UPFRONT October 16, 2006 Issue

And what about Jesus' healings?

MARY TRAMMELL, EDITOR IN CHIEF

HANNOVER, GERMANY —At this writing, I'm traveling in Germany and Switzerland with the Christian Science Board of Directors, meeting with fellow members of the worldwide Church Mary Baker Eddy founded in 1879 "to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17).

To me, as a student of Bible history, there are reminders all around us that Germany and Switzerland are lands where the great reformers of the 16th century—Martin Luther, William Tyndale, John Calvin, and others—first translated the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into languages that ordinary people could understand. These brave men paid dearly for giving the Bible to the people. They suffered scorn, persecution, exile, excommunication. Some were burned at the stake.

Looking back on the lifework of these reformers, it's clear that they helped lay the foundation for the restoration of primitive Christian healing by Mary Baker Eddy's discovery, Christian Science, and the Church of Christ, Scientist. Why? Because one of the reasons spiritual healing was "lost" for close to two millennia was that the Bible itself was virtually lost to humanity during much of that period. Only the most elite scholars and church officials could read the Bible in the one language in which it was available—Latin. Besides that, Bible reading was against the law. But the 16th-century reformers helped change all that. They began an unstoppable movement to return the Scriptures to the people—and to legalize Bible reading.

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