1/22/68

I will call this “The Gospel” with emphasis on the. Now when you hear the word gospel, you always think—that is, I did, I daresay all Christians do or those who know of the gospels—think in terms of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Well, tonight I want to introduce you to “The Gospel” and The Gospel we find in the letters of Paul. Man is not aware of it but Paul’s letters formed the system of Christian faith long before what we call “the gospels” existed. Listen to his words carefully: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, and turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach another gospel that is contradicted by the gospel which we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal.1:6). Then he affirms it again, he repeats it, “I have said it before and now I say it again, if anyone preaches a gospel that is contrary to the gospel that we preach, let him be accursed.” He includes himself, because under the pressure of death or the threat of death or the threat of pain or torture, man could confess that he was wrong. For the churches made Galileo confess that he was wrong, that the earth was center and not moving around the sun. We know today he was right, but under the threat of pain he confessed, for they would have tortured him. Who? The churches who taught an historical Christ…they taught a Christ who never existed and still teach that Christ.

So Paul comes forward with revelation. He said, “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1:1) Now he said, “I will have you know that this gospel which I preach is not man’s gospel. I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11). Now he tells us who Jesus Christ is, he said, “Heretofore, I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” (2Cor.5:16). Now the word Christ and Messiah are the same in scripture. Paul said, “I am a child of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” He was a master in the law of Israel, and he, too, like the whole vast world of Israel was looking for some physical descendant of David to come as Messiah, who will destroy the enemies of Israel and then rule over those who imprisoned them and oppressed them, and then make them the salves…when suddenly the mystery unfolded in Paul.

He said, “I want you to know how I greatly strive for you that you may have an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:1-3). To him, Christ was the wisdom of God, the power of God, the knowledge of God, and suddenly it erupts in man (1Cor.1:24). Well, in him it erupted and then he understood who this coming Messiah really was, that God had been buried in man, and God was called The Word. The Word has three stages in its history. First, you hear it, you hear The Word. You either accept it or you reject it…but you hear The Word. Then the Word becomes dormant in you; in other words, it dies. So, first there is a sowing of The Word or the imparting of The Word, the message of salvation, and then comes its death. Because you must make a living in this world and everyone has to pay rent and buy food and do all the normal things in the world of Caesar, and so you forget it and in that interval it’s dead. Then comes the quickening of The Word…The Word is quickened within you, and suddenly it erupts within you, and all the promises of God to Abraham unfold within you. Then you know who Christ is: The wisdom and the power of God. Everything said of him unfolds in you; so you see no physical being called Jesus Christ. I formerly saw him as flesh and blood, said Paul: “No longer do I regard anyone from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” “For flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1Cor.15:50). Now he sees who can: The Word which is God himself implanted in man, unfolding in man…and it is God himself.

Let me show you how the word becomes quickened in man. When you hear it and you receive it, as he said to the Thessalonians, “When you receive the word of God that we preached to you, you received it not as the word of men, but as it really is, the word of God, that works in you the believers” (1Thes. 2:13). Everyone who heard it and believed the most incredible story in the world, that God became Man that Man may become God, the most incredible story. But there were those who heard it and believed it. They could accept this fantastic story and believe it, even though everything denied it. Their friends died and they knew that eventually they would die, and possibly at the moment without any hope, and yet they die, as all people die. Yet they persisted in their belief, even to the gate of death, that that promise would be kept true, that God would fulfill his promise in them. So the word was at work in the believer.

Now here is a story given to me last Friday night…how we know when the word is quickened in us when in what we call the dream world you do not deviate. That the word that you have accepted has now become so alive within you, you stand on your own feet and challenge anyone in this world concerning the honesty and the truth of the Word of God. Now a lady who is here tonight, she found herself with a huge crowd on a hillside, all seated on this grassy land. It was an enormous crowd, so much so that it was filled to the top of the hill where she was and beyond it to the hill beyond. There was a small raised platform and here was a man speaking into a microphone, and there was a visible open Bible. Then the man speaking raised his voice and said, “I challenge anyone to disprove my knowledge of the Bible.” And this lady, in keeping with the character that she really is—she’s certainly not lukewarm, not in anything she does in this world—so she instantly rose from that enormous crowd and said to the man who had challenged anyone to disprove his knowledge of the Bible, and she said, “Question, please.” Then she began to quote the 22nd chapter of the Book of Matthew; she quoted the 42nd, the 43rd and the 45th verses, omitting the 44th, which is a quote from the 110th Psalm. So she omitted this quote and just took this…and these are the verses.

She said, “Question, please”: “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? And they answered, “The son of David.” He said to them, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” (Mat.22: 42). That is the quote. Then she went beyond that to interpret for him and for the crowd present, and then she explained to him and to the crowd that the word translated “Lord” is “Adonay.” Every son used it of his father, meaning “my father.” So when David in the Spirit called him Adonay, which is translated “my lord,” he is calling him “my father.” Then she said, “This shows you the relationship between Christ and David. Christ is the father and David the son, in fulfillment of scripture.” And then she said, “There was dead silence and then I woke.”

Now the Word has become quickened in her. When the Word becomes quickened in one, it’s only a matter of moments when it erupts and the whole story unfolds in man and it’s the story that Paul told in his letters. When Paul then said, “I have been crucified with Christ” he’s not speaking of a man. No man was crucified…unless some stupid person in a war nailed someone to a cross thinking that they’re injuring him…but no individual called Jesus Christ was ever crucified on a wooden cross. The Christ that Paul spoke of is the Cosmic Christ that is crucified on humanity that man may become a living soul. It’s the wisdom of God and the power of God that is crucified on man, and that power and that wisdom awakens in Man; and Man is it, the power and the wisdom of God (1Cor.1:24). So when he made the statement, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me; and the life I know live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal.2:20). Now you think it is a person. It is God himself who so loved you he gave his wisdom, he gave his power to man, and man in time awakens, and he is God.

After he makes this statement then he turns, in this letter to the Galatians, he said: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” (Gal.3:1). Are you going to see a physical man called Jesus Christ, an external savior, who is coming through the loins of the descendants of David? Did you hear it and accept it in faith? I speak of the Christ Spirit that is buried in you: Because he’s crucified on you and buried in you, he will rise in you and when he rises, you are he. So when Paul speaks…and he said, “I tell you I did not receive it from man nor was I taught it by man, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” The word “revelation” to Paul is primary. Not knowledge about God, but God in an act of self-revealing. He reveals himself in you. You can’t quite believe it. This thing suddenly happens and all of a sudden you can’t say Neville is doing it, and yet all that is said of God is happening in you. Everything said of him is taking place in you, and you wonder, “What is it all about?” And you are it…everything said of Jesus Christ unfolds in you, and then you know who you are. God and Christ are one. Because he unfolds in you as yourself then you are God.

So he said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, then I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal.1:16). I didn’t confer with any flesh and blood after because who would tell me? They can tell me all kinds of things on the outside, but they can’t tell me this great mystery. So he said, “I want you to have the assurance of the understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.” He tells you it is a mystery. He wants you to have the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ. Read it in the 2nd chapter of Colossians (verse 2), because “In him are hid all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.” This that man calls Christ, is not a single little man walking the earth, who’s very wise and very powerful, but something unfolding in you: The Christ Spirit.

Now let the world deny it, does it really matter? He said, “Let it be a curse, anyone who preaches another gospel.” Well, the whole vast world preaches another gospel. They tell you of a little man who had no earthly father, and here, born in some strange miraculous way…but physically born. And that’s not the story at all. He’s born in everyone, in time. Everyone will give birth to this symbol, this sign, for it’s called a sign. When you hold that sign in your own hands, it only signifies your own birth into this heavenly guild where you are this one.

Now let me share with you what was shared with me in the form of a story. I do not know the gentleman save in the Spirit world. I read his works and I love his works. His name is George Russell, better known to us as A. E. He said, “This I will tell you, but I will not tell you where I saw it.” Then he tells a story: “The hall is vaster than the vastest cathedral. The pillars seemed to be made of shimmering opal, starry substances. In between the pillars were thrones on which sat divine kings, all fire-crested. One wore the crest of a serpent. At the end of the hall was a throne higher than the others; on it sat a being that radiated light like the sun, he glowed just like the sun. In the center of this vast hall was a dark creature flat on the floor, and two of the kings moved their hands over the body, and where their hands moved sparks flew like moving jewels. Then, out of this body rose a being as tall, as glorious, as wonderful as these who sat upon their thrones; and he raised his hands as he became aware of the hall and as he became aware of his brothers. They leaped up from their thrones with their hands raised in greetings to this one who had returned from his journey through darkness. Then they quickly faded into the light beyond the where the great one sat.”

Now he said, “I will not tell you where I saw it, but I saw it.” He eavesdropped upon the awakening of the God who was dreaming of the passage through darkness into light. Everyone in this world is so entranced that you can’t remember where in that vast hall you laid yourself down to dream, to dream this world. The day will come that you will finish the dream and you will return, and your brothers, all crested kings, are there to await you and greet you. All will awaken in that same manner, one by one, to be incorporated into a single body that is there at the end, waiting. And all are one! So you and I agreed to dream and to dream in concert, and this is our dream, a world of darkness, a world that is a nightmare. But in the end, you’re untouched by the dream; and you will awaken. When you come back, they are waiting for you and you are untouched, unsoiled by the dream, but enriched by it, glorified by it because you experienced that travel in darkness. You will find that in his book The Candle of Vision where he begins quoting the two passages, one from Proverbs and one from Job. He said, “The Spirit of man is the candle of the Lord” and “When his candle shined upon my head, by its light I walked through darkness.”

Now, a lady who is not here tonight (but her mother is and she can tell her) she too gave me a letter on Friday. She said, “I’ve been having the strangest thing happening to me. I am not disturbed, for you told me these things will happen. But here I’m having double vision.” As Blake said, “Double the vision my eyes do see, and a double vision is always with me.” Then he describes a three-fold vision and a four-fold vision, and he pities those who only have a single vision. So she said, “Suddenly I have a double vision. I’m in my living room doing the normal chores that a housewife must do, and suddenly in my living room in an entirely different world, there’s a roadway and it’s walled with light, scintillating living light, and at the end of the roadway the light is more intense than the walls of light. It doesn’t disturb me, it doesn’t stop me from doing my chores; and yet I am actually in two worlds, and my whole day was spent that way. The next day started off in the same double vision, with the very people in it, and yet it doesn’t disturb the world in which I find myself.”

Now here is a young mother, thirty-ish with two little children. Then she said, “That night, the first night of the double vision, I lay down to sleep and suddenly here is a man, a tall being, robed in white. I felt I must be on the floor because I’m at his feet…yet I know I’m on my bed. Yet from the position that I occupy, I must be on my back at his feet. His hands are raised and he’s holding a lamp above his head. The lamp is uncovered and it illuminates everything round about this beautiful creature. Then suddenly I am looking through the eyes of this being, and looking down not at myself but at my husband. His eyes are closed as though in sleep. Here I am looking through the eyes of the being at my husband on the bed. Since the experience of a few months ago that I wrote you about where I, one and at the same time happened to be three—I am having the experience…I am not only having the experience, I am the one conveying the experience.” Now she said, “Could I be this glorious being that I saw?” I would only tell her mother to tell her, infinitely greater than that, for she is the being looking through his eyes. She was the being on the bed who stretched out his feet, the being called her husband. But she is the invisible cause of all! She is far, far awake. She is really home…just a matter of moments when she completely awakes from the dream of life. Oh, she’ll have many fantastic experiences between now and then, experiences that will frighten her friends and disturb her relatives, but she can’t help it. She is there.

So the gospel of which Paul spoke we find in his letters. The earliest gospel is Mark and that was written, by the earliest account, in the year 70 A.D. Paul’s Galatians is the first book in the New Testament, and no one dates it beyond 52 A.D. All of his letters were written before the four gospels came into existence, for the latest is written 90 A.D., the Book of John, so they pulled heavily on the story of Paul. Paul was that Hebrew of Hebrews in whom the promises of God awoke and then he took the story as it unfolded in him and he told it. He said, “Let anyone who tells another gospel, let him be accursed—even if I tell it or an angel from heaven shall tell it, let them be accursed; for you’re simply distorting the truth and leading men astray.” Today, after 2,000 years we certainly have led them astray by speaking of the historicity of the gospel. And it isn’t history. Paul believed it was history when he read the Old Testament, for that was the only Bible. He really believed that David was a being of flesh and blood and he really believed that Abraham was, and when he saw it wasn’t, he calls it all an allegory. In his letter to the Galatians he tells the story of Abraham and his two sons and the two wives; one bearing children into slavery, called Hagar, and one bearing children into freedom, called Sarah. The he said, “This is an allegory.”

Well, an allegory is a story that is told as if it were true leaving the one who hears it to discover its fictitious character and learn its lesson. So if the story of Abraham, as stated in the 4th chapter of Galatians (verse 24), is an allegory and the New Testament begins on the words, “And this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham”—if Abraham’s story of begetting Isaac, who in turn begot Jacob, who in turn begot Judah and his brothers, and then you come all the way down culminating in Jesus—and if the origin is an allegory, what is the end? But learn its message. It doesn’t mean it’s a lie because it’s an allegory. I tell you a story because man is incapable of grasping things other than to be told in the form of a little story. He can’t grasp the abstract, he can’t grasp the mystery of God, and so you tell it in the form of a story. Man has misconceived the story and accepts the story instead of its message. So he tells you, it’s an allegory.

Now, if it is an allegory and he is the beginning of the entire unfolding picture, then all is an allegory. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a lie. It is more true than anything known to man, for all the wisdom of man will be foolishness in the eyes of God who wrote this story. For this is dictated; he tells you the words are not mine. I know that in 1929, at the age of twenty-four, when I stood in the presence of the risen Lord and he asked me a simple question, which I answered quite simply in the words of Paul. I wondered then, why did I answer in the words of Paul? Why didn’t I answer in the words put into the mouth by the evangelist in the story of the gospel, called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Yet I didn’t. I answered in the words of Paul, I said, “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (1Cor.13:13). I must confess when I came back to this world I wondered, why the words of Paul?

Well, at the time, I had in my circle a man who was completely against Paul and thought that Paul had distorted the Christian faith. And so he was in a way trying to influence my judgment, and yet in my mystical experience it was Paul and his words that I uttered in the presence of the risen Lord. So from then, back in 1929…now, I’m not saying that all that is said in the four gospels is not true; they’re all true. But they were built upon this original, and any teaching contrary to it, he tells you, is a lie, but any other gospel. No historical Jesus Christ. There never was one. But Israel was looking for the coming of Messiah, and suddenly he came, but not in the way man expected. This brilliant mind of Paul was honest enough to record what happened to him, and for that he was condemned by the Sanhedrin, his own earthly brothers. They imprisoned him, they chained him, and they wanted his death because he dared to bring in a translation of the promises of God that differed from what man expected. They wanted an external Christ to come, an external Messiah. It doesn’t come that way; it comes from within. It is only God playing all the parts and he awakens within man.

So the Word has been received by man…and then the Word discovers himself…for the Word is in man if man has received it, and then the Word discovers himself. As he discovers himself, he is the very being that he heard of…and it was himself all along. He returns from this passage through darkness into this heavenly guild where they’re all waiting for him, and now he can contribute to the wisdom and the power and the glory of God. Everyone comes back bringing a contribution based upon his passage through eternal death, his passage through darkness. So no one comes back without his gift. Everyone brings back his gift by reason of his passage through darkness.

So here, read it carefully. It’s the bulk, really, of the New Testament, his thirteen letters. I am convinced that there are many others but not yet found. But these are enough. There were others, but the system of the Christian faith was fully matured before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John came into existence. He calls his system the gospel, that is, the gospel of God or the message of salvation.

Now, I know that everything said is non-historical…and yet true. Here is one, because he refers to it, but take it now as we find it in the gospels, the four gospels. He feeds an enormous crowd on bread and fish…5,000. They’re all seated on the ground when he feeds them. Now he calls himself “the bread that came down from heaven,” so that’s what he’s going to feed them. People think in terms of a little loaf of bread. He’s referred to as “the great fish.” “You must eat my body and drink of my blood”…so he said, “I’m going to feed them.”

Now, here is an experience that I have had. I’ve told it before…the majority of you have heard it. The year was 1946 and I was at sea, sailing through the Caribbean, coming into Mobile, Alabama when suddenly I was lifted up on high. One spiral motion and I am lifted up. But in that motion a heavenly chorus began to sing, and the words were simply simple words repeated over and over. I can’t quite describe how you could take just so few words and make such beauty out of it. The words were “Neville is risen.” That’s what the chorus sang and they added no other words to it. I felt as though I had just been victorious in a conflict with death. I had been actually encased in death, and I was the victor in a conflict with death. I was clothed in a body of fire, a fiery being dwelling in a body of air; my body was self-luminous. And I could see as far as the eye could go this infinite sea of human imperfection, and I knew they were waiting for me. I was completely undisturbed and unconcerned. I didn’t raise one little finger to change one of them. But I was risen and as we are told, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I’ll lift up all men unto me” (John 12:32). And so, I was lifted up in a state of perfection, and as I walked by, rather, glided by, every one of them—they had eyes missing, hands missing, ears missing, all members of the body were gone in each—but as I walked by out of the nowhere came these missing members and remolded themselves into these bodies and they were all made perfect. Not one was left unfinished…it was all finished and perfect.

I simply glided by and the chorus is accompanying me singing, “Neville is risen,” changing all the notes and all the moods, this heavenly chorus. When it came to the very end, they exulted “It is finished!” And then for the first time since I left eternity I knew the cramped stage of being here, for I felt myself actually condense. I can’t describe it. Here is this being of light in a body of air and I felt myself actually come down and I was condensed as though, well, no tight jacket, no straitjacket could bind man as I was bound in this body. I came right down. The world is still a glow of light, but I am bound more than any straitjacket ever bound the insane. There I was on my bunk on this freighter coming from Port-O-Spain, Trinidad into Mobile, Alabama with this vivid, vivid experience.

And now I know what it is to feed the thousands. You don’t feed them with a little bread; you feed them with yourself, what you are. You are perfect and you fed them with perfection. And everyone fed on what they wanted. The one who wanted an eye got the eye; he who wanted the arm got the arm. Whatever they wanted they got in fullness. When everyone was made perfect, they exulted “It is finished!” and then I crystallized….I was found in this little thing…and that’s since 1946. So I know what is in store when I take off the straitjacket and return to this heavenly guild. My brothers await me, waiting for my return from this journey through darkness into light.

So, I am so greatly encouraged when I get these letters, when I hear the story of challenging the one who challenges the whole vast world to disprove my knowledge of the Bible. She rises and here she is expounding the greatest of the mysteries, the relationship of Father-Son: The Father is Christ, who is God, and the Son is David, calling him “my Lord,” “my Father,” in fulfillment of the 2nd Psalm (verse 7). In the vision she is talking about it, and all are silent including the speaker, none could speak. And then she woke. As I said earlier, she is not lukewarm. As you’re told in Revelation, “Would that you were either hot or cold, but because you are neither hot nor cold and you are lukewarm, I spew you out” (3:16). You’d never spew her out, because she is adamant in what she knows concerning this great truth. In dream she rises, accepts the challenge, and then in turn challenges him to interpret this as she is about to interpret and does.

So all these things are taking place in this group. I can’t tell you my thrill. Because what does it matter if you owned the very earth tonight and have to leave it tomorrow and go into the normal little world into which you’ll find yourself, replaying the drama while the Word in you the believer is doing its work? Not until that Word completes its work will it become quickened, and then from quickening into eruption. It erupts into the mystery as it unfolds as the story is told.

But Christ that Paul speaks of is not a little Christ of flesh and blood. If there be another Christ other than that Christ on whom we are all crucified, to Paul that is a false Christ; and anyone who teaches that Christ is a false teacher and his doctrine is false. It is the cosmic Christ crucified on humanity that is the first story as told in the letters of Paul. It predated the four gospels by at least twenty years.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: (inaudible)

A: If you hold onto a stationary object, not an object like an animal that could move, but a stationary object like a stairway, a house, a pillow…I mean, when I say pillow I don’t mean a pillow on which you sleep at night, I mean something solid, and compel yourself to awake, you will awake within the dream to discover it isn’t a dream; it’s just as real as this. The problem then is to get back here. There is no road leading here, therefore, I tell you from my own experience: Feeling is the secret. You can imagine yourself on the bed where you remember having laid the body down, and try to feel yourself on that bed on that pillow, and give it all the sensory tones of reality. Eventually you’ll feel yourself there. But you may be, chances are you will be cataleptic. Don’t be afraid. You’re simply in a body that is almost dead but not, and you’ll come back to normalcy. You’ll see the familiar objects on the wall in a matter of, oh say, thirty seconds or so. It may seem an eternity, but it won’t be that long. You’ll come back enhanced because you know of the existence of other worlds. You’ll know it…I’ve done this time and again…the worlds are here. As my friend said, “A double vision I have now. While I’m doing the chores of the household, here, suddenly I’m seeing a roadway in my living room, and the walls are made of light, pulsing living light and at the end a more intense light. But it doesn’t disturb me or stop me in the work I have to do. I find myself living in two worlds at one and the same time, but they don’t interfere. You told me that I would have these things and so I’m having them, and that’s all there is to it.”

The average person, they know nothing of the existence of anything outside of this little world. So this one is dead, so he’s dead…he’s not dead at all! Nothing dies. Everything is restored, instantly restored, only new and young; not a baby, not a little infant, twenty years old. They’re restored to life and not one little thing is missing; they don’t need any aids that they need here when they die at the age of, say, my age. I have a bridge work. Alright, my hair has turned white. I have a scar on my body because one organ was taken out…none of that if I should now drop and be restored. Only this time I’m not being restored; I’m awakening in that vast hall and I will rise out of that entranced body that is dreaming this, and be as tall and as glorious and as kingly as those who are awaiting my return, for the drama is over as far as I am concerned. I could only wait long enough to tell it and to record it so that when I’m gone you who may not take it off on your tapes and put it down so others could have it, at least I’ve left a record of the experiences…and I’ve called it Resurrection.

Speaking of that, my new publisher has finally brought the book out and it’s here tonight, and he’s called it Resurrection. He numbered the pages so that should you need, as I think you should, numbers on the pages, they’re all now numbered. The few typographical errors in the first edition have been corrected, and so now we have a corrected second printing, and they’re all numbered pages. The title of the book now is not just simply Neville but Resurrection and just simply “by Neville.” So it’s now available. I daresay that you’ll have it not only every lecture night, but he distributes the book, so you can find it wherever you go. Those who come here will get it here at the table.

Any questions? Well, if not, until Friday. Thank you.