Mrs. Eddy knew the meaning of the prophecies intervening between the 12th & 19th chapters of Jesus’ Revelation to St. John. She said they “depict the fatal effects of trying to meet error (disobedience) with error” (lawyerly advice), based upon the false assumption that Mrs. Eddy had made a mistake in failing to provide for the continuance of The Mother Church after her passing. (S&H 568:8).

Why did not Mrs. Eddy make plain the spiritual import of her Manual provisions? Had she done so, her students’ obedience would have continued to be the thoughtless obedience that a mother demands of her children, which she had demanded of them under the Manual.

Only thoughtful obedience will encompass the prophesied confusion and struggle that lay between the final “half-time” of Motherhood, typed by The Mother Church, and the marriage of the Bride and the Lamb, typed by its Extension, and the descent of the City Foursquare, typed by the Concord Branch and other branches.

Thoughtful obedience must be preceded by letter obedience, as the Ten Commandments demanding outward thoughtless obedience were given by God, before the Ten Beatitudes lifted thought to higher meanings.

“Either...suffering or Science must...regenerate material sense and self.” (S&H 296:6-9).

The angelic vials of wrath will be understood as the demands of the revealed Word upon the thoughtless human mind which thoughtful obedience to the demands of scientific Truth would obviate. Only those who “worship the beast and his image, and who receive the mark of his name” (Rev. 14:11) are subject to these vials of wrath. Those who stand on “Mount Sion” with the Father’s name (the one Mind) written in their foreheads (typing thoughtful obedience) (Rev. 14:1) are unscathed.

After discovering the “divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, in 1866, and naming her discovery “Christian Science” (S&H 107:1), Mrs. Eddy was forced by the divine nature of these qualities to reveal them step by step to others so that her individual expression of the one Mind might be reached by all mankind.

However, after struggling for so many years to lift others to see her vision, through the practice, teaching, and writing about the Principle of Christian Healing, Mrs. Eddy discovered, in 1891, immediately prior to the forming of The Mother Church, that “spiritual teaching must always be by symbols.” (S&H 575:13). This latter-day discovery forced her to accept the necessity for the building and forming of the three tabernacles which Peter demanded, on the Mount of Jesus’ transfiguration, after Jesus had given him the Keys of the Kingdom of heaven, declaring that he would found his Church (“Society”: S&H 138:2) on Peter’s spiritual perception of the Christ.

The three tabernacles, as expressed in Science, are The (wilderness) Mother Church, built by Mrs. Eddy’s students; its heavenly Extension, built by the heavenly collective branches; and the earthly second Concord Branch, built by Mrs. Eddy, herself, with her followers’ support; to the end of showing her followers, through symbolic mediums, the way out of the consciousness she had been forced to express as Church (collective consciousness).

Thus Mrs. Eddy permitted the building of The (wilderness) Mother Church, as the symbol of Love in its second phase of its trinitarian nature as Life. However, just as Mrs. Eddy had been forced to figuratively pulled down the stones of Motherhood in the first tabernacle (The original Mother Church) by rejecting it for further physical occupancy and thoughtful occupance, she was likewise forced to pull down the stones of the Extension, in order that its earthly tabernacle (the second Concord Branch) might be discerned as the full expression of the descended Bride, the union of heaven and earth on earth, for no two tabernacles could stand at the same time without the lower tabernacle absorbing the influence of the higher, which has been the case with the continuance of the Extension of The Mother Church in its relationship to the branches, as attested by St. Paul when he said,

“The way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.” (Heb. 9:8).

Thus, the reversal of Mrs. Eddy’s plan to dissipate the “first tabernacle” (at this point, the Extension) has defeated the understanding of the second Concord Branch.

Just as Life can only be individually lived, and Truth can only be collectively demonstrated, Love can only be genetically felt by an individual after it (Love) has risen as Life to collective Truth in Church, and finally dissipated in Church’s erstwhile protective four walls.

Thus Mrs. Eddy’s mission could not have been complete until she had thrown down the stones of the Extension so that her followers could enter into the last “half-time” of Love — the Bride as completed Word. (My. 125:26).

This Mrs. Eddy did in her Manual, which forbade the future thought-occupancy of the Extension as typing the second phase of Motherhood, as heavenly Bride.

By the imperative demands of the Manual, Mrs. Eddy simultaneously disposed of all the previous media through which she built the Word in human consciousness, to its finished final point of completion, such as the periodicals, the Board of Lectureship, and the Massachusetts Metaphysical College — particularly the periodicals after she had finally completed the Word of Science and Health in its finished spiritual purity.

She left no media by which her Word might become adulterated through faulty human interpretation on the part of those who had never understood the fuller meaning of her life-work.

Every word of these periodicals was previously subjected to her personal pre-scrutiny, before being published. Neither did she leave “unsupervised-by-her” lecturers to discourse or debate on this Word, and thus spread abroad what might conceivable be their own adulterations of the Word.

Mrs. Eddy did not permit the teaching of prospective teachers in the Normal Class of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College after she was no longer able to approve of the teachers of such classes, as the Manual requires, extraneous to the College teaching in her textbook, Science and Health.

Such latitude, unless censored by her, might result in being merely “one student’s opinion or modus operandi becoming the basis for others” (Mis. 156:15), and thus the Word would become adulterated by taking in the misapprehensions of others.

This danger did not attend the teaching of Primary Classes in the field, by previously authorized teachers, because they were under strict Manual-demand to merely ask questions, and have them answered from “Recapitulation.” Therefore Mrs. Eddy left them free to teach until there were no more qualified teachers; and hence until the Field rose to its prophesied status of as being “all taught of God” through the Word as Bride, which was “in the beginning...with God, and...was God.”

“The student, who receives his knowledge of Christian Science or metaphysical healing, from a human teacher, may be mistaken in judgement and demonstration, but God cannot mistake. No person can misuse this mental power if he is taught of God to discern it.” (S&H 455:17-27).

Thus, Mrs. Eddy forbade the continuance of these media agencies and left only the branches growing in the “city of our God” in one consciousness (Mind). This privilege can only be spiritually discerned outside of the limitations of Church, for Church divides “Mind into mind” and Being into beings.”

Like all loving and wise mothers, Mrs. Eddy constantly prepared the branches for the passing of Motherhood by demanding of them, in advance, absolute self-government, even to the disciplining of their own memberships. Whereas the members of The Mother Church were constantly forced to pass under the Rod of Manual provisions, having no voice in the government of The Mother Church, with even the Directors placed under Manual discipline.

The Publishing Society Deed of Trust gave its Trustees the power of self-perpetuation, only in case Mrs. Eddy did not elect to fill a vacancy, and in each and every instance of their replacement in case Mrs. Eddy herself elected to fill the vacancies among the Trustees, in line with her reserved option in the Publishing Society Deed of Trust.
Thus Mrs. Eddy held the reins of government in her own hands with reference to The Mother Church and its activities, until the time for Motherhood’s departure, leaving Motherhood as Leadership, and its responsibilities, with no none, and leaving no one prepared therefor.

No mother can expect a child to understand her until he has stood in her place, in the sense of assuming his own self-government, which demands her precedent withdrawal. No one could have understood Mrs. Eddy’s thoughts until she, by such withdrawal, left him to complete the Word in his own thought by standing in his own self-government which he must do before he can take her last step of Bride, which no one understood. All of her students still called her “Mother” at the time of her passing, unable to see her demonstration beyond mother; presaging their inability to do without her motherly ministrations when she passed on; for in order to do without them, they must of necessity have taken the step of self-motherhood, before her passing.

Mrs. Eddy must have known that her own students had not prepared themselves, by self-motherhood, for the cessation of motherly ministrations, and thus could not desert her children of the Word, since they had left all for her own conception of Christ, by their higher demonstration.

Jesus well knew that this struggle would come. After declaring their undying devotion for the cause of being “fishers of men,” his students returned to their old calling, three days after he was crucified. Thus Jesus prophesied (Rev. 13 to 19) a repetition of this backward step of the followers of Mother and Leader, and the terrific struggle the Church would experience before it rose to this privilege of thoughtful obedience.

But Jesus also prophesied of the final triumph of the Church. (Rev. 21 and 22) which Mrs. Eddy foresaw, that gave her the assurance that the provisions she made to sustain her church would only need to be temporary and outside of the Church. She made such temporary provisions completely independent of her church’s “Last Will and Testament,” contained in the Manual, which forbade the continuing activities of Mother so that these temporary provisions should be no impediment to her Manual-Plan for her Church when the church is able to understandingly bear it, and arise to its final demonstration of Christ.