A common thread in this week’s Bible lesson is the war between Spirit and flesh, i.e. Christ and antichrist.
“Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error.” (SH 315.)
70 years after king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed the temple at Jerusalem, Babylon fell and was now a subject of the Persian empire, ruled by the excellent Cyrus the Great, who decreed that the temple of God be rebuilt.
This history prefigures what must be fulfilled in our day, this very moment: the liberation of Christianity – and Christian Science in particular – from antichrist captivity.
Joshua son of Jozadak was high priest of the Hebrews about to be released from captivity. Zechariah’s vision of Joshua features what we now know as the angel of Christian Science as revealed in the Apocalypse of John. Zechariah saw Joshua “standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him….Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.”
After the Prodigal’s return from his self-imposed captivity in a strange and far-off land, his “father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him.” (Luke 15:22, emphasis added.)
The two olive trees (or “witnesses”) in Zechariah’s vision also prefigure the two greatest adversaries of the antichrist in history: Jesus and Mrs. Eddy, understood impersonally. Of the antichrist, Mrs. Eddy warns: “If you stay here until you learn to handle animal magnetism, I will make healers of you. I had to do it and did it for forty years and I understood it all. Now it has gotten to the point where the students must take up this work and meet animal magnetism. I cannot do it for you, you must do it yourself, and unless it is done, the Cause will perish and we will go along another 1,900 years with the world sunk into the blackest night.”
God is clothed with light like a garment, and so must I, like Joshua the high priest, tarry before the holy angel until I know as I am known, transformed from glory to glory into image and likeness of God. (Psalm 104:2.)
In the Adam-dream version of the Creation story, Adam and Eve are given coats of animal skins, the result of their putting on the animality of the flesh, their refusal to be clothed in Spirit. (Genesis 3:21.)
“Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ [i.e., the ‘Robe of Science’], and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” (Romans 13:14.)
“And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep….Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel [“descendant of Babylon”], saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.” (Zechariah 4:1, 6-7, emphasis added.)