Description
Transcript of three Association Addresses (1931, 1932, 1933) Awake And Inherit The Kingdom Within: Supply; The End of the World
In his address on Supply, Mr. Greenwood states, “Wealth that is capable of being lost is not truly possessed, for man’s real possessions cannot be separated from himself. The means by which one may gain these permanent riches are not those of the market or the factory or the stock exchange, for they are the natural heritage of every son of God — that is, of every man. They are incapable of loss, for they are the man himself. God’s creatures are not at the mercy of chance events or changing circumstances, for they have access to those infinite resources in which there is neither lack nor loss.”
In his outstanding address, The End of the World, he tells how the present chemicalization signifies the end of the material world, with the breaking up of the materialistic forms of government, economics, business, and religion, in order to make way for the “new heavens and new earth” being brought to light by Christian Science. He writes, “It has long been a settled conclusion that the world we now live in will sometime be done away with, but the destruction of a material planet is plainly not what Jesus meant by the ‘end of the world,’ but rather the end of the material ages, or the old making way for the new. The prophets looked forward to, and in their spiritual vision saw, the coming of a better view of God’s creation — or the new heaven and earth and man.
“When Jesus said, ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’; and when Mrs. Eddy writes in the textbook, ‘The powers of this world will fight,’ they were not referring to a material planet, or to anything which God created, but to ‘the world of error’; or to that general system of things which rests upon so-called physical laws and phenomena. In other words, it is what we could define in Christian Science as the world of material thinking.
“The dominant factor in this world of materiality is physical sensation, as comprised in the five bodily senses, through which or by which mortals receive their impressions, and upon whose evidence is based the teachings of the schools. This world of sensation has ever been the battleground whereon evil seeks to overcome mankind, and to hold them captive in a bondage which is immeasurably greater than that of the Israelites in Egypt. It is this world which is in such general commotion and distress, chafing to be freed from its bonds, not knowing where to look for deliverance, and which the Bible says is to come to an end. Speaking of the conditions through which the nations have been passing, and of the signs which are to precede the end of the world as we now know it, Jesus said: ‘So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.’
“Ever since the nature of evil was exposed in the Garden of Eden, and the prophecy of the destruction of the serpent was given utterance, the world has been moving towards its end, because the concept of life and man which was evolved from the belief of matter, carries within it the seeds of its ultimate decay and disappearance.
“For a time the pure monotheism which Abraham sought to establish was maintained by his descendants, more or less intermittently, until they succumbed to the mesmerism of pagan idolatry and were carried into its captivity. There they came under the influence of standards of economy, law, and government which were entirely foreign to those given them by Moses and the later prophets.
“The twenty-five centuries of pagan domination announced by Daniel, and which Jesus referred to as ‘the times of the Gentiles,’ has come to an end; and we are now in the period between the old and the new dispensations, spoken of by Mrs. Eddy in the textbook as ‘the breaking up of material beliefs,’ the disturbances of which are to ‘continue until the end of error.’” He goes on to explain how Christian Science will be the answer to this chemicalization taking place.