02 Oct Neville Goddard Lectures: “What Must We Do? Believe!”
1/28/66
Tonight’s title is “What Must We Do?” This is asked in scripture, “What must we do to be doing the work of God?” and he answered, “This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John6:29). It all starts with believing; you believe in him whom he has sent. Now, what must I do? Believe that a person called Jesus Christ lived? Just how would I go about believing in him and believing that God sent him? I simply read his story, read all that he tells, all the signs, and then see if I can believe it. For he tells us, “We speak what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not believe it. If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe it, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John3:12).
So what was the earthly thing that he told first? The earliest gospel is that of Mark, and the first words recorded of this central figure we find them, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk.1:15). He encloses within his doctrine the message given to the prophet Jonah, who brought the one message: the message of repentance. So he takes that in, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” He knows that man did repent. Well, man wants a sign. He calls this now an evil generation; he said, this is the generation, “it’s an evil generation, it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Mt.16:4). And as Jonah was a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be a sign to this generation.
Well, what did he bring? He only brought the message of repentance, and people believed him. He tells us, now they won’t believe his message; because Jonah’s message, you could try it, and if you tried it it would work. The people of Nineveh tried it and saved not only themselves but their city. They repented, and they realized that a change of attitude would result in corresponding changes in the outer aspects of their lives. So he called them an evil generation, but what is an evil generation? An evil generation is simply an unrepentant generation, that’s all that it is. A man could always repent. If he could change his attitude towards life, he’d change his life; and therefore he could always save himself, or save the environment in which he finds himself by simply repenting. So we are told that they did repent and saved themselves and their city of Nineveh. But he wonders who now will actually believe his story, for he brings the final revelation. And here he contrasts the unresponsiveness of the people of this generation to his greater revelation with that response that Jonah got to his lesser revelation.
So here we find, “What must I do?” Well, I could be tending bar tonight and really believe what he told me, and I’ll be doing the work of God. Or I could be sitting on the throne in the Vatican, and so busy with my vast portfolio I have no time to believe what is said and not be doing the work of God. So you can’t judge a man’s profession and think because of his profession—he’s a minister, a rabbi, a priest—that he is necessarily doing the work of God. To do the work of God is simply believe in him whom he has sent, and he tells you exactly in the signs. You believe in these signs, because I can’t reproduce them for you; they belong to the very depths of your soul. They belong in a region that is outside of the range of one’s rational mind, so you can’t bring them to the surface that anyone here could experience. You must wait on them.
In the meanwhile, you go and you tell the story of repentance, and play the part of a Jonah. I know in my own case I told it for twenty-one years before I could honestly say, “And now I am a witness to what I have seen.” The word seen means “experience.” I did not experience salvation, yet I was called and sent. And all that I could actually say I know this from experience. Know what? I know if I change my attitude towards a certain individual and persuade myself of the reality of this change of inner attitude, I would see the day that he will conform to this inner change in me. So I knew that from experience.
So when I took the platform on the 2nd day of February, 1938, here was an actual experience right at my door, my son. I had many before…but I hadn’t yet gone out and actually took that platform as a professional. Yes, I would be invited to a platform, always as the amateur. I was dancing, I went from city to city, and they knew of my interest; they gave me their platform. They’d come to my show, invite me to the platform, for some afternoon get-together. But even then I could tell of the story of Jonah, the story of repentance. So this night in question I was speaking at Steinway Hall, my first night. I went to the door, and we almost opened the door together. Here was my son, a boy in his early teens, just about, well, he wasn’t yet thirteen. I made every effort that man could make. My mother made every effort, with financial inducement, to his mother to get him. Not one thing worked…and I knew exactly how to apply this law.
So in the month of November I began to assume that he was actually living in my place, even to the point of putting my hand, my imaginary hand, on his head, and feeling his presence at the table, and feeling his presence in my place. And then the week I’m to open, I received a call from his mother saying to me quite casually, “My place isn’t big enough for two men, and your son although only twelve, he’s a man.” I went looking for him…in the meanwhile she had told him that I never wanted him and poisoned him over the years against me and my family. But I ignored it and simply assumed that he was home with me, living in my place. So that very night as I was going out. His friend said I was over there day after day looking for him, and this whole thing was a lie that the mother had told him. So he packed up the little that he had and he arrived at my place as I was going out to give my first lecture. There he remained with me until he joined the Marines after Pearl Harbor. He remained with me through all of his many marriages. It’s only now that he is really on his own, at the age of forty-one.
So I know from experience. I could say “we speak what we know,” but I couldn’t then add “and bear witness to what I have seen.” I had not yet experienced salvation…not until ’59. So I started in ’38 and for twenty-one years I went across the country, all the major cities, telling the story that Jonah would tell. You know what you want in life? Assume that you have it. Fall asleep just as though you had it. Live as though you had it. Act as though you had it, and the world will conform to it. In a way you do not know and you haven’t the intelligence to devise the means necessary to produce it, the whole thing will become a fact, and project itself upon the screen of space for you, if you dare to apply this story of repentance…that you need not accept things if you are willing to repent.
Then came the visions, the series of visions. And that is what he brought and called the gospel, the most incredible story that man has ever heard! The story he tells us he meant to be taken literally and to be fulfilled literally. So when you say this is literally so, someone will say, “Oh, no, it couldn’t be.” That’s my problem as I go again across the country. If I go on TV panels or radio panels, if my associates or opponents are ministers, rabbis, priests, they’re my most vicious opponents because they can’t accept it literally. And then, I tell them I know it from experience, I bear witness to what I have experienced. I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating.
This burgher of which he speaks when he tells us what I’ve just quoted in the 3rd chapter of John, he’s speaking now to a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest order of the Jewish faith. And Nicodemus cannot understand how a man can be born from above. He intends that Nicodemus accept it literally. This birth is not from below, from the womb of woman; it’s from above, from the skull of man. When he tells you, that as Moses lifted up that serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, he means that literally and to be fulfilled literally. You actually are lifted up in the same serpentine manner. Every statement he makes concerning these signs…there aren’t too many signs…all told there are four majestic signs. Two are divided into two parts, making it six all told, that’s all. These six signs are literally experienced by the individual; they’re not things on the outside. Everyone will have it.
Now why do I say everyone will have it? Well now, let me share with you the experience. You’re told in scripture, “I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and beside me there is no savior” (Is.43:3,11). Is that true? Is that literally true, that my creator and my savior are one? Yes. But more than that, I say “I am,” don’t I? He said, “That’s my name, my name forever, and thus am I to be known throughout all generations” (Ex.3:14). Well, you can’t stop me from knowing that I am. Is that his name? Well, then I must be one with the creator and the redeemer. Is that literally true? Am I self-begotten? Do I save and redeem myself? Yes. There is only God; there is nothing but God.
Can this be taken literally? Is it fulfilled literally? I say yes. The day will come when the third sign of which he speaks appears, and he gives it to us as the splitting of the temple. When you see at the base of that split body that is yours…and you see the golden liquid light that is truly life itself—and the life is in the blood, it’s alive, it’s liquid—as you look at it you are saying in the depth of your soul, I know I am it. But you don’t stop there, you have the impulse to say, “O, my divine creator and redeemer.” And then you fuse with it. You fuse with what? With your very self that is life, and you know it is the creator, and you know it is the redeemer, and yet one. And up you go, the Son of man, in the form of a serpent. So you know it literally, and you can say, I now bear witness to what I have seen, and what I have seen I have experienced.
So you can truly say, yes, I am self-begotten. I did this for a purpose, contracted myself to the limit that is called man, and brought about this contraction, the limit of opacity, the limit of contraction. Then after spending a time, a time interval of a dream, a fantastic horrible dream, the dream of life, then you begin to break it as you would a womb. And you begin to expand, and then there’s no limit to expansion, no limit to the translucency as you begin to expand from this limited contracted being called man. Well, who did it? God himself did it. And who is this God? His only name is I AM. Well, who goes up? I am going up. Who beholds this? I am beholding it. Who felt himself being split? I went through the entire experience. And that’s his name. He doesn’t differ from the creator, and you know it. He doesn’t differ from the savior, from the redeemer, and you know it. There aren’t three, only one, and his name is one.
So here, what must I do to be doing it? Believe the story. What you do in the outer world that really is not important. So when they brought the first son, he said, “Surely that is he.” He was so majestic, so big, so wonderful looking, and the Lord said, That’s not he, I have rejected him. Bring me the next. They brought the next, and the next, and none of these were. “Are these all of your sons?” said he. “No, there’s one, but he’s with the flock.” “We will not be seated until he comes. Go and bring him.” So they bring him, “That’s he. Rise and anoint him” (1Sam.16:6-12). Here was the youngest. Here was the one they put aside to take care of the flock, while these majestic ones came to be picked out by the prophet Samuel as the one that the Lord would announce as his choice. “I do not judge from appearances. I judge not as man judges. Man sees the outward appearance.” Whether it be your physical form or your social standing or your intellectual accomplishments or something of that nature, he doesn’t see that, he sees only the heart. He sees what that one so far has experienced, and here he picks him out, this one that is buried in the mind of man, called Olam. Some put the letter Alem—Aleph, Lamed, Mem—the God of the Eternal One, or God the Eternal One. And so, is this the one? Yes. Buried in man? Yes. Is that literally true? Yes. He, too, comes out. He comes out and reveals you to yourself, and calls you “my Father.” He comes out…the great and second sign.
So every one of these signs…he said, “Now go and tell it.” So I took you this night, apart, and I will say, trust me, believe me, and I speak now from experience. This is going to happen to you, one night when you least expect it. I hope in the meanwhile you have been practicing the art of forgiveness, which is called repentance, changing yourself, changing the world, changing your friends, and making them conform to more idealistic states in your own mind’s eye; for they will ultimately conform to it if you remain faithful to your change of concept relative to them. They will change, so keep on practicing and practicing, called now, repentance.
And when you least expect it these things will happen to you. And then you tell them. You’re going to be born from above. And the story is this…this is the way in which you are going to be born. It will begin with a resurrection and then followed by a birth. Then will come your discovery of God’s only begotten Son, who will call you, Father. Then will come the great splitting of the temple and your ascent into heaven, knowing you are the redeemer and the creator. You are self-begotten and self-redeemed, and that very self is the creator and the redeemer. Then you will know the work is finished and this glorious thing is now consummated, it’s reached a climax, and it’s good and very good. The symbol of the Holy Spirit will seal it with kisses. He comes in the form of a dove. That’s literally true, and fulfilled literally.
So you tell that story. What percentage will believe it? You can’t tell. So Paul makes the statement, “I should like to depart and be with Christ, that is better by far. But for your sake and because of a better need I stay for awhile in the body.” Read it in the 1st chapter of Philippians (verse 23). It is far better to depart and be with Christ, the creative power and the creative wisdom of God raised to the nth degree of creativity. For he is entitled to that now he is one with God. But he has to tell the story, and so he delays it, seemingly for awhile, to tell the story. He’s not satisfied with the number who accept it…he turns his back to find they turned away, too. He returns to a city to find they’ve gone elsewhere…become strict vegetarians now…they believe that’s the way of salvation. Or, they’ve become something else and something else, everything but believing the story. All you have to do to do the work of God is to believe in him whom he has sent. If you sweep the streets and that’s what you really believe while you sweep, you are doing the work of God. If you owned the city and gave everything to charity thinking that is doing the work of God, you are far, far from the point. You’re only doing the work of God when you believe the story. And the story is incredible but so simple. It calls upon man to believe something entirely different from anything he could ever envision from this level.
Will he believe that story? That’s all you’re asked upon to do the work of God. The story of repentance…it’s easy. It takes training. It takes practice, daily practice. But it works. And Jonah found people who were responsive; they could believe it. One tried it and it worked, told another and it worked, and the city was saved. But you cannot prove this story of salvation, which is something so deep all you can do is believe it and then let it happen. Then become a voice telling others about it—that’s all you can do—in the hope that they will believe you, as they believed concerning repentance. For that makes the great appeal…the whole vast world. You take someone, a child, and you play a game to save the family. That becomes Nineveh, the family, a family of five. The little child comes home and she brings a story of woe concerning the family…they are about to be dispossessed. And you say, “Megan, can you play a little game?” “Yes.” “Well now, this is what we’re going to do” and you construct a little scene, a few words where she is telling you a story that things are perfect at home, have enough to eat, rent’s paid, everything is perfect. She delights in the story as she tells it and you sit and revel with the child because it is so lovely, so altogether lovely, and they are saved.
The next day a friend from out of town calls, finds their predicament, and said to the mother, “Inez, let us forget it. Let us go to the park and get on a boat. I’ll take you. You have no money, but we’ll have a little fun for an hour.” So off they go rowing in Central Park. As they are coming ashore a boat is behind them. He’s not a good boats man. He comes with all of his might and she, to protect her boat, sticks her hand out and it’s crushed. Not injured seriously but crushed…there was a little blood. It’s an obvious injury. So the attendant comes over, examines the hand, takes her name, takes her address, sends her out an adjuster from the city. They’re insured against all these things. They’re not going to court, no suit, gave her $300 for her little injury. She hadn’t seen $300 in years. One time she was big in the theatrical world, she and her husband. They were dancers, went from one show to the other and then came the dive. And here was this little injury, twenty-four hours after we played a little game. She could play it with me and save her little Nineveh, saved the family. They were paying very small rent—I am going back to the Depression days, back in the 30s—and the five of them lived in a small, little unit and still only paid $40 a month, a walk-up, yes. But that story I know.
One exhausts the entire police force of New York City. Lost her furniture…can’t find the furniture. She and her two children went to Paris, leaving a maid behind to take care of her apartment. She returned with her children; there is no maid. The apartment is there but no furniture. She investigates. Nobody knows where the maid is or where the furniture is. She seeks the help of the police force, of the detectives of New York City. Calls in a private detective agency; they exhaust all of the suburbs. They can’t find where it is stored, if it is stored. One day she comes out of a bank on Madison Avenue, makes the wrong turn, and didn’t discover her mistake and she went a block. Then looking down at the pavement she spots a pair of very familiar ankles. She came slowly up to the face…it’s her maid. She held the maid and wouldn’t let her go until the maid took her in a taxi straight to where she had that furniture. And this happened after she had exhausted all things, and then came home to see me. I said, “Have you forgotten? Don’t you know the principle? In the past, how often you worked it…and it worked, it always worked. What are you doing now?” “Well, I haven’t tried this. I tried the police force, the detective force and a private detective agency.” Well now, I said, “Sit quietly and put yourself among your furniture. You had a grand piano, you used to keep your son’s and your daughter’s picture framed on the piano. I recall that vividly. Well now, see it on the piano, and see it as near you as you are now to the piano, therefore, make it real, the whole thing all about you.” She did, and she lost herself in the reality of what she was imagining, and gave it all the tones of reality, gave it sensory vividness, the whole thing was real. And then she went out, and here came this little incident and she got her furniture back. No court case, no suing, all she wanted was her furniture.
A total stranger heard of me and came to ask to find a friend of hers, but it seemed the height of insanity when I told her what I would do. I would sit quietly and hear her tell me that she had found the friend, that’s all that I would do. And she would sit quietly and tell me she found the friend. She expected some magical something. So at the end of our little mental communion I bid her goodbye. She said, “That’s all?” “That’s all.” Well, she was so, well, disillusioned, for she thought she was going to see some fantastic thing take place in my room, and that’s all that she witnessed, something in the Silence, not believing me. But it worked. She took a friend to New Haven where she last heard from her friend. The friend had moved on to Boston. Went on to Boston, yes, they knew the friend, but she left no forwarding address, so she returned, disappointed, to New York City. Coming out of a department store on 14th Street, had she been five seconds earlier or five seconds later, she would have missed her, ran right into her. Then she went all the way to Boston via New Haven trying to find the friend.
So I say, repentance is only an inner change of attitude resulting in a corresponding change in the outer aspects of life. So you practice it until the story told you awakens within you. When you hear the story, believe it. All you’re called upon to do is to believe it…the most incredible story in the world…the story that I have been telling you since it happened to me back in ’59. So that is the message he brings to the world, expecting everyone to accept it literally…and it will be fulfilled literally. He doesn’t depart, though he wants to go now into that creative power and be one with it. As he is one with it he’s entitled to it. For all the signs took place in him, no more signs; but he delays it because of the need of those who are always departing, always turning back, always turning away.
So when he was asked, “What must we do?” this is all you do. Then he said, I give you only the sign of the Son of man, and these are the signs of the Son of man. But this is an evil generation…they wouldn’t even repent. For the evil generation is only the unrepentant generation, that’s all that it is. So how many men today as they succeed even remember how they did it? Now they are surrounded by all the things money can buy they forget these mental attitudes that they adopted to rise to their present state. Completely forget it and turn their backs upon it, and completely ignore that very ladder by which they did ascend. ___(??) repentance. Everyone does it.
So here, as we are coming to a close, I thought I would give you, night after night, from now on, just things that would really fire you in some way to try it. It will prove itself here. And then I hope that you will believe me concerning the message of salvation, for that’s the important thing I bring now. For I was sent before I knew the message, the message of salvation; I was called and sent. But all that I knew from experience was that a change of attitude on my part would result in a change of behavior in the outer world. I saw it, I practiced it and it worked. And so, having seen it work I could tell it from experience, but I knew nothing of the message of salvation. Not until that morning of the 20th of July, 1959. That’s when it began and it came to its climax on the morning of January 1st, 1963. So three and a half years later the thing was culminated; and I could say with Paul then, I should like to depart and be with Christ. That is better by far, but for your sake and for the need, the far better need, I will stay the morning. But from that morning on, I could…not only could have…but truly desired.
But that’s not for me to do, for we are told, “There’s a time to be born and a time to die.” And when the Psalmist asked, “Show me my end, O Lord, and the measure of my days” (Ps.39:4), he wouldn’t respond to that. Wouldn’t show him his end or the measure of his days, for no one knows the measure of his days, no one knows his end. You can observe, like our friend Mike Quill tonight is now at the morgue. Just a few weeks ago when he was sentenced, he said–and I saw it on TV, here was a face filled with anger and filled with venom, speaking of the judge–he said, “May he drop dead in his black robes.” That night when he was taken to prison he had a heart attack. Took him out, he was taken home this past week, and today he dropped dead—whether he was wearing his black robes or not, I don’t know. But here, as a man sows, so does he reap.
I tell you, in the end there aren’t others, there’s only one, and that one is God. God is the creator and God is the redeemer, and you are he. Actually, God became man, as you see it here now; and when he breaks it, the thing that became it simply expands back to what he was but beyond it. It’s his way of expansion, his way of growing…an ever-increasing illumination, that’s God. So I say everyone here is going to experience it because we are all one. This is a compound unity, one made up of others, but one.
So tonight you can take it, just like the little girl, and you can set your Nineveh free, if you believe it. It all starts with belief; given that, everything else follows. But how to go about believing? Well, these are the little secrets…the art of believing. If I would believe this night then I would see the world differently. If what I want would change my world, then my world must be seen by me as I would see it after this thing takes place. So you don’t wait for it to take place, see it as though it were. I saw my little boy, set the table for him, put my hand on his head, felt his presence, and then she found someone. Only they lived in a small place, wasn’t big enough for two men. So I sought him a week…I couldn’t find him.
I told you a story here, in fact, I told it at Fred Bales years ago. A lady in my audience took great issue with me and complained to Fred that such a story should not be told from his platform. She missed the point completely. I told it to show everyone present that there is no condemnation in God: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Because you are causing the behavior…if you know how to control your Imagination, you are actually causing the behavior of all the people you are meeting. You are in control. When I wanted to get married to the girl who now bears my name, who is now the mother of our daughter, I had all of the entanglements in the world. My dancing partner notified my ex-wife who was not then ex; we had been separated for years but not divorced. Therefore we lived, as you know, in New York City, which has the most archaic rules concerning divorce in the world. And so here, I wasn’t divorced. She didn’t want me divorced, because she was living very well, and her boyfriend, out of my pocket. So why have him divorced? We’re living beautifully by taking his money. So she was notified to make yourself scarce, don’t be seen.
Well, I know she left the city, or I was told she left the city, and everyone was very, very happy, they’re all very happy, that I am saddled now, can’t get divorced. My dancing partner and her boyfriend can live off of me, and the other can go her way. So what I did, no one to be hurt, I simply assumed that I was happily and blissfully married to the girl who bears my name. I went to sleep for one solid week in that assumption, that there she slept and here I am, and I wouldn’t be this happy if it was at the expense of someone else. I couldn’t hurt someone else. So that’s all that I did. And then the phone rang one morning and it’s the court. Asked me if I am the Neville who speaks publicly, and if so, they have a case coming up the following Tuesday and it would be to my interest to be in court. Well, I was sleepy, it was early in the morning, and I hung up wondering “What sort of thing is this? I’m not subpoenaed. I have done nothing to warrant this…so I won’t go.”
Tuesday came, around quarter of ten the phone rang, and here a voice on the wire, “Why aren’t you in court?” I thought, “What have I done, I have no reason to be in court?” “Well, we told you you should be here this morning, didn’t we?” I said yes. Then said she over the wire: “Your wife is on trial and maybe you can throw a little light on it. You’re not subpoenaed, no, you’ll not be put under any oath, no, but your presence might be helpful to the judge.” I was unshaven, I couldn’t…I simply threw some clothes on and grabbed a taxi and got to the court. When I got there, some attendant whispered to the judge, ___(??), said “He’s in the court.” So they asked me to stand, identify myself, would I take the platform? So I took the platform and then they brought her in between these two policemen. And so, the judge said, “Now, you’re not sworn in, but I think you can help me solve this case or bring in a decent judgment on it. Your wife is accused of shoplifting.” Then he asked me all the questions. “What’s your religion?” I said, “I’m Protestant.” “What’s your wife’s?” “Well, she was born a Catholic.” “Is that any difference in your way of living?” I said, “No, it made no difference whatsoever. We just were not compatible from the day we got married, and we’ve been not divorced, separated, well, for, I should say, fifteen years.” I then had my son three years.
And then he read out the charge and I said, “Well, your Honor, I have a son. I’m very proud of him, he lives with me. And if you must sentence her, you have the right as a judge to sentence and then suspend judgment. You can be merciful. So if you must sentence her, sentence her as the law demands, but then exercise your right as a judge and be merciful, for my son’s sake.” He accepted my recommendation; he sentenced her for six months, suspended it, and then dismissed it. She met me on the outside, waited for me, and she said to me, “That was a very decent thing to do. Give me the papers.” I said, “I don’t have the papers with me, they’re at my home.” She said, “Well, I’m coming with you and you’re going to give me the papers.” So I took her in a taxi, we drove to my place, I got my papers…and this isn’t a legal thing to do, to serve your own papers, but I gave her the papers. Then I was granted my divorce in the city of New York.
So I told that story, saying that, “Who made her do what she did? I did.” I slept in the assumption that I was free and happily married, and the only way I could be would be to be divorced. She was told by my dancing partner to make herself scarce and she obeyed. They were all living off of me. And all of a sudden she finds herself doing something that she would not normally do. And so, what did it? What was that impulse?—my assumption. So who knows who is treading the winepress? So I told the story to tell people, don’t judge anyone. On the record she took the clothes. In the depths of the soul that is God I did. Well, did I not write the script? Should you go to a play tonight and you don’t like what you see, don’t blame the actor. If there’s any blame, go to the author. He wrote the script. But he’s not there for you to condemn, so you throw eggs at the actor. You dislike the part he is playing, but the author made him play it. And the author doesn’t like anyone tampering with his script. Well, if the author here doesn’t like it, what do you think God likes?
And so, when you go into the deep and you actually assume the end, and live in the end as though it were true, you set in motion all of these things. Then the actors come. She only played a part, and so playing her part she has to be forgiven. So when I asked the judge to be merciful, he was merciful, he was kind. She was moved by my appeal and asked me for the papers. What other way could it be done? Yet I made every human effort to find her. I made every effort and not a thing could find her. Yet a total stranger calls me from the court, says “You’re a public figure and wouldn’t want this in the papers. The reporters are here every day to get anything upon someone who is a public figure and they’d love to get you in the paper. And so, I tell you, for your own sake be here in court that you can throw some light on this.” It was never in the papers; not one paper in the city carried it. It was simply dismissed. So when I said I took the blame, this lady took issue and thought the story should not be told. Well, she didn’t understand. All you can say is, you don’t understand. Had you understood you would have understood the words, the words on the cross, “Forgive them; they know not what they do.” They’re moved by compulsion, but who is treading the winepress?
Now, here is a little thought in scripture. He’s on the cross and they all reviled him, as told us in the 15th chapter of the Book of Mark. Every one reviles him and someone shouts, “He saved others; himself he cannot save” (15:31). These are the words. That’s exactly what no man can do. Man saves himself by, and only by, saving his fellow men. So you hear it and you think you’re just going to escape? No, you tell the story. You tell it, that the message of salvation may be heard, understood, accepted, lived by, and then grows within them…because there is no other. If one is left behind, who do you think is left behind? You are, I am…for there is no other. So when the unthinking, the un-awakened cried out, “He saved others; himself he cannot save” that is so far from the truth. For man saves himself by, and only by, the saving of his fellow men. So you see someone in distress, apply the first thing quoted that he said: repentance. After that, if you can reach them, tell them the message of salvation. It’s incredible. It’s the most, well, far-fetched story ever told man. It wasn’t conceived by man. It is an eternal message, which is God’s way of redeeming himself, not another. There is no other.
So now let us go into the Silence.
* * *
We’re going to close the end of February, the last lecture night is the 25th. I can’t write Dr. Smith until it is official with me from Barbados. I’m waiting for some correspondence. It’s a crowded season and we wish to get there when the crowds have departed, so we are waiting for some kind of a green light as to when that date will be best. However, I am planning to close four weeks from tonight and I want to write Dr. Smith as soon as possible to let him know officially that it is so. I can’t tell him it will be so until I actually have this letter from Barbados. We want to leave just as soon after we close as we can, maybe a few days later. So, I am still planning to close on the 25th of February. We have exactly four weeks left or eight lectures. I will let him know…he has been very kind to me letting me have this place. So I will let him know just as soon as I hear from Barbados. But we are planning to close…
Q: ___(??) anger of the Lord, could you comment on that?
A: Well, the word translated anger I would think would be better translated “Spirit,” for it really means “to breathe hard”; and breath and Spirit are the same in both Hebrew and Greek…the wind, and so, wind or breath. It also defines in the concordance the word anger as “the nose,” because that is the orifice through which the breath comes. And because it is on the face, they call it “the face of the Lord.” Yet they use the word anger. But our connotation with the word anger is not what the ancients intended. It was “The Spirit of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly” (Jer.23:20). The “latter days” being the things I told you this night concerning the message of salvation. These mighty acts, which are four, and yet two are divided, therefore, there are really six. But two happen the same night. The first is a dual act, the third is a dual act; the second and the fourth are single acts.
Q: Then the anger or the Spirit of the Lord is in the wind that occurs at the time in the first act?
A: The very beginning, “And the Lord caused a wind to blow.” It’s himself. The word translated wind there is the same as Spirit. Tonight, when I quoted the 3rd chapter of the gospel of John, that could be either wind or Spirit. “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit” (John3:8). The word Spirit and the word wind are the same. Yet they are used in that sentence: the first one is wind and the last one is Spirit, yet the two are the same word. And yet it is wind. It’s Spirit, it’s a vibration, you can’t deny that, but you entertain the thought of wind and wonder “Where is this cyclone, this hurricane?” That’s the thought that permeates your whole being when it begins to possess you, as though you’re possessed by the wind, but it’s Spirit. You’re Spirit possessed when you are born that night.
Didn’t realize it was nine. Well, until…(tape ends).