Before we came out from the Father, we were part of the Eternal Being called God the Father, just as a bud or a spur or a little graft becomes a part of the tree and takes its nourishment from the tree.
WHO IS THE SON OF MAN : Neville Goddard
Tonight’s subject is “Who Is The Son of Man?” In the 16th chapter of the book of Matthew the question is asked of the Disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” and they answered, “Some say, ‘John the Baptist’ come again, others say, ‘Jeremiah’ or one of the prophets, others say ‘Elijah’.” And then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:13-15)
So, here He equates the Son of man with I AM. It is the one title that is most used concerning Jesus in Scripture. We find it in Ezekiel throughout the entire book, and the 7th chapter of the book of Daniel, we hear –
“one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him is given dominion and glory and kingdom.” (Daniel 7:13)
Dominion is supremacy in determining and deciding and directing the actions of others. It is really ascendancy over human and unhuman forces, such as assures being obeyed.
Now, let me give you an experience of mine that you may taste of this power that is in store for you. You will only taste of it before you have complete possession of it. You may not get complete possession of it until you are completely permeated with Love, or you can wreck the world. This is the Power. You will come upon a scene just like this.
To give you my own experience, I came upon a scene that I felt to be about two hundred years ago in the New England states of our country. Somehow I thought it was a Sunday afternoon, and they were all dining.
My attention was attracted to a family of four – the father, mother, and what appeared to be their two sons in the early 20’s, say, 21 and 22 or 21 and 23. As I stood watching them, I felt within myself that I could stop an activity that I was feeling, and that if I succeeded in arresting this activity within me, everything would stand still.
Well, I did it. I arrested an activity within me, and everything stood still. A bird was flying, and it flew not. The waiter was coming in with the next course, and she walked not. They were dining, and one, as I looked at him, he had the soup spoon just about here [indicating a spoon approaching the mouth] and he couldn’t bring it any further. He dined not. The leaves falling, like the Fall of the year, and they fell not. The grass was waving, and it waved not. Everything was frozen, as though made of clay. I looked at them, and one second before they were all alive and seemingly independent of my perception of them, and now I knew they were not – that the whole vast world was dependent upon an activity that took place within me, of which I was totally unaware until that moment.
When I released that activity within me, they all continued to fulfill their intentions. The bird flew to the branch where it intended. The waitress continued walking towards the table where she would serve the second course, and the leaves began to fall to the earth, and the little green grass waving continued to wave, and the boy brought the soup to his mouth. Everything continued as it intended to when I stopped it.
I know now that I could have changed their intention, and had I changed their intention and then released it, they would have thought they had initiated the change, and they would have done exactly what I had ordered. That is dominion – complete control over the actions of others so that they must obey you. What enormous power is in store for man when man awakens from the dream of life. That’s dominion.
Then comes glory. Well, “glory” in the Bible is equated with “God.” “I will make my glory to pass before you,” (Exodus 33:19) and “… as I pass by…” (Exodus 33:22) There He equates “glory” with “I,” so He gives Himself to you, actually, literally gives Himself to you, so that you become God.
And then kingdom. What is a kingdom but a realm, subject to an anarchical form of government by a king? Therefore, you become the king as spoken of in Scripture. This is in store for every child born of woman. That One, in Scripture, is called the “Son of man.” We speak of Him in Scripture as the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is in everyone, and that One, one day, will awaken as the one in whom He awakes, and then you will have dominion, and then you will have glory, and then you will have the kingdom. That’s what is in store for everyone in the world.
Not a thing in this world will die, but that which has no right to live. Only that which has no right to exist will be brought to an end, and it is not any child born of woman. Any child born of woman has a right to live, a right to exist, so I show you now – or tell you, rather – what must die, what must be brought to an end.
One day you are going to have this experience. You will suddenly be confronted, in vision, with the most monstrous thing that you have seen. It’s an animal, but it speaks. It speaks in a guttural voice. You will see two – a beautiful angelic being, radiantly beautiful, and this monstrous thing covered with hair. In fact, I would not offend the gorilla by likening it to a gorilla, for a gorilla is made by God, but this is made by man. You will confront these two – one, the embodiment of all your misused energies in the world; every unlovely thought formed it. Every violent act of yours formed it, and it thrives on violence.
As I looked at it, I did not realize at the moment that I had created it, and it called this lovely angelic being “Mother,” and I struck it, and it gloated. It loved being struck. And I pummeled it, and it grew bigger and stronger through my violence. And as I looked at it, something within me knew that I was the father of it. I brought it into being by my own violence, my own misuse of energy, as I brought this glorious being into being by my loving use of the same energy. As I looked at it, I pledged myself that if it took me eternity I would redeem it.
I had no one to whom I could turn as a witness to my pledge. I pledged myself to redeem it if it took me eternity. At that very moment of my pledge, which I meant beyond all doubt, the whole thing melted before my eyes, and all the energy that went into it returned to me. Not one little drop was lost. It all came back to me, the one who misused that energy and formed this monstrous thing out of my misused energy. And this other one glowed – glowed like the sun. She simply personified my loving use of the same energy.
So, the only thing that dies is that which has no right to live. The only thing that comes to an end – ceases to be – is that which has no right to exist. And it is simply made up of energy, so the energy is not lost, but it returns to you who created that monstrous thing. And though unseen by your mortal eyes, unheard by mortal ears, it whispers into your ear the moment in time to be violent, to be unkind, to be unlovely, for it can feed only on violence. It feeds only on hypocrisy – on every unlovely thing in the world.
So, you have a constant companion urging you to commit some unlovely act, to entertain unlovely thoughts, that It may be fed. Then, when you confront it, you will pledge yourself – without being told by anyone else – you will know how it came into being, and you will know what you should do, and you’ll do it. And you will mean every word that you say to yourself.
“I will redeem you if it takes eternity.”
And it only takes a matter of moments – only moments, and the whole monstrous thing melts before your eyes, leaving no trace of ever having been present, when all that energy returns to you, and you’ve never felt so strong in your life. That is the being returning to the Son of man, who now has dominion and has glory and has kingdom.
So, then we are told –
“As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (John 5:26)
You are that Son. Before we came out from the Father, we were part of the Eternal Being called God the Father, just as a bud or a spur or a little graft becomes a part of the tree and takes its nourishment from the tree. When it is detached and then grafted onto some good solid stock, as you and I were – we were grafted onto the stock called Humanity, and then we, the graft, become a father in our own right, so, when the graft takes and we begin to grow and produce fruit, we can only produce the fruit of the tree from which we were taken, and we were taken from the Tree of God – the Eternal Tree of Life.
So, grafted onto these bodies as we are, we penetrated these bodies and annexed the brains of these bodies, and the graft took, and then as it took – because the Father has Life in Himself – that spore, that graft called His Son – now has Life in Himself and becomes, in his own right, a father – one with The Eternal Father. And that’s our destiny!
Everything said of this character in Scripture called Jesus Christ you are going to experience, and it will be said of you. Do not be embarrassed. That is the play. That is the plan of the entire Mystery of Being. You are destined to awaken as God the Father!
So, in the end there is only God. For we came out from the Father, and we became one with Humanity, and when the vow takes place and we begin to bear the fruit of our Father, we return to the one Father, and are reincorporated into the One Being, and there is only “… one body and one Spirit… one Lord… and Father of all…” (Ephesians 4:1-4) and you will be that one body and spirit and Lord and Father of all, and yet I will know you! You will not lose your identity. I will know you as the being I know now as my friend, and yet I will know you as God – You are destined to awaken as God.
It’s a shock to the world to hear this. It seems blasphemous, so they accused Him of blasphemy. He said, “Why?” They said,
“Because you being man make yourself God.”
He said, “Is it not written in your Scripture, ‘I say ye are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High? Why, then, do you accuse me for blaspheming because I say, I am the Son of God’?” (John 10:33-36)
He said that was in their scripture, and Scripture cannot be broken.
Man has been trained to believe that he is a little worm – that he is some little outcast that is no good, and that, for most people in the world today, death ends it all, because more than half of the people in the world are under an atheistic regime. They will number far in excess of half of the people in the world; and they claim that death ends it all. And the other half claims that death does not end it all, but they still think of themselves as worms.
Anyone making the bold claim that they are destined to awaken as God sounds like blasphemy. But I tell you that you will awaken as God! And you will know that you are God.
I got a letter today from a friend of mine in L.A. I have been teaching this Law since 1938, but I did not know the Promise of God until twelve years ago in this City when it happened to me. From then on, all my lectures have been – I would say – geared toward the Promise.
So, he has been coming to my meetings twice a week in L.A. over the period of the last three years. As I have told them, and I tell you, before I depart this world physically I will appear to you as the Man I know myself to be, for He awoke within me. But he said to me in this letter which I got today,
“Last Tuesday morning, early in the morning, I had a vision, and a woman said to me, ‘Neville has risen. Look down there,’ and she pointed down to the end of the corridor. As I looked at the end of the corridor, there was an effulgence of glorious golden light, and I said to myself, ‘My friend, a man called Neville, and I know he is the Lord. I know as a friend of his I could always go to his home unexpected, uninvited, and be welcome, and yet at this moment I have not been invited specifically to come, but he told me – and I remember vividly – that he will show himself to me before he departs.’ And I knew at the end of that corridor in that effulgence of glorious golden light, out of sight was the Holy of Holies, and there He was, and He was the Lord.” And I was overcome with an emotion – a mixed emotion.
My emotion was one of fear, one of joy, and one of awe. Knit these three emotions together, and that is what I felt. He promised that he will appear to me, and so now I will wait. I know he is there, I see the radiation of him, and it was a woman who told me, ‘Neville has risen. Look!’ and she pointed to the end of the corridor, ‘and there you will see him.’”
I am only telling you what I know. Not only this one, but hundreds must witness before I take off this garment for the last time in this world. For in this City twelve years ago, I awoke from the dream of life. I awoke to find myself buried in my own skull, as everyone is but he doesn’t know it. And I came out of that tomb – out of that sepulcher, the only sepulcher in which Jesus was ever buried, and Jesus is the Lord Himself.
The Lord actually became, as we are – literally, that we may be as He is.
So, when we were detached from the Infinite Being called Father and started a journey of tribulation, it was for a divine purpose. But we, by detachment, depending on our Father for our own support, our own supply, will now become a being having life in itself.
“As the Father hath life in Himself, He has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (John 5:26)
The only way it could be done was to detach his spore – detach the graft and implant it to this sturdy stock called Humanity, and then it produces, not humanity, it produces that from which it was taken, just as you do with a tree. You take a bud that can propagate itself, and you graft it onto a sturdy stock, and when it takes hold, it does not produce the fruit of that tree on which it is grafted, it produces the fruit of itself, and it brings forth what it is. So, we are sons of God bringing forth all the fruit of God. Then we have life in ourselves.
So, I say to everyone in this room, as to everyone in the world, I do not care what you have heard in the past; this is the greatest of all mysteries, which is the Christian faith. I am telling you what I know from experience. I have experienced the Christian faith. I am not speculating. I am not theorizing. It is true from beginning to end, but not as it is taught in the world. It’s taught in the world as secular history, but it is not secular history; it is salvation history. The whole thing is based upon God’s plan of saving His own sons that He brought out of His own body and transplanted and engrafted into the stock called Humanity.
So, the Son of man – the name given the Lord Jesus – the name that He used most about Himself – is said of everyone seated here, regardless of your sex. When you say, “I am,” that’s He. When you say, “And who do you say that I am?” you are discussing the Son of man. And now He equates the Son of man with “I AM.”
So, as you are seated here, that is the Lord Jesus. As told you in Scripture, you must test yourselves to see whether you really believe it or not. (See II Corinthians 13:5)
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not believe Jesus Christ is in you?”
When I say, “Jesus Christ,” if you thought of some being external to yourself, at that very moment you failed the test. “Do you not believe that Jesus Christ is in you?” So, you failed if at that moment that I used the term “Jesus Christ” your mind conjured some existence external to yourself in time and space.
He is in you, and in you He awakes. And when He awakes in you, you are He. And everything said of Him in Scripture you will experience.
“All the things that I have done,” said He, “you will do, for now I am returning to the Father. I have accomplished the work He sent me to do, which was to fulfill Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me.”
And having fulfilled Scripture, now He returns to the Father, and He said, “Return unto me the glory now – “What glory?”
“…the glory that I had with thee before that the world was.” (John 17:4)
And glory is God Himself.
So, return unto me – I was one with you – well, return that same Unity, for I have completed the job that you gave me to do, and I have told them Who You are. I have made known unto them Your Name, and I will make it Neville. And the name He made known to us was Father.
So, God is Father. If I complete the job that He gave me to do, I must arrive at the point where I, too, am the Father – not just a father, for there is only one Father. So, I must arrive at the point where I am the Father! So, I found out His Son and the Son’s name, and I must find that Son and have that Son call me, “Father.” Well, he did. So, I know the truth of Scripture, for the Son’s name is David. It is David. That is the Son of God as told us in Scripture – “for David in the spirit calls him ‘My Lord.’” (Matthew 22:43)
So, Jesus is the Father. Jesus is the Immortal Father, and David, which is the symbol of Humanity, calls Him “Father.” So, here we find in the last book of the Bible, the 22nd chapter of Revelation, “I am the root and the offspring of David.” (Revelation 22:l6)
The modern translation of the word “root” is “scion,” which means a graft. I am the graft, and yet I am the offspring of that graft! I am the scion and the offspring of David – David being Humanity. Engrafted onto Humanity is the Son of God, and He brings forth all that was in God. So, if God is a Father, He brings that forth, and because He is one with the Father, He brings forth the Son. The Son calls him “Father.” Now, we know who the Son of man is!
The Son of man in Scripture comes before the Ancient of Days – and may I tell you, that’s a true story.
I stood in the presence of the Ancient of Days, and He asked me to name the greatest thing in the world, and I quoted from the words of Paul in the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, and I said as he asked me the question,
“Faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is Love.” (I Corinthians 13:13)
At that moment, Infinite Love embraced me, and may I tell you, Love is a man! The Ancient of Days is a man, and you can’t think of anything in his presence but love. I answered “Love,” and he embraced me, and as we embraced, we fused, and I became one with the body of the Ancient of Days. I became one with the Spirit of God, and then he sent me – sent me to do what I am doing now – to tell you of the true story of the Christian faith.
It hasn’t a thing to do with rituals, hasn’t a thing to do with form; it’s entirely a mystery hidden within man, which in the fullness of time will unfold within man. And when it unfolds within man, the man in whom it unfolds is the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything said about Him, you will experience in the first – person, singular, present tense experience. As David, as told you in Scripture called Him “Father,” David will call you “Father.” And as David confessed in Scripture,
“I will tell of the decree of the Lord! He said unto me, Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” (Psalm 2:7)
Well, you will know when you see him that he is your son, and that day that you see him, as your son is that day that you have finished the drama. All the tribulations of humanity you’ve gone through, and having gone through all of them, at the very end He stands before you and calls you “Father.”
Now, we are told, They asked him –
“When will the hour be? When is it going to happen?”
You can read this in the 13th chapter of Mark (Mark 13:4) and the 24th chapter of the book of Matthew. (Matthew 24-13) And he said to me, as he said to the world –
“As the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so shall the coming of the Son of man be.” (Mark 13:27)
What does that mean? The lightning shines from the east and as far as the west, and “so shall the coming of the Son of man be.” He comes only to fulfill Scripture. Well, the only scripture that he could fulfill would be the Old Testament. There was no New Testament. Now, where is this in the Old Testament? Where is this splitting of the veil spoken of in the New Testament – where is it in the Old Testament? Where is the serpent spoken of in the New Testament that is in the Old? He said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (Matthew 3:14) And he said, “I am the Son of man.” Now, where do we find it?
Let us turn, now, to the book called Jehovah Remembers; it is called by us Zechariah, for the word “Zechariah” simply means, “Jehovah remembers.” The last chapter –
“On that day he shall stand on the Mount of Olives …and the Mount will be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, and one half will withdraw northward, and the other half will withdraw southward …and then living Water will flow out from Jerusalem …and on that day the Lord will be king over all the earth, and the Lord will be one, and his name one.” (Zechariah 14:4, 8, 9)
Now, when you read it, unless you’ve had the experience, you ask yourself, “What on earth does it mean?”
Well, he is telling you exactly what it means. The drama takes place within man, not on any place called the Mount of Olives in the Near East. The whole drama takes place right here in man. And like the lightning, it will come just as unexpectedly as the bolt of lightning, and it will split you in two from top to bottom.
He calls it east and west – from the top of your head to the base of your spine. And they will part leaving a wide valley between the two halves of your body, and at the base of your spine you will see a living pulsing, vivid light. It’s liquid. “Living water will flow out of Jerusalem.” And you will contemplate it, and when you contemplate it, you will fuse with the water – the living water that you contemplated, for you will know it is your Self.
And as you become one with it, like a fiery serpent you will ascend your spinal cord into the only heaven that there is, right back within your own wonderful skull. And when you enter, it will reverberate like thunder, as you are told in Scripture; they take it violently. “And the violent take it by storm.” (See Matthew 11:12 and Luke 16:16, especially the Revised Standard Version)
So, the only mountain that is split is not the mountain in the Near East, but this mountain [indicating the physical body] right down the middle from the top of your head to the base of your spine. At the base of your spine is the Living Water that will flow out of Jerusalem, and you will contemplate it and know it is your Self, and you’ll become one with it. At the very moment of fusion, like a fiery serpent you will ascend into heaven, and you will know what it means that you stood on the Mount of Olives. And it is split in two from top to bottom. And one withdrew northward and one withdrew southward, and then the living water flowed out of Jerusalem. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (Matthew 3:14) That’s how you are going to be lifted up, like a fiery serpent.
You will still be human. I will know you in Eternity, for I will know you as my friend and my brother, but I will know you as God! I will know you as the Lord – everyone in the world, for nothing in Eternity will die but that which has no right to live, and that is simply the embodiment of your misspent energies – all your hates, all your unlovely thoughts, unlovely actions – everything whipped into the creation of a monster. I will call him the dweller-on-the-threshold.
No one sees him with mortal eye, but he is ever present, whispering into the ear of man to be violent. He simply thrives on violence. He loves violence. He loves deceit – everything that is unlovely in the world, and can only feed on the unlovely thoughts, when the other one feeds only on loving thoughts. Feed her with Love.
So, every time you do anything lovingly, you feed her, and she glows, and when you do anything unlovely, he is fed, and he gloats with it all. And the day will come; he will leave her alone forever. She is made of the substance of God, which is Love. And here was the embodiment of hate and violence, and you will dissolve him without thinking for one moment that he is going to dissolve. When I made the pledge, I had no idea it would work like this. I thought I would have to spend Eternity to change it and work with it and make something good out of it. I had no idea it was simply the embodiment of misspent energy.
As we are told in Scripture,
“Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (I Corinthians 1:24)
I was not wise in my use of that power, and I made that monster. But everyone has made it, and everyone will redeem it. Everyone will be forgiven for his misuse of the power.
So, you are not going to any so-called lake of fire, as so many evangelists talk about and our ministers and priests from the pulpits talk about. There is no hell. You are in it right now!
This is hell right now. The sufferings of men and women in our hospitals tonight, the sufferings of those who must look for food, not knowing where the next meal is coming from. Those facing possibly dispossession and know not where to turn – all these – isn’t that hell?
But our priests are not satisfied with that even; they try to make an even more horrible hell than that is. This is hell. Our boys in Viet Nam – that’s hell. Those who come back with arms missing, feet missing – isn’t that hell? For the rest of their earthly days, these young men in their 20’s are going to go through life, many of them, with all arms missing and their feet missing, and they are basket cases for the rest of their days, just vegetating.
There is no greater hell. It’s right here in this world. This is the world of death where everything appears in this world; it simply waxes, it wanes, then it vanishes. And the only escape is – out of this world – not to make it a better world. When they talk about making this a better world and getting all our energies together to make it something wonderful – no.
This is a school – a school of educative darkness, and you don’t turn a school into a home. It is escape from this world, and God has planned the escape for His sons. He has built that bridge of escape, and that bridge of escape is the story of Jesus Christ. There is no other way out.
“I am the Way;” (John 14:6) I am the true and living way. To what? To the Father. We all go back to the Father. We came out from the Father and we came into the world. Again, we are leaving this world, and we go back to the Father – but not until the job is done. So, we came here to fulfill a certain job, and when the job is accomplished, then we are resurrected, and we return to the Father, having accomplished that which He gave us to do.
So, the Son of man in Scripture, who is brought into the presence of the Ancient of Days, is seated right here in this audience in garments of male and female. And the day will come, you will consciously stand in the presence of the Ancient of Days, and you will answer as I did, as though you were divinely prompted.
You don’t have to be concerned as to what you are going to say. In that day you will know what to say. You say it automatically. You will not make a mistake. Don’t be concerned. No one is going to make a mistake in the presence of Infinite Love, for you cannot think of anything but – in the presence of Love, you can’t think of anything.
So when he asks you the greatest thing in the world, you answer automatically, as though you were divinely prompted. And then he embraces you. At that embrace, you are fused with the Ancient of Days.
So, you must learn to discriminate between Christ-in-us and we-in-Christ. Christ-in-us is simply – I would say – proof of being sons of God, for Christ in us – Christ being the Son-in-us, we are sons of God.
We-in-Christ are incorporated into the body of the Ancient of Days. That is the grand transition. So, the Son wakens, and He is embraced by the Ancient of Days and incorporated into the body of the Ancient of Days, Infinite Love. And then you are sent.
So, to be called is to be sent, and then you tell the story. You tell it from experience. You don’t theorize, you don’t speculate; you tell it as you have experienced it. And having experienced it, you can’t change it. You do not modify it to please others. If they are not pleased, you are not concerned.
You can only tell what has happened to you, and you go forward and you tell it. As told in Scripture, “They related their own experience.” When they came back, they simply told what happened. To whom? To themselves. “They related their own experience,” and that is our Scripture. We are only telling the drama as we have experienced it. And then they went back into the ancient scriptures and saw confirmation of the experience. They found it there, but finding it there, it was adumbrated. The whole Old Testament is an adumbration. It is a foreshadowing in a not – altogether conclusive or immediately evident way, but there it is, foreshadowing the story of standing on the Mount of Olives, and then a bolt of lightning splits it in two from east to west, and one side moved northward, the other side moved southward.
Who would have thought for one moment that was going to take place in man and that he is the great Mount of Olives? And the Being stands in you. And that Son of God, which is the Son of man, is you. And He becomes the fiery serpent, and moves up into heaven. After it happens, you say it was always there but I didn’t have eyes to see it – my eyes were not open.
He had not yet opened the ears that I could hear. He had not yet opened the eyes that I could see.
So, if this seems something other than what you came to hear, again let me repeat myself. Whatever is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most directly practical. You will find things coming into your world of which you are totally unaware at the moment; they will come because your Father knows your need far better than your conscious reasoning mind does, and it will come. Without any effort on your part it will come. Just be about your Father’s business and –
“set your hope fully upon the glory, upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 1:13)
And when He comes, He unveils Himself in you, as you, and then you know who Jesus Christ is. You will never know Him if you look for Him as coming from without, and the whole vast world is looking for Him to come from without.
He can’t come from without because He is buried, and buried in the Holy Sepulcher. And the Holy Sepulcher is the skull of man. Until He comes, He remains buried in the grave – the grave of the human skull. And when He wakes, He wakes as you in the grave. And when He is born from above, as we are told is essential to be born again or you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, so when He is born from above, He is born out of your skull.
The very night when He awakens within you, which is the Resurrection, He is born, and He comes out. And then you will find who you are. And then the whole drama unfolds before you, just as it is recorded in Scripture concerning one called Jesus. So Jesus is the Pattern Man. It’s the pattern that everyone will follow, and as you follow that pattern, the whole thing unfolds within you.
So, we are told in Scripture, “Be ye imitators of God as dear children.” (Ephesians 5:13) Well, here is the pattern of God. Imitate that.
You can’t do it deliberately or consciously; it is going to happen in this pattern. When it happens, you will tell it, as everyone in whom it happens tells it. And you will meet with the same response. Some will believe you and some will disbelieve you. Don’t make any effort to force those who disbelieve you to believe you. To try to suppress opinions, which you do not share – you will find it far less profitable than to tolerate them.
So, they don’t believe you; so do not try to persuade them. You simply leave them. You do not share their disbelief, for you’ve had the experience, so you leave them just as they are. And do not try to suppress that disbelief, as the world does.
Today we are trying to suppress at a fantastic cost, opinions of other governments, that we do not share, and they are spending billions to suppress our free enterprises. They can’t suppress it with all of their billions, and we cannot suppress theirs. So, it is far wiser to tolerate it than to try to suppress it, just as it is far wiser for me, at any opposition to my experience, to simply tolerate it, and not try to suppress it. Leave them alone.
Eventually everyone who now opposes it will be brought to experience it, and when a man experiences it, then he can’t deny the experience. So, having the evidence as something he himself experienced, all arguments cease.
So the Son of man of Scripture is in you as your own wonderful I AM, your own wonderful human imagination is the Christ – the Lord Jesus Christ of Scripture, and the Lord Jesus is God, the Father. And His Christ is humanity personified as the single being called David. David will call you, one day, Father, and you will know you are his father! And David only represents Humanity, that sturdy stock on which the sons of God were engrafted.
Now let us go into the Silence.
Audience Questions
Question: Did I understand you to say that we should not concentrate on trying to improve the world?
Neville: I did not say that. I said this is a schoolroom of educative darkness, and you do not change a schoolroom into a home. It remains a school filled with problems to be solved. Let us solve the problem, but you still are not going to turn the school into a home. It remains a school for all who are coming into it to face the problems – if not similar problems, more problems. So, make any effort you want, but you will not enter heaven by reason of any gift you make to society or any changes you seem to bring about in the world. You can only enter heaven by being reborn, “For unless you are born again you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)
No matter what you do in this world, you have to be born again, for “flesh and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” as told us in the 3rd chapter of the Gospel of John. Here was a member of the Sanhedrin and he did not know it. He said, “You a master of Israel and you do not know?” (John 3:10) Unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He did not know it! He thought that by doing good things in the world and giving some fabulous sum of money to some foundation and giving his name to some hospital, that that would earn him some little niche. No, no, you aren’t in any other little niche. You are still flesh and blood. He said, “You cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.” That which is flesh remains flesh, and that which is Spirit is Spirit. (See John 3:6) And if I would enter that Spirit, it must be Spirit, and that comes out of the skull of man, not from the womb of woman.
These garments [indicating the body] are born from the womb of woman. The second birth is from the skull – a literal birth out of the skull. You come out just as a child from the womb, but you come out of your own skull, and you ease yourself out inch-by-inch-by-inch, and all the story of the birth of Christ as recorded in the books of Luke and Matthew surround you. You are wrapped in swaddling clothes as the sign of your birth, a birth from above. The witnesses to the event, they appear out of the nowhere. They witness the infant, which is a sign, for the child is not the thing that is born, as we are told, “And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12) This was not the birth, but the sign of the birth.
Well, what was born? God was born! The Savior was born. And man has completely misunderstood the entire mystery of the story. When you are born from above, no one is going to see you with the mortal eye, but they will see the sign of your birth, the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Question: Neville, will you explain what you mean by the Kingdom of Heaven?
Neville: The Kingdom of Heaven? To me, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a realm. To me, the Kingdom of Heaven is when man is clothed in his immortal body. Wherever he is, that’s the Kingdom of Heaven. When I am clothed in my immortal body, if I move through the Petrified Forest, it will instantly burst into foliage. If I move through the desert, it will blossom like the rose. Wherever I am, clothed in my immortal body as the Risen Christ, everything is perfect. You cannot move in any sphere that could remain imperfect; in my presence it is perfect. That’s the Kingdom of Heaven – not a realm.
If I walked through Hell, it would cease to be Hell, clothed in my immortal body.
I know in my own case, in 1946, traveling through the Caribbean on my way to Mobile, Alabama, on a freighter carrying this red dust for Alcoa – it’s an aluminum dust we call boxite, and I retired early, because it only carried a few passengers. I think twelve was the maximum. It was really a cargo boat. We were down to the very gunnels with this boxite. So, I retired early; in the wee hours of the morning this happened to me. I heard this heavenly chorus singing, and it is saying, “Neville is risen,” and I felt myself twisted out of my skull like a corkscrew, and here I am clothed with a garment of light – living light, and I felt myself a conqueror in a conflict with Death. Here I am, completely clothed in something entirely different. Well, I was light unto myself. I didn’t need the sun, the stars, the moon or anything to illuminate my world. It was light enough.
And then I saw this enormous sea of human imperfection, and I was moving in the direction of it. I didn’t walk; I simply glided above the surface of the earth. Well, when I got to this enormous crowd, feet were missing, hands were missing, limbs were missing; they were simply halt, lame, blind, withered. Not one asked me to help. I did not do what I did out of compassion. I simply glided by, and everyone was made perfect as I glided by. Eyes out of the nowhere reappeared in the empty sockets. Arms out of the nowhere fitted the empty armpits, and those who were crippled ceased to be crippled. Everything was made perfect as I glided by. And the chorus accompanied me singing, “Neville is risen.” When I got to the very end and this was all made perfect, the chorus exulted, “It is finished!” Then I felt myself crystallize back into this little garment, which was asleep on the bed in the stateroom.
So, I know from experience that Heaven is not a realm, but it is the body of the Resurrected Christ-in-you. When you awake and you are risen, you are clothed in an entirely different garment, and that garment is perfect, and nothing can remain imperfect in its presence. So, you don’t need a realm called “heaven.” You don’t need anything, just your body. And wherever you go – if you walk this very moment into the Petrified Forest – these trees that have been long dead and turned to stone will burst into foliage, because you are a God of the Living. “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” (John 11:25) Nothing can remain imperfect in the presence of the Risen Lord. So, that’s my concept of the Kingdom of Heaven. I will meet you, and I will meet everyone that I know, and I will know you, because there’s no change in identity. I will know you as my friend and my brother in Eternity, but I will know you as God! Everyone is destined to be God. We came out from the Father, and all things bring forth after their kind. When I was detached from the Father and engrafted onto the stock called Humanity, I bring forth God, just as you take a graft and you put it onto a root stock, it doesn’t produce the nature of the stock onto which it is grafted, it produces its own nature.
Have you never seen it done?
Flowers – my Mother used to love them. She had a marvelous garden, especially roses. She would take a rose and graft it onto a good firm stock. When it bore, it bore the nature of the graft; it didn’t bear the nature of the stock onto which it was grafted. So, because we came out of God, that’s a graft. That’s the Son of God. It is a scion, and you graft it on. And when you bear fruit, you bear the fruit of God, and God being Father, He has to have a son, so when you bear the fruit, you are going to bear the same Son.
Same Questioner: Well, why is death necessary?
Neville: Why is death necessary? Did you ever read the 82nd Psalm? “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment…” and now God speaks. The word is “Elohim;” it’s a plural word, translated both in the singular and in the plural in one Psalm. So, when we say, “God has taken his place,” that word is “Elohim,” that word is plural.
But it is translated in the singular. “…In the midst of the gods…” – that’s “Elohim;” now it is plural. Now God speaks, in the singular, to the gods. It is really communion with Self. He says, “I say, Ye are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High; nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall as one man, O princes.” (Psalm 82:6, 7)
If you will die like men, then you cannot be man, because it would be nonsense to tell you that you are going to die like men if you are already man. You are going to come down and annex the brains of the stock called “man,” and die like men when you die. You are the immortal body and cannot experience death, but as you come down to that which dies, he says, “You will die like men. To tell me I am going to die like a man is to almost tell me by implication that I am not man. If I am going to die like men, then I am not man, am I? But I have to become man to experience death. So, an immortal being that cannot die, in order to experience death and overcome death, he dies like men. Well, the only way to die like man is to become man.
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