09 Apr Nevile Goddard Lectures: “Eschatological Visions”
4/5/68
The culmination of the teaching of Jesus is reached in the thought of the mystical union of the disciple with the Father and the Son through the Spirit.
Now first of all, let me explain what I mean by Jesus and what I mean by disciple. Jesus is the pattern man. “He has made known unto me the purpose of his will which he set forth in Christ as a plan, as a pattern, for the fullness of time” (Eph.1:9). So that plan, that purpose, revealed in a pattern is Jesus Christ, the pattern man. The word disciple simply means “learner.” Anyone who hears from the one in whom the pattern has unfolded and believes it and learns more and more about the pattern is a disciple. You might think through tradition of Peter, James and John. No…you are…if you believe it. Anyone who hears the pattern, this incredible pattern of salvation, and believes it is a disciple. And then he learns more and more about the pattern. So that’s what I mean about this mystical union of the disciple, the learner, the one who heard it, with the Father and the Son of whom the pattern speaks; for he is speaking of his own unfoldment of the Father and the Son and this is brought about through the Spirit.
Now, tonight I have quite a few perfectly wonderful eschatological visions to share with you that came to me this week. They are perfectly marvelous. Here is a disciple, one who heard it and he believed it to the point of faithful following all so that he could hear more and more about the pattern. And so he writes this letter that I got this week, “You were on the platform teaching and you smiled at me, but in your eye was an intensity as you looked at me. And then you took a golden arrow and you shot it at me. On the side of the arrow was the word in bold, bold type ‘resurrection’ and it penetrated my forehead. Then you took a second arrow and you shot it at me. On the side of it in bold type was the word ‘David’ and it penetrated my chest. Then you took a third arrow and you shot it at me. On the side of that arrow was the word ‘ascension’; it penetrated my belly right to my spine. Then you took a fourth arrow and you shot it at me. It had no word on it, but there was a dove, a white dove on the arrow, and it struck me all over, every pore of my body was struck by that single arrow. I’ve never known such ecstasy of love. I felt like a spiritual springtime of pure, pure love.” Now, here is the perfect order of the unfolding of the pattern that penetrated him by his intensity and his interest and his persistency in hearing more and learning more and more of God’s plan of salvation.
Then he said, “Last Monday night this happened. In my dream a man that I have never seen before to my knowledge, but he invited us all to a great feast, and it was perfectly beautiful. There was such love in the atmosphere. Then he turned to me and he said: ‘I have prepared a great, great feast. I am coming again to take you with me. I am coming on the 17th.’” Now you take seventeen, it could be the seventeen, literally, but in symbolism seventeen is a marvelous number. When you write a number in Hebrew, you do not write, say, as we write it in the Arabic, 17; you write seven and you write ten…seventeen. So you must know the significance of seventeen. Look it up in your Concordance. It first appears in the 37th chapter of Genesis: “And Joseph was seventeen years old.” That’s the first appearance of the word seventeen. Then it comes with his father in the 47th chapter: “And Jacob was in Egypt seventeen years.”
But it really denotes a combination of seven and ten, and seven is “spiritual perfection” and ten is “ordinal perfection.” Here he has a perfect order that preceded this vision, the order of resurrection, then the discovery of David, then the ascension from the spine, and then the dove that smothers him all over in love. So he has the ordinal perfection and, therefore, spiritual perfection in this. I can say to him he has not a thing to fear. They can chop his head off tonight; they can’t stop the penetration of these arrows from a world beyond the world of dream. They cannot. He’s a complete being now with the pattern completely embedded in him. And in the not distant future the pattern of Jesus Christ will unfold within him.
Now, here is one…you take it to heart. The earliest gospel begins with the words, “In the beginning”…or, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The word gospel simply means “good news.” Not good advice, good news, the most incredible news in the world. How God actually redeems man: He becomes man that man may become God. That’s the good news. Now here, in her letter she said, “I found myself…you were present, but I cannot bring back any detail of what you did or what you represented. You were present, but outside of that I cannot say any episode or recall any episode, any sequence. So I will tell you what I recall. I was with our group…that is Jan and our group. We were walking in one direction, and then in another direction there were groups of women spaced, at intervals of space, and they seemed to be on a conveyor belt. They were not walking and they were being conveyed, like simply a moving platform. But we were walking and we were gay and happy, moving in the opposite direction.
“And the first group that I encountered was all dressed in black, with black shawls over their heads, and many of them were crying. They seemed to be a mournful crowd, and I had at the moment a feeling that this is a Catholic group, a Catholic religion. Then the next group were the most bitter, the most stern of stern faces, uncompromising, without compassion, self-righteous. You’ve never known such complete embodiment of self-righteousness of these women, and I felt they represented all the fundamentalists of religion, the unbending. They could ask no question because they knew it all. They knew everything and it was just as they knew it. And they were on the belt moving in the same direction.-
“Then I came upon another group of women and they were more friendly, they were amenable, and they could ask questions; they were seeking. One asked me a question, but I can’t recall the question. But I do recall what I told her, and I said to her, ‘You will find who you really are, and who God really is, and it is all there”…and with her right index finger she pointed to her forehead. Then she said, “I joined my crowd, I answered the question whatever it was, and then I jumped and leaped and, I would say, ran forward to rejoin the crowd, our group, all moving into the distance leaving them moving in the opposite direction.”
Now in the earliest gospel the turning point is to repent. Here, the very first words spoken by the pattern man: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14). Believe this good news. Well, repent means “a radical about face, a radical change of mind.” So that no matter what I think I now believe in, when the pattern is presented, can I so accept it that I can turn completely around from a physical Christ on the outside? Paul, “Are you so foolish…O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” You know what the word portray means? Look it up. I can portray in a letter, I can portray if I can draw, I can portray a drama on the stage. It’s “portrayed as crucified.” “Let me ask you only this…” said he, “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having received the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” (Gal.3:1).
So the turn-around is to turn from your belief in a fleshly being called Jesus Christ, a being of flesh and blood, to the spirit that is Christ—the pattern man, that pattern that is trying to awake within man. And as you turn around, you turn by exercising your right to change your mind. And in spite of all the facts of the world, you dare to believe what you would like to believe is true, in spite of the facts screaming at you. And so you turn around. You turn around in your mind and begin to practice what I call revision and the Bible calls repentance. It’s the same thing: To revise is to repeal. I revise, well then, I repealed it. So if I repeal a thing, I’ve changed it. And so, I may modify it, not completely repeal it, I may still hold onto a little bit of the physical nature, but eventually I’ll drop it all. When I completely turn around and start moving up, I will simply move forward with the spiritual Christ, the pattern that must unfold within all of us.
Now here is another one. This lady said, “I found myself”—this is a dream; I call this a most wonderful vision—“and my niece and I went to a neighbor’s house and there were numberless people there. There were rooms and rooms and rooms, all filled with people, and suddenly I knew I had to feed them. And then suddenly without giving them anything or doing anything they’re all eating. Many came up to me and extended their hand as though I had a tray in my hands. I had no tray but they extended their hand and when they withdrew it, they either had food or they had a drink in their hand. And I did nothing. I felt so detached from it all.
“And then I said to my niece, I want to leave, so we left this place and went home. I found three implements: there was a shovel, and there was a pitchfork, and there was a rake. I didn’t like where they were in the front of my house, so I put them on the side. Then when I went in, I met a friend. I’ve never seen her so thin, never in my life, and she was so thin. I’ve always known her plump. And she said to me, ‘My husband wants to see you.’ Well, her husband’s been dead for many, many years, but she said, ‘My husband wants to see you.’ She has been a widow for so many years. Then I looked out and here in the distance on the driveway was an enormous stable. I saw a man approaching with a straw hat and overalls. As he approached he had on the uniform of either a general or a colonel—it was the grey-blue of West Point—and he said to me that he’s going to show me my horse. He entered the house and here is this perfectly beautiful, magnificent white horse.”
Well, here is the symbol of the white horse. The only one who rode it in scripture is The Word of God, that is the pattern man called Jesus Christ. And it’s her horse; she’s going to ride it. So, if she rides it, well then, it’s Jesus Christ: The pattern will unfold within her. And here is the horse. Now she sees the reason for these three implements; for these are the three that you would use in the care of any horse. And he said, “We will keep your horse in the stable,” and there was no other horse in that enormous, big stable.
Then she said someone gave her a white dog, a very, very friendly white dog, and she took the dog up and it weighed about sixty or more pounds. Then she took an oval basket, about twenty-four inches long, and she made a little bed and placed the dog in it on its back. Then she covered it with a blanket, and as she tucked the blanket in, it felt like a baby. It didn’t seem strange to her that it felt like a baby…but the face was the dog. Well here, the dog symbolizes, in scripture, faith. It’s called Caleb, the only one that crossed the Styx, crossed over into Jordan, the Promised Land, with Joshua whose name means Jesus. It’s the Hebraic form of Jesus. And so here, faithful to the pattern man, here is the child that is promised. So she actually felt it and it didn’t seem strange, and tucking it in she woke. It was six in the morning and she said to herself, “I must remember this dream in detail,” and she fell asleep again.
This time, a man appears, and the man said to her, “Find me a surgeon.” Well, where to find a surgeon? He said to her, “Look into my skull,” and the skull fell apart, and she looks into the skull. Instead of seeing brains, as we who are not doctors have seen pictures of brains, it wasn’t brains, it was a red kidney-like substance that pulsed, it was alive and the whole thing was pulsing. And in it she found a little tiny head the size of a pea, a perfect head with a crown, and it seemed to grow. Then he said to her concerning the surgeon, “Feel my head.” The whole thing closed up now and it felt soft like silk. And then he said to her, “You know if the surgeon doesn’t come immediately, my skull is going to split open.” And then…first of all, she began to quote from my book Awakened Imagination, for she had been reading it the night before, the Coin of Heaven, how imagining creates reality…and he completely believed it, she said. Then he said to her, “If God…” or rather “the surgeon does not come immediately, my skull will split open and then I’ll be imagining out of this world.” Well, here is the perfect, perfect vision. This is all scripture really. Here the white horse—that’s Revelation—and the whole unfolding from within man…the child within the skull.
Then comes another one, she said, “I am in a deep cavern in the earth, and there is a long, long trough, really, with water, running water in this long, long trough. And this enormous white worm is in it. Sitting on the banks of this water is a babe, in the nude, about eight months old. He seems so completely in control of himself. He’s sitting up and in complete control, eight months old, looking at his extended hands.” She said, “You were up above it all and looking down at the child. I was looking at the child. And then, I heard myself repeating to myself, ‘Can a man bear a child?’ and I am waiting, repeating ‘Can a man bear a child?’” Well, that’s scripture, the 30th chapter of Jeremiah. So when one begins to express scripture…and that is eschatology for that comes at the very end of the journey, “Can a man bear a child?” These, all these visions are eschatological, every one of them that I’ve told you or I will tell you.
Here is one…it’s a weird one and you’d wonder what on earth does it mean? She said, “Here I am in this…I call it a dream…I am in a corral, a huge oval corral. There’s no one but myself. I don’t see myself but I am aware; I am just a center of awareness. There is no animal, not a thing but the beautiful sky and limitless expanse of this open country. And the gate of the corral is open. Hanging on the top of the gate post, like a side of beef, is half of the carcass of a human being, and it seemed to me natural to be there. It didn’t strike me as something that was wrong. It seemed perfectly natural that it should be hanging there.” And so, she said, “At that moment I looked at it, and I wondered, and then I woke.”
Well, I will tell her to get the significance of this, the 26th chapter of the Book of Exodus, the 12th verse, but there it is called a half of a curtain. The 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Hebrews gives us the significance of the curtain: “He opened a new and living way through the curtain, that is, his flesh.” So the flesh you saw was simply representative of the curtain of the temple…as Moses saw it, and he had to execute it just as he saw it from above. But he saw it in the form of the curtain. And the New interprets the Old; it’s not the other way around. And so in the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Hebrews, the curtain is called “his flesh” and “he opened a new and living way for us through his flesh,” and so you saw the curtain that was torn from top to bottom. That is eschatological.
And here is one. She sat in her den and she must have dozed just for a few moments, and in that short interval she’s in a small boat in a turbulent sea. The sea is turbulent and raging. There is no steering gear and no sails, just the mast and a crossbar, like a cross, on the prow. She is in the nude. She climbs the mast and extends her hands on the crossbar like a cross, to use her body as the sail…as that which would give power and direction towards a haven. Now, she said, “What significance it has I do not know.” It has tremendous significance. First of all, let me quote, you’ll find the 28th chapter of Job, the 8th verse, and you’ll find in the 7th chapter, the 2nd verse of Daniel. And Daniel said, “I saw in my vision by the night, and behold the four winds of heaven were stirring up the deep sea.” And the phrase “were stirring up,” the Hebrew word translation was “stirring up” is translated in Micah, the 4th chapter, the 10th verse it’s translated “of a woman in labor.” That same word in Micah, which is translated “were stirring up,” that is “great irritation” is “the woman in labor.” So I can say to her, you are this night, my dear, in labor.
And being on the cross, what can you bring forth but Christ? You have to bring forth the pattern. Christ is the pattern, that’s all that Christ is, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And that pattern you are, and you are in labor, and you’re going to bring forth this pattern. So that’s your vision. It took, what, a moment? So what? A thousand years is as a day in the mind, in the eye of God. So you sat in the den and you nodded, just for a moment, but in that one moment you saw what you are doing. The depth of your own being revealed to you that you are in labor and you are bringing forth Christ. So I can’t tell you my thrill in receiving these this week. Every one is eschatology, every one, the drama of The End. That’s all that matters. For the purpose of life is to fulfill scripture; there is no other purpose.
Tonight, our whole country is disturbed because of the death of one man by one man. I will tell you, the man who was killed and the man who killed him are one; and both will be gathered together in the bosom of the risen Lord, the most intimate brothers, having played their part in this world. The most intimate brothers with a love transcending anything known to man on earth, both the one who was murdered and the one who murdered. They did not know it and the world doesn’t know that we are one. And so, tonight, on this level, the country has good reason to be concerned and to make all these speeches on the air and television. Certainly, I would not deny it and on this level all that is in order. But I’ll tell you, they are one, and the one being who played both parts is God. God is a Protean being, he plays all the parts in the world. And maybe this death…unless violence erupts and takes away its significance…it could foster and further what he stood for one thousand-fold and far, far quicker than anything else in the world. If there is, on the other hand, a denial of sacrifice, well then, it could again delay it. But he of one race who was killed and one of another race who killed him are both one. For “in Christ there is no bond, no free, no Greek, no Jew, no male, no female, but one” (Gal.3:28); so there’s no black, no white, no yellow, no pink, no red, just one, all one.
So, what I am trying to say, having unfolded the pattern within me, that the end, the culmination of the teaching, you’ll find in the thought of this mystical union of the one who hears believing with the Father and the Son. And this is brought about through the Spirit. For you receive the Spirit by hearing, that’s how you received it. Now don’t be foolish, having received it through hearing return once more to the flesh (Gal. 3:1), and see a physical savior on the outside; for there is no physical savior on the outside.
So, in this glorious 17th of John, he said: “O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these believe that thou hast sent me. I have made known unto them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them” (verse 25). For where would he go? If he’s going to the Father, and he is the Father, and the Father is in you, then where would he go? So, he will never be so far off as even to be near when he goes, for nearness implies separation. And if he’s going to the Father, and I and the Father are one, everyone can say that, then where can he go? So when he comes, can he come in any other way than the unfolding of himself which is the pattern in you? He can’t come in any other way. Don’t look for him coming as flesh and blood from without. He returns and he is only a pattern man. And when he returns to you, he returns unfolding himself as the pattern in you, for you are Spirit. And in the end all will awaken and all will be one; they will not be two. There’s only one God, “one body, one Lord, one hope, one faith, one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:4). And we are that one…all returning one by one into the one body, the one Spirit, the one Father.
You dwell upon it. I tell you tonight, in spite of all the turmoil in our country tonight and the world, really, for men are thinking on the lowest level, but the very lowest level, and they are trying to solve the problems of the world on the lowest level, and you can’t do it. You solve it by repentance and repentance is simply radical change of attitudes of mind. You confront a fact, alright, so what? Is everything possible to God? Alright, so that’s a fact, so what? I can resolve it. If all things are possible to God and his name is I AM, at this very moment can I not assume that things are as I would like them to be? Well, who assumed it? I did. Well, therefore you mean I am assuming it? Yes. Well, that’s his name. And all things are possible to God? Well, that’s his name…I AM. But now have faith in God, have faith in that imaginal act. Don’t go astray, have faith in that imaginal act. That turns you around and keeps you turned around if you practice repentance, practice revision. And if you practice it you’ll be on the way. You’ll find a group who will be friendly and amenable, who will ask, and you’ll be bold enough to tell them, “You will find God, and you will find who you really are, and it’s all there.” You had that courage to tell them it’s all there [within]. He’s not coming from without, he’s all there.
And when he unfolds himself within you, it’s simply a pattern; that perfect pattern that my friend Bill received with the four golden arrows as I told you quite a few months ago. Who knows what the awakened man in the world beyond the world of dreams is doing when he shoots his arrows. You might have the tape, I don’t have it, and you will find what one does in that realm beyond the world of dream when he’s completely awake and he shoots his arrows in the perfect order. You can’t deviate from God’s plan. Well, if you awaken within yourself and it’s the plan that awoke, you are the plan that is awake. And so you shoot the plan to those you love.
Now, in the story of the piece of beef, she said, “Strangely enough, I looked at it and it seemed perfectly right to be there. The only emotion that permeated me was one of infinite freedom.” Well, that is freedom…to go through the curtain. You free yourself from the world of sin and death, the new and living way through the curtain. Certainly you have to have the experience of freedom. She said, “I only felt free. I felt infinite freedom. And I can’t explain it, but that was the one emotion that permeated my being as I looked at it. And then I woke, not knowing for one moment that it had any significance.” Tremendous significance, my dear! So, all these have. So you take the passages that I’ve quoted and see how they are related to the vision. It’s all in scripture…and you’ve all brought forth scripture…but you’ve brought forth the passages that are dealing with eschatology. Eschatology simply means “the doctrine of The End, the doctrine of the last things,” the things where man turns from this age into that age.
Now, this may seem a deep spiritual night to many of you, but, may I tell you, it’s practical. Give your attention to this and you will leave all this on the belt that is moving automatically. For the belt is moving in one direction. And they are all self-complacent. They are very, very contained within their own little sphere and they know that they are right, and they’re all self-righteous, and in hell the only conversation is self-righteousness. There is no forgiveness of sin in hell. It’s all self-righteousness, justifying oneself. One of the greatest of all human weaknesses is the necessity of always being right. That is what that conveyor belt is taking down, until one group becomes loose enough to ask questions. And then, whether that one who asked accepted it or not is irrelevant. But they asked and they got a direct answer with a direct indication as to where it’s going to come from. When you find God, you’re going to find him there, and when you find yourself you’re going to find it there. And when you find the two, you are he: I and my Father are one. That’s what you’re going to find eventually.
So here, if you haven’t read it, that beautiful 17th of John, I think it’s one of the most glorious things ever written! “O Father, I have manifested thy name to those thou gavest to me. They were yours and you gavest them me.” And then he said, “I in thee and thou in me and I in them…that they may be made perfect in one, for you and I are one.” For he tells you who he is: For God and his pattern are one. “In the beginning was the Word”—the pattern, the plan, the meaning of it all—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). So the pattern and he who sent the pattern are one. So you’re told all through the 17th of John, he mentions several times, “They believe that thou sent me” and then, “I say this that they may believe that you sent me.” He’s always telling you that he was sent, and the sender and the sent are one, for I and my Father are one. So the Father sends himself as a pattern and the pattern unfolds in man. The man in whom it unfolds tells it, and he has always a remnant who will hear it and believe it. He’s not going to get the whole vast world to believe it, for they are moving on the conveyor belt, moving down. And they hear the call, and the call is to repent, but they don’t stop to change their beliefs one moment.
I have an aunt. She’s still with us in this world, she’s ninety-odd, and she was born and raised in what is called The Brothers, the most bigoted Christian organization…if you can use the word Christian…but they call themselves Christian. And I recall years ago…for I was always in love with the Bible…her name is Maude. We were discussing something and I said, “Well, Maude, don’t you know that the Bible teaches that Jesus had brothers?” “What?” She almost smacked me in the face. She was my aunt, my father’s sister, and she denied it. I said, “Now you are supposed to be a good Christian. You’re always in church, seven days a week you’re there praying.” And she wouldn’t let her only child a daughter marry a man who is of the same Christian belief but not a Brother. Because he wasn’t a Brother he was a child of the devil. So she would deny this union of love because he was of the devil while she was an angel because she was born of her, one of the Brothers.
I said, “Bring your Bible. I couldn’t bring mine because I don’t have it with me” and I opened up to the 6th of Mark and said, “Read it for yourself. They not only are mentioned but they are named, four of them are named.” She opened it up in her own Bible, she read it, and she slammed it this way, rushed back into the bedroom, and never came out. She still remained unchanged. She read it but could not believe it. She wished she could have torn it out, but there she remained, completely unchanged. She still is the same unchanged woman to this day in her nineties. The only reason she loved my father is because he sent her a good, handsome, big check every month…because he drank like a fish and she never drank in her life and my father drank heavily. But he made a lot of money, she admired him for that and aside from making the money every month, and after he died, he saw to it that the family continued the gift. So she never failed to get her big monthly check from the brother who drank like a fish…and who raised one who is a devil.
And so, that is on the conveyor belt, can’t stop it. I tried that moment, unknowingly, to change her, to get her to go back and read her Bible with a different understanding. Oh no, she was already fixed. Don’t bring me the facts; my mind is made up. So she has all that she wants to believe in and she’s on the conveyor belt. She will die eventually, for she’s ninety-five now, so she’ll die eventually to find herself restored to life in a world just like this, with a body same as before but new, young and nothing missing. And she will not even know what miracle has taken place to restore her to such youth, but she will still have the same fixed beliefs. And she’ll go through another pattern of events to get her to become proximate matter. Know what proximate matter is? It’s matter that is made so it could receive a form. Well, like taking a piece of wax and you simply soften it, bring it the point where it can receive a seal. For in that first chapter of Hebrews when we are told that “he is the express image of his person,” here is the son who is the express image of the father. That means, the impression of a seal on wax—not something that looks like it, it’s the identical. It’s the express image of his person. And so, she has to go through and simply become amenable. And so, that proximate matter will be brought to the point where it can receive a form, and the form we receive is the image of God. And so, what my friend saw in the skull was simply that proximate matter that was being molded, and shaped, and made more pliable to receive the impression.
Now let us go into the Silence.
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Q: (inaudible)
A: ___(??)keep them coming, they’re perfectly marvelous. My dear, as far as I am concerned, there’s no assurance that you will find yourself a member of the same family. You may find yourself in a different section of time, a time best suited for the work yet to be done. But you will find yourself restored, young, beautiful, not a thing missing. You will not be wearing glasses, you will not have anything of your body that is missing, all restored, and a girl about twenty, altogether lovely, altogether beautiful. And you can’t account for the newness of the form…but in a world just like this, where there is also marriage and giving in marriage as taught in scripture. For it still belongs to this age. Until the pattern unfolds in man he remains in this age, and this age does not end with what the world calls death. In other words, my world does not terminate at that point where my senses cease to register it. It’s vaster than that.
So the little three score-ten does not measure life. It’s a very large circle. And so, I may find myself in the year sixty-eight. Like the Rev. King tonight, he may find himself in the year 1,000 or 3,000. He’s in an environment best suited for that pattern, for I’m only concerned with the unfolding of the pattern, which is Christ in man. Christ is the plan of God and it’s the pattern of God. It’s in man. And whatever is best suited for that unfoldment, he’ll find himself there. For “He who began the good work in you will bring to conclusion”—when?—“at the day of Jesus Christ,” at that day of the unfolding of the pattern (Php.1:6).
So, you’ll find yourself just not in time ___(??), immediately you’re restored. It’s a miraculous restoration of a being. And no one in this world, and I can’t explain it, no one can explain how a man who is turned into dust…you put him into the incinerator and here is nothing but dust that was a man…how could that be restored? Well, he never was that. He wore that garment and the garment is turned to dust, alright; but he you never saw while he wore the mask that was here. That once more brings forth the same image of himself but young. Not through the womb of a woman—no such thing as rebirth through the womb of woman. He’s not a baby. He’s simply a young man, a young woman.
And in an environment…and strangely enough, it’s always something that he feels that he’s at home in, he’s not a stranger to it. And you get married there too, may I tell you. And there they are just as afraid of dying as they are here. Because they do die, as told us in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke: “Those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage for they cannot die any more for they are sons of the resurrection, sons of God” (verse 34). That would imply, and you don’t have to be a brilliant mind to see that if they die no more, those who have not attained to that age must, therefore, die some more. And they go through these stages of passing through, and they’re called dead; but they are not dead, not to themselves. They die only to those who cannot extend the sense of feeling, or sight, or touch, and get them. But they’re not dead, not to themselves.
So that ___(??) perfect, because the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. And they asked a question: A man had a wife; he died leaving no offspring; and the law of Moses said she should marry a brother. Well, there were seven brothers and they all married her, and all died leaving no offspring, and she died. Whose wife is she in the resurrection? (Luke 20:35). They said this to trip him up, because they did not believe in the resurrection. They were the Sadducees, what we call today our scientists. Today’s scientists are the Sadducees of scripture, and they cannot conceive the thing reduced to dust, if that is all that man is, the body that he wears not knowing that he’s wearing it, they think he is the body, so you reduce it to dust, he’s gone. He leaves behind a record of any accomplishment, but that’s all that he is…just the record of what he did. So he’s gone.
So they asked that question and he said: “The sons of this age they marry and they are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, for they are sons of the resurrection, being sons of God.” That is something entirely different, a new age altogether that they enter by the unfolding of the pattern of Christ within them. So one in whom it has not unfolded, he still lives, for God is a God of the living. So he lives in a body just like this, cut it and it’ll bleed, it’ll hurt. And he will get married. All the things of this world will happen just as it happens here. For life does not begin and end from the cradle to the grave. But this world into which we go is not through the womb of woman. You’ve been through that and you aren’t going to go through it again. Your second birth is not through the womb but through the skull.
Good night.