In the scriptural book of Luke, John the Baptist tells his followers of the coming of Christ Jesus, and he describes him as the one who will baptize “with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” Using the metaphor of a threshing fan, which separates the chaff from the wheat, John says of Christ Jesus that his “fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable” (3:16, 17).

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, defines fan as “separator of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 586). Christian Science declares as fact the overarching New Testament message that God is good, pure Spirit, and all power. As God’s image and likeness, man must be spiritual and subject only to God’s all-good power. Whatever opposes this fact must be a powerless fable, cast out through the purifying action of Christ, the true idea or understanding of God.

“He will throughly purge his floor.” According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, the Greek word translated throughly in this verse means “to cleanse perfectly.” In considering this, I saw that it points to the healing action of the Christ, God’s spiritual ideal, which comes to destroy the ills of the flesh. It shows this divine, healing action to be complete, leaving no lingering trace of chaff or worthless debris, no unhealed residue, no false thought uncorrected, no stone or obstacle not rolled away.