Article October 2, 1920 Issue

The First Testimony Meetings

CHARLES G. BALDWIN

Perhaps the first Christian testimony meeting of which we have any record was held in a prison cell. John the Baptist conducted the simple ceremony, and around him were the few faithful students whose devotion had gained for them admission to their teacher in prison. Eagerly these earnest men, one after another, told of the instantaneous healing work which they had witnessed. The lame walk, they reported to John, the blind are healed so that they can see, the dumb are made to speak, and those who are ready may learn how this healing is done, and the good news of health and holiness is brought to them. Another testimony meeting is recounted in the fourteenth chapter of John. Jesus is here trying to reveal the secret of his mission and of life itself, and finally has to have recourse to his healing works to afford the necessary proof. At this meeting Jesus taught that if we study the truth and keep everlastingly at it we shall be entirely free from fear, error, evil, and discord of every sort.

Once we perceive God as Spirit, Mind, or Soul, we can think of man as the child of God, entirely spiritual and the very image and likeness of Soul. God, Mind, or Spirit is infinite, and man, God's spiritual offspring, lives, moves, and has his being in God. Man, therefore, has a place in Principle and cannot be made to believe or imagine that he has any cause to be troubled or fearful. Christ Jesus blazed the way of safety through the mazes of mortal belief and trouble by the perfect understanding of God and His omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, and we have only to follow in his footsteps. Not only this, but his teaching are ever with us as we take each step in the path, so that we have only to study the way we are confronted with doubt and fear. Jesus the Christ has demonstrated man's real spiritual being, and we know that he did it by declaring and realizing always and in every circumstance that God is Spirit and that man is the offspring of God.

Thomas, one of Jesus' disciples, could not grasp or make practical this wonderful truth demonstrated by Jesus, and when Jesus spoke of his departure and took for granted that his disciples perceived that he was going to prove his true relation to God, omnipotent Mind, and that he would sit at the right hand of God—that is, manifest God's power to overcome hatred, matter, and death—Thomas could not understand and asked for an explanation. Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Thomas was also told that had he known Christ Jesus he would have known God, and Jesus gave him this spiritual knowledge, for he said, "From henceforth ye know him, and have seen him."

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The First Testimony Meetings

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