12/17/65

…. for a very short while, closing tonight and reopening on the 4th of January, same place, same time. But I’m not sending out notices, so please remember the date. I will take a small ad to remind those who may read the Saturday paper, and that would appear on the 1st of January stating that we’re reopening on Tuesday, the 4th of January. Outside of that we have no notice to send. The subject will be “Your Future.” It will be based mostly on this level of Caesar, just a small portion given to your ultimate future. But on a whole it will be on this level. So if you have a friend you can tell him. For I have no other way of reaching him save through that small ad.

This being the last and Christmas follows within a week, I thought it best to give this as the last of the year. So my subject tonight is “Christmas,” as misunderstood as all the other great mysteries of scripture are. There are supposed to be one billion Christians and a week from tomorrow millions will fill the churches and hear the story as it never took place. So tonight I want to share with you what I know of Christmas from my own personal experience.

The evangelists are not recording incidents of the past as you record the story, say, of Abraham Lincoln. They tell what happened in the depths of the soul of Jesus. The resurrection, the birth from above, the discovery of the fatherhood of God, the rending of the curtain of the temple from top to bottom, the serpentine ascent of the Son of man, and the descent of the dove upon the risen Christ were seen and heard by none save Jesus. No mortal eye witnessed this series of events, yet man believes that at the birth a woman with her spouse were present when it happened, and three shepherds, mortal men, came in flesh and blood and witnessed it; and then the crowds came. They’ve even added things like the donkey and the little lamb and things of that sort. As the years go on they build it up and they really believe that these series of events were witnessed by mortal eye…and they were not. The evangelists were not telling that story…an entirely different story. They were not interested in the events in the life of Jesus between the physical birth and his physical death; they were simply concerned in telling the story of salvation. Theirs was essentially, well, a revelation of the risen Christ.

The Jesus you read about in the gospels is one with your own wonderful “I am,” that’s Jesus. One day you will discover it, one day you will know it from experience by the same series of supernatural experiences. Always bear in mind that Jesus is a wholly supernatural being. He’s in you now, actually in you now. When you say “I am,” before you say anything, that’s Christ Jesus. But he’s not awakened, he’s not aroused, but that’s Christ Jesus. And everything recorded in scripture of that Christ Jesus you will experience; for there’s only one Christ Jesus. You will experience it without loss of your individuality, the loss of identity.

It’s a very grave mistake in interpretation to ignore the out and out supernatural being that is Christ Jesus, this character that is in man, and try to explain him in some naturalistic way, as they will one week from tomorrow. They will tell of a unique being who was born of a physical woman of flesh and blood but he had no father; the Holy Spirit came upon her. If you take it in that light, well, then declare “I am Mary and birth to God must give, if I in blessedness for now and ever more would live.” If that is the story, then every person in the world, regardless of sex, is Mary.

That the Holy Spirit comes yes. The word Spirit is wind, it does come. It comes upon you and then you awaken. That is the beginning of the entire drama, the resurrection. So the resurrection comes first and you awake in the tomb of your own skull. While in that tomb, you know the drama, you know it intuitively, and then you come out as one that is being born. And the signs that accompany that event are recorded in scripture, and man has taken up the signs and personified it and made it something real, like flesh and blood. It’s only a sign of your own departure from the skull, from the tomb.

And then comes the series—for Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. For in a simple, simple way it is simply God in you awakening, stirring from a long, long self-imposed restriction in which he dreamed the dream of life. Then comes that moment in eternity where he awakens. And you haven’t changed; there is no other; it’s you, your own being, and you awaken to find that you haven’t changed at all. No one on the outside witnessed it. And when you tell it they will smile indulgently. The witnesses to the event could be, as it was in my own care, my own physical earthly brothers. But they know nothing of the fact that they were present, for they were present in the soul of me. Everything is in my soul and they were chosen to witness, but chosen in Spirit. So when I told them for the first time, they smiled. What wonderful dreams he has, as far as they’re concerned. And friends of mine, one a doctor, his first question was “Are they aware of it?” They’ll bring it right down to this level. They must be aware of it. “If when you meet them next year or year after next when you go to Barbados and they are not aware of it, then it has to be a dream, Neville, hallucination.” They can’t conceive of a supernatural being containing the whole vast world within himself and this selection of your earthly relatives to play a certain part that’s all to witness the event.

And so Christmas is not to be celebrated as something that took place on this level. Christmas is a completely wholly supernatural event that takes place in every child born of woman when that individual awakens. And may I tell you, it is awakening, it’s rising. As the very word itself when you define it in scripture…look up the word resurrection and the first definition given is “to rise and to awaken from sleep.” And you had no idea that you were asleep. You had no idea that the sleep took place in a tomb. You had no idea that sometime in eternity you entered death’s door, which is called a sepulcher; and that in that state you were placed into a profound sleep; and that you would dream the dream of life, this horrible dream; and in the end it would vanish just like a dream, for you will awake. And that you, of all people, regardless of your earthly history, you are Christ Jesus.

You walk the earth completely unknown by the three billion who walk with you. They pass you by and you’re not known, so you’re ignored. They don’t know that he as he walks by we have a neighbor this night who has had the entire series already unfolded within him. He may be the poorest in the neighborhood and so he is not wanted, for man judges in the world of Caesar by the little tags, the little earthly honors, ….and the bank account. And all these things stick upon him and he’s just so proud of them he tries to perpetuate them forever in this world, forever. And one comes without earthly goods, he has nothing, but it unfolds in him. His departure from this world would be marked when at the very last moment he takes off this garment for the last time. But all the others are restored to life to play and continue to play these parts and all these relationships until this happens in the individual.

So Christmas…yes, this glorious event takes place in you…and the being who is to be born, you have no father, you have no mother, other than your earthly father and mother here. But they didn’t give birth to you; you were self-born. You came out all by yourself and left the tomb empty. So we are told in the Book of John, when the wise men and the Sanhedrin came, he said to them, “You must be born again; for except you are born again you cannot in anywise enter the kingdom of God” (John3: 3,5). Well, he went away very sad of heart, for he couldn’t understand how a man his age, old in years, could be born again. And he said to him, “You a leader, a master of Israel, and you do not know that unless you’re born again you cannot enter the kingdom of God?” And he didn’t understand it.

When you read it, bear this in mind, you can always if you read “birth” it can be considered either from the father’s side or from the mother’s side. If it’s taken from the father’s side, the verb is always it’s meaning is “to beget”; if it’s from the mother’s side, it is “to bear.” John uses the verb anothin, “from above,” with the meaning “to beget.” It’s always from the father’s side; in other words, “begotten of God.” “Not begotten of blood, nor born of the flesh, nor born of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

So you’re told the Holy Spirit will come. Well, how does he come? Well, you wait and see. One night when you least expect it your head will seem to you as though it can’t take any more, there’s an intensity in it that you’ve never felt before. It’s all concentrated in your head but at the back of your head. And then it reaches the apex of intensity and you feel this is it. I either let it recede—and you have no control of it—or else I’m going to split wide open. Something is happening to me and I’m either going to completely split all open and they’ll find him and say a massive hemorrhage, or else it has to recede because you can’t take any more. At that apex of intensity you feel yourself waking as you’ve never wakened before. You’re waking, waking and suddenly you’re wide awake.

As you’re wide awake you rise and you stand, where?—in your own skull. There you are alone in a tomb, in a sepulcher, and you know if you pushed the base of that skull something will give. You do it, and you come out, just as a woman is bearing a child, in the same manner, inch by inch by inch. When the whole thing is done you come out and the whole thing unfolds before you, the witnesses and the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. You are invisible to those who witnessed this event. They only see the sign bearing the…or testifying to what happened to you.

Then you read back into the ancient scripture, the Old Testament, looking for some intimation or foreshadowing of this event. You’ll find it. And here you come upon the words, the 30th of Jeremiah: “Can a man bear a child?” Well, the answer, naturally, would be no. But he doesn’t wait for the answer, he answers: “Then why do I see every man with his hands on his hips drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? Why has the face turned so pale?” (Jer. 30:6). He doesn’t argue the point, he makes the bold statement, this is the word of the Lord speaking. He sees a man pulling himself out of himself. Well, that’s exactly what you do. The minute the head comes out of the base of the skull, you have one consuming desire to get out and you pull yourself out. You come as far as here and then you pull with all of your might and the whole of you slips out at the base of the skull, and you’re on the floor.

Then you rise and look back from this out of which you came and it’s ghastly pale; it looks like simply death itself. Out you come and before you know it witnesses are present. You go back into the story and read once more “And three appeared.” Who were they? They were heavenly visitors and they came to announce the birth to Abraham. Abraham looked up in the heat of the day, for he was seated in the door of his tent, and, behold, as he looked up three men stood before him. He didn’t see them approaching. They appeared out of nowhere and stood before him and bore witness to the fact that he is going to have and be giving birth to a child—one that is called laughter. For the name is Isaac, and he shall laugh (Gen.18:2). That’s why the name is called Isaac—it means “he laughs,” exactly what the little symbol does when you hold him in your hands.

So that is Christmas, the only Christmas in the world, and it comes to every man, every woman in the world. And so, until you get it right in and see it, you’re led astray with this strange concept of what Christmas really is. Christmas comes to all in his own good time. And as that wonderful West Indian carol sings out: “And man will live forevermore because of Christmas Day.” His Christmas…he now is the immortal being. Until then he dies, restored to life to die, to be restored to life to die, and the cycle goes on and on until his Christmas Day appears. Then he enters immortality to an inheritance, as you are told in the 1st chapter of the Book of Peter: “We are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading” (1:3). Can’t fade; it’s forever. It’s imperishable and completely undefiled. You enter and inherit the kingdom of God. Your inheritance is not fully realized by you while you’re still wearing garments of flesh and blood. But the moment you take it off your entrance there is assured by the events that took place while you walked within that interval from the cradle to the grave.

So they were not writing the story of a man from his little physical birth to his little physical death. In that interval, an unknown man experienced scripture and then went back into the scripture, and there in the volume of the book he could say, “This was written of me.” They didn’t believe it. How could this be written of you, you came thousands of years after these things were written? Ah, but the scribes searched and they could not find the Christ of whom they wrote and whose coming they foretold. They were looking in the wrong direction. They were organized by divine providence for spiritual communion, and they wrote under dictation, and left it for us.

But someone had to break the seal and interpret scripture, and so he’s “the first fruit of those what slept.” But because there’s only one Christ Jesus and that one Christ Jesus is in every man, you, too, when it happens will be the first fruit of those who slept. No one greater than you and no one less than you, all equal, all one, for Christ Jesus is God himself. It was God who assumed the limitation of man, the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity; and it was God who awoke in the grave that he imposed upon himself, and then began to expand. There’s no limit to his translucency, no limit to his expansion.

So here, the story is true, absolutely true and literally true, and will take place in every being in this world, but every being. No one will be lost. No one will be left aside, no matter what part you now play in the world. You may be judged harshly by society and condemned; but, nevertheless, your redemption is assured because the being dreaming you—even the horrible dreams that you may dream—is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ must awake in everyone. So Paul warned the world who taught that the resurrection was past, he said, “You’re leading the people astray and turning them from their faith by teaching that the resurrection is over.” The crucifixion is over but not the resurrection. The resurrection is taking place. He said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and became me” (Gal.2:20). He actually became me in the most literal sense; so I have no sense of two of us, he became me. I am the very being that was crucified. I’m crucified with him, and then he must rise in me, and when he rises in me, I am he, without loss of identity. And the name conferred upon the risen Christ in the experience of man is Jesus Christ, and he’s called Lord.

There are only a few of the great events that are obvious that no one witnessed but Jesus himself. The earliest gospel is Mark. It’s not placed chronologically as the first; it’s Matthew first, then Mark; but all scholars are agreed that Mark is the earliest gospel. From Mark, Matthew and Luke took it as their source and claimed that they had a better arrangement of the source material. But the earliest is Mark, and the first event that he records is the descent of the dove. As you read it over and over, I defy anyone to find in that description of the first chapter of Mark anything said about a witness other than Jesus himself. There was no witness to the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove…only Jesus. So you can take his word for it or you don’t.

So Jesus in man reveals what happened, and he tells you exactly what happened in the order in which they happened. So he tells you the first shall be last, and the last first. Well, the first recorded is the dove; it’s the last to happen. And then what is the last? What is now this one? The birth, called the first. Alright, the birth follows on the heels of the resurrection. The last thing is the resurrection as recorded in all, that’s the last; it’s the first! And the first recorded in Mark, the dove, that’s the last. The last shall be first and the first last. Doesn’t mean that you come into this world after others and being the last you’ll be the first, and those came first will be the last. No, the series of events are reversed in order. And the last event recorded is the resurrection…it will be the first. For the whole thing starts on the resurrection, God’s mightiest act in man—he awakens man.

When I tell you God became man that man may become God, I mean that literally, in the most literal sense. And to us it can’t describe the awe. You can’t describe the feeling that possesses you when you go back into the ancient scripture. In 1965 it happens to you. You go back and read a book…in the volume of the book written centuries ago it was all recorded and it was all about you. So you can say to anyone this was written about me. So every time that he cites scripture…the Book of Luke, the very first words put into his mouth are from the 61st of Isaiah, and he said, “This scripture has been fulfilled today. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor…and set the captive free” (verse 1). Then he closes the book and says the whole thing was fulfilled this day—he’s telling you it happened to him—closed the book and gave it to the attendant, and sat down; and all eyes were upon him (Luke 4:18).

They all knew him. “Why, that man is Joseph’s son. I know his brothers…his sisters are with us today. What is he talking about?” They were looking at it on this level. It’s not this level at all. So I could say to my brothers, “You witnessed,” and now I kid them about it. I can say to Lawrence, the one who found the child, “And this is the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. You can’t go first; I must go and prepare the place for you.” I kid him all the time. He’s my brother who is a doctor, and he’s been quite under the weather, and so to lift him up I’ll say, “After all, I may be the younger brother too, but I’ve got to go first. How could you go before me? You have no place to go unless I go and prepare it for you. So just have fun, because I’m not going yet. Just have fun, relax.” That sort of gives him a lift.

But he kids. After all, brothers are brothers, and we all know each other’s weaknesses. It hasn’t a thing to do with our position in this world. If it had anything to do with position in this world, well then, all those who are socially prominent, intellectually great, financially sound they would be chosen one by one. It’s not God’s order. They’re all being hatched out in order; he calls us according to his purpose; so his purpose which he set forth in Christ Jesus as a plan for the fullness of time (Eph.1: 9). So when the fullness of time comes to the individual, then his will according to his plan which he set forth in Christ is unfolded within you.

So he calls himself “the way.” Here is the way…there is no other way. I get this argument all the time. I go to San Francisco, New York, wherever I go: “But surely, Neville, God didn’t neglect the hundreds of millions of people all over the world; and so, their religion is just as true in that area as this.” I will go out on the limb, the very end of it, and tell you there’s only one way to the Father. He said, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes unto the Father except by me.” This is the only way and the series I’ve explained to you, the series I have named. It begins with the resurrection; the second is the birth from above; the third is the discovery of the fatherhood of God through his son and only through his son. The son is not Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ is God the father. The son is David.

The whole vast Old Testament was inspired by the spirit of Christ. It was the spirit of Christ who said in the 2nd Psalm: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” (verse 7). Then you see David not as a man as I am before you, you see David as the personification of all the generations of men, all of their experiences, fused into a single being, and that being personified called the eternal youth and he’s David, David of biblical fame. So in the Bible he is the one that they cannot say mortal eyes saw him. For he said, Why then did David in the spirit call Jesus Christ Lord? Why did he call him Adonay, the name which is used by every son of his father, my father, Adonay? In the spirit he called him—so they can’t say there were witnesses, mortal witnesses to that event. You read it in scripture.

So, as he said, he called me Father…then I’m a father. And you will stand amazed, aghast, and I’m speaking of priests, I’m speaking of the rabbis, I’m speaking of he Protestant ministers as I discussed with them as I go across the county. They can’t see it at all, that Jesus Christ is God the Father. So “When you see me you see the Father. How then can you say show us the Father? Have I been so long with you Philip and yet you do not know me? He who sees me sees the Father” (John14:8). And then, how would you know he’s a father? “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt.11:27). So David comes revealing me as God the Father. So he’ll reveal you as God the Father, and everyone is God the Father.

Well then, this unity of being…are we not one? Are we not now the fulfillment of scripture? “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut.6:4). It’s one Lord; it can’t be two and he calls me Lord. He’ll call you Lord, and without loss of identity we are one, a compound unity, one made up of others. Everyone with the same son, and that son the embodiment and personification of all the generations of men, and all that they’ve ever dreamed, all they’ve ever accomplished, fused into the single youth that scripture calls “eternity.” So, eternal youth is really the true personification of time, our eternity—not an old man with a scythe. It’s simply a young handsome, beautiful lad that you can’t describe his beauty, that’s David. So he comes and he reveals you as God the Father.

And then comes the curtain of the temple…and the Book of Hebrews, the 10th chapter, identifies the curtain of the temple with the body of Jesus. It’s your own body that is split from top to bottom; and it’s you (the Son of man) at the base of that severed body that like a serpent as the Son of man ascending into heaven. Then comes the descent of the dove upon you the risen Christ; for the Bible is only about the risen Christ. It’s not about the sleeping Jesus in man. That’s the crucifixion—and we all have been crucified with Christ, every one of us—in you. So he sleeps in man until that moment in eternity when the Holy Spirit awakens you. And the Holy Spirit comes like a strange unearthly wind, a peculiar wind, and all of a sudden it gets more intense and more intense and more intense, and you feel this is it. It either is some massive hemorrhage and tomorrow they’ll find the body on the bed, or else let it recede. It doesn’t recede; something entirely different happens as a result of it. What happens? You wake and you’ve never had such an awakening in your life before.

This whole thing is preceded by the most wonderful experience with children, as told us in the end of the Old Testament: All the children came. Well, I’ll tell you, take the widest avenue in our city that would be the width of the sidewalks. There were no tall buildings, nothing taller than three stories, but masterpieces of beauty. Just beautiful things beyond description but not more than three stories tall. Theses enormous sidewalks and streets about four times the width of the sidewalks, and the concert grand pianos at stated intervals down the sidewalks. These men would come and play, no money passed, just for the joy of playing. And there was a strange wonderful rivalry, a friendly rivalry between the great artists. And they all had their followings.

I was seated at a piano and there was an unwritten law that anyone who was seated was never asked to give it up. It was his until he desired to give it up. And at that moment, the crowd of kids, beautiful little children of ten, eleven, twelve, around their favorite and he was coming in my direction. A young woman, twenty-eight, twenty-nine…and I knew her motive in doing what she did…she quickly sat on my lap to make him a little bit envious. As he came and stood beside me, he could not ask me to give him the piano, so I took her by her seat this way and took her right up, put her on the side. Then I said it was my pleasure and he thanked me profusely. He looked into my face, and I could read his mind; he knew that he should know me but he couldn’t bring it back. But he knew he should know me and there he is struggling with himself to put a name, to put something on this face that is looking right into his eyes. But he turned to the keys and still looking at me and he began to play divinely. All of sudden out of the piano came the most beautiful geometrical patterns you’ve ever seen. Not only are they beautiful but they’re in color as he plays and a constant change of form and all beautiful in color. As I looked at him and looked at this wonderful display of beauty coming from his playing, I froze it. I knew I could do it if I could only arrest the activity within my Imagination. As I did this, these wonderful trees in bloom froze as I’m looking at it and seeing this power that I now possess, this peculiar power, unknown by anything on earth. I am actually taking the music that’s coming out in geometrical form and I freeze it.

At that moment the wind possessed me and the scene changed, and I am now waking from a deep, deep sleep. And then is when I awoke within the skull to find myself encased and sealed within the sepulcher of my own skull; after that followed the birth, and then the others. And the shock and the awe and the peculiar feeling that possessed me when I then read back into the ancient scripture and found all these intimations and all these foreshadowings, that it was truly said in the 40th Psalm: For in the book all this is written about me. And I didn’t know it was written about me. For I was one of the billion Christians who as a child I was up early in the morning Christmas morning, up at four, service started at five, and we looked forward to it. Up at four, all dressed, off to church.

Of course, I didn’t understand the story, but we had to get that behind us before we could come home and get our football and cricket that was always the present. Because we are a huge family and mother could ill-afford to give us each a present, so she gave us a communal present, a football and a cricket set. It was ours, not mine, not his, but ours. So we learned to play together, and in that learning to play and share together they built an enormous fortune because they still play together, they still share together. The one best qualified to lead no one envies his ability, they throw it at him. Like playing cricket, if you can do a better job opening bat, you go first. If you’re better going fourth, well then, wait until the fourth cricket is yours. So you play it based upon your ability. If you have no talent, put you in the last one; get you out at the very end. And so, that’s how we learned to play; and business simply followed into the footsteps of our playing soccer and cricket.

But here, as told in the end of the Old Testament…and the Old Testament ends upon a note of expectancy; the New Testament begins on the note of fulfillment. The whole thing is fulfilled in the gospel story. But our evangelists were not recording events and situations of the past as historians; they were simply telling the story of salvation as they themselves experienced salvation, as I am telling you tonight the story of salvation as it really is. Not from hearsay, I am telling it from my own, own experience. I have experienced it. I am not hiding the moment of departure, for that is all fixed. No one departs before his time and no one delays it. No matter how wise the doctor and what he thinks he does, he does not delay it. We go on time as we come in on time. You and I were born physically by the actions of powers seemingly beyond our own. And the Holy Spirit when it actually comes upon you, you don’t know it as yet that it is your very self. But you feel it as something other than yourself, but you feel it in yourself, that peculiar vibration that is a strange unearthly wind.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: (inaudible)

A: Well, John is the last of the gospels. Luke has been split from its original volume, because it used to be Luke-Acts. And scholars, oh, unnumbered years ago divided it and placed Acts as the fifth book and put John as the fourth book. But Luke-Acts once formed one volume by the same author, and all these authors are unknown. They’re all anonymous. No one knows the identity of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But as far as the gospel of John goes there are several rearrangements of the text. There’s one that is perfectly beautiful, but it’s so involved. You’d have to see it, and because of one verse here they take and put it here, and one chapter they put it there…as though someone went off to the printers and before he got there the manuscript fell and he couldn’t put it back. He didn’t know how to put it back in the order that it was given him, and so he did his best. But it’s obvious that it is not properly set—the end of a certain chapter does not move in and lead into the next. And yet, when we know the ancient scripts had no chapters, they had no paragraphs, they had no punctuation marks; they were simply one line after another. They were written on parchment and these parchments simply fell, and when reshuffled and rearranged they just didn’t fit. But some scholars have done a marvelous job and I have an arrangement of John at home that’s perfectly marvelous. It hasn’t been printed, but it’s been stated in bold type, “If you will follow this order, it will have a greater meaning, a greater sequence.”

But Luke-Acts formed one book. John now splits them and John is the fourth gospel and Acts becomes a book in itself where Paul, the character, is introduced for the first time. He witnesses the death of the first martyr and here he consents to his death, and then he is blinded by the light. No one will admit that mortal eye saw that. Here he saw the risen Christ in his glorified form and having persecuted the people of the Way it was too much. But he was a chosen vessel. In spite of his intensity on the negative side of violence he could be used, because he was just as intense for good as he was for evil; he wasn’t lukewarm. So Acts introduces Paul into scripture. But the same author who wrote Luke wrote Acts.

Q: (inaudible)

A: His first name was Saul and his transformation turned it from Saul to Paul. “Saul, Saul, Why persecutest thou me?” He’s called Saul…as Jacob was the one wrestling with the Lord through the night and then he was transformed into Israel…so his name became Israel. You find these strange changing of names in scripture. A change of name is a change of identity. We had in New York City a man that died this past year, he was known as Father Divine, and I think really the man was completely misunderstood. I met him twice. Little fella, wasn’t any bigger than that. Hair, not a hair on his bead, just like a billiard ball. But when he lived in Harlem he was equal to a thousand policemen. His presence was equal to a thousand policemen, and they’ll all tell you that today. The crime wave was a way down…this very presence. Yet he had shops all over, barber- shops, restaurants, laundries, all over. The first thing he did when you came to him for help he changed your name. A friend of mine, a very fine artist, had his home in Long Island, I went off to spend a very long weekend with him. Well, this Philippine served table and he was the cook. And so, Tom wouldn’t tell me a thing about him ‘til I arrived. So I arrived…I arrived in time for lunch, so he came on and as he served me he said, “Peace, it’s wonderful.” I looked at him…strange behavior for a butler…but nevertheless “Peace is wonderful.” He put it before me. The phone rang, when he answered instead of saying, “This is Mr. W’s. residence” he would say “Peace is wonderful.” So that was on the phone too.

Well, this went on…then Tom told me how he got him. He said I wanted a butler and I also wanted one who could not only butler he could also do the cooking. So this man came, sent by Father Divine, and he told his story to Tom. He said, When I went to the Father I didn’t have a nickel. I was unemployed, down and out. The Father said, “From this moment on your name is Real Gladness.” And when he went to Tom a little bit embarrassed to say my name is Real Gladness, and being a Philippine, he turned it around and said, “My name is Gladness Real.” So Tom hired him as Gladness Real. But it changed the man’s attitude towards himself. How could you be really glad about being poor? How could you be really glad if you can’t pay rent, can’t buy a loaf of bread? You couldn’t be really glad. So if you go out of here really wearing this name, you must be really glad about something. Well, start with your immediate need: “I’m really glad that I’m gainfully employed!” So he went out…in twenty-four hours he got the job with Tom.

And when it came to honesty, well, New York used to swear by the followers of Father Divine. No one put anything aside, hid anything. If you got someone from Father Divine, you could leave everything open completely, but everything. Not one thing was touched. The one thing they wouldn’t do, they wouldn’t wash cocktail glasses. They wouldn’t put liquor away. That was your job, because they didn’t touch liquor, no smoking, no drinking, no …., and that was their code, signed all over his big auditorium. I met him twice and I liked him, strapping fellow, small, about five feet. He died at the age of 102. Well, so you die at 102, suppose you are a little senile. People are senile when they’re twenty. So the last couple of years of his life he was a little senile. And so the New York papers just for headlines and all kinds of stupidity, the wrote up some unpleasant things in his obituary, “he was an old senile man.” But they didn’t know the real Father Divine…he was a great fellow…and I still say what the police say, “He was worth in New York City a thousand policemen, his very presence.” But there are people who resent anyone having something, and Father had all the best things in the world. He didn’t have one Rolls Royce, he had about six of them. And he always said he had no money, but he could pay for any housing cost in cash, one hundred dollar bills, and the place was $600,000…no credit…$600,000 peel it off.

He lived next to our late President Roosevelt in Hyde Park, and he used to fly this flag “FDR” on his mansion, enormous mansion. The FBI said to him one day, “Well, you can’t do this, that’s deceiving, that’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR.” He said, “Who said that’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt? That means Father Divine is in residence.” … FDR. And that’s what he did. So when he started off it was simply an enormous crowd of cars, all new cars, filled with a gay wonderful crowd. They were happy, always happy. I’ve gone to homes where they worked. They were spotless and as honest as anyone who walked this earth. No one locked up anything when someone came from Father Divine to clean for you or to do any service whatsoever. One day the police stupidly—or some politician playing for the grand stand—offended the Father … city, went off to Philadelphia, and then Harlem really became a place. But not when the Father was in Harlem.

But to go back to the point, his secret was change the man’s name; the name he is bearing isn’t bearing fruit. And his names were really marvelous, always joyful, always gay. Didn’t call you Mary Jones if your name was Smith, no, he puts on like Gladness Real, real gladness, real happy. Well, to walk the earth saying, “My name is Real Happy”…but it worked, it paid off in dividends.

Well, on the 4th of January, here, the same time, and the subject is “Your Future.” Thank you.–

Note: Father Divine most likely was 89 years old when he died not 102. See also why we are mentioning this because we’ve had issues with Neville’s age guessing abilities Are we supposed to believe a 113-year-old man was hopping on a plane to Ethiopia in 1957?).