

Life, without birth and without end,

Emitting light!

- Science of Being

- The Manual's segment is about the functioning of a Christian Science Publishing

Society. The literature that society publishes for itself needs to be focused on

human development and universal good. Society owes a debt to itself to meet this

need in the most effectual manner. It owes it especially to its children. This, of

course, means that nothing should be published that tares humanity to the ground, no

matter how much profit or political advantage can be gained thereby.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

11. The Way, the Truth, the Life--His word--

Are here, and now

Christ's silent healing, heaven heard,

Crowns the pale brow.

- Some Objections Answered

- The Manual's segment is on, Teaching, especially the teaching of Christian Science,

which unfolds the Science of the Christ. Here, teaching is a solemn trust that builds

society up towards mustering the spiritual power to extinguish the human need, and

thereby its debt to one-another.

And Love is reflected in love

12. For Christian Science brings to view

The great I Am,--

Omniscient power,--gleaming through

Mind, mother, man.

- Christian Science Practice

- The Manual's segment here focuses on, Education. Formal teaching in Christian

Science provides only a small step, and awards only a bachelor degree. The real

education is rooted at a higher level than that which teaching can furnish. But it can

be taken on a higher plane where no one certifies another and awards diplomas,

where the results furnish the proof.

God gave us his promise

He gave us His Word

This promise is immediate,

for Love IS reflected in love

Christ and Christmas Part 4: And lead us not into temptation...

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;

13. As in blest Palestina's hour,

So in our age,

'T is the same hand unfolds His power,

And writes the page.

- Teaching Christian Science

- The Manual's segment is on Lectureship, and on the framework for providing it as a

sacred obligation by society to take concrete steps to rouse itself out of the evil

trap of small-minded thinking to the contemplation of divine Truth as it applies by

reflection to humanity. That's how civilization is raised at the grassroots level.

And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and

death

14. To-day, as oft, away from sin

Christ summons thee!

Truth pleads to-night: Just take Me in!

No mass for Me!

- Recapitulation

- The Manual's segment is called, Committee of Publication. Its duty is to assure

truthfulness in matters related to Christian Science and its officers in general

publications, in order that the gem of Truth that Christian Science presents to the

world is not being tarnished. In the larger context this requirement applies to

Christianity as a whole and the vastly greater task to discover the truth about Christ

Jesus who stood in the middle of it, and to assure that this truth is not hidden under

the mantle of convenience, politics, and religiosity. Humanity is presently far distant

from meeting this goal.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever

15. No blight, no broken wing, no moan,

Truth's fane can dim;

Eternal swells Christ's music-tone,

In heaven's hymn.

- Genesis

- The Manual's segment is about Church-Building. Ultimately this isn't about

constructing a physical edifice, but building the edifice of civilization without

smallness, impotence, and timidity in its design. The building committee, symbolically,

has three members: Discipline, Duty, and the sacred trust of Teaching Christian

Science.

For God is infinite, all-power,

all Life, Truth, Love, over all,

and All.

And he that overcometh, and keepeth my

works unto the end, to him will I give

power over the nations:

And I will give him the MORNING STAR.

- Mary Baker Eddy attributes this final verse in Christ and Christmas, not to herself,

but to Christ Jesus whose work she had built all of her achievements on. In the

Manual the final segment is about the Church Manual itself that ultimately may form

the basis for a constitution for civilization, or a Manual for Civilization. With her

Church Manual being founded on the Lord's Prayer, as evidence suggests, Mary Baker

Eddy has published it without her seal being applied to the front cover as she did for

all of her other published writings.

- John describes in the book of Revelation the type of apocalypse that results from

the progression that was begun by Christ Jesus, which is the only apocalypse that is

possible, an apocalypse that marks the end of all evil with the unfolding of the golden

fullness of God's creation. Mary Baker Eddy's manual appears to be dedicated to

that.

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