Date unknown (1972)

“When truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”

For that is the story of scripture. The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint of the story of Jesus. A prophet’s vision is foreshortened, and they see as present what really is the future. So, we open a book of the Old Testament, and here you’re looking at a prophecy. It’s not history, not secular history. It’s a prophecy. Man is not aware of it.

There’s a rabbinical principle which states that what is not written in scripture is nonexistent. The story of Jesus follows this principle. But as the poet said, it’s embodied in a tale that it may enter in at lowly doors.

So, you and I hear the story like a little tale. Now, listen to these words. They are from the end of Luke, the 24th chapter – the last chapter of Luke. He had just explained scripture, beginning with the law of Moses and all the prophets and the psalms. He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And then they said to each other:

“Did not our hearts burn within us, while he opened to us the scriptures?”

And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished out of their sight. Now, you would think a man appeared to those walking along the highway, and they didn’t recognize him at first. And then he explained the scripture, and their hearts began to burn within them as he opened to them the scriptures and then their eyes were opened. They recognized him, and he vanished out of sight.

This one is called the truth. “I am the truth. I am the way. I am the life.” If I succeed in opening up the scriptures to you, then whatever you hold now as an image called Jesus Christ will vanish out of sight.

The only enemy of Israel is a false god. There is no other enemy for any man in this world. A false God. If I could now take scripture and so interpret it that I could show you who God really is, well then, anything you hold down in your mind’s eye concerning an external God would vanish out of sight.

Can I take the scripture and do it? I think I can. But it’s one of those difficult things in the world to change a fixed idea. It comes back time and time again. So, you simply repeat the story from different angles until finally you get through, and the man discovers who he is.

It is in us, as persons, that God the Father reveals himself. He comes to us as one unknown, yet one who, in the most ineffable mystery, lets man experience who he is. When we experience who he is, all false gods vanish, for in that experience we discover we are the Lord. And there is a definite way for the discovery – a definite plan.

The whole thing was planned before that the world was, but we are children in this world of darkness. We came out from the world of light and purposely came into this world of darkness, and took upon ourselves the form of this thing called man. The restriction, the contraction that is man. And, one day, in the fullness of time, it unfolds. The mystery unfolds in a man. And that man in whom it unfolds tells it to as many as will listen. Some will agree, and some will disagree. Those that agree and really see it clearly, their eyes are open. They recognize not the man talking to them; they recognize the truth. For he said, “I am the truth.” So they recognize the truth of scripture. And then, an external being that they turn to and worship vanishes out of their sight. There is no more external God in their world. They find him within themselves. That is the story.

Everything said in scripture concerning Jesus is taken from the Old Testament, and most of it you will find in the words of David. Now, let us take a look in the 10th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. You will find verse after verse taken from the 40th Psalm, which is credited to David – a Psalm of David:

“In the volume of the book it is all about me.”

That’s what David is saying. “I delight to do thy will, oh my God.” These same words are used in the 10th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning Jesus. He said, “I have come to do the will of him who sent me. That’s my food. Just to do the will and to accomplish the work he gave me to do.”

These are the words of David: “In the volume of the book, it is written of me.” That’s the unknown author speaking of Jesus. Yet in the 40th Psalm, these are the words of David. These are prophetic. It’s fulfilled in a man.

Who is the man? They give a name. They called it Jesus. They say he was a carpenter. You think of a carpenter as one with a hammer and a saw and a chisel, and things of that nature, working in wood. That’s not the definition of a carpenter in the Bible.

The word “carpenter” in the Bible means to produce from seed, as a mother. As a plant, like the earth.

That’s the word carpenter: to bring forth, to be born, to be in travail, to be delivered. The time has come for this thing to be born, that seed that was the seed of God. And now it unfolds within a man. That man in whom it unfolds tells what happened to him. He relates his own experience, but he’s up against a wall. For man being a child, he was told the story that it may enter in at lowly doors.

“When Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors.”

So they heard it as I heard it, as you heard it, as my mother taught me. And then I went to school, and they confirmed what mother had said. Then I grew into manhood still believing the story that I heard as a child – until one day, in the fullness of time, the story erupted in me, and then I knew who Jesus is. Then, and only then, did I really know who God is.

And I am telling you, it will erupt in you. And then the God you now hold – if you still hold him as external to yourself -will vanish out of sight. You can no longer turn to an external God and pray to an external God when that which is in you unfolds like a flower, and it’s you.

1 Samuel and you note it carefully as I quote these passages. I am quoting the last four verses of the 17th chapter of 1 Samuel.

Now let us take these passages from the book of Samuel – 1 Samuel and you note it carefully as I quote these passages. I am quoting the last four verses of the 17th chapter of 1 Samuel. Prior to that, to make it clear for you, is a battle about to take place – is now the battle between the giant Philistine, Goliath – a man of war from the cradle -and a youth who has no armament, for he cannot wear the armor that King Saul gives him.

He takes it off. and said, “I’ll go in the name of the Lord of Israel.”

I will have not a thing to do with the armorament of man. I will go in the name of the Lord of Israel. And this day he will deliver the Philistine into my hand. He takes five stones. Well, that’s not five little stones. It means grace. It’s a gift. Five is the number of grace in scripture. That’s the only armor that he takes. Well, I think you’re familiar with the story. He brings down the giant with the first blow into the forehead. Having no sword, he takes the sword of the giant and severs his head. And then he comes back with the severed head of the giant.

King Saul turns to his lieutenant, Abner, and says:

“Abner, whose son is that youth?” Abner answered, “As thy soul liveth, oh King, I cannot tell.” Saul said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is.”

And then comes David with the head of the giant, holding it in his hand.

And Abnner brings him before Saul and presents him before Saul. And Saul turns to David and he said, “Whose son are you, young man?” David answered, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite.”

You will note in all of these passages that Saul is inquiring not about David, but about David’s father. Whose son are you, young man? Inquire whose son the youth is. Inquire whose son the strippling is. Now the word youth, young man, strippling lad are all from the same word in Hebrew. Alum, that’s the word. But it also means to conceal, to hide from view, to veil a secret. The words are right. It’s a youth. It’s a lad. It is a young man. But it’s something veiled, something concealed. It’s a secret that is hidden, something out of sight.

He placed it in man that in the fullness of time, it is that that is hidden in man that will reveal man to himself as God. For no one knows the Father but the Son, and no one knows who the Son is but the Father. So without the son you will never know that you are the father. So then you start reading scripture. So he takes the book and he begins with the law of Moses. Then he comes through the prophets. Then he comes into the psalm and he interprets to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself and he shows them exactly what was said in scripture.

That this is the great rebrinical principle that what is not written in scripture is non-existent. He is not interested in what Caesar’s world does. He makes no attempt to change the pattern. If there were slaves in the day in which a man walks when it happens in him, he leaves it just as it is. He is not concerned with changing governments and changing things. As he finds them, he leaves them. But he tells the eternal story for the Old Testament which is that prophetic blueprint of the story as told in the New Testament is simply a shadowy intimation or I would say intimations for the many shadowy intimations of this eternal reality is something that is timeless. It is taking place forever and forever and forever.

It didn’t take place once and forever 2,000 years ago. It is taking place in the unexpected breast of man or woman. And when it happened, he’s a stunned. He goes back and he searches the scripture and he finds it. It’s there. It was always there, but he didn’t see it. It was always in scripture but man saw it differently because he was told it as a story that it may enter in at the lowly door because of his consciousness a way down on this level.

So, as the poet said, all was foretold, not could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be. Yes, the whole was foretold. Well, if the Bible is as it claimed thousands of years old and I read it after the event and having experienced the wind, the unearly wind that accompanied the series of events, then I go back and I but it’s all in scripture. But I didn’t see it.

I have had one severe beating in my life, and it was over scripture in Barbados, where I was born and raised. We were allowed to be beaten by the schoolmaster. In his eyes, I misquoted scripture – which I did not. I said, “Take up thy bed and walk,” which is quoted in the gospel when he said to the cripple, take up thy bed and walk. And he who was crippled from his mother’s womb took up the bed and walked.

The schoolmaster said to me, “Bring your Bible.” Well, I could not produce the Bible. I am one of 10 children. you don’t have 10 Bibles. And I simply said that I didn’t have the Bible with me this day. My other brother Cecil, he had it. He had another class in another school and he said, “I don’t care if your brother goes down the gap with a dunce cap on his head. You aren’t leaving here with a dunce cap on your head.” Well, he was allowed to beat students because his translation said, “Take up thy couch and walk.” And I said, “Take up thy bed and walk.” All depends what Bible you have. It means the same thing. Take up the litter on which you were placed when someone brought you here. Take it up and then you don’t need it anymore. Get off of that. You’re not crippled anymore.

Well, you went in and got a cane that long and knocked on the desk on the bench for me to get over. I had to sit and kneel on the bench and bent it this way to see that it wasn’t uh injured because we knowing what was in store for us. When he was out of sight, we would go in with our little penknives and screw these little things and simply got them all so that the first blow would spatter the whole thing all over the place.

He beat me unmercifully. I was bleeding from my buttocks to my knees.

When my father saw it that night, my brother Victor said, “Daddy, come and see what Neville looks like.” And Daddy came in and asked how it happened. And I tell him. It took the next-door neighbors, my mother, and all my brothers to restrain my father from going up there. Had he gone up, he really would have killed him. That was the temper of my father.

But they restrained him. Next day, I was taken out of that school never to go back.

And a year later, the man was a sadist, a complete sadist. He blew his brains out. He just simply couldn’t live with himself. He beat the boys unmercifully. Well, that was my one beating in this world, and that was for seemingly misquing scripture. So I read my book from beginning to end over and over and over but I didn’t see it until it happened in me when the whole thing erupted in me. Then I went back and I could see the whole pattern was there all along just as the poet said. All was foretold me. Not could I foresee but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be. And there they were. Everything was there.

David and his father were set free. For the promise was made: The man who destroys the enemy of Israel, I will set his father’s house free in Israel.

And the father’s name was Jesse. And Jesse simply means Jehovah exists. That’s the literal translation of the word Jesse. any form of the verb to be. In other words, I AM God’s eternal name. So you discover you yourself are the father of the youth who destroyed the enemy of Israel. And the only enemy of Israel is a false god. As long as you worship a false god, you have an enemy. And that enemy must be brought low. And it takes David to bring him low. So in the New Testament his name is called Jesus Christ and he brings the true God and he said I am the truth. What truth? He reinterpret scripture in the light of his own experience. He experienced scripture and it ceased to be a dead code and became a living, living book. And he was the book. He was the word.

So as he explained it, they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us?” When he opened to us the scriptures and their eyes were open and they recognized him and then he vanished out of their sight.

Recognized what? A man? No. They recognized the truth of what one was talking about. The one who had experienced the truth. So they recognize the truth. For he said, “I am the truth.” They recognize the truth, not a man. And therefore, a man vanished out of their sight. No longer can you worship a man. This thing speaking to you now has experienced it. But don’t turn to me for any worship. It would be the most horrible thing in the world.

But take the truth that I’m telling you, for I have experienced scripture. And the day will come you will experience scripture and you and I will be one in eternity. Just one. One body, one spirit, one God, one father of all. And we are that one. So here he comes to me as he did to me as one unknown. I hadn’t the slightest idea of The Promise until it happened. I never read it with understanding. I never heard it. No one ever spoke one word about The Promise to me. I read it in the Bible, but I didn’t recognize it. I did not see it there.

Only after it happened.

Well the, I have been commissioned: Go and tell them. When I was told, 30 years before the event, that I must go into the world, standing in the presence of the Ancient of Days, embraced by him who was infinite love, and then sent… I didn’t know what I was sent for.

Have the slightest idea what on earth am I going to do uneducated no background social background intellectual background financial background but nothing and what on earth would I talk about or what would I say to anyone if I open my mouth I say well what has he to say.

Then I went back into scripture to study it was also said of this one who is the character of scripture how does this man have such learning seeing that he has never studied and then he makes a confession My teaching is not mine but his who sent me.

“Go, I will put words in your mouth. Go, I will give you everything that you need to tell the story.”

And so he did.

I didn’t go back to school to learn anymore. It just simply happened within me. My interest was aroused in things beautiful like poetry and above all things the Bible.

I read it daily by the hour. And every day it seems fresher and fresher and fresher. It’s a constant eruption of the great revelation.

There is no limit to it. The things that I do, you will do. And even greater than these because I am going to my father. I came out from the father and I came into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and I’m going to the father. Therefore, you will follow, but you will do all that I have done and even greater while you still remain here. The Holy Spirit will outpour himself all from within you in one revelation after the other. And it’s all there in scripture.

But you will find it after the event.

The poet said, “I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” The words are perfect. The word wind and spirit are one and the same, both in Hebrew and in Greek. And so, we are told you must be born of the spirit – born of the wind. Same thing. So, when one is born from above, he is born of the spirit, he is born of the wind – it comes in the form of an unearthly wind. And that’s the story.

So here you and I have been told the story and it’s a glorious story. Until man can actually accept the truth of that story, let him continue in the belief of an external God to whom he turns. But it is his enemy, and that enemy one day must be destroyed when truth rises within him and there is no external one to whom he can turn.

To whom will I turn? Thou hast the word of eternal life. So when they said these are hard things to say. This the sixth chapter of the book of John. And he tells them the strangest things possible. And in the end many left him never to walk with him again.

And then he turned to the few who remained. And then he said, “Would thou go also?” And Peter became the spokesman for the 12 who remained. And he said, “To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

But where would I go? If what you’ve said is true, then where would I turn? I’m telling you what I’ve told you is true, for it’s based not on speculation. I’m not speculating trying to set up some workable philosophy of life. I have no interest in setting up any school of philosophy, no interest in founding a church. That’s the one thing that the boys said to me when I was sent.

“Down with the blue bloods. Down with all church protocol, all external ritual and ceremony. Down with the blue bloods. Don’t go destroy it. Leave it as it is on the outside, but don’t you set up one.”

Therefore, I resisted every attempt at ordination. I’ve been offered it time and time again to join this church and that church or the other church, and within 24 hours they’ll give me my degree that I may do all the things that any priest could do. I said, “No, I want no part of it. I will go alone, and he who sent me, is with me, and what is necessary he will provide.

I am one with the one who sent me. Only in the office of the one that is sent, I seem inferior to myself, the sender. But I’m not inferior to my essential being, the sender. Only in the present office as the sent. And to him the sender, I will return when I take off this garment.

So in the meanwhile, while I must still wear it until the end, I share with you what I have experienced, and that is scripture. But the whole thing unfolds within us.

Therefore, in the New Testament because the words are now put into the mouth of Jesus, when you read the chapter, you wonder why on earth did he bring this up? They brought up a certain argument concerning marriage. And the Sadducees said to him, “Master,” which they did not believe he was a master or anything great because they represented what we call today the agnostic or the atheist. They were the scientific mind, the intellectual mind.

So we speak of the Sadducees and then the Pharisee. But the Sadducee was the intellectual mind, the agnostic of the day. If they remain within the synagogue, they did it only for business reasons, not because they approved or believed it. So they thought they’d trip him up. And they said to him, “Master, Moses in the law said, “If a man marries and dies, leaving no offspring, that his brother should marry the widow, and raise up seed for his brother.”

Now there were seven brothers, and the first one married and died leaving no offspring. And then the second one took her and he died leaving no offspring. And the third took her, and finally the seven married her and yet she had no offspring. Then she died. Now in the resurrection – which they did not believe in, as it stated quite clearly they did not believe in the resurrection -so in the resurrection, whose wife will be that woman?

And he answered, “In this age, the sons of God 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 are sons of the resurrection and cannot die anymore.” Implying, therefore, until this resurrection takes place in man, he is only restored to life to die again. But those who have the experience of the resurrection while they are here, they can die no more. For they are sons of the resurrection, being now sons of God, not belonging anymore to the world of flesh and blood.

Now, there was no reason to follow that wonderful expression of his with what follows. And then he turns to the people round about him. He said, “Whose son is David?” Now, it doesn’t fit. And yet he asked the question, “Whose son is David?” And they replied, “The son…”

“Whose son is Christ?” And they said, “The son of David.”

“So why then did David in the spirit call him my Lord? If David in the spirit called him my Lord, how can he be his son?”

Yet the New Testament begins on those words: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” So here we are in the midst of a mystery now. How can he be the son of David? When David calls him my Lord, my Lord is an expression of a son about his father. He calls him my father. He’s trying to get man to go back into the only scripture known in the day, which is the Old Testament, and dig.

And you’ll find in the 89th Psalm, that David does call the Lord my father. Read it carefully. “And I have found David, and he has cried unto me, thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” In fulfillment of the earlier psalm, the second psalm: “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”

These are the words of David. All attributed in the New Testament to Christ. Therefore, who then is David? And who is Christ?

Jesus is the Lord. The word Jesus means Jehovah. Same word. God here above begins as the root of both words. And then we are told in Revelation the 11th chapter, “And the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.” They do not put the two words together and call it Jesus Christ, but our Lord and of his Christ. The father and his son.

Now you, I tell you as you are seated here, you are the Lord and you have a son, and you will not in eternity know you are the Lord until that son and only that son appears and calls you my father. And when he appears, there’ll be no uncertainty in you concerning the relationship between the two of you. And then you’ll know you are the Lord. And if Jesus is the Lord, then you know who you are. If Jesus is Jehovah, then you know who you are. And then you will see how altogether marvelous the Bible is. It’s completely concealed just as told in scripture.

Here, something hidden – the youth. Something concealed, something veiled, a great secret. And yet a youth. And that’s the one that is hidden. He is the stripling. He is the lad. He is the young man. And here is completely concealed, buried in man.

So, I tell you that a thing in this world could happen to you comparable to the eruption of the story in you. For then all false gods vanish and you will never again lose your way in this tangled, tangled confusion that passes for religious truth.

You pick up the Saturday morning paper. I am embarrassed to look at it when I look at the religious paper. One is coming through the air flying through because it’s Halloween. A huge big ad she took in the paper. “Come and see Miss So-and-so how she’s going to come flying through the air to her million or two-million dollar super substantial something…”

Well, I get so embarrassed because after all, occasionally I do put an ad on that page or they wouldn’t see my ad on any other page, so I’ve got to confine myself to that page. And when you read the nonsense that goes in the name of religion, and people do it. They fall for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

But when this happens to you, you will simply lose all false gods. And the only enemy you will ever have is a false god. You have no other enemy. But may I tell you, your own wonderful human imagination is God. It’s the eternal you, and by that all things were made, and without that was not anything made that is made. You are the immortal God, and one day you will awaken.

And I can’t tell you the thrill. I think in the morning when I get up, I’m awake. I look at my familiar objects on the wall in the room. I know I am awake. But the awakening of which I speak, you can’t compare that to any awakening you’ve ever had in this world. It’s something entirely different. Memory returns.

The great Holy Spirit brings back memory. He is the remembrancer. And we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. And then he releases himself within us – it’s memory, and our memory returns. And I, in the 20th century, have lost my memory so far back that someone who supposedly lived 1,000 BC stands before me. And there is a complete collapse of time. There is no such thing as 3,000 years difference. I am his father, and he preceded me by 3,000 years. Isn’t that a complete lapse of memory? Isn’t that complete amnesia?

Well, that’s the whole vast world. It suffers from amnesia. And when it happens, you wonder how on earth this could have lasted so long. And yet at that moment, it seemed like this: Just a short sleep, and then waking to eternity, and the experience you had called death. Death is no more. And the only thing that dies then, is death itself.

As Paul tells us in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians, the last thing to be conquered is death. And death dies because you are the living God. And you’ve seemed to die. And you will seem to die, but you can’t die. And in the end, you will completely awaken. And you and I are one. One in the sense we are the same father, and we have the same son, and therefore there’s only God and his son, and that’s the story of scripture.

So it is in us as persons that God the father reveals himself, and when he reveals himself he reveals himself as the one in whom he awakes. But not a thing can be seen of him until the son appears. Then the son appears and reveals that one in whom he awoke 139 days prior to this moment as God the father. He still didn’t know it between his awakening and the birth of the child, which was a sign of his awakening and his birth from above, for 139 days. Then comes David, and then he tells you who you are, and then you know it, and then all false gods vanish.

You may fail in application, but you cannot go back. You can’t get back into that small little thing that contained you prior to that awakening. Can’t go back. Can’t turn to any god. Nothing on the outside.

Yet you’re living in the world of Caesar. And you will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Render it completely. Taxes. Pay the taxes. The money will come. You’ll do everything that Caesar demands. But you’re not of this world. An entirely different being has awakened within you, which is your true being.

But when you read scripture, take the Old Testament as a prophetic blueprint, just a rough sketch, vague intimations of eternal reality. Then comes a moment in time when these things erupt within you, and you experience these things. And then having experienced it, you can’t deny it. You then tell it to as many as will listen. Doesn’t matter how many, as many as will listen, you are sent to do it, and to accomplish his work.

So then you are the carpenter. You brought forth from seed. You didn’t build anything on the outside. You simply found who he is. And then you vanish. Who vanishes? All outside objects vanish because now you found the truth, and your hearts will burn as you’re told.

And as we are told in the 20th chapter of the book of Jeremiah, “If I say I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name, then there is as it were a fire in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” You’ve got to talk about it. No matter where you go, you talk about it and you tell it to anyone who has an ear to hear.

Not everyone has the ear to hear because you’ve got to go through fixed ideas and their eyes are not open. Ears have not yet been dug for them. So you’re up against the wall that has been planted in them because they heard it as a child would hear it. “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” And that’s how it comes through… until one day it happens within you.

Now let us go into the silence.

In Memoriam (Tennyson)
by Alfred Tennyson
Canto XXXVI

Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where Truth in closest words shall fail,
When Truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.

Main image: Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath