The Kingdom of Heaven

August 7, 2019
Hymns: 5, 278, 66
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The Bible & Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

PSALMS

17:15…I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.

LUKE

17:20-21 when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

SH 587:25

Heaven. Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality; bliss; the atmosphere of Soul.

SH 266:25-26

Perfect and infinite Mind enthroned is heaven.

JOHN

18:33,36 (to 1st :) Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? …Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world:

SH 590:1

Kingdom of Heaven. The reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme.

SH 51:12

Jesus could give his temporal life into his enemies’ hands; but when his earth-mission was accomplished, his spiritual life, indestructible and eternal, was found forever the same. He knew that matter had no life and that real Life is God; therefore he could no more be separated from his spiritual Life than God could be extinguished.

SH 266:16-17

Thus He teaches mortals to lay down their fleshliness and gain spirituality.

SH 6:14

To reach heaven, the harmony of being, we must understand the divine Principle of being.

SH 117:15-16

Our Master taught spirituality by similitudes and parables.

MATTHEW

13:31-33 …The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof…The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. 

SH 291:13;23-25

Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of “the mind of the Lord,” as the Scripture says. … As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needed change.

SH 560:10-19

Heaven represents harmony, and divine Science interprets the Principle of heavenly harmony. The great miracle, to human sense, is divine Love, and the grand necessity of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in man. This goal is never reached while we hate our neighbor or entertain a false estimate of anyone whom God has appointed to voice His Word. Again, without a correct sense of its highest visible idea, we can never understand the divine Principle. 

MATTHEW

13:44-48 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. 

JOHN

8:51 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

SH 188:11-15

Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of mind. 

SH 479:18-19;1-5 (np)

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…When the substance of Spirit appears in Christian Science, the nothingness of matter is recognized. Where the spirit of God is, and there is no place where God is not, evil becomes nothing, — the opposite of the something of Spirit.

SH 218:32-2

When we wake to the truth of being, all disease, pain, weakness, weariness, sorrow, sin, death, will be unknown, and the mortal dream will forever cease.

MATTHEW

5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

18:2-3… Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

SH 236:28

Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth.

SH 505:26-28

This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of all things brought to light.

SH 39:10-22

The educated belief that Soul is in the body causes mortals to regard death as a friend, as a stepping-stone out of mortality into immortality and bliss. The Bible calls death an enemy, and Jesus overcame death and the grave instead of yielding to them. He was “the way.” To him, therefore, death was not the threshold over which he must pass into living glory. “Now,” cried the apostle, “is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,” — meaning, not that now men must prepare for a future-world salvation, or safety, but that now is the time in which to experience that salvation in spirit and in life. 

SH 130:9-25

Laboring long to shake the adult’s faith in matter and to inculcate a grain of faith in God, — an inkling of the ability of Spirit to make the body harmonious, — the author has often remembered our Master’s love for little children, and understood how truly such as they belong to the heavenly kingdom.

JOHN (New English Translation)

3:1-3…Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 

MATTHEW (Amplified Bible)

3:2 Repent [change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret past sins, live your life in a way that proves repentance; seek God’s purpose for your life], for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

SH 191:16-17

As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought, and leads it to “where the young child was,” — even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error. The human thought must free itself from self-imposed materiality and bondage.

MATTHEW

6:6; 9-10 … when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; … Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

SH 16:27;31

Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious…Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.

SH 114:27

In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Science shows that what is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author mortal mind.

SH 251:8-11

In the illusion of death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that they have but passed the portals of a new belief.

SH 39:22-25

Now is the time for so-called material pains and material pleasures to pass away, for both are unreal, because impossible in Science. To break this earthly spell, mortals must get the true idea and divine Principle of all that really exists and governs the universe harmoniously. 

REVELATION

21:1-4 I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away

SH 572:23-25; 9 (np)

The Revelator had not yet passed the transitional stage in human experience called death, but he already saw a new heaven and a new earth…This shows unmistakably that what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness. 

SH 108:19

When apparently near the confines of mortal existence, standing already within the shadow of the death-valley, I learned these truths in divine Science: that all real being is in God, the divine Mind, and that Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and ever-present; that the opposite of Truth, — called error, sin, sickness, disease, death, — is the false testimony of false material sense, of mind in matter; that this false sense evolves, in belief, a subjective state of mortal mind which this same so-called mind names matter, thereby shutting out the true sense of Spirit. 

REVELATION

21:10, 22 … he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, …And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

SH 576:14-15;21

The word temple also means body… This kingdom of God “is within you,” — is within reach of man’s consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals it. In divine Science, man possesses this recognition of harmony consciously in proportion to his understanding of God.

SH 35:30-4

They, who know not purity and affection by experience, can never find bliss in the blessed company of Truth and Love simply through translation into another sphere.

JOHN

16:33 In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

SH 242:9

There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality — to have no other consciousness of life — than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses.

SH 598:23

One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. This exalted view, obtained and retained when the Science of being is understood, would bridge over with life discerned spiritually the interval of death, and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are unknown. 

SH 285:3

This Science of being obtains not alone hereafter in what men call Paradise, but here and now; it is the great fact of being for time and eternity.

SH 174:17

Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

SH 263:7-10

When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven.

SH:254:31(to;)

Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven; 

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS

Prose Works

by Mary Baker Eddy

What is the kingdom of heaven? The abode of Spirit, the realm of the real. No matter is there, no night is there — nothing that maketh or worketh a lie. Is this kingdom afar off? No: it is ever-present here. …The kingdom of heaven is the reign of divine Science: it is a mental state. Jesus said it is within you, and taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come;” but he did not teach us to pray for death whereby to gain heaven. We do not look into darkness for light. Death can never usher in the dawn of Science that reveals the spiritual facts of man’s Life here and now. (Mis. 174:16-19 (to.);23)

…Man’s existence is a problem to be wrought in divine Science. What progress would a student of science make, if, when tired of mathematics or failing to demonstrate one rule readily, he should attempt to work out a rule farther on and more difficult — and this, because the first rule was not easily demonstrated? In that case he would be obliged to turn back and work out the previous example, before solving the advanced problem. Mortals have the sum of being to work out, and up, to its spiritual standpoint. They must work out of this dream or false claim of sensation and life in matter, and up to the spiritual realities of existence, before this false claim can be wholly dispelled. … The error of supposed life and intelligence in matter, is dissolved only as we master error with Truth. Not through sin or suicide, but by overcoming temptation and sin, shall we escape the weariness and wickedness of mortal existence, and gain heaven, the harmony of being. (Mis. 52:21-3; Mis. 53:5)