23 Oct Neville Goddard Lectures: “Invisible Things”
2/8/66
Tonight’s title is “Invisible Things.” When one thinks of Jesus, they see a man, or by any other name, maybe they see God, but they see a person, something visible. When we read the words, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus,” one thinks of a man. It is my hope tonight that you’ll find him and you will see he is not a man. “The invisible things of him are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made.” You read that in the 1st chapter, the 20th verse, of Romans. They’re understood by the things that are made…“even his eternal power and Godhead.” “That they may seek the Lord, in the hope they may feel after him and find him.” So he’s not far from every one of us, “for in him we live and move and have our being.” That you find in Acts, the 17th chapter (verse 27).
So we’ll take it from here and try to develop it for you. Christ is called the power and wisdom of God. He is referred to in scripture as “the Word of God.” We’re told he was sent by God. We’re told, “My word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me void, but it must accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Is.55:ll). So he sends his Word. Let us look up the word “word” in Hebrew. It’s dabar, d-a-b-a-r. It means “to arrange; figuratively, to arrange words into speech, to commune, to promise.” So you sit here and you have a request. You take now a request and you form it into a sentence. You are communing with self, for this that you are doing you are doing it, and yet I and my Father are one. The one forming me is forming out of himself, for in him I live and move and have my being.
So I stand here and you tell me a horrible picture, but now I’m trying to arrange in my mind’s eye the solution of that problem. If I can extract the solution of the picture you just painted, then I have him. For his name is Jesus, his name is “to save,” he is the savior. Can I commune with myself and so trust this feeling that I can actually say to myself, “I promise!” How it is going to be done on this level I do not know, but it will be done. I simply take a sentence implying the fulfillment of my dream, my desire, and having arranged it, I have the Word, I have Jesus, I’ve found him. Now I send it. He will not return unto me void, but he must accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
I am a person, and he and I are one, so I’m not going to deny the right of anyone to think of him in terms of a person. He’s person gotten, person sourced, person received, so, I say to them, yes a person…but I then am he. I conceived it all in my own Imagination and trusted completely in this presence, which I am myself, to see some greater way to do it. The whole vast world is myself pushed out; the whole vast world is but response. It can only respond; it does not initiate. So it tells me constantly what I am sending out into being. I’m only sending myself, sending him to accomplish that which I purpose…and he never fails! “His name shall be called the Word of God…thy Word is truth.” The word, dabar, is simply to arrange words so they form meaning. When they form the meaning, I commune with myself, and then say to myself, “Is it done?” and actually speak to myself, “It’s done.” When I can say to myself, “It is done!” and actually believe in this communion, it’s a command. So the word dabar means to command, to arrange, arrange words so that they form speech, to commune and to promise. We have all these definitions in your James Strong Concordance.
So, this is the Word that was in the beginning, that all of the invisible things of him from the creation of the world were clearly seen being understood by the things that are made. Yes, even his creative and eternal power and Godhead. So I see what I am doing from this invisible reservoir. They’re all present, every thing in the world is. I simply single out that which I want to form into a meaningful word, and then send it. All I do is wait, wait for the echo, wait for the response…and it must come. I am speaking from experience. It will come if you can sit here this night and shut out the obvious, and carry on this conversation within yourself, communing only with self. And then as you commune, you just say, “Is it done? It’s done!” and trust it implicitly. For faith is trust in God, holding God trustworthy. It’s your own being. But you are seeing this world from a higher level; you’re not seeing it here at all. You’re seeing it from an entirely different world, a higher level altogether; you’re seeing the thing done. It will impinge upon you, upon the whole vast world. Anyone it can use to give birth to the word it will use, without their consent, without their permission, without their knowledge. It doesn’t need the knowledge of anyone, for they are all itself pushed out.
Now, all I ask of anyone here is to try it. If this takes from you Jesus, I wouldn’t take Jesus from anyone. I’m trying to give Jesus to the world. I’m trying to show man how to find him, how to find Jesus…far from taking Jesus from the world. First of all, I couldn’t do it and I wouldn’t do it. I am not breaking down idols. I’m not here to break down your ideals but to show you who Jesus really is. So when Philip said, “I’ve found him. Found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus.” What did you go to see, a man? A man wearing what? a soft garment? Those who wear the soft garment are in the kingdom. They are in king’s houses, unseen. Don’t go looking for a man called a holy man called Jesus, you’ll never find him. If anyone says, “Look, there he is!” don’t believe it. You’ll never find him not that way; but you will find him in yourself, in your own wonderful creative power. And the day will come you will awaken to discover you are the being called God. You and your creative power called Jesus Christ are one. You’ll find him.
So here, the Word…you can construct it tonight. You don’t realize what you’re doing, maybe, but you’re actually sending Jesus on his way if it is a saving word. If it’s not a saving word and you believe in it, he must fulfill your command, and you’ll hit him. He takes upon himself all of the blows of the world in man’s ignorance. If it is a saving word, you send him. He said, “I’ve come to do the will of him who sent me…and he who sent me I am one with him” (John 4:34). But you are sending yourself, really, when you send what you have constructed as the word.
So here in scripture, from beginning to end, he brought everything into the world by the Word. “By this Word all things were made, and without it was not anything made that was made” (John1:1). You can ask for something through the human channel, and you may ask in vain. It may never come…if you’re depending upon this party, that party, the other party. Don’t designate the party, just commune with self, and let him take all the parties of the world that can best be used to bring about your objective. If the one you said must be the one, ___(??) him alone, and he drops before your eyes and you bury him, are you going to give up hoping? Are you going to give up your objective because the channel that you selected is not the channel? All these are the channels…and so you simply commune with self and let it go.
So tonight, you will find this most practical, right down to earth. You simply, this night, single out a simple, simple objective. It may be a fantastic thing, but you make it simple, because you trust God. Not a thing is difficult to God…and yet you and he are one. But you’re doing it and seeing it from a higher level. Remember every thing is easy from the higher level; it simply appears on this level. When it appears it seems so natural that you might say to yourself, “Well, it would have happened anyway.” But it would not have happened. It couldn’t happen without a cause, and the cause was the Word that you sent. You do all kinds of things, and all of a sudden you turn to him. Every one of us forgets— not just little Lynn…to be reminded by her father three times in a day—every one forgets. The teachers forget. No matter how big they are in the eyes of the world, they forget the one and only God. And that fundamental sin is lack of faith in “I am he.” That’s what we’re taught. The moment I forget it I go astray.
Now, the phone rang twice today, many times, really, but two most important calls, total strangers. I said I’m closing on the 25th, put my affairs in order and go, get my tickets and go. Only forty-eight hours ago I did what I’m telling you to do. Instead of trying to arrange them here, seeing that things are in order here, talking to this one and that one, “Would you do this in my absence, would you do that?” and all these things, just simply turned within, not to one person in this world, as though I talked to another but there was no other, trusting this presence implicitly, knowing all along it was myself, in self-communion. So, I just simply assumed within myself that the whole thing was done. This morning the bank called, “We have a draft for you for a considerable amount.” Alright, I ___(??) nothing. This is not the time for it, but they had it for me. Came home, having put it in my bank, phone rang again. It’s BOAC, “We were notified to notify you that tickets are waiting here for you at your pleasure. Come in and get them. You can go today, tomorrow, next month, go when you want.” The only one to whom I turned was myself. I did not turn to anyone to put anything in order. So out of the blue…and one does not depend upon the other—the most generous dividend is independent of tickets—that’s a gift.
So I say, everyone in this world is serving. All you need do is trust this inner communion. It’s yourself…this whole vast world is yourself pushed out. So when I say all things exist in the human Imagination, I mean that literally. All things are going to exist there; they begin and end there, but everything. And you, you are all Imagination, and you and God are one. And you gradually move from a God of tradition to a God of experience; moving from a God of tradition where your fathers taught you of a God on the outside to find him on the inside. And the Jesus of history is your ability to simply take the Word and form it into meaning, commune with it, and send it on its way in complete confidence that it’s done. And it’s done. So the invisible things of him are clearly seen by the things that are made. I know from what I am seeing what I must have sent on the way, and somewhere, wisely or unwisely, I constructed it and then sent it on its way. So I say to every one of you here tonight, don’t let anyone tell you that you are less than someone else, that you are a young soul, that you are this, that and the other. As you are seated here and you say “I am,” that’s God. Believe it.
Now, if you came here this night really believing as you should in Jesus, let me tell you who he is. And if perchance you were raised in another faith and the word offends, it would not offend you after you know who he really is. He simply is the Word that God sends into creation, and that Word you send. If you send it, well, then you know who you are. So here, try it tonight. I’ll be back on Friday; you should be able to tell me wonderful stories. Yes, between now and Friday. If you really believe him, you’ll tell me, because it happened. Just have to commune with him, like a friend. We’re told, he spoke with him, face to face, just like a friend with a friend. That’s all that you do. ___(??). Doesn’t take you more than a half minute to do it, just no time at all, if you believe…if you believe in the reality of these unseen states.
Then I thought of Jung, Carl Jung…the last book that came out about him after he was gone. And the day of the funeral of a very dear friend of his, he was in bed, and suddenly he saw in his mind’s eye. He said it was not an apparition: “But I saw him clearly, my friend whose funeral I had attended that very day. But trained as I am I said this is an apparition. But why should I, said he, take my friend and treat him this way? Suppose he is here. I should give him the benefit of the doubt and say to myself he’s real. The moment I credited him with reality, he smiled, turned around, led me to the door, through the garden, up the street to his home several hundred yards away, and there he pointed out a book, one of four. The titles of the four books convinced me of at least survival, for the whole thing was based on they survive. The next day he was so curious he walked up the street to the widow and asked for permission to see the library. As he got in there, just as they were in his vision there were the books. He took a stool and got up, took one away, and there was the title, the title he had seen just the night before when he gave his friend credit for being real. If he had said it’s an apparition…“I mustn’t treat this as I tell my students not to treat these things as real, therefore, I must not treat them as real.” The moment he gave it reality it became real and acted independent of his perception of it, and led him to where confirmation of what he was thinking would be found in tangible book form. That was Jung, Carl Jung’s latest book.
So I say, you can’t see this?—make it real. He didn’t see it with his physical eyes, he saw it in his mind’s eye, gave it reality, and it acted as something real. Now you, if you don’t see it, you’re communing. Don’t see a face; there is no face to be seen. It’s your face and you don’t see your face, save you look into a mirror. So you are communing with self and you give to self the power, the creative power, to externalize this communion. And it does.
So tonight, you try it. We have just a few lectures left…five to be exact. Closing on the 25th, and whenever we get back I’ll let you know. We have no plans beyond the 25th…close the 25th and take off a few days later. But in the meanwhile, don’t forget it. Don’t turn to other gods. Don’t turn to any outside god. Don’t turn to any holy man; there aren’t any. No holy man on the outside. If anyone should say to you, ‘Look, I’ve found him, there he is!’ don’t go. No holy man, no little icon, no outside god. The whole thing is taking place within you. You must put him to the test, the extreme test to prove that you too can send the Word and it cannot come back to you void. If it can’t come back to you void and you sent it and you knew exactly what you’ve done, then who are you? Only God speaks the Word! When he speaks it and it fulfills its purpose, then who are you? He said, “My name is in them.” His name is “I am.”
So you try it tonight, tomorrow night, until it finally becomes a habit and you live by it. If perchance you should forget it, my prayer is that it will not be for long, that you’ll come right back to it again. You may not have a father, like little Lynn, to remind us, but you could pick up the book from time to time and be reminded of who you really are. You’re here to bear fruit and bear it abundantly. Let no one tell you, “Be satisfied, you have enough, that this is alright…just eke out the days and wait.” Don’t let anyone tell you that. If you have a hunger, satisfy it. Satisfy it in this simple, simple way. No one will be hurt, because when you do it this way he isn’t going to hurt anyone, for he’s not going to hurt himself. So, if you say I want this, that and the other for another, alright, he won’t be hurt. If you want it for another, ask a very simple question, “Would I want it for myself? If anyone gave it to me would I want it?” Yes. Well then, do it. And whenever you do it lovingly, you’re doing the right thing.
All day long you can create, create lovely wonderful things for every being in the world. Spend a half-minute, just a few seconds rearranging words. When we speak of the ten words of the cross, the shortest is made up of two, “I thirst”; then we have three, “It is finished.” We have those that are nine, where each sentence that has meaning is called a word. So there are ten words on the cross, but none is made up of a single word. It’s made up of, the very shortest, of two words. But “I thirst” conveys meaning; “It is finished” conveys meaning. And so, these words, though many words, are in scripture, the Word, the Word of God. So you are called upon to take all the invisible words and make a word, and speak it into meaning. When you speak it, you give absolute trust to self. Though invisible to mortal eye you’re in communion with self, and from that higher level it sees all and can do all.
Now, if you’re here for the first time, it may seem strange. I’ll give you a chance tonight with your questions to make me clarify the point. If I have not actually given you a concept of Jesus that is true, and you don’t think it’s true, you hold me here until I clarify it for you. I tell you, that what I spoke of this night is the true Jesus. So if you could ever say “I found him, I have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets spoke” and it’s not that Jesus, you haven’t found him. If you found a man, you haven’t found him. No matter who you look for, that’s not he. You will find Jesus as the creative power of God, the wisdom of God. It is the power to fulfill the purpose for which it was sent and the wisdom to do it. Just send it on its way in confidence that it can’t return void.
Today in all of the papers, last week’s Observer, they said, “The Protestants have reached the crossroad, they will either now become the most radical body in the world or return to Rome. They do not believe in God.” That’s what the writer [said], filling up two full pages of the weekly paper called the Observer…very well written. They write books saying, “God is dead” and then all, similar types, all these professors that are in our great universities teaching our children that God is dead. They haven’t the slightest concept of who Jesus is, not the slightest concept who God is. So they want us all then to return to Rome, for we’re headed towards being the most radical body in the world, that’s what they’re saying. But don’t believe it.
The Word, the real Word, is that Bible. You read it, extract the word, the meaning, extract all of the messages that it holds for you and then test it. “Come test yourself and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!” That’s what we’re told in Corinthians (2Cor.13:5). Don’t you realize that he’s in you? The average person would say to that, if he’s honest about it, “No, I don’t.” But if you said to him, “Now come and sit with me…what would you like?” and then he tells you. Then you say, “Don’t tell me audibly but close your eyes and talk with yourself, as though you were two; and then say to the unseen one, ‘Is it alright? Is it done?’ and imagine he said to you, ‘Yes. It is done!’ And say, ‘Thank you’ and go your way.” You’ve found Jesus and you’ve found his Father. Who conceived the words? You say, “I did.” Well, you’re the father of them, aren’t you? You can’t deny you’re one with him? No, so “I and my Father are one, yet my Father is greater than I.” For he conceived it, he rearranged the structure of the mind, and then I asked, “Is it done?” and he said, “Yes.” And I believe him implicitly.
Now wait and see. If in twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, in the not distant future it works, then you’ve found him. Moses spoke of him; yes Moses spoke of him in the law. No one understood him. They took the law literally on the outside, something external. The prophets, too?—oh yes, they spoke of him. And finally I found him…and to have found Jesus…and not let him go. As we are told in the very end of the drama, “Now that you have found me, don’t let me go, but let all else go.” And they held onto him. They came into the garden and there he was, and when he said, “Whom do you seek?” they said, “Jesus.” He said, “I’m Jesus” and they all fell (John18:4). When they regained their composure, he said, “Whom do you seek?” Again they replied, “Jesus.” He said, “I’ve told you I am he; now that you have found me, let all else go.” It’s put into a dramatic form as though a man is speaking to a man. Just as though I’m asking you tonight to commune with self as though there were two, and yet they are one. So in the end, I and my Father are one, and I send my word, and then watch it fulfill itself in my world.
Now let us go into the Silence.
* * *
Q: ___(??) recap different ways people have reported to you the way they used the law?
A: Last Friday night, what Lynn did, that’s a way. You know what you’ve done with the trees and you looked beyond the obvious and saw what was not there to be seen. Then you didn’t ask him to cut them down, he cut them down, didn’t he? That’s a way.
Getting out of the army was a way. You know that way. Bringing to me a very big, generous dividend, far in excess of what I even thought, is a way. I simply talked to myself and thanked myself for it. It was cabled…not even by letter. Well, there are as many ways as there are people. What is best for one isn’t for the other. How do I simplify it and bring it to a point where it’s so simple that a child can do it? Tonight is very simple: communion with self. He doesn’t have to be an Einstein, he doesn’t have to be a giant, he doesn’t have to be some fantastic person, just a child. A child could do what I did if it could believe in the reality of the communion. So I said last Friday it is my aim to raise you to a confident faith in imagining. That’s my purpose. If one could only lift himself up to believe in the reality of that unseen imaginal act, it’s done. But the average person will say, “What, little me? I couldn’t be that powerful. I don’t have the background, intellectual, social, the financial, none of these.” You don’t need any background.
Q: Neville, I’d like to give a testimonial to this wonderful truth. I’m a singer and I wanted to be on the Art Linkletter Show, and you’re supposed to have somebody introduce you.
So just in my Imagination I thought, “Well, I don’t know who’s going to do this,” but I imagined I was already on the show, and I’m singing on Art Linkletter’s Show. So, today I get a surprise telephone call from a friend and she said, “I didn’t tell you but a month ago I wrote a letter…and you know I borrowed a photograph of you.” I said yes. She said, “The 16th of February you have an audition for the Art Linkletter Show.”
A: Well, thank you! Now, that’s another technique.
Q: I didn’t know how…I didn’t do a thing but right in here [pointing to head]. My best friend did it and didn’t even tell me. And I didn’t tell her.
A: All right, that’s how it works. You see there is no such thing as two of us, not in the real sense of the word. That’s Israel’s contribution to the whole vast world, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” So it seems to be diversity, seems to be, but in the end there is only one. But thank you, Danny, thank you very much.
By the way, the cards of my friend Freedom are at the door if you’re interested. We quickly picked out 200 names out of 2000.
Q: I don’t know how even to word it…when you speak of Jesus Christ, what is the exception there…?
A: Christ Jesus and Jesus Christ?
Q: Yes,
A: Well, Paul interchanges them. He speaks of Christ Jesus as often as he speaks of Jesus Christ. So he doesn’t really mean two when he speaks of Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus.
Christ is really “Messiah.” It’s the Anglicized form of the Hebrew word Messiah.
Q: Neville, is it possible for you to estimate the time of resurrection to the time of being born from above?
A: It’s just a matter of moments, same night. Ascension, that comes nine months later. But resurrection, that comes the same night, comes first. And your exit from the tomb is your birth…as you make your exit from the tomb where you were awakened. To be resurrected is to be awakened from a profound sleep, a sleep that is so deep it appeared to all of the watchers of the world that you were dead. “Awake, you sleeper, and rise from the dead” (Eph.5:14). So when the Lord awakes to find himself entombed, he comes out. The exit from that tomb: he pulls himself out of his own body.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Not if I would analyze it for the gentleman. You awaken in a tomb, it’s your skull. You know where to push to get out. At the back of the skull, you push, you start coming out like a child, only you’re not a child, you’re a fully grown man. You come out, and when you are almost out, you pull from here down, you pull the remaining portion of you out of your own skull. Because, although it’s a tomb, the minute your head goes through the opening in what is a skull, you feel it here. The symbolism is a huge, big tomb, a sepulcher. But when you start coming out of the big sepulcher, you actually come out of here. It’s out of here that you’re coming, the base. And when you are almost out, you pull, and then you turn back and see this out of which you had emerged.
Q: Well, then it isn’t a question of “I have power to take it up and put it down,” that this is the sheet, and I am outside of the sheet…within the sheet but outside of the sheet. I can lay it down, take it up and put it down. But this is a sheet and I am inside of the sheet
A: You see this is not what certain schools of thought talk about, called an astral projection.
It hasn’t a thing to do with an astral projection. I have had those through the years…it’s not that at all. This is something entirely different. It is your resurrection from a long, long sleep. Everyone in the world is asleep until resurrected. And who is not resurrected—prior to that moment they are called dead—will be revived, restored to what is called life, in a world just like this to continue the journey until resurrected. Then they enter a new age altogether. They are above the organization of sex. And the children, the little child wrapped in swaddling is there. The witnesses to the event they are there. The story is true.
Q: What’s the astral then?
A: Astral? Just like this. I haven’t found it any different. When I found myself out of this body, attached by a silver cord, I am moving in a world just like this. It’s not heaven. Just as frightening, and you’re just as limited and can be hurt as you’re hurt here. No transforming power whatsoever in an astral projection.
Q: This is then purely psychic? Is that true?
A: It is.
Q: Well, is that induced by meditation? Is that a preliminary to…
A: My first astral projection was involuntary. My second that took place the same night was deliberate. I was in my room on 49th Street, and I felt this sensation in my head, and then the next thing I knew I was whirled out. There I found myself on a beach. I noticed this cord in my head. Having read and studied over the years about such things, I concluded I am now projected. I didn’t know one person on the beach, I knew no one. They didn’t seem to know me and I didn’t know them. I desired to go back and observe this thing from beginning to end, to go right back into that body and come out this time consciously, deliberately. I no sooner desired to do it than I found myself back in the body, with the same sensation in my head. This time I wanted to control it, so I intensified it by imagining. As I imagined, the thing got more and more powerful, and then out I went. But having decided to control it, as I whirled out, I reminded myself “I want to get right back in that room, not in the body, and observe this thing for myself.”
I came back into the room, here is this [body], the face was covered by a cloud. I could see the face through breaks in the cloud. I looked at it, it looked…well, it was Neville, and here is the same room, the same pictures, no change whatsoever. I am in the room but I am out. I walked into another room where my dancing partner’s parents slept. We had a three-room suite. I tried to arouse them; they couldn’t see me. I talked to them, pushed them, got no reaction. Pushed my dancing partner; got no reaction. Everything was simply as it was, but I, to them, was invisible. I reasoned and I said, “I know I’m out, there’s the body; therefore I should be able to go through that wall because I’m not of this substance.” So I started; couldn’t get through. The wall was as solid as that wall. Couldn’t get through. So I said to myself, “I’ll rush and jump. You don’t seem to have any fear.” I was living on the 11th floor and there was no stairway. “I’m going to jump right through and I’m Spirit…wouldn’t fall.” So I took off and leapt into space, head first, and struck myself so hard I knocked myself out, back into the body.
Then I said, “What’s this all about? I should have gone through.” And then I realized, it dawned on me I gave solidity to that wall. I gave reality to all these things, and what I gave them they possessed it. So the next time I got up, deliberately, to prove I was right, standing in the room with the door locked, everything locked, I imagined myself elsewhere, and like that I was where I had imagined myself to be. And it was real, like this. That astral projection has nothing to do with what I’m talking about on the Promise.
Q: (inaudible)
A: The resurrection is God’s mightiest act. The 7th chapter, 2nd Samuel, the l2th verse— skip the 13th, for that’s an insertion—12th and 14th. And here, think of God himself bringing forth himself that he had imposed a sleep upon for creative purposes.
Q: In other words, a higher level was revealed to you that you could not possibly induce by yourself.
A: All that happened to me in these four mighty acts were all involuntary, every one. Not one did I deliberately conjure. You can’t do it. It’s grace. You don’t earn it. Just, at a moment in time, the time has been fulfilled, and when the time is fulfilled, it happens, and you unfold.
Q: Is that what the orthodox people call born again?
A: Born again, yes. But they interpret “to be born again” is simply a change of attitude towards life. That’s repentance. But it doesn’t say that if you repent that you will be able to aid God in bringing in the kingdom. The kingdom is coming whether you repent or not. But you repent to help yourself while you are in this world. For to repent is to change your attitude towards life, and any change of your attitude results in a change of environment. And so, I’m convinced by what has happened to me that fitness for the kingdom is the consequence, not something that man has earned; it’s the consequence of the grace of God.
Q: There is nothing that we can do and it is an involuntary thing that happens to us.
Obviously, you are compelled to tell us this story. What good is it going to do us, the hearing of it, if we just have to wait anyway? Why do we need…?
A: Lucy, my dear, tonight’s story will aid you in getting anything you want in this world.
But, if I didn’t tell you of God’s Promise and you owned the earth and all within it, knowing the inevitable is death, wouldn’t life be empty? So I tell you of the Promise that’s coming, whether you die tonight or not, you won’t die; that Promise is going to be fulfilled. And you are coming into an inheritance that is unblemished, unspoiled, that cannot be tarnished, clothed in a garment that is immortal, where you create above the organization of sex. So I tell that to the world. I know of nothing in this world more comforting than that story of the Promise. But to tell the world of this principle, where you can go out and become bedecked with the honors of the world, and then leave them behind to rot, as we must, to become a billionaire and then leave it all behind, so what good would be the law? He said, no one is justified before God by law. So you can use the law wisely—and you should—and do what you want with it, have homes, beautifully furnished, live graciously. In the end, you leave it. Tell you the Promise…when you sleep no more, the sleep is behind you.
Q: If this is true, then it’s just a matter of time, a matter of just so many experiences, then why are you…you’re the only person I know, really, that, or maybe a handful of people, wouldn’t you think this would be happening to a lot of people? Because surely there have been lots and lots of people who have gone through all of this?
A: In this audience tonight sits one who has had it, but he’s not inclined to tell it from the platform.
Q: Yes, I know, I understand, I know that, but wouldn’t you think it would be more common, and when it did happen more people would talk about it? Because most people don’t talk about it. This is what I’m…isn’t it strange that people wouldn’t talk about this thing that has happened to them?
A: You hear it, you accept it on faith and go your way, confidant the Promise will be fulfilled. But to be anxious, “Why did he leave me out, why am I postponed?” No one is postponed…no one is left out.
Q: I didn’t mean that. I meant that the people that did experience, because of what it is, wouldn’t you think that more people would be telling about it?
A: I don’t know who is telling about it.
Q: No…this is…
A: I don’t know who’s telling about it…I really don’t. Not everyone who has it is sent as an apostle.
Q: Then that’s it…that’s the answer I’m looking for. Not everybody who experiences it has the desire to tell it.
A: He has the different values marked out in his letters. He puts the apostle first. The apostle comes first and to be an apostle there is one outstanding qualification: to have seen the risen Christ. He said in the 1st verse, the 9th chapter of 1st Corinthians, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord Jesus Christ?” To have seen him is to become him. You become what you behold. And so, Paul saw the freedom that was different, and then he was self-sent. You can have these experiences and not encounter the risen Christ. Experience the birth…you can’t take that back. The going up as a serpent…you can’t take it back. The discovery of David the Son of God as your Son…you can’t take it back. But have you been commissioned to be sent? If you aren’t sent, you aren’t an apostle.
Q: In the part of scripture where it says some are sent as apostle, some as teachers, and so forth, do you know…
A: You have it both in Corinthians and in Romans, I think. The concordance, Strong’s Concordance…well, then look it up. And he puts the wise man at the very lowest…the one who speaks in tongues. The whole vast country recently was all up in the air about throwing themselves into a trance and speaking in tongues, mumbling, not one word understood. He put that the last of all. The apostle comes first, and then he brings them down. There are teachers, they’re down. Until Friday.