3/14/69

Tonight, I’m speaking of the greatest of all mysteries, the mystery of the Bible. One must experience the gospel for himself before he can begin to understand how perfectly wonderful it is. Think of this whole fabulous world of ours, we’re all here in the world, and we go through the horrors that everyone goes through, all the violence; and then at a fullness of time, one man is called and then incorporated into the body of the author of it all, and then sent back into the world to tell what he heard, what he saw, what he felt.

Now here is the story of salvation. In our New Testament we find every author—and no one knows who they are—but each claiming that he is one who is sent. Each claims he is an apostle and apostle simply means “one who is sent.” But we do not know the authors as they’re all anonymous: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are unknown characters. And all the others…no one mentions the others in any contemporary work of the time that these are supposed to have been written. So here, all the authors are unknown but each claiming to have the experience of being called, because to be called is also to be sent. So, they come and they bring the story that they heard and that which they saw, and that which they experienced. When Paul tells it, he makes the statement, “I will now tell of visions and revelations. I know a man in Christ, who fourteen years ago was caught up into the third heaven—now whether in the body or out of the body I do not know…but he heard that which cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2Cor.12:2). Now Paul is telling his own story, whoever Paul is, and he’s simply telling his own experience.

I personally have had no restraint of that nature. I feel that the unknown author of the Book of Jeremiah, which by definition means “Jehovah will rise,” for he said, “If I say ‘I will not mention it, or speak any more in his name,’ then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot’” (Jer. 20:9). I cannot restrain the impulse to share with my brothers that which has happened to me. So I, too, was called. You’re called while you’re here in this world of horror. Who knows that secret of electivity? No one knows. Who knows when anyone will be called and from what strata he’ll be called? It’s not based upon anything, any code, any order of arrangement known to man. There is no aristocracy of privilege, none whatsoever. You don’t have to be a brilliant giant of a mind; you could be washing floors, you could be shining shoes, you could be in the eyes of the world, unlettered. There is not any, I would say, standard by which man is elected. But he is called out of this world while he’s walking in this world.

Now whether in the body or out of the body…you seem to have a body because you see, you can touch, you can hear, you can observe; and the body that you see, into whose body you are incorporated, is a solid body to you. When he embraces you, you feel the embrace, you feel the complete fusion of the two, you and the one with whom you are now united. Then in the twinkle of an eye, from infinite love who embraces you, he now wears the garment of infinite power and he sends you as power. For, when you come into the world then you are the power of God and the wisdom of God. It’s not the wisdom of man and it’s not the power of man. You do not need the things that we call here expressions of power, like fabulous wealth or social standing or political standing. You still are the same being you were before; you come only to tell the story. But you were called, incorporated into the body of love; then, because this being is a protean being and can assume any form instantly in one twinkle of a moment he now wears the form of power. You stand before him and he sends you into the world; you’re hurled back into your body. You do not now whether you were in the body when the whole thing happened or whether you were taken out of the body. You only know that you are back where you were…and the whole world is full of light. As far as you are concerned the room is simply filled with light and there’s no reason for light. It doesn’t subside right away, takes the longest while for it to actually subside and return to its norm, which is four in the morning and therefore dark. Filled with light! You are completely, well, I wouldn’t say confused but awed. You are startled by the experience. And then you go through life playing the same little part you were playing before, when the whole thing begins to awaken within you. Then, after an interval of time, you start your work; thirty years later you begin your ministry to tell…because then something really explodes within you, suddenly erupts within you, and that is your beginning, which is your resurrection from within your own being.

So here, the whole vast world…we are the gods who came down and took upon ourselves these dead bodies of weighted nerves—that is all that they are—without a mind, and we animated them. Then because they are weighted nerves we began to suffer as we now wear these garments of weighted nerves. We suffer everything that they are capable of experiencing in the world, every pain, every disappointment, but everything. And it seemed that we would never depart this world of hell, for this is hell. Then one moment in eternity, one from this world is called and when he is sent into the world his name is changed and his name is Jesus. So everyone who is called and sent is the same being. He only brings a pattern, and the pattern then unfolds within him, and that is the pattern of redemption. It’s a definite plan of redemption, a series of supernatural experiences unfolding in him. So when he departs at the end of his little spell here for the last time, he leaves whatever record he can leave to encourage everyone who heard him, who will abide in what he said…if his words will remain in them.

Will they? I often ask myself to what extent are we so ground into it that they really will abide in us? Well, I’ve told you the story as I personally have experienced it. I have not elaborated, I have not minimized it, and I do not feel for one moment any restraint in the telling of it, telling it in detail just as it happened. I have no compulsion not to tell it, such as Paul, whoever Paul is. I felt I must tell it to encourage everyone. Quite often you think they heard it to the point of accepting it. And then, today for instance in this tiny section of time, you meet friends you know well that came to the meetings. They’re people my senior in years; I’m sixty-four, they must be seventy, lovely home, adequate income without labor, they don’t work, trust funds, investments, no children, just the two of them. And then because they listen all through the night to the Joe Pines of the world, they are afraid at their advanced years of seventy to remain in California which is going to sink. So they take their little old garments up and rush off to Arizona to wait out the interval of time. They haven’t the courage to tell me why. They make all the excuses that it’s the rain, the constant floods, the constant this. They’ve been living here for years and years. It isn’t that at all, but they haven’t the courage to tell me why they’re moving out for two months, looking for a place in Arizona and if they find it, they’ll be back some time in the end of May or early June, then to dispose of their properties here. That’s not what they’re thinking at all. They’ve been so frightened by all this nonsense on radio and TV. Even today you find it the L. A. Times the political cartoonist making a cartoon of a man all dressed for the occasion. He has his lifebelt, he has his snorkel, everything.

You have no idea, you think you are getting over, and you think you are reaching a certain person or persons, and then their behavior belies the fact that they ever heard you… ever heard you to the point of acceptance. Because why? They know you. So he said, “So you know who I am and where I come from, but you do not know the one who sent me. Him you do not know.” “But do we not know your father, your mother, your brothers, your sisters?” And he tells them of a different birth. But they can go back to his physical origin and pinpoint the day he appeared in this world from the womb of a woman, and he had brothers and they named the brothers and he had sisters. Then he tells them something else happened. Well, they can’t believe it. They can’t believe that that’s what could have happened. That would change the entire outlook of the entire world.

It is all from here that we are called. We all came down into this world of horror for a definite purpose; not for punishment but for an experiment. For this is the world of death and we all came down to die, as told in the 82nd Psalm: “You are all sons of God, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes” (82:1,6). So here we are in a world that is a fallen world for a purpose. And then in a moment in time, the first one is called, and then the second is called, and eventually all are called. Then everyone who is called is incorporated into the body of the risen Lord, everyone.

Now, we are told, “In that day”—speaking now of the very end—“the Lord will be king over all the world and his name will be one and the Lord one.” And “David, his servant, will be their prince forever and forever” (Ezek.34:24). David will be their prince. Well, don’t tell me that any man who was born prince say of England…if I were born as I was under the British flag, that he was any prince of mine. If I am not a prince and he’s my son then I am king. So there is no one in this world who is any prince of you. Let him be the prince of his own father who is king, but not any prince of you unless you are his father. So David is the prince forever and forever. That’s what we are told in Ezekiel and we’re told it all through in Zechariah, all through the Bible: he is prince forever and forever. If he’s prince and he’s my prince, then I must be that one spoken of as the Lord who is king over all.

I can tell you from my own experience that is your destiny. When you will be called I do not know, but listen to the words, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. He who sent me is one with me. He has never left me alone.” He who sent me is one with me; he has never left me alone. So if the sender and the sent are one, and then I am called, incorporated into the body of the sender and sent, I am one with the sender. So whenever I return I am the sender. When I call, as I will, I will send. And you and I will be one. I have told you his name: his name is Father. “I have made it known and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and they in me, and I in them” (Jn.17:26). For, the sender and the sent are one.

So on my return, I am one with the one who sent me and he is God the Father. Then I will be in the capacity to embrace you into my body of love, and then clothed in the garment of almightiness to send you and you will tell the story. But you will be one with the one who sent you and you’ll return having told your story. Then you too will be able to say, “I’ve finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Return unto me now the glory that I had with thee.” For that moment when you incorporated me into your body of love, that was real joy, ecstasy beyond the wildest dream of man. So return to me that glory and then I am one with that body. And, may I tell you, no one knows the beauty of that body, the glory of that body until they see it and are incorporated into it. To describe him as love…oh, I can say love, it’s the human form divine, it’s infinite love. But he doesn’t send you from the garment of love; he always whirls you back into this world from the garment of power.

So Paul could describe Jesus Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor.1:24). So he’s telling his own story that he knows—talks about that he knows a man in Christ. To be “in Christ” is to be caught up into a cosmic purpose and you’re through with this world altogether. It’s a cosmic purpose now, something entirely different, and you’re caught up into that garment which belongs to an entirely different sphere, a different age. So then he tells you that he knows a man in Christ, who fourteen years ago was caught up into Christ. Now whether he was in the body when it happened or out of the body, he said, “I do not know.” Well, no, you really don’t know. You come back to a body that’s on the bed, or it can be seated on the chair, but it is in this world. You can’t deny that you had a body. It never occurred to you that you should have examined the body and see what it looked like, for it’s Spirit, yet it’s a body. You aren’t looking into a mirror to see it reflected; it’s a body, a living body because you could see, and that being before you asked you a question. You could see the recording angel as the name is recorded or checked off. You could hear the voice of the one who asked you and when he embraced you after you answer him, you felt the embrace. So you felt a body, you felt a body and your body was felt. So he said, “I do not know whether I was in the body or out of the body, but this I do know that I heard things that cannot be told.”

Well, I never heard that. I was told it was time to act and the only action I could think of was to tell what I had just experienced. Then thirty years later, as told in scripture, he began his ministry; and the ministry was from the moment of resurrection. Then after the resurrection within himself, and his birth, and his discovery of the eternal prince who calls him Father—well, if the prince calls me Father, I am the king spoken of in Zechariah. So he said, “In that day, the Lord will become king over all the world; and the Lord will be one and his name one” (Zech.14:9). Only one Father, one God and Father of all, and you are destined to be that one God and Father of all.

So, keep it in mind and let these words abide in you. No matter what sorrows you go through, hold this divine vision in time of trouble and lean against it and don’t listen to the Joe Pines and rush off trying to hide the little garment which in the not distant future you’ll take off anyway. He might tonight close his eyes in Arizona and wake to find he’s not there at all. Whoever’s left behind returns to find that the little house hasn’t gone. He’ll go blindly on selling products, for the only purpose for all these silly things on TV and radio is to sell products…it’s a commercial venture. Hasn’t a thing to do with the true vision of God.

So when he said, “I am now going to boast”—that’s how he starts the twelfth chapter of 2nd Corinthians—“I must boast,” for he’d been criticized for the claim that he was an apostle. And he knew that those who criticized him might have been more learned, they might have been, well, he claimed he had a thorn in his side and they might not have had any inhibitions or any limitations. So he thought that he must go on record and tell that he’d had what they did not have. But he should have spelled the whole thing out, just exactly what happened to him, so he claims he’s not allowed to tell it. May I tell you, tell it! When it comes to you, you tell it, tell it as vividly, but don’t elaborate, don’t exaggerate, just tell it. It must conform to scripture. We are called to be witnesses. Well, the word witness and the word martyr are the same in scripture. To be a martyr is to be a witness. It doesn’t mean that you chop off your head or you had it chopped off, or that you were stoned to death…no, you’re now a witness and to be a witness, a good witness, it must conform to that one witness which is the external witness of scripture. There are two witnesses: the external letter and the internal Spirit. And the Spirit must actually conform to what is written through the prophets. So, is it in scripture? If it’s not in scripture then your testimony is not acceptable, for if the testimony of two and they are different and they agree in testimony, well, then it’s conclusive. If they do not agree in testimony, well, then it’s not conclusive, because the testimony of one is not acceptable.

So here is the Bible, that’s the testimony of one and that’s external. When you in Spirit have the experience as recorded in scripture and it dovetails, well then, you have two witnesses: the external witness of scripture and the internal witness of the Spirit. Then when you’ve completed scripture, you return to the sender. But while you are here in this world, in this world of ours doing the work, you are still the sender. From the moment you were sent you were one with the sender…he never left you…even though no one sees it. They can’t look at the mask that you wear and see him who sent you. You know who sent you and you’re conscious of his being every moment of time. You know that no one sees the being that you know that you are. You know that you are the Ancient of Days and yet you’re a man in your sixties or seventies or maybe fifties…but you know you are the Ancient of Days. By Ancient of Days I don’t mean that you look like an old wizened person. No, it’s beautifully described in the Book of Daniel, and you’ll know when you see him that you’re in the presence of infinite love, and he is the Ancient of Days; and when incorporated into his body, you are the body of God and you are the Spirit of God. Because, there’s only “one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph.4:4). You are that.

So you walk still wearing your mask until that moment in time when you take it off for the last time. What was it until you ___(??) it? It was only a weighted nerve, weighted nerves without a mind. You, by taking it animated it and from then on started to suffer, because the nerves allowed you to suffer and to experience this world of death. Without wearing that garment that could be animated into suffering, into joy, joy and woe in this world, you would not have the experience. But the body without you is dead. Then at the end, you take it off, return to the sender who sent you, and you are one with the sender. Then those that you receive here—for no one comes unto me here in this world of Caesar except my Father who sent me draws them—and I will not lose one, it is said, not one. So he who comes to me and accepts what I say based upon my own experience of scripture and these words remain in him and abide in him, then I return to the one who sent me (I am the sender) and then I will call those that he gave me while I was here…everyone…not one will be cast out, not one will be lost. And they will be incorporated one by one into the body that then is mine in a conscious way; and then whirled back into the world where their body remains…with the knowledge that they have been called and sent. Then they will tell their story.

The story, tell it vividly and don’t restrain the impulse…just tell it over and over. For this is such a fantastic story you can’t tell it once and expect acceptance. It’s too profound, it’s too altogether wonderful to think you are going to tell the most incredible story in the world and have people accept it. For they are going to say, “I know you.” Well, you say you know me, you know where I come from. “Oh yes, we know where you come from.” And you know my father and my mother? “Yes.” Well I didn’t come in that way at all. The one who now speaks to you came from heaven. “Well, we know where you came from. What are you talking about coming from heaven?” “I was lifted up into the third heaven,” said he. Well, three is simply a symbolic number for the resurrected state, for three is simply the number of resurrection: “On the third day the earth rose up out of the deep.” So the third heaven is simply a nice way of saying it is the world of paradise, the resurrected world, the New Jerusalem; and there you’re taken into the state, incorporated, and then sent. And you can’t forget it.

Paul said fourteen years ago; I go back forty years. It was 1929 when I was called and sent. But it was not until 1959, thirty years later, that the ministry began in the true sense of the word. Prior to that I was talking only on the law: if you know what you want, believe that you have it and you’ll get it (Mark11:24). If you persist in that assumption, though at the moment your reason denies it and your senses deny it, if you persist in it you will get it. So I was only talking about the law; I knew nothing of the promise. But in ’59 the promise broke upon me and all the promises of God began to unfold themselves within me. So I can truly say that his promises have found their yes in me, for there’s only one being in whom the promises can be fulfilled and that is the one he called and sent. He always calls and sends his pattern and the pattern man is called Jesus Christ. There is only in the end Jesus the one man; but he is housed in every man waiting to be called. He is called and, I would say, fertilized, fertilized by entrance into the body of love, and then sent into the world. Then this thing erupts within him and he is the one spoken of in scripture.

So, Father, as thou sent me even so I have sent them. And he who sees me sees him who sent me, and he who sent me has never left me alone. And, Father, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do, now return the glory that I had with thee (Jn.17:5). I had it; now return it. So the garment comes off and you return to the glory that was yours when he incorporated you into his body, and you are one with the body of the Lord. You are the Lord, for you’re one Spirit and you are the God and Father of all. Then those he gave you while you were in the world…as you are told, and the word is used that way…“As thou hast sent me into the world, so, Father, I send them into the world.” So I was taken from the world, incorporated and sent back into the world. And when it comes my turn to call those he gave me when I was in the world, I will incorporate them into my body, which is our body, and send them back into the world where in this world that pattern will erupt and everything will unfold within them. And then they will return and we are one. So the love with which thou lovest me I have loved them that they may be one as we are one.

So let no one frighten you about the world coming to an end. It’s not in scripture. The end is simply the end of your journey, that’s the only “end” spoken of in scripture. The end and the buildings falling…that’s all symbolical. I had that back in 1960, where all the buildings fell and I knew exactly this would fall and that would fall and the other one would fall. But it hadn’t a thing to do with buildings in this world of Caesar: these were the beliefs by which I lived. After the incorporation and being sent into the world and then the whole thing erupting within me, all that I formerly believed because I was taught it in that manner crumbled. I could no longer believe in the little historical Jesus. I could no longer believe what my mother taught me is the Christian faith, and the churches still teach is the Christian faith, and the Jews teach in their faith. I couldn’t accept it after the experience.

So all the structures of the mind by which I lived began to fall. I had the vision of all the buildings, every one, fell right down. I had to build from scratch, build a new foundation, and the only foundation is Christ. And Christ is not some little historical figure of 2,000 years ago; I’m speaking of the cosmic Christ who is buried in every child born of woman. In the fullness of time the individual is called, incorporated and sent right back into the world wearing that same body. He has to confront those who know him and then meet the challenge—“But don’t we know you? Aren’t you so and so?” Yes I would answer to that. You know my physical origin and to that I will answer, but I am not the being that you formerly knew. Something has happened and another birth has taken place that I cannot share with you…I cannot tell you save in words. I cannot take you and show you the actual event. I can describe it in words for you, but will you believe it? And the chances are they would say “No, that’s all fantasy, that’s all self-begotten fantasy.” You leave it right there. That’s all that they can accept.

You take them to scripture and you show them the scripture, but to them scripture is secular history, that they were not historians who wrote it, and that their one consuming desire was to transmit to man this message of salvation. That’s all that they were interested in because they were saved, for they were called and sent; therefore, they were an apostle. The minute you are sent you are an apostle and the apostle, the one who is sent, is one with the one who sent him…the sender and the sent. So if one is sent by God the Father and he in turn tells those who listen to him that now I send you, well then, if he is one with God the Father and he sends you, then you are one with God the Father. The minute you are sent you are one with God the Father. You can’t get away from this argument in scripture.

So I say to everyone, the day is not far off when you’ll be called…if what you heard abides in you…if you aren’t going to run away to save the little skin which is going to be taken from you before you can reach the plane. But when you know these people and you know them, and you love them dearly, and they seem intelligent, with an income of in excess of $800 a month without having to go to work. They get up, they need not leave the door and that comes in every month. They have no children, no obligations to society, a home that is completely free of all indebtedness, and a few acres of land, beautiful orchards, lovely flowers, everything that people would desire. Well then, they turn this silly little thing on at night and go and absorb all that nonsense, and then act upon it, proving that the words did not abide in them. So you’re told, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, just ask what you will and it will be done for you.” They can remain right here if these words abide in them and ask for confirmation. But ask it for something.

Well, they would never hear what the professors at Cal Tech said about it. They wouldn’t read that because that’s in conflict with what they heard this ignoramus say on radio. Oh, so he makes a hundred thousand, maybe a half-million dollars a years, so what! My father used to have a saying, and it’s a true saying, “Money doesn’t care who owns it.” It doesn’t…it doesn’t care who owns it. In little Barbados, we had what is known as a lazaretto for the lepers. From all over the islands they came, for we were the most healthy of all the islands, so they built it in Barbados, and then they came from all the islands. There were never too many, but I mean, it was a place for those who had leprosy. Well, the only thing that ever came out of the lazaretto that came into it, outside of the doctors and the nurses, was money. If you sent in clothing it was burned when it was no longer usable. If you sent in food, the dishes were never sent back, so you sent in on tin dishes…things of that nature. But you never got anything out in those days. The only thing that came out was money. They would allow you to send in money. If you had a friend in there or a relative, you could send them money and they could go to the top of the wall, and when the huckster came by selling candy or selling syrup or any little thing they didn’t get on the inside, they were allowed to buy it and the exchange was money. But when you put the syrup beyond the gate, and they had the syrup, that little tin can never came out because that was a colony of lepers. So my father very wisely said, “Money doesn’t care who owns it”…filthiest thing in the world. If you took any coin in the world and could actually tell the history of that coin, what a history, the hands through which it passed—the miser’s hand, the censor’s hand, the thief’s hand, every hand, that one coin. If it was long enough…and what a history if you could only follow the history of a coin.

So that the man makes a quarter of a million selling a lot of nonsense and poisoning the minds of people…perfectly all right. No man can come unto me except my Father calls him and I will not lose him, not one that he’s ever called to me to hear the message that he gave me to say can I ever lose, can’t lose one. But the only way you can tell that they are those that were really called is when the words that you mention to them concerning the experiences that you’ve had in the third heaven abides in them. Will it support them in the time of need? Will they lean against this vision when things are rough? If they will lean against it in the moment of distress, well then, they are abiding in the Word. And when you depart…not long, you depart it instantly…you don’t go through little areas. You are instantly back to the sender and you are the sender. Now those that heard and abide you start calling. It doesn’t take long, you start calling them one by one incorporating them into your body and sending them back into the world. For that’s where you got them…he gave them to you when you were in the world of Caesar. You call them into the third heaven where you are now, and then you send them back where that body waits for them. Then they bring back the memory of the experience and then begin to tell it. That’s how the Word is revealed.

So may I tell you, the greatest story ever told is the least understood; it’s the story of the gospel, and the individual must experience it before he can begin to understand how perfectly marvelous it is. When the whole thing unfolds within you, you can hardly believe it. You mean the whole book was written about me?—yes. And written about him?—yes. And all?—yes. But in the end it will not be a bunch, just one…all coming back into the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord. Just see it like a play or a beautiful poem, and the poem existing not for itself but for the author of the poem. You desire to have it exist for itself and there’s no way to do it unless you come down and animate it. So you animate the entire poem, making each alive; and then you take yourself back, one by one…each now having played the part perfectly, each individualized.

So the poem…like a Shakespeare…take any play of Shakespeare…it existed only for Shakespeare, all within him. Hamlet did not exist for himself nor any character in the play. And so he comes down and plays all the parts, and now in the end he calls himself back. Then the play now exists not only for the author, it exists for itself. And that is the glory of this marvelous, marvelous play.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Cartoon: The Los Angeles Times, Fri Mar 14 1969 Page 6