How did Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection utterly transform human experience and change the world forever? By convincing a few dozen of his followers, who then convinced billions down the centuries and around the world, that Jesus was God incarnate and that through his blood believers could enter into eternal life.

This is what jumps off the pages of the Book of Acts if you carefully read its early chapters, as I did recently during Holy Week. I would challenge anyone who is wondering whether to continue following Christian Science, simply to study Acts 1-9 with fresh eyes and see if they find there any support for such familiar contentions of Mary Baker Eddy as these:

• That man is perfect and not really a sinner.
• That Jesus only seemed to have died on the cross.
• That Christ and Jesus are not one and the same person.
• That after the ascension Jesus’ human identity ceased to exist.
• That the Holy Spirit or Comforter didn’t come to us until 1866.
• That Christian healing requires a “scientific statement of being” to be fully effective.
• That God’s revelation of himself and his salvation plan in New Testament times was anything less than final (SH 107:5).

They will find St. Luke, the inspired writer, teaching just the opposite in every case. Remember how Mrs. Eddy invites the inquirer to “ascertain for yourself if the author has given you the correct interpretation of Scripture” (SH 547:6)?  Fair enough, so try it.

I wish someone had dared me to look over these first nine chapters of Acts and compare them with the false gospel of Science and Health, some time in the first 40 years of my life when I was under the spell of Christian Science.

I would have come to the Cross far sooner.