9/20/68

Tonight’s title is “Fall and Restoration.” We are told that men fell because of disobedience, that the act of disobedience separated man from God, but man should study the scriptures so that he would not feel so guilty. For in the scriptures we read that “God consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all” (Rom. 11:32 RVS).

Now, I know from experience that if a man feels that his background is important, he acts as one who is important. There are those who feel that, well, my ancestor was a president of our great country, and they carry it in the background with them. It influences their behavior. If I asked you, do you have anything in the background that you would consider important, you may say no, I have no truly great ancestor. That is because you have forgotten. So tonight we’ll bring to you who you really are.

We are told in the 82nd Psalm—and it’s considered one of the most difficult of all the psalms—they say the ideas may be perennial, but the meanings have long since escaped us…we do not know just what they mean. Well, here are just a couple of verses and this is the Lord speaking, that “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O princes’” (verses 1, 6). Well now, take the last part, you are proclaimed sons of God, all. These words are addressed to you, you who are here tonight, and to every child born of woman, regardless of race, regardless of nationality. Every child born of woman is addressed in this psalm: “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall as one man, O princes.’” So evidently those who are addressed are not men; otherwise the forecasting of their death like men would have no meaning whatsoever. Then who are they? What do they look like? It’s not described. But if they were men, it would be stupid to say you will die like men. As a man, I know I will die like a man. But then I am told, first of all, I am a god…I am the Son of God. Nevertheless (here comes the grand experiment) you shall die—like what?—like men. Therefore I could not have been a man when these words were addressed to me.

Well, here is the plot for expansion and an ultimate birth. Therefore, what did we resemble? I can only suggest it. I could no more describe it than I could this very moment take off and start through, with my physical body, the wall. But I can turn to scripture and get you to use your Imagination. But don’t come to any definite conclusion, don’t. The fall is associated so much in symbolism with a serpent, God’s wisest creature, and he said to man, that is generic man, for he speaks now to woman: “Did God say that you would die?” and she answered, “Yes, if I ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” He answered, “God knows you will not really die. But your eyes will be opened, and you will become like the gods knowing good and evil” (verses 1-5). Then in the same chapter, which is the 3rd of Genesis, God speaks now and said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (verse 22). It must have been the same technique employed by that state to know good and evil. So he takes the next layer and raises it to know good and evil by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But, nevertheless it’s a serpent.

Now take the vision of Isaiah, “And I beheld the Lord sitting on a throne, lifted up. Behind him and above were the seraphim,” these fiery beings (Is. 6:2). They were fiery serpents. Now you take the word seraphim and analyze it from the Hebrew and get the definition of it. It is called “glorious, celestial beings, fiery serpents, noble ones, princes.” The same word used in, “…you will die…O princes” (Ps. 82: 1, 6). Here is the being…now, I do not know if you recall our friend Marta…she always sat here…the first lady that I would greet when I came down into the auditorium, well, she departed this world on the 19th of July. I was in San Francisco. So a friend of hers who is here tonight, they were together in Laguna, they went down to see the festival, the art festival. They stopped at a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and while at the table she said, “Oh, what a strange feeling” and fell right over and Marta was gone. Well, “within the week,” she said, “I saw Marta…same Marta, gay and happy, and she was in a cage, heart shaped, but the heart was inverted so that the base was wider than the top and a line of division between the two. She was on one side and on the other side this enormous serpent. It had rings of color from the tail up to the very top.” Marta said to her, “After 6,000 years, man and the serpent become one.” Then she said, “I noticed these lovely colors, beautifully matched, all blending perfectly from the tail all the way up.” She said, “You know, you can tell the age of the serpent if you know the colors.” My friend Marge who wrote me the letter said, “She read from a book in which this was stated in the dream, in the vision. Then she turned to Marta and said, ‘Well, if Neville says so, it’s so.’” Then she woke.

Now we are told in scripture, “God speaks to man through the language of dream and makes himself known in vision” (Num. 12:6). So here is a vision. She came to the end of the road and I know that she has completely finished the drama. But here the two become one. How can you blend man and the serpent? What would you get? Don’t try to speculate. For here, this being is a fiery being, a glorious being. When Isaiah saw it he saw it with six wings, two covering the face, two the feet, and two used for propulsion. But you can’t describe heavenly beings. This is only an attempt on the part of man to describe what cannot be described, for we have no imagery in this world to describe heavenly beings, we don’t have it. But you dwell upon it, and tonight when you leave here, don’t go back to any earthly ancestor to feel great. You go back to the 82nd Psalm if you really want to feel who you really are: “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O princes.”

So one man containing all within itself falls into division and then resurrects into unity. As we are told in Ephesians that the fall, the structure is growing into a holy temple in the Lord…in whom you also are built in (2:21)…one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. One fell into division; all will be gathered one by one into unity, and that is resurrection. I call it in my title restoration, but I keep the word restoration for a different purpose. It’s resurrection, and that act of resurrection is God’s most mighty act in awakening his sons who deliberately fell into the world of decay and death. For this world is the world of decay and death, where everything dies, but everything. But if you dwell this night on your real being, it isn’t that you have an ancestor who is a son of God, you are that son spoken of but you’ve forgotten. You had to completely empty yourself of all that you really are and take upon yourself the limitations of this cross called man, and become obedient unto death, giving up everything for the experiment, the experience. When you are called, it is at that moment of resurrection; and when you are awakened from within yourself, that is your birth from above, which was the hope before we fell into the world of death. For, the grand hope was expansion and ultimate birth.

So we came down, and when we return we are beyond the wildest dream greater than we were prior to the descent. And so we did nothing that was wrong. So then we are told that we disobeyed and that act of disobedience separated us from God. May I tell you, suppose now you the being spoken of as the Son of God, without defining exactly what it looks like—it certainly isn’t man, for he falls into man and dies like men—but the one addressed is certainly not man if you read the story carefully. So don’t try to find out what it looks like. But there you are a being beyond the wildest dream of man. It’s not your ancestor, it’s you. Well, if disobedience brought me into this sphere, suppose now I took this being and with his consent—“For no man takes away my life, I lay it down myself; I have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again”—so with my consent I took upon myself this garment of an animal called man, filled to overflowing with passions. But I emptied myself first of my power and my wisdom so that I could not restrain the impulse of the animal. Then I am told, on threat of death if you entertain one concupiscent thought you die. You sentence me to death. The drama is psychological; it isn’t physical. I can restrain all the impulses of the world physically. I may contemplate an act and it seems pleasant and so I may be inclined to do it. I contemplate the act along with its consequences and I may restrain the impulse to do it. That isn’t good enough. I am told in scripture, “You have heard it said of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that any man who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart” (Mat. 5:28). Well, every man has committed it.

He puts the whole drama into a psychological frame. It’s not good enough to restrain the impulse; I mustn’t even have the impulse. Therefore God consigned me to disobedience by giving me the garment of an animal and then telling me on the threat of death if you entertain one concupiscent thought you shall die. Then I must die. So that is man’s disobedience and so man is not to blame. And may I tell you, God does not blame man. There is not a thing he has ever done that God sees in the act something to be blamed, for he placed him in these garments. But in the end, God in his infinite mercy will step beyond and arouse man. When he arouses him, he is not man that you see, he’s awakening his Son. But by then it is something entirely different. He has tasted what it is to be man, he has tasted what it is to be in this world of death, and he will add to his glory whatever that is he can extract from man.

But don’t try to make a mental picture as to what you were before you fell into this world of men. You are infinitely greater than any man that ever walked the face of this earth. You have no ancestor comparable to the being that you are. When I say you were, you only emptied yourself of it, but it’s still you, awaiting your return. But you’ll return expanded. You’ll return beyond the wildest dream of what you were prior to the fall. So one man containing all men fell into division, and then all are gathered one by one and redeemed into unity. So, the one will return. But it’s built slowly, as told us in the 2nd chapter of Ephesians. This structure is slowly built as a holy temple in the Lord in whom you also are built in (verse 21). So everyone is built into this one structure; and that one being fell. So let no one hereafter tell you, you did anything that was wrong in the descent into the world of decay and death. It was a challenge to God that he could die, literally die, and still live.

And then one day this is put upon you, and you begin to stir within yourself. And your brain begins to become alive and you awake to find yourself in a tomb, and the tomb is your skull, and then you come out. Now listen to the words carefully, “He is designated Son of God with power…by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). Now, if I asked you how old you are, you would say, well, I’m fifty, I’m thirty, I’m forty, and you would count from the moment that this little garment appeared in the world. You would count it, well, so many years, forty years. That’s not scripture. People do not read scripture carefully, because they carry to scripture their prefabricated misconceptions of scripture. And so, if they don’t see it, they’ll see it anyway. They’ve come with these prefabricated concepts and they’re going to see what isn’t there to be seen. The little child in scripture is a sign…that’s all that it is. “And this shall be a sign unto you.” That’s not a birth; that’s the sign of the birth. So when you’re told he was twelve years old, twelve from what, a little garment of flesh? No, Jesus Christ is a wholly supernatural being and has not a thing to do with this world of Caesar. That is the being that is buried in everyone in the world. That is the being that no one can see, because you can’t describe him. There is not any picture drawn in scripture concerning Jesus Christ, whether he was white, black, yellow, whether he was tall, short, fat, thin; there is no personal description of Jesus in scripture. How can you describe the Son who fell when he wasn’t man to begin with?

So that someone in you that is you is buried, and one day you will awake. You do not have any urge to look into a mirror to see what you look like, but you look at men and they can’t see you. You are invisible to them. But what a power! You are sheer power, sheer wisdom! And yet you’re not defining yourself. There’s not a thing here that you can use as imagery to describe the being that you are. He identifies resurrection with birth: Designated Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead. So man is born anew through the resurrection. The resurrection is not when a little body appears in the world. You’re walking this world, you may be twenty, you may be thirty, you may be sixty, when suddenly you’re called. As you’re called you begin to awaken, and that’s the moment of your resurrection. That’s the moment of this ultimate birth that was the hope before the fall of the one man.

May I tell you, it may seem too spiritual, but I know from experience if you will dwell upon this background…not that you have an ancestor who was or is a Son of God but that you are that. You’ve forgotten it deliberately for awhile but you are that. There’s no one on the face of the earth that could come near the dignity, the nobility of this being that you really are! That’s the seraphim, a glorious flaming serpent, a glorious celestial being, the noble one. That’s how it’s defined in scripture. I’ve read scholar after scholar as they attempt and they cannot come to any conclusion. All they can say is that he was around the throne of God.

And yet our association with a serpent is one that is evil. Now, here is my friend (she’s here tonight), she wrote me a letter recently. She said, “Here I saw this enormous serpent standing straight and its head was hooded, like a falcon, and a shield between it and whoever would be brought to face it. They came, and through tradition I felt and I was suspicious that he would bite them. But when they came out from his presence, they glowed. They were transformed and they radiated that quality that in his presence they seemed to take on. Then I was still afraid because of my association with the serpent. Then my mother came and began to anoint me with the most fragrant, fragrant, I would say, salve. And I asked her what she was doing. She said, ‘You are next. I’m preparing you because you are next.’ And I was scared to death because of my association with the serpent. So as I was prepared, the emotion was so intense I woke, and I do not know if I was actually faced with this being or not.”

I can tell her, yes, you woke, but it was done. And may I tell you, we become what we behold…but you can’t bring it back. You will eventually, because you will be it, the being that fell. When we return we are enhanced a thousand-fold, for we are only dealing with creativity. But man has eaten of the tree of good and evil, and he judges all day long—this is right, that’s wrong, this is right, that’s wrong—and he goes through life this way. God sees nothing that is either right or wrong: Let man do what he will, but in the end everyone will be redeemed. Everyone will return to that glory that was his before that the world was, only more glorious, more wonderful. So here, let no one hereafter tell you that you disobeyed God and for that disobedience you’re separated from God. This separation from God is at once a tragedy and a triumph; a tragedy because we fall into death, and a triumph because we will rise beyond what we were prior to the fall.

Now, Marta said 6,000 years. Every mystic sees it as 6,000 years, and if you read the scripture carefully, it’s 6,000 years, the journey. Blake said, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years dazzling around thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer” (Jer., Plt. 96). How can I describe to anyone that when you are split from top to bottom you don’t see a form, you see golden liquid light…and you know it is yourself. Looking at it you fuse with it, and then having fused, like a serpent you rise. So when you are born from above, you are designated Son of God. Son of God gives you power within yourself to raise the dead, as told us in the 5th chapter of John, “And the dead will hear his voice, and hearing it they will rise. As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (verse 26). Now, the Son of man has power of judgment on earth; the Son of God, the power to raise the dead. Everyone who is raised possesses that power and will be used to call his brothers out of the grave. He has the power to start it and there’s no power on earth equal to it. You can take all the hydrogen bombs in the world…it cannot arouse the dead. It can kill them; it can’t arouse them. But this power, you apply it to the sleeping one who has been asleep for 6,000 years, and you simply awaken him. He rises from the grave…and the grave is his own body in which he’s been sleeping for 6,000 years.

So tonight you dwell upon it. I’ll give you a simple little story. As a man called Neville, born of a large family, very poor, no educational background, no social background, no financial background, just a large poor family; but my mother was a very wise woman, and if we did anything that she thought unbecoming one of her children, she would say, “Have you forgotten that you are a Goddard?” That was our surname, still is. Well, we didn’t know, we were too young to now anything about these backgrounds, but the mere fact that mother said that we must have forgotten that we are Goddards to have done what we did, well then, you dwell upon it, you can’t disgrace the name Goddard. It must be important. Someday we will know who we really are. By that time it had become so ingrained in us that when we discovered we had no background, we still made the name important; with the result that the Goddards in Barbados today are the outstanding business people of the island. If you want a new venture, you go and see the Goddards first. If it’s in competition, don’t start it unless you bring them into the picture. And that’s their world…and they had nothing. So that now, year after year, they do a gross of thirty-odd million dollars and it grows and grows and grows. It’s a family corporation, it’s not public. It started with mother saying, “Have you forgotten you are a Goddard?”

So if you can take some silly little thing like that in the world of Caesar, and make it so important that in the world of Caesar that tree of money grows, just imagine what you could do if you go beyond the world of Caesar. Take the 82nd Psalm, “And God is taking his place in the divine congregation; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Then God speaks. Now, the word God is Elohim; and he speaks to the gods and that same word is Elohim—it’s plural. The word is a compound unity, one made up of others. It takes all of us redeemed to make God, the one God. So then you read, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4). So here, the Lord is one; Elohim, many, many gods. But it takes the Elohim all together to form the Lord which we call Yod He Vau He, Yahadonai…that’s how you sound it. But that is simply the one composed of the many. So he’s in the midst of the gods, and then he pronounces the judgment: “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all”—not a few—“all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O princes,” O seraphim, O glorious celestial beings. But you will empty yourself of your glory, your wisdom, your power, and take upon yourself garments of death and decay. And after a journey of horror of 6,000 years you will be redeemed with the experience of the 6,000 years, and therefore you will have expanded your wisdom, your power, your wealth. Everything that you had before will have expanded by reason of your descent into decay and death. So let no one tell you, you did anything that was wrong to be expelled and separated from the Father. It was a deliberate act for expansion and ultimate birth.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Are there any questions, please?

Q: (inaudible)

A: Jesus is a wholly supernatural being. His birth is not physical. No woman ever gave birth physically from the womb to Jesus. Jesus is buried in everyone. He is that one man, that pattern man that is buried in everyone. When he is born, at that moment of birth it is when he is resurrected. If you want to measure time—you will not see him because he is completely invisible—twelve years from that moment of his resurrection would be his twelfth year. Yet the Bible speaks of resurrection as coming at the very end of the journey.

Q: (inaudible)

A: The Good Samaritan? Personally, I find it so much easier to be the Good Samaritan. Far from doing it for reward, for someone looking down upon me and giving me credit, there is no credit in God’s world. But I find it easer to live with myself being the Good Samaritan. No one earns the kingdom by merit. You could be so good that you give your body to be burned, you give all your earthly goods away, but you can’t earn the kingdom; because the kingdom is grace, grace. It’s a gift unmerited, unearned. But it’s so much easier to be kind than to be unkind and the Samaritan is kind. Yet people think that they’re happy by being rude and being most unkind. They do not know what they’re missing. We all have friends who we like who go through life in this arrogant manner, because they have money or they think that they have a nice background, and they simply look down on everyone in their world from what they consider their perch.

I have them. You get into an elevator…I have a friend in New York City, she has multiple millions, and she prides herself that she is of the Adamses, our second president…named one of her sons after this ancestor. All the old portraits in the house…well, I wouldn’t put them in the dog house, but there they are hanging all over the place…and these are supposed to be ancestors. Well, I’ve gotten into the elevator in my apartment in New York City with her and the man that I loved, Pat, who would take care of my mail, look out for anything I wanted—I would tell anything to Pat; Pat was like a friend, a confidant—and she would speak in his presence as though he wasn’t present. In other words, she would say things most embarrassing because he was a worker. She never worked in her life, and anything that worked to her was just simply scum. Get into a taxi…I wanted to stop the taxi and get out. But she couldn’t help it, and she’s still that way today. So she has not a thing concerning the Good Samaritan. She doesn’t know what she’s missing…not a thing. But as you go through life and you play the part of the friend, the part of the Good Samaritan…for he asked, who was the friend, the stranger or those of his own race? For, they passed by and they didn’t want to be tarnished by this stranger who had blood on him. The Good Samaritan not only took care, put him into a home and said, “Whatever the expense is when I come by again this way I’ll pay it.” And he was a friend…yet he was not of the Jewish faith. The rabbi passed by and one of the members of the great high order passed by, but they wouldn’t touch him. Well, you find that in every walk of life.

So I would say to anyone, if you haven’t practiced it, try it, just try it. Ask for no reward, ask for nothing in return. Just try it; do it psychologically. You can’t afford to give a man a dollar…you can give it to him psychologically. That’s what we teach here. Assume that he has what you wish he had and persuade yourself that that assumption on your part was actually a fact, and he’ll get it. He does not know who did it therefore he doesn’t have to seek out the benefactor.

Any other questions?

Q: (inaudible)

A: The Bible teaches that. He calls it in the Bible the remnant…always the remnant. When Elijah said that they tried to kill him and there aren’t any left, the Lord said, “You get back, for I always have a remnant.” We are being prepared, at the end of our long journey we are being prepared to be taken out of it by this wonderful, most miraculous act which is the act of resurrection. So it comes to all walks of life and all denominations. But the Bible speaks of the remnant…he always has a remnant. And so he’ll never be without the remnant that he’s saving, because the temple is being built slowly. But it will be completed when all are being brought into it. Those who today show no interest, after the furnaces they’ll show interest. They will.

Q: (inaudible)

A: You’ll find that in the 5th chapter of John, the 25th verse concerning the Son of man. Then go forward two verses and you’ll find that concerning the Son…no, the Son of God is the 25th, the 27th is he Son of man. He is given power to pass judgment and his judgment is perfect. The Son of man is the one who is lifted up like the serpent; the Son of God is the one who is designated Son of God by his resurrection. Yet they are one, but exercising different powers from different spheres. The Son of God raises the dead.

Q: (inaudible)

A: The question is, “Do we do anything physically to receive the grace?” No, my dear, we don’t. It comes as a gift, unmerited, unearned, unexpected…like a thief in the night. But it was promised before we descended. We came down in faith that we would rise. And we could not pretend that we were men, we had to actually become men, these garments of defecation. And men hold on to them, mind you, expecting to go through eternity in garments that defecate when the garment they gave up has no need for food as we know it, for any elimination as we know it, completely above the organization of sex…creators without divided images. That’s the being you are. You were that being before you became man and you still are that being. So you dwell upon it, and if anyone brags about how important their ancestor was, you don’t have to be offensive—remember who you are! There is no man who ever walked the face of this earth that can compare to that Son of God, or sons of God addressed in that 82nd Psalm and you are the Son addressed there.

Q: (inaudible)

A: Well, in the Book of Isaiah we are told, “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction. For my own sake I do it, for my own sake I do it, for how should my name be dishonored? My glory I will not give to another” (Is. 48:10). You have to become God. And to become God…like putting ore into the furnace…it must be pure metal, pure gold. I can’t have anything with it, no alloy; and life itself is the furnace. There is no place called hell; you’re in hell right now. And if you don’t think you are, you ask anyone who is in Vietnam if he doesn’t think he’s in a greater hell than the priest ever painted for him. Or the one tonight facing disgrace because he was caught in the act—he doesn’t regret trying, few people do, they only regret being caught and then having to face the disgrace from being caught. So that’s hell. So the whole vast world, this is hell and it is death, decay and death. Death here does not mean the end of the furnaces unless you are resurrected. To depart here means to be restored as you were, only younger, unaccountably young and new, nothing missing; a young body; same as before but young, all your teeth, your hair, no organs missing, and a young strong body. Not a baby, a young man, a young woman, twenty years old, in an environment best suited for the work that is still to be done in you. And you’ll marry there too and there are divorce courts there too. There is marriage and giving in marriage and birth there too. Because this world is not measured by three score and ten; it’s measured by 6,000 years. There is marriage—read it in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke. The Sadducee, who is the modern scientist, they did not believe in the resurrection, so to trip him up they said, “Master, Moses taught that if a man marries and dies leaving no child, no offspring, and he has brothers, the brother should marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first one married, and left no offspring; the second took her and died leaving no offspring; the third took her, died, leaving no offspring and finally all married her leaving no offspring. In the resurrection whose wife is she?” He answered, “The sons of this age marry and they are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, for they are equal to the angels, sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (verses 27-37).

Well, if they cannot die any more, it implies unless they are resurrected they continue to die and they continue to marry and they continue to produce. In fact, one translation that I have at home instead of using the word marriage—“they marry and are given in marriage”—“they procreate and are born.” That’s how they translate the Greek phrase. They continue to procreate and are born in the world into which they go unless they are resurrected here. And in that world if they’re not resurrected here and they are on the verge of it, they’ll be resurrected there and depart from this stretch.

Well, the time is up…until Monday. Thank you.